by Alexis Hall
“Something I can help you with, Luc?” Rhys Jones Bowen, who had been passing on the way to either the coffee machine or the burns unit, stuck his head round the door. “I mean, not with that. Not that I’m judging.”
“It was a rhetorical aubergine, Rhys.”
“I’m not sure that makes it any better. Now what’s the issue?”
“Just”—I waved a dismissive hand—“donor stuff.”
He came in uninvited and plonked himself in the spare chair. “Well, let me hear it. A problem shared is a problem two people have.”
“I’m afraid you’re not going to be able to do much good here. Not unless you happen to know a cheap but not insultingly cheap, ideally slightly trendy and indie, but not threateningly trendy and indie, specifically vegan café-slash-restaurant that I can take Adam and Tamara Clarke to.”
“Oh, that’s easy. Just take them to Bronwyn’s.”
My mouth sagged for a moment. “Who’s Bronwyn?”
“Friend of mine from way back. She’s a vegan, and she’s doing a pop-up.”
“Okay,” I said hesitantly, “that sounds promising. Just to check, is this pop-up happening in Aberystwyth?”
“Luc, I find it offensive the way you assume I only know about things in Wales. It’s happening in Islington. Although she is from Aberystwyth.”
“And she’s definitely vegan? Not, like, a volcanologist or a veterinarian?”
“I’m finding your lack of confidence a little bit hurtful, Luc.” He did, in fact, look fairly hurt. “We do have vegans in Wales. And I don’t just mean the sheep.”
“Sorry.”
“That last bit was a joke. I’m allowed to make it because I’m from Wales. And so you can laugh.”
The moment, such as it had ever been, had very much passed. But he was doing me a favour—maybe—so I forced out a wheezing noise I hoped sounded moderately amused.
“But, no,” Rhys went on defensively, “she’s definitely vegan. I remember because she used to be vegetarian but then she explained that she felt that it wasn’t ethically defensible to be vegetarian but not vegan owing to the complex interdependence of animal exploitation in industrialised farming. For example, Luc, did you know that there are two types of chickens, one for laying eggs, and one for eating, and because we only need the girl chickens for the eggs, the boy egg chickens just get thrown in a big blender and used for cat food?”
“Um. I didn’t know that. Thank you for ruining eggs for me.”
“Yeah but they’re brilliant with soldiers, though, aren’t they?”
As in most conversations with Rhys Jones Bowen, I really wasn’t sure how we’d got here. “Anyway, back to you saving my vegan bacon substitute. This Bronwyn who used to be a vegetarian from Aberystwyth and is now a vegan in Islington, is she…how do I put this…actually any good?”
He scratched absently at his beard. “She won the South Wales Echo Food and Drink Award a couple of years back. Though she did marry an Englishwoman so her taste is questionable.”
“Wait. Bronwyn’s a lesbian?”
“It’d be a bit strange of her to marry a woman if she wasn’t.”
“No, I just kind of assumed all your friends would be more…”
“That’s quite homophobic of you, Luc, if you don’t mind my saying.” He climbed to his feet and ambled back into the corridor, pausing on the threshold to give me a stern look. “You’re not the only gay in the village, you know.”
Well, that was me told.
* * *
That evening, as I was pushing the mess around my flat like a half-arsed Sisyphus, I got a text and an attachment from Oliver. And was briefly really excited until I found myself staring into the kindly, twinkly eyes of the late Sir Richard Attenborough.
Wtf is this? I sent back.
A dick pic.
You are not funny, I told him, laughing. And I definitely don’t miss you now
A few minutes later: I’m glad you chose to reach out to your father.
I’m not
I can see you’re handling this well.
I’m insecure. Tell me how mature I’m being
I think—and somehow I could hear him like a voice-over—genuinely mature people don’t demand praise for being mature.
Baby steps, I typed. Praise me anyway
You’re being very mature and I’m very impressed.
Was that your sarcastic voice? I read that in your sarcastic voice
I am actually proud of you. I just thought it would sound patronising to say it.
You must have noticed I have zero self-respect
A pause. I don’t think that’s true. I think you’ve just forgotten where you put it.
Well you’ve seen my flat
Normally we’d wrap up here, with him saying something semi-nice to me and me not knowing how to cope with it. But tonight for some reason I wasn’t quite ready to let go.
I know you can’t talk about it blah blah blah. But you okay? Work okay? Everything okay?
Wow. Look at me playing it cool. Like a fucking cucumber.
There was a longer-than-average Oliver pause.
Oh fuck, I’d pushed it too far. Or he’d fallen asleep.
Yes, he said finally. I’m just not used to
He left that half sentence hanging for a really long time. Then: Sorry. I pressed Send too early.
Okay, he was not getting away with that. I’d like the second half please
I didn’t mean to send the first half.
Well. You have. And as five-word phrases go I’M JUST NOT USED TO is nearly as bad as WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT
Sorry. Sorry.
OLIVER!!!
I’m just not used to having something in my life that’s as important to me as my job.
I typed out You’re really taking this fake boyfriend business seriously aren’t you? But didn’t have the heart to send it. Instead, I tried, What about your gazillion other relationships?
They were different. And, while my thumb was midswipe, By the way, I think we should have lunch tomorrow.
