I NEVER DOUBT MYSELF MORE THAN I DO WHEN YOU'RE AROUND

            I stifle a yawn and open another of Sonia's kitchen drawers. They slide open with no noise or difficulty and have silencers to make slamming impossible — good in theory but it would be far too easy for someone to rob their cutlery when they don't have to joggle the drawer back and forth to gain access, alerting everyone in the house and wasting precious time.

Since lessons are over and Hannah's Pantry is shut for the start of the week, Sonia offered to do tutoring at her place. Miles is late. Obviously. Self-obsessed dickhead who has no respect for other people's time, innit. He'd probably go into anaphylactic shock if he thought about someone else for once.

I've decided not to be confused anymore.

Hopefully, he won't show up at all.

He never responded to my text and I spent the weekend ducking at every risk of him spotting me through a window. I even refused to get the post, which earned me a twenty-minute lecture from Iya about how lazy and spoilt I am, interrupted only when Mrs Azad came by with a plate of fresh cardamom biscuits to thank Iya for the help with her sprained ankle last week.

Bored with Sonia's cutlery drawer, I move to the one below it, which, along with cooking utensils, is filled with no shortage of peculiar devices. I pick one out. With the thin rod poking out of the handle, it looks like some sort of torture device. I nearly drop it when I press the on-button and it starts to buzz loudly.

'The hell's this? A vibrator?'

Sonia sighs from the breakfast bar. 'It's a cappuccino whisk. You use it to make milk frothy.'

'What?' A scoff rolls against the roof of my mouth. I turn it off and chuck it back in the drawer. 'A vibrator would be more useful.'

Adjusting my bucket hat, I look at the clock again. It's nearly quarter past and still no sign of Miles.

'He's probably not coming.'

With a groan, she throws her pencil down onto the sketchpad. Apparently, it's not Miles she's annoyed with because she glares at me and not the door, eye contact with her so rare that I shrink back. 'What's going on with you two?'

What is she talking about, "going on"? Why would she think something's going on? The only thing going on is that he's a dickhead.

'Nothin.'

Too impatient to deal with me, she returns to her drawing. 'I think there is. You're always staring and all you do is talk about each other–'

'That's not true. You're bare makin that up.'

'You've been here for twenty minutes and he's all you're interested in. You could tell me I look nice or ask me about the weekend, but no, it's Miles Miles Miles.'

I scowl. That's not true. I asked her about her weekend when I first came in. Must've. Right? I screw up my face but all I recall asking is whether Miles had arrived already. Astaghfirullah. Maybe Iya's right: I really do lack basic manners.

Think about something else. Anything else.

I round the kitchen island where she sits on a barstool. The last time I saw Sonia outside of school must have been before GCSEs. Used to uniform, she looks almost disturbing, albeit beautiful too, in her dungarees and rainbow-striped crewneck.

'Your outfit's cute.'

She smiles at her sketchbook. 'Yes, I know. Thank you.'

'What're you drawing?' I slip into the stool beside her, the chain looped to my trousers clattering on the wood, to look at the ridiculously detailed picture of the train station. She's not drawing this from memory, is she? Best not to ask. 'Should we just get on since he's clearly doin somethin more important–?'

The doorbell rings.

I cement to my barstool whilst Sonia slides off hers.

She's barely opened the door before Miles's voice floods from the entrance. 'I'm dead sorry I'm late. Iris made me miss the bus so I had to walk and I forgot my cell so I couldn't phone.'

He forgot his phone. Maybe that means he hasn't seen the text. But how likely is that considering I sent it on Friday and it's Monday now? If I pretend I've forgotten all about it, maybe he'll ignore it too.

Nodding, I slide off the stool just as Miles follows Sonia into the kitchen. He neglects himself halfway over the threshold as he slowly scans up my teal parachute trousers to my cropped tee and bucket hat before trailing down again. His gaze glues onto the sliver of bare skin at my waist.

