I knocked on Elle’s front door. The street was silent but for the distant whoosh of traffic, the calls of children in a school playground and an aeroplane passing overhead. The door opened. Elle’s brother, Nick, stood there. He wore a white t-shirt and tight-fitting black jeans with a hole in the knee. His hair was wet. He looked at me.

“Is Elle in?” I asked.

“Rob, right?”

I nodded.

“No, she’s not in,” Nick said, “I think she went to college.”

“Oh,” I said, “she doesn’t usually today.”

“No,” Nick said, “she had to hand something in or something.”

“Oh.”

I rocked back on my heels, pushed my thumbs into my jeans pockets, looked at the door-frame.

“I think she said she wouldn’t be long. Have you tried texting her?”

“I don’t have any credit.”

Nick looked past me for a moment. I turned to see a lady in a brown coat walking a long-haired dog. I turned back round.

“Do you want to come in and wait for her?” Nick asked.

“Sure,” I said.

Nick stood to the side and let me pass. He closed the door behind me. I stood in the hallway not knowing where to go. Looking down I saw a pair of Elle’s high-heeled shoes, not the ones she wore every day, in between pairs of trainers, some worn-out converse and some slippers. I bent down to untie my own shoes. Nick walked past me and stood on the stairs. I looked up at him. He was skinny. I put my shoes with the pile and followed him upstairs.

“Do you want to sit in my room?” He asked.

“I don’t mind waiting in Elle’s,” I said.

“She might. I don’t know. You can if you want.”

He shrugged and walked into his own room where I could hear a TV playing. I looked through the open door into Elle’s darkened room. Some clothes lay on the bed, a bra among them. I walked into Nick’s room.

He sat on his bed with a laptop across his legs and his back against the wall. On the TV there was a cooking programme. He looked up when I came in and patted the bed next to him. I looked at the office chair by his desk. It was piled with clothes. I sat next to him on the edge of the bed and looked at the TV. I didn’t know Nick that well, only that he went to university in Nottingham and he was older than Elle. I’d met him a couple of times before, but he usually wasn’t around.

“Check this out,” he said, suddenly picking up the remote and turning the volume down on the TV. He nodded towards his laptop. I moved back on the bed and closer to him. He tilted the laptop towards me and hit the play button on a movie-editing program. Our shoulders touched as I leaned in to look. A video started playing: an animation of a cartoon dinosaur going to a supermarket. Some jaunty music played in the background. It only lasted half a minute.

“Did you make that?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Nick said, “it’s part of my project for this semester.”

“What course do you do?”

“Film and Animation.”

I looked at his hands, gripping the sides of the laptop. They too were skinny. On his wrist he wore a music festival bracelet and some brightly coloured beads. He smelled of shower gel.

“What’s uni like?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“It’s good,” he said, “you meet new people, you go out and get drunk with them, you do some work. Are you in the same year as my sister?”

He looked at me.

“Yeah,” I said.

I looked at him. There was something delicate about him, like plasticine moulded over wire. He continued to look at me. He had the same eyes as Elle. I looked down at the laptop again.

“You want to see another of my videos?” He asked.

“Okay,” I said.

He brought up a folder and clicked on a file. This time it was a stop-motion video of a wooden man running and jumping over hurdles. It was about the same length as the last.

“How long did that take?” I asked.

“A couple of weeks,” he replied. “That was when I was just learning how to do it.”

“Oh,” I said.

I looked at the silent TV, still showing people in coloured aprons running around a kitchen, mixing things in bowls. I could feel Nick looking at me again. I turned to face him. He leaned towards me with the slightest motion. His breath smelt of toothpaste. I nearly pulled away. I had never kissed a boy before. His tongue felt slimy against mine, but tasted of mint. I was a little repulsed, a little excited. I thought about Elle.

Nick pulled away. He put the laptop down on the floor, then kind of pulled me down so we were lying on the bed, facing each other. I didn’t resist. He kissed me again, briefly, without tongues this time. I looked at his eyes, the same eyes as Elle.

“I’m not gay,” I said, after a few minutes passed in silence.

“No,” he said.

He started to play with my hair, then stroked my head gently, like you would a cat. His hips were only a few inches from mine. I barely felt anything. I sat up and looked at him. He looked comfortable. I was going to say ‘sorry’, instead I asked

“Do you think I have a chance with your sister?”

“I really couldn’t say,” he replied.

He sat up, picked his laptop up from the floor and began working again. I looked at him. Without looking away from the screen he reached for the remote and passed it to me. I took it and continued to watch him. He turned to smile at me, then looked back at the screen. I looked past him. Elle stood in the doorway.

“I thought those were your shoes I saw in the hallway,” she said, her dark eyes on me.

She was wearing that navy blue double-breasted coat of hers. I put the remote down and stood up. I could taste mint.

Tags: Fiction, gay, original fiction, Raymond Carver, Relationships, short story

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