The Party - A blog story from six authors

A six chapter short story from RJ Scott, Chris Quinton, Meredith Russell, Lisa Worrall, Sue Brown and S.A. Meade.

Blurb:

Henry and Jack had thought nothing could ever drive them apart. They were wrong. Three months have passed since Jack had walked out of the home they shared, and Henry had been too stupid to take back the hurtful things he'd said.

Both assured by their respective parents that the other would not be present at Henry's mother's annual Christmas gathering, they attend. Finding they have been duped into seeing each other, Henry realizes that this may be his only chance to try and make things right. But will he be able to convince Jack to come home?

Posted daily from 18 - 23 December.

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Chapter 1 – RJ Scott 

Henry Lewis contemplated not answering the knock on his bedroom door. It would be easy to hide out in here from his mum and not join everyone else downstairs. He'd done his bit. Caterers were here doing food but he had been the one responsible for hefting tables and moving chairs around. They had to be in organised groups in a manner that made them not look organised at all. Emily Lewis was a stickler for perfection and the thought of her not having enough chairs to hold court was something bringing her out in a rash.


"Henry, darling, everyone will be here in a few minutes. Are you dressed?" she called from the landing..

Yes. He was dressed. But not in the smart slacks and pristine white shirt his mum had said would be a 'good thing to wear'. No. He was in jeans, admittedly his best jeans, and a blue sweater over a blue T-shirt – sue him, blue was his best colour.

"Yes, Mum. I'll be down in ten."

He could picture his mum's face; her lips tight in a little moue of displeasure. She wanted him to be there when she answered the front door to her guests. Her brilliant surgeon son who saved lives on a daily basis. He was as much an ornament as the fifteen foot Norway spruce in the high ceilinged hallway.

"Don’t be long, Henry." She elongated his name so that it sounded more like hen-reeeee. She only did that when she was dissatisfied with him.

"I won't be," he called. He waited for sounds of her moving away from him but it was only years of listening to the same thing that meant he could tell when she moved. Expensive carpet muffled her footsteps but the floorboards outside his room squeaked in a very particular way. When he was satisfied she had moved away he relaxed. He hadn’t wanted to attend this damn thing. Last year, he and Jack had promised that this year would be different. This year they wouldn’t attend the Christmas party that Henry's mum threw each year and that the entire village of Cantly-on-Thame attended.

Thing is, Jack wasn’t here. He wouldn’t be going with Henry to anything again. Not after what happened in September. Emotion curled inside Henry as memories surfaced and he crossed to the window with the view over the lake at the back of the house. There'd been snow overnight, just as if his mum had ordered it. Even Henry had to admit the beautiful house in the wilds of Leicestershire was stunning against an icy lake and with a few inches of the white stuff covering the whole area. The snow sparkled in the half light of late afternoon and for a few minutes Henry simply stared down at the grounds of his childhood home. Those damn memories wouldn’t leave him alone. If only he'd done things differently. If only Jack had been a different person—a more understanding person. He couldn’t be the taking-life-as-it-comes man that Jack was. He was a man of position and he had to act the right way, be seen doing the right things. If only Jack had seen that under the shell remained the Henry he had fallen in love with… hell, there were too many ‘if onlys’.

Straightening his shoulders, he decided now was as good a time as any to make his way downstairs. He knew Jack's mum, Angela Hughes, would be arriving with her husband Edward in tow. But for the first time in twenty years Jack wouldn’t be with them. Henry's mum wasn’t specific as to why Jack wasn’t coming but when she persuaded Henry to attend he only did so when he knew there was no chance of meeting up with the man who had left him and broken his heart.

"Henry," his mum said warmly as he jumped the last two steps of the staircase to the hall. She frowned a little at his action but he'd always jumped the last two steps. Aged eleven or thirty one, he would jump those last steps until the day he couldn’t walk. It was tradition. He landed in the hallway to groups of people milling in the hall and his dad was busy taking coats and placing them in perfect order in the study.

"Henry, help your father," his mum said. Willingly he joined his dad in what was normally Alan Lewis's cave. Any place to hide out.

"Thank God you're here," Alan said as Henry assisted him in taking the coats.

"Coats getting too heavy for you, dad?" Henry teased.

"Ha, bloody ha, son. Your mum is anxious and I just want it all to go well. We don’t want a repeat of the prawn fiasco of oh-six."

"Alan, Henry? Angela and Edward are parking the car out front. They'll be inside in a moment."

Alan rolled his eyes. Emily Lewis ran a tight ship on social events like this. Henry smiled at the familiar interaction between his parents who were just as much in love with each other now as they had been when they were married. Henry wanted that. He'd wanted it with Jack.

"To battle," Alan said dryly.

Alan's words put a halt to Henry's wishing. He nodded. "To battle."



* * * *



Jack Hughes hovered by the car.

"You need to come in," his mum said softly. Angela Hughes achieved a lot by using patient encouragement—far more than shouting.

"You said he wouldn’t be here, Mum. You said that it was going to be okay. Why tell me that Emily was matchmaking? Why tell me when we're stood here at the bloody front door and it's too late for me to avoid him?"

"Language, sweetheart," his mum warned. "I honestly didn’t know until last night. I was prepared to go along with Emily's plans but seeing you look so sad when you look up at that house makes me think we're wrong to make you confront each other."

"Hell, yes you're wrong," he snapped. Then felt immediately guilty when his dad put an arm across his mum's shoulder and frowned at him.

"Sorry, Mum," he said quickly. Being thirty might make him a grown up, holding down a nine to five job might make him responsible, but being rude to his mum was never a good thing.

She pulled him in for a brief hug and he inhaled the perfume that reminded him of childhood and times when he wasn’t nursing a broken heart.

"I don’t know what happened between you two but it upsets me to see you sad and lost. You were so much in love…" she stopped talking and he pulled from her hug. What did he say to her? Yes, he had been in love. He'd even had a ring in his pocket, was going to go down on one knee and propose -. Bloody stupid. Henry wasn’t going to settle for a primary school teacher when he was a cutting edge surgeon. He'd shown that when they were together with the missed dates, or the days going by without even a text. They may well have grown up together, discovered boys together, but had they really fallen in love? Or was it just easy proximity that had them falling into bed with each other? The sex was incredible, the hugs, the love…

He couldn’t even think about it.

"What if I see him and it all comes spilling out, Mum?"

Edward spoke this time. His dad was a quiet man but when he did speak he somehow managed to summarise everything in a few words.

"Probably best if it does," was all he said.

The three of them stood silently for a moment and then Angela clapped her hands. "Can we wait until after the champagne, though?" she said. "I like champagne."

Jack huffed a laugh and his breath crystallised in the frosty cold air. Linking hands with his mum they made their way up to the large country house.

If Henry was here, then Jack could be calm and collected. He could ignore the crack in his heart and the memories that hurt. Maybe.

>>Chapter 2 from Chris Quinton>>