What's he staring so much for? Probably holding back some comment about dressing so much like a "queer fuck". He's hardly in the position to complain — who wears athletic wear when they're not even exercising? Would he die if he wore a shirt with sleeves? And, of course, he decided to walk here so that his muscles only look more defined with the sheen of his sweat. Dickhead.

Sonia sighs again. 'Should we start?'

Without waiting for an answer, she grabs her backpack and glides through the kitchen into the dining room beyond it. I hurry to follow, the trouser chain chattering against my thigh at each footfall.

The dining room alone is the size of half of our ground floor. A Tembu beaded tapestry of tribe members in traditional clothing covers the wall opposite floor-to-ceiling windows and the polished walnut table is large enough to host ten people.

I slip into a seat at the head and pull out my maths book. 'Oh, um... I can't do Wednesday, so I reckon this our last meet.'

Miles knocks a chair right into his pelvis. 'What?'

I raise my eyebrows at him. He looks like I've just informed him that his dog died. A bit of an overreaction: it's not like one lesson will make that big a difference to his grade.

He has to bite through a grimace as he speaks, massaging his hip bone. 'How come?'

'I've got a meeting with my parole officer.' I scratch the side of my neck. 'If I miss it, they'll put me back in juvie.'

'Right...' Nodding, Miles drops into his seat. 'And what did you go to juvie for?'

'Robbin a petrol station.'

'I thought you went to juvie for drugs,' Sonia says, her voice indisputably disinterested. The point of her fluff ball pen is expectantly pressed to a clean page of her notebook.

'Yeah...' I rub my palms on my trousers. 'I robbed a petrol station and then used the money to buy drugs.'

Miles reclines in his chair, a smirk budding on his lips. What is he doing? He's never been this direct before. What if he's on a deadline? Maybe he made a bet to find out all the details and that's what this whole tutoring thing is about. And since this is our last session, he has to get to the bottom of it now or his social rank will plummet.

'How'd you rob the petrol station?'

'With a gun, innit.'

'You own a gun?'

'I did. It was unlicensed though, so I chucked it right after cause carryin an unlicensed weapon will get you twenty years.' I adjust my bucket hat as I run my tongue along the back of my teeth. 'Anyway, let's get back to the maths, yeah? You're not payin me to hear my autobiography.' I glance at Sonia only to return to Miles.

He stares at me for a lingering second before he forces his face to neutral. 'Aye.'

It takes a few minutes to force my mind to focus on maths, partly due to Miles and partly due to the fatigue that still plagues me from my episode days later. I manage eventually and we get through an hour and a half with no distractions.

At two, Winnie, Sonia's basset hound, starts to demand attention and she says she should walk her. Neither I nor Miles are close enough friends with her to hang out in her home without her there so we follow.

I used to clean houses in Eastwich. Before I had the experience or age for a contract job, I spent my weekends and holidays here and it's evident the tradition continues; everywhere I try to look, I'm expelled by the blinding reflection of sunlight from dozens of windows untarnished by so much as a speck of pollen.

Despite the idyllic weather, all the gardens we pass are empty. No kids chase each other with water guns or colour the cul-de-sacs in chalk drawings as their parents watch from the shade, no music gives away the impromptu back garden picnics teens have raided their pantries for.

Most houses on this side of Sufadale are empty for summer as their residents travel to Mallorca or Rhodes or wherever rich people go on holiday. I'll never understand why they paid me, and whoever they pay now, to wash the windows and mow the lawn once a week when there's nobody here to look at them.

I've fallen behind. I look like an idiot, constantly losing myself to contemplation. Stop living in your head, idiot.

Sonia is already at the mouth of a gravel path that strays from the residential area and wades along the sparse woods all the way to the edge of farmland on the outskirts of Sufadale. Miles is waiting for me halfway. Something twists in my chest, or maybe in my gut, and I scurry to catch up, doing my best to give him a thankful smile before we fall into step with each other to follow Sonia.

