Crying in the Rain (Hiding Behind The Couch Character and Festive Episodes)

10 Bar

Ade

A de internally cheered , a hint of self-belief creeping around the edges of his obliterated self-confidence. He didn’t say I feel the same because he wasn’t sure he did yet. Nor did he run away, but he was going to keep the conversation focused on Kris a while longer. Or Kris and Shaunna, at least. After ten years with Fergus, it was far too easy to fall into the trap of believing all relationships, however well they started out, eventually turned sour, yet here was Kris saying his and Shaunna’s marriage had ended but they were still friends. The best of friends. Ade felt a twinge of jealousy, which he took as a good sign that he did indeed feel the same as Kris, but it was also ridiculous. He pushed it to the back of his mind and moved on.

“Tell me more about Krissi. How old is she?”

“Twenty-two. Twenty-three a week on Sunday, actually.”

“Oh!” Twenty-two?! How? Ade was glad he’d kept his exclamations of surprise mostly to himself. It didn’t compute, and the best he could come up with for why Kris had a stepdaughter of that age was that Shaunna was older. But he was there at Krissi’s birth. A teenage boy in a relationship with a grown woman? Judging by the way Kris was watching him, arms folded and a smirk on his face, essentially saying I’ll give you a minute , Ade was way off the mark, on some aspects anyway.

“You were fifteen?” he asked, adding as a distractor, “My maths is appalling.”

“No, that’s right,” Kris confirmed.

“And Shaunna? ”

“Was also fifteen. I’d have told you if you’d asked.”

“Wow!” Ade couldn’t get his head around it. “At that age, I couldn’t even manage a part-time job on top of school, or work the washing machine or…well, anything! How did you cope? I mean, you went to drama college. How did that work?”

Kris shrugged. “I went to drama college, came home for the weekend whenever I could and every holiday. Bear in mind Krissi was at playschool by the time I left sixth form, and Shaunna still lived with her mum and dad, so they helped out a lot. But as I say, Shaunna was—is still—a brilliant mum. A brilliant woman. I think you’ll get on really well with her.”

“I will?” Now Ade folded his arms, loving how quickly Kris became flustered after he’d described so matter-of-factly being a parent at fifteen! Ade could honestly have listened to him all night, and that second G Ade had been dangling off an emotional precipice ever since.

If there was to be a future for him and Kris, he had to open up, however painful doing so might be. Fergus could not be allowed to spoil this for him.

“OK,” he began, still unsure how much to say. He feared that he might start and never stop.

“I have an arse of an ex-boyfriend who doesn’t get that it’s over.”

He paused. Kris nodded, encouraging him to go on.

“That’s why I was late tonight. He turned up at my place this morning, just as I was going to work. I was hoping he’d have left before I got home, but instead, he drank all of my wine, ate all of my food and trashed the place. So I packed him into a taxi and sent him home, but it took a while.”

“Ah. That makes sense.”

“Does it?”

“As an explanation for why you were late.”

“That’s something.” Ade fished the slice of lemon out of his glass and squeezed it gently, then harder. “He’s a very angry person with a lot of issues.”

He didn’t say the words; he didn’t need to because he saw the moment Kris put it all together—the bruises, Ade’s freak-out this morning. Or maybe the stricken quietness that had dulled the bright, colourful man beside him was simply because Ade was confirming what had been obvious all along.

The lemon was a dry husk in Ade’s aching fingers, and his lip hurt from sawing it between his teeth. He was waiting for the questions—the same questions his sister, Pip and the few other people who knew had asked when they first found out. That’s not just everyday angry, Ade, and so what if he has issues? Does that give him the right to take them out on you?

But the questions didn’t come.

Kris reached out and took Ade’s hand in his, nothing more. A simple, instinctive gesture offering comfort, no judgement, but so rare and precious it felt like a warm bed with arms around him, a vision of future happiness that for just a fleeting moment was more than a distant, impossible mirage.

