Charlie told me a story.  He said that he woke up this morning and found that I was missing. When I didn’t reappear after a couple of hours, Charlie went to the neighbour and knocked on her door. “Have you seen Miles?” “No, I haven’t,” she replied. Charlie went to the other neighbour and knocked on the door. “Have you seen Miles?” “No, I’ve not seen him,” he answered. Charlie left the apartment and walked to the block on the other side of the road. He climbed three flights of stairs and knocked on Mrs Hayward’s door. “Have you seen Miles?” But she slammed the door in his face.

Charlie told the story with such conviction that you almost believed him. But it is a way of saying, “You went out and didn’t tell me where you were going.” At times, he tries to be funny and makes the point with dramatic effect. Other times he can be blunt, like French boys sometimes are.

“Your mobile rang, and the call was from someone called Ben. Who is Ben? How do you know him? Why is he ringing you? Have you slept with him?” I’ll point out that Ben is the landlord of the apartment. “I see,” he would say, “But do you like him?”

For these reasons, I don’t tell Charlie everything, and that can sometimes cause problems. Thomas, his brother, told me that Charlie was insecure, and is frightened that he might lose everything.

I don’t like people reading what I’ve written, which is why most of my work is published under a pen name. Charlie will look over my shoulder and try to read what is on the screen. I will immediately close the laptop, and this infuriates him. “Why will you not let me read it? Is it because you are writing about me?” “It’s not about you,” I’ll tell him, “It is a short story.”

I never show him because he’s right. I often write about him, and if the story wasn’t about him, he would see something to convince himself that it was. 

I suppose it’s my secret, rather like Charlie’s mysterious trips to Europe, of which I still know nothing, and now he’s declared that he’s off to Lille again. I’m not invited and in response I’ve decided to go to Italy in November. When I tell Charlie, he assumes that he’s going with me.

I will enjoy the few days of freedom while he’s away and have already made plans to go out with Levi, the Polish boy with the broad Yorkshire accent, who asked a serious question. “Does that mean that you’ll be wanting to sleep with me?” The prospect is exciting.  “If I asked, would you say no again?” Levi smirked. It struck me that although he wanted to move in with his girlfriend, there were few signs of him doing so. “Like I said before, we shall have to see,” he replied, “But remember that you have a boyfriend.” He hadn’t said no, and I took that to mean that there was a possibility, and I started counting the days.

But Charlie doesn’t miss a trick. “Please make sure that you behave while I’m away, because when you’ve had a drink, you have mischief in you. While the cat’s away, the mice will play.” He repeated this to Levi who told him that if he was so jealous then he should consider staying home. 

A message from Thomas in Paris. “When am I going to see you?” What a predicament? I’d like to see him again, but there is the problem of Charlie, the guy I sleep beside every night. “Hey Charlie, I’m off to Paris, and if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to get my end away with your brother, but hey, it’s more than I get from you.” I’m excited and tempted to go, but I’m afraid of the repercussions.

I love Charlie, and I think he loves me, but the one thing I want more than anything is to make love to him. But he is a strange breed, and sex is as far away as the day I met him.

The other day I was tapping into my phone, and he came up behind me. “What are you writing?” “I’m making notes,” I replied. I saw that look in his eyes. Charlie thinks that mobile phones are for messaging and taking photos. He eyed me with suspicion. “”Who are you messaging?” “Nobody. I’m writing an article for someone.” It sounded as convincing as I wanted it to be. The truth was that I was writing what you are reading now, and he didn’t believe me.

A few nights ago I tried to cuddle him in bed. “No,” he said, “I am very tired.” He put EarPods in and listened to music. That was the biggest fuck off ever. I turned over and decided that I wouldn’t be humiliated again. “If I can’t get it from you, I’ll get it somewhere else,” I murmured, knowing full well that Charlie wouldn’t hear me, but at least I’d said it.

I’ve looked at past sexual conquests and realise that the hardest part was always getting that person home and into bed. With Charlie, the challenging part was easy, but the next stage is even more difficult. The person you desire most is within reach, inches away, and yet you are forbidden to touch. 

I compare it to the euphoria of reaching the gates of heaven, and then being turned away because you’re not supposed to be there. Beyond those pearly gates you can see sunshine, utopia, and eternity, but you’re sent to hell instead.

It’s not that Charlie isn’t affectionate. He might give me a peck on the cheek and make me feel like I’m walking on air. But that’s as far as it goes. Imagine how that feels? The person that everybody thinks is your partner, and doesn’t want to make love to you.