I should say something. Something that's not an obvious attempt to fill the silence but not too personal either. 'You have a nice dream last night?'

Apparently, it's not the small-talk conversation starter I expected because Miles misses a step and pebbles grouse under his trainers. 'Why would you ask me that? How should I know? I didn't dream about nowt.' He grips the back of his neck with both hands. 'I didn't have any kind of dream. I don't bloody remember.'

I raise my hands in mock surrender. 'Sorry. I'll be sure to never ask about your dreams again.' Ya Allah, what's with him now? Definitely won't try another time.

Unlike the dirt path behind East Trough, here, the hay and shrubbery on either side are well-kempt, paid for by the city, so it's easy to think we're walking in a park. A couple comes into view from behind a bend, and as they pass Sonia, who herself is too preoccupied with Winnie to notice, both crinkle their noses.

I clench my jaw. Then snap my head to Miles. 'Hold my hand.'

He stumbles over his own feet. 'What?'

'Hold my hand. C'mon.' Slapping his arm, I glance at the approaching couple. 'Piss off the Tories. It'll be funny.'

Albeit hesitantly, he stretches out his hand for me to clutch onto. I don't waste a second before leaning into him, tucking myself into his chest. It works exactly as planned — their crinkled noses turn to sneers. They don't attempt to hide their stares as they pass.

It takes immense effort to keep laughter out of my voice as I speak in a carrying sigh. 'Can't wait to go home and have rough anal sex.'

The woman actually stops to stare.

I turn back to meet it, trusting Miles to guide me forward without bumping into anything. 'She looks like she might get a stroke.'

Miles doesn't laugh. He keeps walking at a steady pace and tightens his hold on my hand. Then, without warning, he freezes so that, as I keep walking, I yank at my own arm. Fixated on the path, he doesn't meet my eye.

I pry our fingers apart. 'What are your palms so sweaty for?' I wipe mine on his shirt. 'Gross.'

He refuses to so much as smile.

Sucking my teeth, I step to stand right in front of him so that he has nowhere else to look. I'm done being invisible. You have to look at me. 'You don't have to be so scared. Besties won't find out. Nobody's gonna think you're gay now.'

Miles doesn't flee the proximity. He shakes his head. 'I'm not scared someone'll think I'm gay. I'm scared someone is gonna find out I'm gay.'

I forget to inhale as I fixate on the steel ring on his right ear. Nothing about it has changed but the nonsense suddenly becomes obvious, like that time I was waiting for Baba in the car with the radio on and realised, rather than "If You Seek Amy", what Britney's really saying is "all of the boys and all of the girl are begging to F-U-C-K me".

'Oh...'

I whirl around to beeline after Sonia, thoughts spiralling so quickly I can't make sense of any of them, only to skid to a halt four strides later and spin back to Miles who hasn't moved a step. Eyes screwed up, he doesn't realise I've stopped and it takes him by surprise when I retrace my steps in the gravel.

'You know that makes it worse, right? You just sit there and pretend you hear nothin when they say stuff. That's you they're calling a queer fuck. You get that?

'And for the record, we live in the same place too, so if I'm a dirty poor welfare leech then so are you. But they don't know that, do they? D'you have Lysander drop you off at some random house here and then walk home when he drives you about? But I'm the one that's dishonest? Figures.'

Miles doesn't meet my anger with equal fervour, not even with a spark. What he speaks with is resignation. 'Not everyone can be like you.'

Is that an insult? When he doesn't elaborate, I scoff and leave him where he is.

Soon after I've caught up with Sonia, he does too. For the remaining twenty minutes of the walk, none of us speaks though Sonia does hum and occasionally laugh to herself. She doesn't seem to pick up the cues of another argument, and when we get back to her house, I too decide to pretend nothing happened. Surprisingly, it works, and we get through another two hours of maths to complete the syllabus. 

