The Devil's Trill Sonata by Matthew J. Metzger Page A

furniture scattered about the room. “Phenomenal,” he said dryly, “but sporadic.” Which he’d expected, with a hundred-plus mile gap between them. Wasn’t exactly a ten-minute bus ride to get your end away anymore.
    “Ooh, vocabulary,” Scott teased.
    “What are you, twelve?”
    “Older than you, gimpy, so watch it. I have two functioning shoulders.”
    Darren flipped him off casually.
    “Seriously, though, you two all right?”
    “Why do you care?”
    “You’re more acidic than usual,” Scott retorted. “And you chilled out when Jayden was around.”
    “Yes, around,” Darren deflected. “And he’s not. Cambridge is…”
    “Not around around,” Scott scoffed. “I mean around generally. You know. In existence and something to do with you.”
    Darren shrugged. “Getting used to him not being around-around then, aren’t I?”
    Scott narrowed his eyes. “Uh-huh.” Great. “You’ve always been a moody sod, but since school let you little arseholes off the leash…”
    “Like you can talk about being let off the leash,” Darren tried, but Scott was not for the deterring tonight, it seemed.
    “I’m just asking, brat,” he said. “You two okay?”
    “We’re fine,” Darren said—but he knew that, technically speaking, he was lying.
    * * * *
    Darren only spent one night at Scott’s before catching the train to London and back out to Cambridge. (Bloody engineering works. Who had engineering works in the week before Christmas?) Scott dropped him off in his orange monstrosity of a car, and then Darren boarded a train, put on his headphones, and blocked out the rest of the known universe.
    At least the physical one. He couldn’t deny it: there was an anxiety churning in his gut. He hadn’t seen Jayden since he’d started university, and the change was obvious enough over the phone and the internet. He was drinking wine. Their last two Skype calls, he’d been wearing a proper shirt instead of a too-large T-shirt. He’d told Darren off for making a lewd remark on Facebook the other week. In his own status , it hadn’t even been on Jayden’s timeline.
    Frankly, Darren was nervous.
    He’d not admit it—because who would?—but it was true all the same. He was nervous of getting there and finding…someone else. To the point where he’d left the sling at Scott’s just to avoid any scene about getting hurt at work, because he couldn’t predict Jayden anymore. He knew what Jayden was like; he’d seen it, for God’s sake. He tried to fit in and go unnoticed and be liked. Maybe it was Woodbourne, maybe it was the way Jayden was naturally, but he hated to rock the boat. He was always watching everyone else and emulating them to fit in, and Darren could see it happening again. He’d done it at Woodbourne (and fine, maybe that had been a good thing, because the bullying would have been worse if he hadn’t, Darren was sure of it) and he’d done it needlessly at St. John’s, and now he was doing it at Cambridge.
    And Darren couldn’t help but worry that this time, with the separation as well, he’d start to drift away.
    Darren wasn’t blind. He knew Jayden didn’t expect them to last through the next few years while he did his degree. Darren had hung on, because he’d believed they could , but half the battle was getting Jayden to believe they could. And if Jayden was already changing to fit in at Cambridge, and it was only Christmas , of his first year, then…
    Darren shook off the dogged thoughts and tried to focus on the frosty world outside the train window. It’d be fine. It was Christmas, and he was under no illusions he’d be spending at least Christmas Eve at Jayden’s parents’ house, and he liked Christmas there. Lots of food, telly, and free beer once Mr. Phillips had had a few and could be persuaded to share. Lots of Jayden hating the whole saga and trying to smuggle Darren up into his room without his mother noticing. Just generally…nice stuff. That would still happen,