Work for It

by Talia Hibbert

“You are gay, aren’t you?” he asks suddenly, sounding vaguely irritated. I find myself biting back a smile. “No.” “Ah.” A short little sound, but it’s bursting with… I don’t know. Would it be sheer fantasy to call his flat, metallic tone disappointment? I try and fail to slow down my heart, to snuff out the sparks glittering in my blood. “I do like men.”

What’s it like being just you in a place like this?” “Fine, or shit. Depends.” He doesn’t ask what the hell that means, probably because he knows. It’s always fine or shit, isn’t it? And it always depends.

He’s made himself a permanent dot on my horizon. This sort of thing is exactly why I shouldn’t bother with people. His vanishing act captures my attention only because fruit farms aren’t particularly exciting, while his skill is comparatively fascinating. How is a man of such conspicuous size, a man with a gravitational pull like he’s the moon to my exceedingly reluctant tide, so good at disappearing?

It’s as if he and Rebecca, and maybe several other staff members, are muttering, “The peacock has landed!” into secret earpieces whenever I enter a room.

Griff’s hands are folded behind his back, making his shoulders broader, and his booted feet are spread wide, drawing attention to his thighs. Not my attention, but someone’s, I’m sure.

I’m quite enjoying myself here in Fernley. Bumbling around this idyllic little farm with my journal in hand is wonderfully restful. In fact, it’s been five days since I last wanted to commit murder. I, for one, call that progress, and my mood vastly improves at the realisation.

“I don’t like how miserable you’ve been lately,” she finishes. I’m not miserable. I’m… thinking. “You’ve got a face like a slapped arse,” she goes on. I say honestly, “That’s just my face.”

comes to him, Rebecca. If he doesn’t like me it’ll be because I’m a rude fucker with no social skills who can’t figure out the basics of… of polite death-talk.”

I’ve done something twice over. To Keynes, yeah, because I was so awful when I chucked him out the other night, I really was. But I also feel like I’ve done something to my mum, I suppose. When I realised I’d mentioned her, it felt like something bad, and that gutted me. My mum’s not something bad. She was all the good in the world.

Or maybe it’s the look on his face: careful warmth, tentative humour, like he’s testing to see if we can slide back into the way we were. Well, we fucking can’t, because he and I are so different that he demands shit in return for his intellectual property and goes to dinners and laughs with whoever the hell he wants, while I get laughed at. And deserve it.

“I’m sorry,” I say again. “Fuck off,” he tells me. “I promise not to work in the dark.” “I don’t give a shit. If I’m being really honest, I hope your eyeballs fall out of your head and roll into a gutter.” Now I’m trying not to laugh. “Don’t fucking laugh,” he snaps.

Candlelight glitters, because men of Henry’s ilk pine for ye olden days, when they were legally allowed to beat their serfs and people like me were rarely permitted to taint the purity of their class—or indeed, their race. Oops. Not supposed to think about that sort of thing in this sort of situation. Makes it rather difficult to smile.

He stares at me some more. “If I thought I deserved it,” he says, “I’d probably kiss you.” I stand frozen while he walks away. The cool air kisses my cheeks while his words kiss me—the way he doesn’t think he should. If I thought I deserved it, he said. What the fuck does that mean? As if anyone needs to deserve me. As if he wouldn’t make the list, if deserving did come into it. Doesn’t he know no-one’s ever made me feel so many things at once in my whole life?

I put my hands on her shoulders and give her my best I’m not fucking around face, which has been known to make people run away in terror.

“But you’d be so far away!” “There’s these things called phones. Also, cars.” She sobs, a burst of sound cut off real quick. “You hate phones!” “I wouldn’t hate them if you were on the other end, you donkey.”

“Our lives have been the same for a long, long time.” She sniffles. “Are you saying we’re boring bitches?”

She’s still sniffing as she pulls back, but there’s a flash of mischief in her watery blue eyes. I’ve laid down the challenge and now she’ll pick it up. She never could resist a dare. In this moment, I know Rebecca’s gone. Not completely, I tell myself. This is like moving a plant to a different side of the garden so it’ll get more sun. She’ll do better, and that’s what matters, even if I have to walk—or drive, in this case—a bit further to see her bloom. And how will I bloom, left here in the dark?

By 11a.m., Griff still hasn’t come over, which is fine. I wasn’t expecting him to come, anyway. People, especially the people I know, say things like that all the time: I’ll come to see you! I’ll visit! We should meet for coffee! But it’s just good manners. Either they don’t come, or they show up, shag you, and leave.

