It didn’t go over particularly well, Christian taking me to the art gallery, but then there wasn’t much Tiller could say, because we both knew he only pretended he couldn’t come home. I don’t know whether that was because he felt like it was too dicey to go to a museum with me or because he’s avoiding my brother, but either way, it wasn’t his favourite of all the news I’ve ever delivered him.
The dinner, however — for better or for worse — went very well. Tiller liked my brother.1
He didn’t say as much,2 but I could tell he did. Not his fault, Julian is practically impossible to dislike, even knowing all the shit he pulls and does. He’s humanising, my brother — that’s where he gets you. He’s so obviously flawed, so obviously imperfect and ready and willing to admit it — so much so that it disarms you.
He’s not always like this, just when he wants to win you, and he wants to win Tills. A few times I’ve even caught them watching ESPN Classics.
But tonight after work Tiller comes home and as soon as he walks into my bedroom, I can tell he’s in his head.
He can be like that sometimes, I’ve noticed. He overthinks things. Thinks about how everything might play out, how it might work, how it might not, how it looks, the optics of everything. He needs to be pulled back from the edge of a cliff every now and then, but for the most part I don’t mind when he goes serious because I like how his face goes when he is. He has these beautiful eyebrows. Pretty straight across, and he always looks intense, but it’s combatted by the lightness of his eyes.
He walks over to me in my bed, bends down, brushes his lips against mine, smiles down at me tired.
“Good day?” I ask.
He nods, but he looks a bit tired.
“No?” I ask, sitting up straighter.
“Yeah, no—” He shrugs.3 “It was fine — it was good.”
“Okay.” I frown, watching him.
“What about yours?” He sits down on the edge of my bed, pulls his shirt off his head they way hot boys do. From the back of the neck and pulling it off forward — I don’t know why but it feels like a magic trick.
“It was fine.” I shrug. “Boring, really — I’m just around the house a bunch.”
“No luck with the tutor yet?”
“Well,” I shrug, “Julian’s hired a retired military surgeon to come and teach me field tactics, triage and emergency care techniques, you know—” I flash him a little smile. “Things he’d find personally useful.”
Tiller sniffs, rolls his eyes a little and then his eyes catch on my bedside table.
Maybe that was stupid of me to leave it out, but I didn’t think anything of it.
“What’s that?” He frowns, nodding towards my gold doubloon that’s sitting on a Moleskine journal.
I have thirty-eight doubloons at this point.
My brother’s been giving them to me most of my life. I sketch each one into my journal and write down everything I can find out about the coin and its history and then I4 put the gold in my safe and daydream about two hundred years from now someone finding my own buried treasure and they’ll be confused because there’ll be gold doubloons from all over time and the world, and the thought makes me happy.
“This?” I pick it up and toss it to him. “Julian gave it to me.” I give him a small smile.
Tiller turns it over in his hands, frowning as he does — then he peeks up at me, holding the coin between his thumb and his index finger.
“Some coins like these were reported missing yesterday.”
I snatch it back quickly. “No there weren’t—”
“Oh.” He pulls his chin back. “You’re monitoring antique thefts now, are you?”
“Are you?” I ask sharply.
“Don’t—” He shakes his head. “Don’t look at me like I’m the bad guy for doing my fucking job and knowing when shit’s been stolen—”
“It hasn’t been stolen!” I lie. Maybe. Maybe I’m not lying, I don’t know, but it probably hasn’t been. “He bought it for me—”
“Your brother, the known art and antiquities thief, just happens to give you a piece of pirate gold the same week some’s reported missing—”
I shake my head, dismissively. “This shit is littered all over the seafloor—”
“Really?” He gives me a look. “Peruvian eight Escudos from 1715? What the fuck beaches are you hanging out at?”
I glare at him a bit and he starts shaking his head a lot, standing up, pacing.
“This is bad, Dais — what am I meant to do?”
“Nothing!” I shake my head. “You can’t do anything—”
“I’m a fucking detective at the NCA, and my girlfriend is pocketing shit she knows is stolen—” He gives me a look. “Julian’s a thief — I know you know he stole that—”
“What are you doing?” I stand up, shaking my head at him. “You like him! I know you like him!”
“You’re right!” Tiller nods, stressed, “I do. And I hate that!” He shrugs. “I don’t want to like someone like him—”
I glare at him as I fold my hands over my chest, defiant. “You’re dating someone like him.”
Tiller shoves his hands through his hair and his eyes look heavy. “Yeah, well maybe I shouldn’t be—”5
My mouth falls open. I blink a few times. “Are you breaking up with me?”
Tiller walks right over to me, hands on my face. “No—” He shakes his head. “But I don’t know — I don’t know if—”
“I’m not ready—” I bury my face in his chest and he wraps his arms around me straight away, so maybe he isn’t yet either. “Please, Tills—” I sniffle into him and his grip tightens. “I’m not—”
I’m not ready yet, that’s the bottom line. Because I know what happens soon — I know we’re on borrowed time. We have been since the second we walked through the doors here. This isn’t what I wanted, God, I hope he remembers that. I don’t like the feeling that I need to hide parts of my life from him and I don’t like thinking that he has to lie for me, and I know that he has to. And he will, because he loves me. But because I love him I don’t want him to have to, and I guess therein lies the iceberg.
We’ve crashed, I know we have. No way to make it ashore, but maybe we can still pretend we’ll make it because I’m not ready. Not ready to let him go, not ready to not see him anymore, not ready for his hands to not be on my waist, not ready to feel alone again, just… not ready to say goodbye to him or the life that he represents.
Tiller shakes his head, nudges my face with his own until I’m looking at him again. “I’m not ready either,” he tells me before he kisses me.
He slips his hand under my shirt, keeps it on my waist for a couple of seconds before his hands slip north and take it all the way off.
He lifts me up, carrying me backwards, laying me down, looking at me with eyes I think I’ll always be grateful for no matter what happens after or next or later, because those eyes were my lifeline and my safe place when I didn’t have anything else.
And his hands slip down my body, his mouth dragging down me with them. There’s a sad and desperate urgency to us right now — two people clinging to a life raft, big breaths that feel like last rites.
And I cry a little bit, and I think he sees but he doesn’t say anything — a bit because now that we’re here, I think the statue I put away in that room in my old house is back out, dead and centre, shadowing everything, distorting light, stealing focus and also a bit because even if that is true, it doesn’t mean that I don’t love Tiller, which I do — which I tell him, and he says it back. I can tell by the way his eyes go when they look at me that he loves me too but you can ask anyone and they’ll tell you for free (even though the lesson itself often comes at great cost) — love isn’t enough, and it will hardly ever set you free.
1 Much to his dismay.
2 I don’t think he’ll ever admit it out loud.
3 And I can tell he’s lying.
4 Usually.
5 I think he says this by accident.
