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There was never a dramatic goodbye, no tears and recriminations, no moping into ice cream and crisps while reciting Harry’s worst qualities. Harry absolutely has bad qualities, but Nick is resolutely fond of them by now. They don’t talk for months at a time, and then there he is in Nick’s texts, I’m in London next week. Dinner? And it’s just the same as it ever was. But they don’t make out on Nick’s couch anymore afterward and Harry doesn’t find an excuse to stay over in Nick’s bed. When he’s feeling sentimental, Nick thinks he should remember the last time they kissed, but he doesn’t. He couldn’t even say the year with any certainty, just that one time Harry turned up in London with a girlfriend, pleased and sly about it, and maybe that was a few girlfriends ago, and now there’s Mesh and Nick is settled. Really settled, finally slotted into place in his own life.
Some unkind “friend” called him “nearly 40” recently, and he protested loudly, but nearly 37 is far closer to 40 than 30, and having a boyfriend born in the ‘90s doesn’t change that. Adulthood is a coat that fits better with every phone call he makes about tiling the bathroom, and he recently found a small cluster of grey hairs above his ear and didn’t feel shriveled and impossibly ancient. Mostly he’s glad his hairline isn’t receding, unlike some other people whose widow’s peaks get more pronounced each year.
Harry calls him while he’s sat in the garden savoring the last of the sunshine in the garden on Wednesday, murmuring the word “penultimate” to himself and trying to come to terms with exactly one more day.
“Hey, popstar,” says Nick, leaning back in his chair. Pig bumps her wet nose into his knee as though he might be speaking to her, and he ruffles her ears. “Isn’t it amazing that after all these years you can still fuck up my twitter mentions?”
“Did I?” says Harry. “Well, think of it as a parting gift.”
“You could have sent champagne.”
“Oh, maybe that would have been better. Next time you leave a job after 14 years I’ll do that.”
Nick laughs. “You don’t have to say anything tomorrow. The whole bloody world’s expecting it, but no pressure.”
“No pressure,” Harry echoes. There’s music at his end, coming through soft and distorted behind his breath.
“What are you doing today?” Nick asks.
“About to go to lunch, just waiting for Liv.”
“All good then?”
“Yeah. All good. But I should ask you. You’re going through a big change. All good?”
“It’s not the menopause, Harold.” Nick runs his finger around the velvety edge of Pig’s ear. “If I think about it too much, I feel a bit sick. But all good. Yeah.” Mesh pokes his head out the back door, comes over to press a kiss to the crown of Nick’s head, eying the phone. He leans in to say hi, and Nick thumbs it to speaker.
Mesh and Harry chat for a minute, and then Mesh drifts back inside with a squeeze to the back of Nick’s neck.
“Thanks for everything,” says Harry very solemnly.
“Oh god, don’t. I can’t take it.”
“Fine. What a terrible radio presenter. Bring back Moyles.”
“Thank you.” Nick closes his eyes for a second, smiling. Sunset is washing the garden orange, and he holds back the impulse to think everything matters too much, that he’s supposed to preserve every moment of this week in his brain for some future memoir. Harry is humming faintly to the song Nick can’t quite hear. It feels like having his hand held across eight timezones by someone who hasn’t held his hand in years. A lot of this week is like that, a reassuring squeeze across a decade or more.
“I should go,” says Harry. “Speak soon, okay?”
“Yeah.” The definition of “soon” is always variable with Harry, but as Nick stares down a lack of daily schedule after fourteen years of being late for Newsbeat, that’s fine. “Speak soon.”
“Love you, Grim.”
“Love you too.”
Harry’s “bye” recedes, like he’s already putting the phone away before he rings off, and Nick sits in the low hum of London and scratches Pig’s ears and lets himself breathe.