I made the mistake of mentioning this to a friend, and he came up with a thousand and one shit reasons why this might be – life distractions, stress, emotional tension, low desire, physical, and mental health issues, sexual pain, and even brought up erectile dysfunction. That last one definitely wasn’t true because I’d seen Charlie walking about the apartment in his underpants with a definite hard-on . “Talk to him about it,” he said. I told him that I didn’t even know if Charlie was officially my boyfriend. “No,” I replied, “It’s much easier to sleep with someone else instead.”

I feel that Thomas is too good a chance to miss. I want him, I need him, and have reason to believe that he wants me, but then I remember Charlie’s temper tantrums after his brother visited.

When Levi came home last night, he sat opposite in just a pair of football shorts, and, at that moment, he was the most beautiful boy in the room. I remembered the drunken conversation we’d had a few months ago when I’d told him that I wanted to get him into bed. He’d graciously turned me down. This time I wasn’t drunk and wanted to say it again. But I didn’t, because a voice inside my head was saying, “At this time, anybody with a penis looks attractive to you.” Sadly, that voice was right.

Charlie reappears after an hour and talks to me about London and the fantastic things he’s done in the three hours that he’s been there. I can tell that he is tired. I ask him if he’s OK, but he turns away and disappears again. The barman, who is fit, but skinny as fuck, looks at me, and I smile like I’m the friendliest guy in the world. He smiles back, like he fancies me, or pities me, and because I’m drunk. I’m convinced that he thinks I’m the best looking guy in the place, but he goes to mop the floor. 

I’ve had time to reflect on the time that Thomas spent with us. The blonde French boy had gone back to Paris, and I missed him. I’d forgotten how emotional I could be and fought back tears when he’d said goodbye. The question I asked myself, was why I’d become so attached to him.

Thomas was flirtatious and for the two weeks I thought that it would only be a matter of time before I got to sleep with him. But the two brothers turned out to be alike, teasing, and seductive, without ever doing anything. Charlie had made me believe that Thomas was straight. Either he was lying or couldn’t see that his brother had a different agenda. 

Thomas’s unexpected advances went unnoticed by Charlie. Before he left, Thomas had made me promise to visit him in August and was keen that Charlie shouldn’t come with me. 

I thought about their parents, and how proud they must be to have two fine looking boys, even if there was doubt over Thomas’s parentage. Did they realise that both sons were philanderers? And would they smile, or be horrified, to discover that a man they didn’t know, had fallen in love with both?

Thomas’s departure made the apartment seem empty, and each time I walked into the living area, I expected to see him with his pale long legs sprawled across the coffee table.

“I am glad he has gone,” Charlie said. “I told you that he would cause trouble, and I was right.”

“What trouble did he cause?”

“You are moping around the apartment because he has gone, and that means that my brother has played with your mind, and you did not resist.”

I could feel myself colouring up and made a pretence of tidying cushions on the sofa. “I’ve no idea what you are talking about.”

Charlie sat cross-legged on the floor and spread his latest paintings in front of him. “Did you think that I could not see what was happening?”

“Nothing happened,” I replied. “I tried to be hospitable towards your brother, that’s all.”

“And yet,  you still managed to fall in love with him. You are no different to all the other people that he has tricked.”

“Charlie, you said that your brother was straight, and that turned out to be a lie.”

“My brother will sleep with anybody if he thinks that he can benefit from it. He will sleep with men and women. There is no distinction between them.”

I thought about the private conversation I’d had with Thomas and the stories that he’d told me about Charlie. “It seems to me that you are both alike, and besides, I didn’t sleep with your brother.”

“Then you are fortunate because he does not love you. He loves only himself.”

I slumped on the sofa and watched him make a show of rearranging the canvases. “Charlie, if I didn’t know better, I’d say that you’re jealous.” He tutted but didn’t reply.

I spent the rest of the day writing and tried to keep away from him. We were annoyed with each other, and the limited contact we had, turned out to be frosty. I realised that this was the first time that we’d fallen out.

I went to bed around midnight and expected Charlie to sleep in his own room, the one that Thomas had slept in for a fortnight. I couldn’t sleep, and about one in the morning I heard the patter of feet in the hallway. The door opened quietly, and Charlie came into the bedroom to undress. He slipped into bed beside me, and I felt the warmth from his body.

“I do not like it when we fall out,” he said gently. I didn’t reply. “And I was hoping that I could sleep here all the time, if that is okay with you?”

“I must be honest with you,” said Thomas. “There was a reason for my visit.” He sat opposite me outside the bar and puffed on a vape. “I came here because my mother asked me to.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She asked me to check up on Charlie because she was concerned about him.”

“Charlie is fine,” I said. “He seems quite happy here.”

“I know that, mon ami, but he is very secretive and tells us nothing. I am sure that he has said little about his life in Paris.”