Ade kept his face down and his eyes trained on their hands, focusing on the gentle rub of Kris’s thumb along the edge of his own. A stray tear spilled, and Ade wiped it away in shame. “I’m sorry.”

Kris squeezed Ade’s hand, not hard. Just enough to signal he’d heard. The silence resumed, but the conversation played out in Ade’s head.

“Why are you sorry? ”

“For messing you around this evening, for making you feel you have to wear that boring shirt, for driving all the way here for a date because I’m shit-scared of Fergus coming after me, for being too much of a coward to stand up in court and tell them what a violent, abusive bastard he is.”

“I’m going to the gents’,” Ade said, hanging on to his control by a thread as he eased his hand out of Kris’s. “I need to blow my nose and…” The words crumbled away as the tears engulfed him, and he fled across the bar without looking back. He was humiliated enough, and Kris would be halfway to the door already if he knew what was good for him.

***

Kris

K ris stared after Ade, feeling as if a ton of rocks had dropped on him, pinning him to his seat. Now he understood everything—the bruises, the lack of bright colours, the uncertainty about making it for their date, the agreement to come to Kris’s hometown rather than meet up in the city where they worked and where there were a lot more venues to choose from for a night out.

He understood that there was so much he did not understand, and he was sliding too, but it wouldn’t help Ade if he returned to find Kris bawling his eyes out, so he ordered more drinks and opened the script on his phone…and worried…and wondered if he should go and check on Ade. He must have read a hundred lines or more, not a single word registering, before Ade sat down, eyes averted, and took a long drink from his replenished G&T.

It seemed to take a great deal of effort to do so, but eventually Ade looked up and met Kris’s gaze, searching…for understanding? For forgiveness? For someone he could trust? Kris held the eye contact, allowing Ade access to his emotions, letting him know he was wide open and unafraid. Ade smiled weakly.

“I’m really sorry I’ve ruined our evening. It’s very poor dating etiquette. ”

Kris shrugged. “You haven’t, and anyway, dating etiquette is just a play with a terrible script. All those shallow questions and answers—‘What do you do?’ ‘Do you come here often?’ ‘What’s number one on your bucket list?’ ‘Can I see you again?’ If you have to ask, you probably already know the answer.”

“God, you’re so right!” Ade laughed, not quite back to his bubbly pre-talking-about-the-abusive-ex self, understandably. “Not that I’ve been on the circuit recently. I imagine it hasn’t changed much. Have you dated anyone since you and Shaunna separated, apart from…you know?”

“Jack? No.” Ade had flipped the conversation, but Kris was fine going along with it, wherever it took them. “I went on nights out with people from work a few times—there are a couple of gay guys I got on well with at the station, both quite a bit younger than I am, so we used to go out in Manchester, clubbing. They were always trying to fix me up, but I’m not into one-night stands. I tried all that when I was at college, and it wasn’t that much fun then.”

“So there’s only been Shaunna for you?”

“And George.”

Ade’s eyebrows rose, and he shuffled closer. “And who’s George, other than someone who puts a smile on your face and turns your cheeks rosy?” He picked up his drink and waited to be regaled. Kris sighed wearily, but he honestly didn’t mind talking about George.

“He was my first boyfriend. We went to the same high school and were together on and off until Shaunna.”

“Did you break up with him for her?”

“No, actually. He dumped me.”

“Outrageous! How dare he!”

Kris laughed. “George wasn’t out, and I was. Very much so. But that was just one of many things we didn’t agree on. I tried to get him to see that we were paving the way for other gay and bi kids, but he couldn’t do it. He’s very sporty—he played for the school football team—and he’s kind of a typical man. Not like alpha male or anything. Just into lots of things that are traditionally very masculine and heteronormative. Like, for instance, he studied agriculture at uni, then moved to Colorado in his twenties and ran a cattle ranch.”

“That is pretty manly,” Ade said. “And impressive. Should I be worried that one day you’ll drop everything and go join him?”

