Read Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 8 for Free Online Page B

staking a claim to the man who's been mine since we were four years old.
    Except he isn't mine. Not anymore.
    I step into my flat, stuffy and stifling after the frigid air outside. One good thing about living on the fifth floor: heat rises. I'll never have to worry about my electricity bills– the storage heaters are essentially decorative. Stripping off, I pad naked to the minute wetroom the developers installed off the bedroom for the sole purpose of adding another five grand to the asking price. Like a one bed flat needs two bathrooms. I shoehorn myself into the tiny space, elbows knocking the walls either side as I slide the glass door shut and turn on the shower, gasping as the water gushes scalding hot. A quick adjustment and it's more bearable, but already my skin shows up red and blotchy, tingling in the sudden switch from cold to warm.
    As I slowly soap my body, I suppose that I've changed, too. The light smattering of hair dusting my chest hadn't been there when I was eighteen, for a start. Sparse and short, like iron filings, and as black as the hairs on my head. My chest is more toned than it was back then, abs cut, stomach flat. I'm not the scrawny twink I once was, that's for sure. I like to keep in shape and I've been going to the gym at least twice a week since I was twenty, even occasionally getting in a workout between cruising the cute guys and arranging hook-ups.
    I admit, when I first came out– and for several years after– I was the proverbial kid in a candy shop. Sex with men is so easy if you know where to look. We're honest about what we want, and about getting our needs met. At one point if I'd gone more than a day without getting my dick sucked I'd consider it a dry spell. Everything had been simpler then.
    I don't think Paul's ever been like that. I was the cocky one, always louder and more outgoing than him. When we were sixteen I dragged him to our first ever gay bar. We went every week after that; it was our Friday night thing. We were jailbait and we didn't even know it.
    Well, I was jailbait. Paul never seemed that interested. He'd hover in a corner nursing a warm bottle of beer, an inscrutable expression on his face as he watched me dance and kiss and grope an endless succession of attractive strangers. No amount of cajoling or teasing would get him out of that corner to actually speak to another guy. Not unless that guy was me, not unless I took pity on my shy, gangly friend and took him by the hand, placed his arms around my waist and forced him to sway along with the music. Too late, I know now what that look on his face was. It was love.
    ****
    "Jackie, can we talk?"
    I stop packing and look over at my best friend. He's hovering, wringing his hands over the open suitcase spread across my ageing single bed. I put down the T-shirt I'm holding and sit, patting the mattress next to me. He remains standing.
    "What's up?" I ask, unsettled by the anxiety rolling off him in waves, charging the whole atmosphere of my room.
    His eyes flit over a poster of 5ive on my bedroom wall. They're a cool band, and I've always had a little bit of a thing for J. Take me home, daddy. Paul, I knew, had a crush on Scott, the black-haired, blue-eyed frontman. Him and every other teenager on the planet. Not that he'd admit it because, y'know, boybands just aren't cool. Not at our age. The poster's a hangover from my younger days but I can't bear to take it down. I know mum will, after I leave. She's not the sentimental type: no fear of my room being turned into a mausoleum after I've abandoned her in her empty nest.
    "Shouldn't you be packing?" I ask to break the silence. Tomorrow we're due to start our next big adventure: running away from our hometown to spread our wings in the big, bad city of Manchester. It feels like a whole world away.
    He shakes his head a little too vigorously. "I need to tell you something…" He trails off and won't meet my eyes.
    "Paulie, you're scaring me. What is it, has something