Everything is fine until, after procrastinated goodbyes, we step out of Sonia's house together.

Miles lingers on the doorstep. His stare imprints to the back of my head as I unlock my bike from the drainpipe of the garage. 'Aren't you gonna take the bus?'

'Can't take my bike on the bus, can I?'

'Aye...' He stands up on his toes and rolls his heels back down. 'We could walk.'

Why does he want to walk home with me all of a sudden? We'll have to go through most of Eastwich which gives plenty of people the chance to see us together. They'll think he's "like me".

'Er...' I wrap the chain slowly around my bike handlebars. 'Okay.'

Thus, we move out of Sonia's front garden together, my bike between us, and step into tense silence which picks at me like static. It's disrupted only by the zippers of Miles's bag and the clicking of my bike pawl. I'm too on edge to drag my feet: our footsteps are silent.

Peach shades reflect off the windows around us. It turns them into photorealistic paintings of the budding sunset and the street we walk into an art gallery where the silence isn't uncomfortable at all but merely the convention of our setting.

Until Miles breaks it. 'About your text–'

'Can we talk about anythin else?'

Though he lets out a laugh, it's breathy and short-lived. He busies himself with checking that the zippers to all his pockets are properly shut as he attempts to orient himself in, what I now realise, must have been a well-rehearsed speech. Like the scene in any cliché movie where a perfectionist puts away their notecards to "speak from the heart", Miles stops looking for distractions and turns to me.

'I'm sorry.'

I start to wonder what for but the way his eyes plead with me answers the question: everything. His gaze apologizes for things he isn't even guilty of, dark irises shadowed with regret.

'I'm only trying to be the kinda son my dad would've liked... Like when I started playing football and my mum said "your Ba would be so happy, he loved football too". But if I said I were into... romance movies or owt, I wouldn't get that.

'And it's not just me neither. This is a small town. If people thought... knew... I'm gay, it'd affect my mum and my sister too, and everything's hard enough for them as is.'

My eyes dart to my trainers. My throat threatens to close up so I clear it, and, with a deep inhale, force my gaze up to him. 'That makes sense. Sorry. I shouldn't've snapped.'

Miles shrugs. His attention has moved to the horizon and he peers into the distance as if there's something to look at other than dethatched houses. He doesn't believe in God, so what do you see? Won't you explain it to me? I need to know what enchants you about sunsets. I'll listen for hours and I promise I won't interrupt.

He rotates the friendship bracelet around his right wrist as we continue at a sluggish pace. 'I dunno if my dad would've been okay with it. He were a proper traditional man, like.'

I should say something comforting. But I can hardly assure that, of course, he would: I've never met Miles's dad. How would I know?

He snaps his head to look at me before I can come up with anything. 'It were a compliment, what I said. About being like you.'

My lips part but I don't manage a single phoneme.

'I know... that... I'm all hot and cold, and it must be confusing, and I'm sorry.' He's returned to his rehearsed speech. Nonetheless, repetitively interlocks and untangles his fingers. 'I don't really know what I'm doing... I don't know what I'm s'posed to do.' Here are the dents in my skeleton, he says. Please don't axe them further.

Another tense silence settles between us, though it's less electric and more suffocating. I don't know what I'm supposed to do at the moment either. The last thing I expected to happen today was for Miles to open up to me.

We look in opposite directions to study houses on our respective sides of the street. Would things be different if we lived on the south side of the train tracks? Rich people can get away with anything. Most people, at school at least, wouldn't care that Miles is gay if he also had a three-storey carriage house on the side of Victoria and drove an Audi.

When we continue to Hydrangea Crescent, I speak. 'Have you got a secret boyfriend in Leeds, then?'

He peels his attention from the Land Rover parked in front of number seven, a smile flashing on his face before he shakes his head. 'No. I had one, but we split.'

'Cause you moved here?'