Thomas was right about that. Ever since he moved in, Charlie had given little away.

He drank from a glass of wine and continued. “Charlie had a difficult childhood. After he was born, my mother became ill, and found it difficult to raise two children. For the most part, Charlie was raised by my mother’s sister, Aunt Celine, and that meant that we were apart for many years.”

Thomas had requested that we have a drink together and had made it clear that he didn’t want his brother around. When Charlie had said that he was going out to sketch, it was the opportunity for us to get together. But I had misinterpreted the situation.

“Aunt Celine allowed Charlie too much freedom and he grew up believing that he was entitled to everything. He was a wild child. He came back to us but found it difficult to settle at home and in school. My grandparents said that Charlie took after his father who was also a wild child.”

“Not like you.”

Thomas laughed. “You might have noticed that I am very unlike my brother. I suspect that I am not my father’s child, and so I did not inherit my father’s genes.”

It was a lot to take in.

“Charlie is clever, very artistic, but he was expelled from school when he was a teenage boy.”

“Why was he expelled?” I asked, feeling increasingly uncomfortable about Charlie’s troubled past.

“Charlie is a seducer, he always has been, and he thought that he could have anybody he wanted. Let me say that he chose wrong and ruined a man’s life. When he was old enough, he moved out of the family apartment and started living his bohemian existence.”

“Where did he go at Christmas?”

“I do not know,” he said.

“He told me that he was seeing his family, but now I know that he lied.”

“He was in Paris, that I do know, but with whom he stayed is something he will keep to himself.”

“I suspect that he was with a guy called Matis.”

“Matis?” Thomas laughed again. “What do you know about Matis?”

“That he is a photographer from Lille and took erotic images of Charlie.”

“I don’t doubt it. Matis is an excellent photographer. I introduced him to Charlie at Christmas because he came into my bar. But I am sure that Charlie will not have mentioned that Matis is married with two young children and is as straight as a ruler. ”

“He didn’t,” I said, “but I suppose that makes me feel better.”

“Charlie wants to be famous, as an artist, a model or by any other means. He may be my little brother but he is also a dreamer.”

It was an afternoon of revelations. “What about you? Where do you fit into all this? I’m finding it difficult to know which brother to love.”

Thomas poured two more glasses of wine, and looked me in the eye. “I shall be gone soon, and I will tell my mother that Charlie is living with someone who loves and cares for him. That he is very fortunate. That she must not worry.” He hadn’t answered my question. “And I hope that you will visit me in Paris, and I can show you exactly the type of person that I am.”

Charlie appears to have moved into my bedroom. It was supposed to be for two weeks while Thomas slept in his room, but there are signs that he’s here to stay. I hadn’t understood why Charlie had boxed his possessions up. It was only his brother who was using his bedroom, and not a stranger. In the days that followed, Charlie started unpacking the boxes and claiming residency.

I walked into the bedroom and there was a pile of books stacked neatly beside the bed. Pasolini’s Requiem, Arditti’s the Celibate, Dancer from the Dance, and Eric Jourdan’s Les mauvais anges. I hadn’t realised that Charlie could read as well as speak both languages. I didn’t realise how pernickety he was either. I looked at his books and didn’t put them back in the right order, and he quickly rearranged them until he was satisfied.

There is also the amount of time he spends half naked on my bed, his head resting on ‘his’ pillows, while scrolling through his phone. I realised that he was updating his Instagram and felt a bit guilty. I’d manoeuvred my way around him blocking me by using a fake account and I could now see everything he posted. I had been shocked at first, photos of Charlie in erotic poses, but something became apparent, and it was that Charlie seemed enamoured with older males, guys around my age, and that gave me hope.

But I couldn’t help feeling that my privacy was evaporating, and that Charlie was hi-jacking a part of my life. Did I mind? Probably not. There was something beautiful about him wanting to spend time sleeping in the same bed. Thomas had said that Charlie wanted to feel safe and that made me feel good. It was also obvious that this was all that Charlie wanted.

I always went to bed first and Charlie would slip into it in the early hours of the morning. We might have a brief conversation, but when he stopped talking, I knew that he’d put in EarPods and was listening to music, and that he couldn’t hear me. He never read his books and that made me realise that the books were for show only. I was happy with the arrangement, that sense of cosiness, but deep down I hoped for something more.