Kris shook his head. “Definitely not. For a start, he’s back in the UK now.”

“A threat even closer to home!” Ade was mock aghast, or Kris hoped he was laying it on. “Are you still in touch?”

“Yeah. There’s a group of us who’ve stayed friends since school. We’re really close. We pop in to visit each other all the time and celebrate birthdays and go on holiday together—we went to visit George while he was in Colorado. That was…eye-opening.”

“I’ve never been anywhere like that. What was it like?”

“The scenery was incredible, surrounded by snow-capped mountains and so much space, it’s hard to picture, living here. The ranch, though…well, it wasn’t as if George had misled us, but I guess we all imagined a huge homestead with a porch like something off Dallas , and it turned out to be a broken-down shack in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by hundreds of cows and horses. Really not my thing. Or George’s. Although some of those cowboys were really, really hot.”

“Go there often, did you?” Ade teased.

“Not often enough!”

They both laughed and clanged their glasses in a toast to ‘hot cowboys’.

“This is nice,” Ade said.

“Yeah, it is,” Kris agreed. Ade looked so much happier than he had, and that made Kris happy too, even if he was feeling a certain amount of pressure to keep the stories coming.

“Last month, one of our friends got married, and believe it or not, we had a group honeymoon.”

“Kinky! ”

Kris laughed. “There was definitely nothing kinky going on. Ellie and James—the couple who got married—have a baby, and James has a son from his previous marriage, so their kids were there, and Dan and Adele’s daughter—”

“And Krissi?”

“Not this time. She says she’s too old to go on holiday with the parentals. I think what she means is we’re too boring, and to be fair, there’s not much for a town girl to do in a cabin in the Welsh mountains. On the plus side, it meant Casper could come with us.” There were entire subplots Kris could’ve gone into, but some of those weren’t his to share, so he finished with, “Casper’s our dog—a golden Lab. Quite big, moults all the time, generally a bit on the dozy side.”

“No offence to Casper,” Ade said, “but I think you’ve just described every golden Labrador, ever.”

“Hey, I’ll have you know he’s named after one of the three wise men.”

“Oh, so he’s Casp- ar rather than Casp -er ?”

“Nope, I was kidding. Krissi chose the name because he’s always ‘pleased to meet ya’ like Casper the Friendly Ghost, but I felt I should say something in the poor dog’s defence.”

“Ah, OK.” Ade chuckled. “I’ve no idea what that is, incidentally.”

“A cartoon Krissi used to watch on TV when she was little. She made us record every episode.”

“My sister’s kids are like that. She goes mad because they ask to watch something and then leave the TV playing to itself. Or they used to. I haven’t seen them in a while.” Ade’s focus drifted, and he sighed and closed his eyes for a moment but once again shook off whatever it was. “Does your brother have children?”

Another tiny insight, another switch back.

“He does. Two daughters, eighteen and fifteen. They’re beautiful girls, both stereotypically blonde Swedes, even though Lars is darker than I am. Lena—his wife—is fair. And she’s stunning. Fragile, like an ice crystal.”

“An interesting description. ”

“Hmm.” Kris hadn’t meant to imply his sister-in-law was cold, but both she and Lars were emotionally quite restrained, even for Swedes. “They’re right for each other. He’s a businessman, and she’s a former model who loves hosting dinner parties. Very conventional and sensible, and their home is immaculate.” Kris frowned. “I can’t imagine what they think of us with our clutter. Shaunna insists the house always stinks of dog. Honestly, someone only has to sniff and she whips out the incense. Potpourri and scented candles everywhere!”

“Sounds very cosy to me,” Ade said.

“Oh, it is, but it’s a far cry from that functional, minimalistic style us Swedes are famed for.”

“What matters is that you like it.”

“I do. I love it.” Kris shrugged. “But then I look at Lars and Lena with their big house, daughters at private school, fancy new cars… Even if I was as successful as Lars, I don’t think I’d want that lifestyle.”