I WAS JUST TRYING TO BE FUNNY | ✓

▬ 26: maybe...

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

Miles lingers on the doorstep. His stare imprints on 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.'

And so, 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 morphs the street we walk down 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 apologises 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 detached 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, his dad would accept him: 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 syllable.

'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.'