The mushroom is terribly well-behaved, which means he doesn’t take after his father or his uncle. Thank God.”

I tell him waspishly, “You’re wearing odd socks.” It’s a weak effort. He doesn’t look offended; he doesn’t even look down to check. “Thanks for noticing,” he says, and then he pushes gently at my shoulder until I step back.

“You happy to be an uncle?” “I do believe it’s what I was born for.” It’s not. I want to be a father, but I’m too old and too cold and who would ever have a baby with me anyway?

I sink into wanting Griff the way people sink into hot baths after a long day, and it’s… glorious.

By the time evening rolls around, I have thought of Griffin countless times and fucked my own hand twice. I have cursed myself at least once an hour for not making him stay last night. I have promised myself that the next time he touches me, as long as I still want it, I will eat him alive. And I’m certain that he will touch me again. I don’t know why I’m certain, but I am.

“Did my eyes deceive me, yesterday—” I sigh. “Maria.” “Or did I spy our lovely Griffin—” “Maria.” “Skulking out of the flat at an unholy hour, looking rather pleased with himself?” “Maria!” But I’m grinning. She slaps my shoulder with a tea towel and says, “It’s only been a bloody week. A week, and there’s romance!” “It’s not romance.” “Get inside, you slut, and tell me all about it.” “There’s nothing to tell,” I protest, but by the time my arse meets her kitchen chair I’m already babbling, “He liked my cooking,” like a fool. I am a happy fool.

But he would’ve let me in, wouldn’t he? Saturday was good, wasn’t it? Yeah, it was good, and I have no reason to worry like this. Me and him, we’re… something, now. There’s a current between us I’ve never felt before, and I know exactly what my mum would say about it: There are things you have to reach for with both hands, and fuck the doubts. I’m mumbling under my breath, telling myself to relax, when a shadow spills over me. “Have I ever told you,” Keynes asks, “that you think rather ferociously?” My heart throws a fit.

He plucks a head and taps me on the nose with it, his voice crisp but not clipped, cool but not distant. Like he’s a teacher. Or an especially good student. “The flowers grow on bushes that may become big enough to resemble trees, but they never have a trunk. Blooms burst from their stems in a spray and are pale yellow or pure cream in colour. The leaves have serrated edges and are commonly found in groups of five. Not to be confused with cow parsley, which is whiter and tends not to have the accompanying leaves, or prycantha, which are paler, larger, and packed more closely together.” He finishes his speech and puts his elderflower in the bag. I swallow. Hard. I knew I loved plants, but Jesus Christ, hearing him reel off information like that was hot. For a moment, all I can do is stare down at my hands and imagine them on him, making him moan plant specifications in my ear.

A hand on my arm, getting hotter and hotter with each moment the touch continues. So hot that by the time I turn to face him, I feel as if he’s burning through my clothes. I actually sneak a look down, just to check he isn’t, and then I’m frozen, locked in place by what I see: that elegant, long-fingered hand splayed over my biceps, digging in just a little like he won’t let me get away. Something thrills through me, right down the middle, until my skin seems to crackle and my blood rushes in stormy waves. I let my eyes wander over his hand, his thick wrist, the crisp golden hairs on his forearms. The mint green of his shirt’s rolled-up sleeves, and his broad shoulders. His hard jaw and soft, open mouth. His eyes. “Stop that,” he murmurs, almost breathless. “Stop what?” I don’t wait for an answer, since I already know. It’s a heady, drunken feeling, this knowing.

A bigger part of me remembers the moment he said: “If I thought I deserved it, I’d kiss you right now.” Slowly, my heart pounding right through my chest, I move my hands to cradle Keynes’s face. Sweep my thumbs over those sharp cheekbones, feeling the rasp of stubble he forgot to shave. My head falls forward until my brow bumps his. I whisper, “You deserve it. Everything you want, you deserve it.”

If you’re lost, go outside. Everything’s easier under the sky. That must be how Keynes and I are doing this right now, how we’re making each other feel so good without reservations. Because we’re under the sky.

“You don’t seem afraid of anything.” “I’m afraid of lots of things,” he says promptly. “Mum used to tell me fear will stunt you. Like growing a sunflower inside a cupboard. So I try to take my sunflower outside, even when it kills me.”

“Is this supposed to be a seduction?” he asks. “Because if so, I think you’re doing it wrong.” “I don’t think you want seduction. I think you want someone to know you,” I say honestly, “and this is all about what you want, Olu.”

