The Film Still Playing

The Film Still Playing

Lewis kept the film running because pausing it would have made the room admit what Matt was doing beneath the blanket.

He lay along the narrow sofa with his head propped against one fist and the remote loose in his other hand. The larger couch had been pulled open at a right angle to him. Its mattress ended less than a metre from his knees. Matt and Imogen sat against its cushions beneath the same grey blanket, facing the television.

Matt's hand rested high on Imogen's thigh. It had been there since the opening credits.

Onscreen, a man climbed the outside of a hotel in the rain. Lewis watched him reach for the next ledge.

Until that night, keeping Matt's secret had been mostly verbal. A few unfinished explanations in the kitchen. Imogen's name appearing on Matt's phone while Rachel stood at the cooker. A lie Lewis had not volunteered but had supplied when Rachel asked the wrong question in exactly the right room.

The flat had made intimacy cheap and privacy expensive. Lewis and Matt had taken it after university because their first salaries looked respectable until rent was removed from them. Rachel moved into Matt's room within a month. Her mugs appeared beside theirs, then her winter coat behind the front door, then a narrow clothes rack that occupied the only warm patch beside the sitting-room radiator.

She did not behave like a guest. She paid a third of everything, knew which cupboard door needed lifting before it would close and brought home the coffee Lewis liked when it was discounted. On Sunday evenings she sat cross-legged at the far end of the sofa and objected to his choice of film until he found one she was willing to complain through.

Matt had been with her for four years.

He had known Imogen for eleven weeks when he told Lewis he had kissed her.

They were in the kitchen. Matt was eating cereal after midnight and standing because the flat owned only two chairs and one of them had become a shelf for unopened post.

"It happened after the client thing," he said.

Lewis closed the fridge. "Does Rachel know?"

"No."

Matt scraped the spoon around the bowl. He looked exhausted and exhilarated, an expression Lewis had never seen on him after an evening with Rachel.

"Are you going to tell her?"

Matt took another mouthful. "I don't know what I'm doing yet."

It was the sort of answer that asked Lewis to wait while pretending not to ask anything of him.

Lewis went to bed. In the morning, Matt made coffee for all three of them. Rachel kissed the back of his neck while he stood at the counter, and Matt leaned into her without looking guilty enough to be caught.

Lewis decided that friendship did not require him to manage another man's relationship. The decision felt practical.

Rachel asked him about Matt a few evenings later while they put groceries away.

"Does he seem better to you? Since starting work?"

Matt was in the sitting room, smiling at something on his phone.

Lewis put the milk in the fridge. "Less bored, maybe."

Rachel nodded as if he had confirmed something hopeful. She had been worried that Matt would hate the office, the commute and the cheap suit he kept folded over the back of their bedroom chair. She wanted the new energy to mean he had found a place for himself in adult life.

Lewis let her keep that meaning.

He met Imogen at work drinks the following Friday.

She was twenty-seven, two years older than Matt and Lewis, with dark auburn hair cut bluntly at her shoulders. She listened without arranging her face to reward the speaker. When she found something funny, the change was sudden and complete.

Rachel liked her.

That was the first unpleasant surprise of the evening. The second was how naturally Imogen occupied the place beside Matt without touching him. She knew which manager he imitated, why he kept taking the stairs and what he had said after a presentation went wrong. Rachel heard these details as evidence that somebody at work had noticed her boyfriend was worth knowing.

Lewis heard the private hours inside them.

At the bar, Rachel went to order another round. Matt followed because she had forgotten her card. Imogen stayed at the table with Lewis.

"He's told you," she said.

It was not a question.

Lewis looked toward the bar. "Enough."

Imogen lifted her glass. No apology, no defence. She watched Matt take Rachel's purse from her hand and find the card in the compartment she never used.

"He tells you things before he understands them," Imogen said.

Then Rachel returned, and Imogen asked about the music playing overhead.

The ease of the transition irritated Lewis. It also kept him watching her.

The following month, Rachel went away for her sister's birthday. Matt mentioned it on Monday. On Friday, he brought Imogen home with them.

Nobody called it a plan.

They carried wine into the sitting room and let Lewis choose the film. Matt pulled the larger couch open, threw its grey blanket across the mattress and settled beside Imogen. Lewis took the narrow sofa running perpendicular to it. There was barely room for the coffee table between them.

Matt placed one hand on Imogen's knee before the title appeared. By the end of the first scene it had moved beneath the blanket. Imogen kept her eyes on the television and shifted closer until her hip rested against his.

The film was good enough to punish divided attention. Lewis missed one exchange, then another. Matt's forearm moved beneath the blanket. Imogen's breathing changed. Once, when Lewis reached for his glass, he saw her hand close around Matt's wrist, not to stop him but to keep him where he was.

The pull-out couch gave them enough space to lie back without leaving the room. Matt kissed her. Imogen turned fully toward him, one leg crossing his beneath the blanket. They were close enough for Lewis to hear the catch in her breath before the film covered it.

Neither of them looked at him.

Matt's hand worked lower. The blanket shifted at Imogen's hips, then settled. A strip of dark fabric appeared near her knee before Matt drew the blanket over it.

Lewis kept his face toward the television. The lovers occupied the edge of his vision anyway: Matt bending over her, Imogen's fingers at the back of his neck, the grey blanket rising and falling with every adjustment.

The hotel climber reached the roof. Matt's belt buckle sounded once. He moved closer against Imogen beneath the blanket, and her lips parted against his shoulder.

Imogen drew in a breath that ended too carefully.

Lewis tightened his fingers around the remote.

The next sound was small, but it belonged to no conversation and no comfortable change of position. Imogen's voice caught low in her throat, softened as if she had pressed her mouth against Matt, then escaped again.