More Than This by Patrick Ness Page B

nice kid.”
    “He’s not the same, though,” Seth said. “There are neurological problems. He’s all1 . . . scattered now.”
    “Can you really tell that about a four-year-old? That he was one way before and a different way after?”
    “Yeah,” Seth said. “Yeah, you can.”
    “Are you sure, because –?”
    “It’s all right, Gudmund. You don’t have to fix it. I’m just telling you, okay? That’s all. I’m just saying it.”
    There was a long silence as he felt Gudmund’s breath in his ear. He could tell Gudmund was thinking, working something out.
    “You’ve never told anybody else, have you?” Gudmund asked.
    “No,” Seth said. “Who could I tell?”
    He felt Gudmund hold him tighter in acknowledgment of the importance of the moment.
    “It’s nothing I can change, right?” Seth said. “But imagine there’s this thing that always sits there in the room with you. And everyone knows it’s there and no one will ever say a single goddamn word about it until it becomes like an extra person living in your house that you have to make room for. And if you bring it up, they pretend they don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “My parents found the wrong gender of porn on my touchpad last year,” Gudmund said. “Guess how many times they’ve talked about it with me since?”
    Seth turned to look at him. “I never knew that. I’ll bet they went ballistic.”
    “You’d have thought so, but it was just a phase, wasn’t it? Nothing that churchgoing and pretending it never happened wouldn’t make go away.”
    “Aren’t they suspicious about me coming over all the time?”
    “Nah,” Gudmund said, grinning. “They think you’re a good influence. I tend to play up your athletic abilities.”
    Seth laughed.
    “So we’ve both got messed-up parents who just don’t want to know,” Gudmund said. “Though, I admit, yours are a bit worse.”
    “It’s not anything, really, good or bad. It just is.”
    “It’s enough of an anything to make you cry, Sethy,” Gudmund said softly. “And that’s not something that can be any good.” He squeezed Seth again. “Not something I like to see anyway.”
    Seth didn’t say anything, didn’t feel like he could without his voice cracking just that second.
    Gudmund let the silence linger for a moment, then he said, brightly, “At the very least, it made you guys move out here from England. And if you hadn’t, I’d never have learned about
this.”
    “Quit tugging on it,” Seth said, laughing. “You know what a foreskin is.”
    “In theory,” Gudmund said. “But to think that I used to have one of these and someone had the nerve to chop it off without even asking –”
    “Stop that,” Seth said, smacking Gudmund’s hand away again, still laughing.
    “You sure?” Gudmund moved an arm underneath Seth and pulled him back into a full embrace, nuzzling his neck.
    “Hold on,” Seth whispered suddenly.
    Gudmund froze. “What?”
    “Just that.”
    “Just what?” Gudmund asked, still frozen.
    But how could Seth explain it? Just what?
    Just Gudmund’s arms around him, holding him there, holding him tightly and not letting him go. Holding him like it was the only place that could ever have existed.
    Just that. Yes, just that.
    “You’re a mystery, you are,” Gudmund whispered.
    Seth felt Gudmund reach for something off the bed and turned to find Gudmund holding his phone up above them.
    “I told you,” Seth said, “I’m not taking any pictures of my –”
    “Not what I want,” Gudmund said, and he snapped a picture of the two of them from the shoulders up, just together, there on the bed.
    “For me,” Gudmund said. “Just for me.”
    He brought his face around to Seth’s and kissed him on the mouth, taking another picture.
    Then he put down the phone, pulled Seth even closer, and kissed him again.

Seth opens his eyes on the settee and can barely breathe from the weight on his chest.
    Oh, Jesus,
he thinks.
Oh, no,