We dry off in silence, but it’s the good kind; the kind I feel at home in. Olu seems so talkative all the time, so constantly on, but when I go quiet, he never looks at me like I’m an alien. He doesn’t try to talk my mouth open. He doesn’t leave me be, either. He just is, and I just am, and we just are.

“Normal clothes. Instead of pastel suits that cost a bomb, or designer jeans, or—” “My jeans are not designer. They’re Levi.” “How much were they?” “I don’t know—ninety pounds. Griff, why are you laughing?” “Put the T-shirt on,” I say in between chuckles. “And these.” A pair of my sweats smack him in the chest. “I promise they won’t make you poor by association.” “You prick.”

My brain tries to tell me I’m an idiot. I tell it we don’t think things like that anymore, and if it’s not going to be a positive part of the team, it can piss off.

When I’m dressed, we stand and stare at each other like strangers instead of… instead of whatever we were ten minutes ago. I guess this is how things work, when they happen fast. They unhappen fast as well.

When we first met, Olu had this magical ability to stick at the back of my skull and make me vicious with the need to get him out. Now he’s still stuck in my head, but I want him there, and all his predatory roars sound like kitten hisses to me.

“About what I said before—I just meant, no-one’s ever given me their clothes. I was surprised.” That news changes how I think about what he said. Instead of hearing, You’re one of many, I hear, I’ve always been one of many. “Well,” I tell him, “I like you.” “I believe you’ve said that already.” A pause. “Perhaps I like you too.”

We’re almost at the turning where our paths home separate. Right to Maria’s, left to Griffin’s. He doesn’t know which direction I’m going to take, because we haven’t discussed it, and I don’t know which direction I’m supposed to take, because we haven’t discussed it.

“You didn’t think to mention the fact that you’re ten years younger than me?!” “Didn’t ask, did you?” Good Christ. “I thought you were my age!” “Cheers.” “I just meant—you’re very serious, Griff. Why are you so serious? What’s the matter with you? You should be off doing stupid, twenty-eight-year-old things.” Then again, sleeping with me might qualify.

Every touch of his tongue stamps his name all over me, and I like it. I like it so much I twist my fingers in the fabric of his shirt, stepping back and pulling him with me—until I’m pressed up against the tree I just climbed, caught between my rock and a hard place. Then we kiss some more. When we slowly, gently, come to a stop, he looks at me with cautious eyes and says, “Is this okay?” “This,” I tell him softly, “is perfect.” Even though a week ago I would have been panicking, even though I should be panicking now. I can’t, not with him, not when he’s made a rose of my heart: it’s still thorny, but around him it’s also fragrant and lovely and full.

Sometimes I’m so angry with him. How dare he make me feel like he adores me?

We didn’t argue much, but when we did, it was because she wouldn’t tell me anything. She felt like, if I helped her, that was a burden on me. Like she was a bad mother for needing me.” Griff holds my hand tighter, turning to look at me with a fierce challenge in his eyes. “But she wasn’t. She was perfect, and I loved her, and she’s the only person who ever loved me.”

“No-one helped her. That’s why she’s gone,” he says dully. “Because no-one in the whole fucking world helped her.” “You did.”

Our hearts are so close, I imagine I can feel Griff’s thumping against his ribcage, and he can feel mine. He pulls back just enough to rub our noses together, and I smile as if I’ve never cried.

He shouldn’t ask me. Because right now, I look at him and think—why in God’s name wouldn’t I come back? But that’s precisely why I have to leave on schedule, before all of this sours and the magic fades and Griffin stops smiling at me. They always stop smiling at me.

I remember my decision to hate myself less, and hear Griff’s gravelly voice in my head: “That’s all anyone can do, isn’t it? Try.” I’m trying, I’m trying, I’m trying. Finally meeting Griff’s eyes, I tell him, “I don’t know if I’ll come back to Fernley. I don’t go back. I’m not sure how to do it yet.”

The air is a mixture of the storm of want in me and something… something in Olu that I still can’t name. He has an edge to him, and it doesn’t seem like my fault—but if he wants to wear that edge down on me, I think I’ll let him. Then we get inside the house, and he shoves me up against a wall, and I know I will.

People never want me the second time as much as they did the first.

It feels as if we’ve swapped: I’m so full of need that I can barely speak, but everything in his head is spilling from his lips and it’s glorious. “You’re fucking incredible,” he swears, “so incredible. Just fuck me, just give it to me and everything will be fine, okay? Okay?”

“You’re not supposed to top from the bottom.” Griff gives me a wicked smile I barely recognise. “Who said you were topping right now? They lied.” I’ve never laughed while fucking someone before. “Behave,” I order and grab a handful of his silky hair.