And then there was Thomas, that lanky brother of his, who’d settled into the British way of life, albeit for a brief time, remarkably well. Charlie had warned me about him, but he hadn’t turned out to be like any of the things he’d said. Thomas was good looking and flirtatious, and I had to keep reminding myself that he was straight, but the longer he stayed, the more I realised that I was falling in love with him too. I hadn’t done anything to encourage him, but there were the delicate touches he made, the affectionate kisses, and the occasional tweak of my leg under the table. Charlie was oblivious to it all but to an outsider it might have seemed like something was going on. As two dreamy weeks rolled along, I asked myself which of the two brothers I preferred most, and I found it difficult to answer.

One night, Charlie fell asleep while we sat drinking wine and watching Ripley on Netflix. I decided to call it a night and wandered through to the bedroom. I had barely stepped through the door when two hands grab me from behind. Thomas spun me around, hugged me and planted a kiss on the cheek. It was an enthralling experience and I found myself reaching down the back of his shorts and squeezing his arse cheeks. I expected him to pull away, but he took it in his stride. They were soft and smooth and not what I expected. It was the point that I wished Charlie were anywhere but in the flat.

That was all that happened, but it was enough to send me to bed in a rapturous mood. I’d made up my mind and decided that Thomas was the one I wanted. I recalled something somebody once said to me. Make sure that it is love, not lust. I didn’t care either way.

Charlie crept into bed an hour later and did something completely unexpected. He leant over and gave me a kiss on the lips. I wished he hadn’t because that confused matters even more.

“What do you think of Thomas?”

“He’s turned out to be completely different to the person you described.” Charlie had painted a bleak picture about his brother, and so far he hadn’t matched that description. Thomas had turned out to be a thoroughly decent person, and easy on the eye.

“Do not be fooled by appearances. I meant what I said about him.”

“I don’t know whether to believe anything you say anymore.” I was referring to the revelation that he’d lied about visiting his parents at Christmas. He didn’t reply.

Thomas had been here a couple of days, and it was the second night that Charlie had shared my bed. It was strange because apart from one night stands, I was used to sleeping alone.

The first night had been awkward. I’d gone to read while Charlie stayed up late talking to Thomas. I pretended to be asleep when he came to bed. He was wearing only his underwear when he slipped between the sheets, but that wasn’t unusual because he spent most days like this. 

In a perfect world, in my colourful imagination, Charlie would have cuddled up to me and we would have spent a memorable night entwined with each other. But Charlie wasn’t like that. He put in ear buds and started watching something on YouTube. 

I wanted to touch him, I wanted to say that despite his shady lifestyle, that I loved him. Instead, I was motionless, willing something good to happen, and waited until I fell asleep.

In the morning, Charlie laid with his hands behind his head. “I had a strange dream last night, and I was furious with you. I dreamt that we were in Paris one night, and we had argued, and so I had gone to a bar on my own. In the meantime, you had gone for a walk and met Madonna in a dark alley. There was nobody else around. You fooled together and made silly videos on your phone. You showed them when we met up later and would not share them with me, and I was furious because you do not like Madonna like I do.”

I told this tale to Thomas later that day. 

“Charlie has always had strange dreams,” he said, “ever since he was a child. Sometimes he is frustrated because the dreams are not real. Once he dreamt that I had been abducted by a monster that lived in the Paris sewers and was annoyed when he found me drinking hot chocolate the following morning. Be satisfied that it was not a violent dream because he is likely to hit you in his sleep.” He paused. “But he would not deliberately hit someone that he loves.”

“I don’t think for one moment that Charlie loves me.”

“Then he is a fool because he should know that you are perfect for him.”

It had been decent of Thomas to say so, but I couldn’t help thinking that he was trying to flatter me, or at best, flirt with me. I looked at him, dressed in shorts and t-shirt, his pale long legs stretched out before him, and saw how different he was from his brother. 

“Charlie can be selfish, and stubborn, and he can be deceitful when he wants his own way. My brother must settle down with a man he can trust and who will care for him.”

“I don’t believe that I’m that person,” I replied. “We’re quite different in our ways, and Charlie won’t be around forever.”

“If you believe that, then you are fooling yourself. Charlie will stay where he is wanted. He is sleeping in your bed and that will make him feel safe. I am envious because that is something I would also like.”

I remembered a night many months before, shortly after Charlie had arrived to stay with me, and we’d gone to a busy bar. Just as we were about to leave, Charlie had gone to the toilet, and I waited outside. I stood on the other side of the street and watched as he came looking for me. I saw the panic on his face when he couldn’t find me, and the relief when he did.

Thomas stood up and I saw how slender he was. He grabbed me around the waist and pulled me towards him and despite his lean frame, I realised that he was strong and broad chested. 

“If Charlie is not interested, I might break my promise and sleep with a handsome man.” He gave me a friendly kiss and I could feel his soft bristles against my cheek.

I felt young again, recalling those carefree days when every guy was going to be better than the last one.