'Nah.' His lips press into a thin line as he rubs his collarbone, and when he speaks, his voice wavers. 'Nah, we split cause he moved abroad two years ago. For his master's degree... Cause he were twenty-five.'

I jerk to a halt with a clatter of my bike lock against the handlebars and stare. Two years ago. He was sixteen two years ago.

Though he stops walking too, Miles doesn't look back. He grimaces at the road ahead of us. 'I know. I know that it were... But at the time, you know, I were dead flattered that someone so much older would be interested in me. And it's not like I got a second opinion cause that would've involved me coming out.'

'I'm sorry.' There's a burn in my eyes and I blink rapidly. Astaghfirullah, now is not the time for me to cry. 'Thanks for tellin me.'

A gentle smile is the only answer he gives. He allows a moment of silence to brush the tension away before he speaks. 'You then?'

'Relationships?' I snort. 'Might I remind you that I've lived here my whole life?'

He laughs. It's the kind of laugh that's impossible to hear without joining in and soon I'm laughing too even though it really wasn't that funny. When Miles laughs, his head falls forward a little and he loses the athletic posture to a gentle curl of his upper spine. He squints too. And as his laughter fizzles out, a smile stays.

I lean a little too much on my bike. It starts to fall over and I revive just before both I and it collapse right into him. Eyes wide, I force myself to stare ahead the entire time it takes to get into East Trough through the underpass below the train tracks.

Once we're out of it, I continue without acknowledging my embarrassment. 'I don't think I rank high on anyone's list of what they find attractive.'

Hopefully, my voice sounds like I'm unbothered and it's all in good fun, like I haven't spent hours knotted in my sheets at night fearing I'll never find someone who'll love me not in spite nor because of any of my wounds, but simply love me and allow them to be there, acknowledged without requiring a connotation to the positive or to the negative.

Maybe I'm the issue because I've never tried. I predict doom in every scenario with as much accuracy as a fortune teller at a fair. But I don't want him to know that about me either. 

I hurry to continue. 'It's calm. I doubt I'd be good at relationships anyway.'

A fraction of laughter bursts out of him before he manages to suppress it in a deadpan tone. 'Because you can't tell the difference between a joke, an insult, and flirting and somehow constantly do all three at once?'

'What? No. You're a dickhead.' Kissing my teeth, I cast him a glare before I tense again. 'Other reasons. Juvie reasons.'

'C'mom... You didn't actually go to juvie.' His voice is one of kind accusation. He's caught me in a lie but finds it entertaining more than anything else. 'I mean Lysander said you disappeared for a summer but no way you've been to juvie.'

'Yeah, I have.'

'What for?'

Do I honestly believe that his motivation to spend time with me is only to gather intel? I don't know. I don't want it to be but why else? He certainly wouldn't open up to me about all this just for information. Unless it's to gain my trust. Unless it's all a lie he came up with in the desperation of today being his last chance. But he really is awful at maths. Unless he's faking that too.

None of it matters: I break instantly under his gaze. 'I tried to kill someone.'

Sighing, he shakes his head. 'You'll have to tell me honestly one day.'

It doesn't sound like a threat. You'll have to tell me honestly one day. What it sounds like is a wedding vow: I promise to be patient until you tell me, whenever that day comes, and if it never does, I'm content with that too.

I scratch my cheek as I do my best to calculate the probability of each option for his motivation until the bend to Cleavers Grove comes to view and Miles interrupts me. 'So we gonna go home and have rough anal sex?'

I ram the right handlebar of my bike into him. He dodges easily and drops his head forward with laughter.

'Keep dreamin, Kilometres.'

I would do anything for us to never get home. For us to simply live here forever where the rest of the world, or the past nor the future have any authority to evoke fear, where I don't have to think about Edenfield, or Lysander, or Miles's parents. Here, with the tangerine sunset behind us and you laughing and my head buzzing in a paradoxically comforting way.

But only one thing is clear now: I'm confused again.