Free This is Not a Love Story by Suki Fleet

you,” she says softly. I close my eyes and will her to shut up. I feel her hand on my knee.
    Mainly to stop her feeling sorry for me, I pick up my pad and write the first thing that comes into my head.
    Yeah, anything except talk to me about how much selling himself was hurting him. He always talked to you, though.
    “Are you joking?” she stares at me incredulously. “Honey, Jules is just about the shyest, most verbally reluctant person I’ve ever met.”
    He was never shy with me. Except about sex.
    “Well, that says a lot about how you make him feel, doesn’t it?”
    But we always came to you. I thought he wanted to talk to you because he couldn’t talk to me.
    “We’ve been friends a long time, and in all that time, we’ve never once had a conversation about how he felt or was feeling. To be honest, I think he came here because he didn’t want you to have to deal with him when he wasn’t feeling strong.”
    That’s stupid , I write, but I know it’s true.
    “You changed him, Romeo. After he helped you when you got attacked by that gang, he was different. He was more himself, more sure of himself. I thought it was drugs or something when he first brought you here. I thought he was high because I’d honestly never seen him so happy. But he was happy because he was taking care of you, and then later on he was happy just because he was with you.”
    She looks down at her long fingers and taps her elaborate nails against the fabric of her jeans, sighing deeply.
    “You were always wary of me, and you were right to be, I suppose. I was jealous of you at first.” Her deep brown eyes hold mine. I won’t look away. She smiles tightly. “I am still jealous, but I wanted him to be happy, and he was.”
    I grab my pad and not caring that I’m wasting pages by covering them in tears, write, Stop it, stop talking about him like he’s gone, he’s not fucking dead. I’m going to find him. I WILL.
    Joel and Phillippe are laughing in the kitchen. Joel has that effect on people, and I know why Gem doesn’t trust anyone with him. She goes to see what’s going on, and I curl up on the sofa in despair.
    I stare out the window at the drifting clouds and the slowly dimming sky, too torn apart to think coherently anymore.
    Gem goes to get ready for her next client, and Joel comes and sits on the floor in front of me. He knows I’m sad, but he doesn’t know why. I’m holding the picture I did of Julian. Holding but not looking at it. Stupid, really.
    “Why isn’t Jules with you?”
    My pad is on the floor next to us. I let my arm fall limply over the edge of the couch and write, I wish he was .
    “Why is he gone away?” Joel frowns, looking puzzled.
    I look up and see Phillippe watching us from a chair in the kitchen.
    Someone took him away. I don’t think he wanted to go away. Which is of course the wrong thing to write.
    Joel is upset. I hold him as tight as I can in my apathetic arms.
    He cries next to my ear. “Are the policemen going to find him? When someone is taken away, the policemen find them and bring them back.”
    And what am I supposed to say to that? Am I supposed to lie, or am I supposed to tell a four-year-old that we’re nothing, that we don’t matter, that to everyone else it’s better that we don’t exist?

I T ’ S A LWAYS D ARKEST B EFORE THE D AWN
     
    W E CAN ’ T stay at Gem’s, and saying good-bye to Joel is awful. It feels as though something has ended, and I’m never going to see him again. Of course Gem hasn’t said she doesn’t want me to come back. She would never say that, but I know I won’t come back unless Julian is with me.
    Phillippe follows me out into the freezing night.
    Without anything to tether me, I drift back to the streets I know. There is some strange dark comfort in being here again—even the threat of seeing Lloyd here doesn’t bother me. As we walk along the black embankment, it occurs to me we could die of this cold tonight. But even though my hands