And again, before I could answer: I mean if it’s agreeable.
I’m just very aware the aim of this exercise was to generate positive publicity for you.
Which we can’t if we aren’t seen in public.
So we have lunch
As I suggested
In my other text.
So he’d panicked then.
As a world-class panicker, I was well-placed to read the signs. There were a bunch of things I could have done. I could have teased him or pressed him or fucked with him. But none of them seemed right just then. So I…I let it go. That sounds great, I sent, but what about your case?
If you’d be so good as to bring me something. A wrap or something. I thought we could eat it on a bench.
Play your cards right I’ll get you a packet of crisps to go with it
That won’t be necessary, thank you. A pause. You’re teasing me, aren’t you?
I guess you’ll find out tomorrow
Meet me by the Gladstone statue at 1. We’ll go somewhere nice and photographable.
God he was…thoughtful. And in whatever the texting equivalent to silence was that followed his last message, I sat on my sofa with my knees tucked under my chin, my brain churning restlessly. It was that weird space where I didn’t actually know what I was thinking, only that thinking was kind of happening. But afterwards there came this calm, like fine rain on a too-hot day.
Hell, I had a lunch date. With a barrister. A fake lunch date, admittedly. But a real barrister.
And suddenly my job didn’t look quite as crap.
And my flat didn’t look quite as impossible.
And I didn’t feel quite as hollow.
Grabbing my phone again, I jumped into
the WhatsApp group, which was currently called All About That Ace, and sent out a quick cry for help: Have been too bad at adulting for too long. Flat is unliveable in. Fake boyfriend horrified. HLEP!
Priya was the first to respond with Luc, do you only ever message us when you want something?
Followed by Bridget. ILL COME HELP YOU. JUST SAY WHEN WHERE. HOW IS FAKE BOYFRIEND?????
Oh dear. So much for not telling all my friends. Maybe I could ask them to keep extra special double quiet about it. What was that saying? Three can keep a secret if two of them try really, really hard.
My flat, I typed. This weekend. I’ll pay you in pizza. Though frankly that might make things worse
Do NOT order pizza! Somehow James Royce-Royce sounded camp even in text. The big chains are all run by Nazis. And also the pizza’s terrible. I will make a picnic and bring it with me.
TIDY PARTY!!!!!!! Bridge, of course. I think she’d had her caps lock stuck on since 2002. IM SO EXCITED!!!!! HOW IS FAKE BOYFRIEND?????
Then Priya: You just want me for my truck, don’t you?
I bet, I couldn’t help myself, you say that to all the girls
HOW IS FAKE BOYFRIEND?????
What I say to all the girls is that’s my sculpture. Wanna fuck?
LUC IM GOING OT KEEP ASKING YOU HOW THINGS ARE WITH OLIVER UNTIL YOU ANSWR OR MY THUMBS FALL OFF
I took pity on her. Or maybe on everyone else. It’s wonderful. We’re getting married. Why do you think I need to clean my flat?
YOUR BEING SARCASTIC THAT MEANS YOU SECRETLY LIKE HIM!!! SEE YOU ON SAT CANT WAIT!!!
From there the conversation moved on to other things, and I stuck it out for long enough to prove that, whatever Priya said, I didn’t only talk to my friends when I needed something from them. Then a bit longer to prove that I wasn’t just sticking around to prove I didn’t only talk to my friends when I needed something from them. Then a little bit longer than that because I realised Priya had been right all along and I was a bad person. And, besides, it was nice. I hadn’t realised how far I’d drifted from them, because they’d kept sculling towards me anyway. But I had. And I shouldn’t have.
Chapter 22
Pictures of me and Oliver having lunch on a bench near a statue of Gladstone didn’t exactly make headlines—Two Men Eat Sandwiches was never going to get the traction of Minor Celebrity Vomits on Other Minor Celebrity—but they were out there, showing me off in all my nice-boyfriend-having, nonthreatening glory. We did lunch again on Friday, without much expectation of anyone caring, but we felt we should keep up appearances anyway. And also I, y’know, liked, y’know, seeing, y’know, him. And stuff. True, it wasn’t going to last because come a discreet time after his parents’ anniversary, we’d be going our separate ways with no need to ever speak to each other ever again, but maybe that was…a good thing? It turned out that there was way less pressure when it was all just pretending. And for now I didn’t have to think too hard about what I’d do when the pretending stopped.
Saturday rolled around and, despite Bridge’s all-caps assurance that she couldn’t wait to come and tidy my flat, I wasn’t entirely surprised to get a call from her at nine in the morning.
“Luc,” she wailed. “I’m so sorry. I super wanted to come round for the tidy party. But you will not believe what’s happened.”
“Tell me what’s happened.”
“I can’t really talk about it, but you know The Elf-Swords of Luminera? Robert Kennington, series of twenty-something fantasy novels that’ve been going since the late ’70s.”
“Didn’t he die?”
“Yes. Back in 2009, but he gave his notes to Richard Kavanagh, and he was going to write the last three books in the series. But then the first one had to be split into three other books for publication, and the other two have been broken into a quadrilogy and tetralogy—”
“Aren’t those both sets of four?”
“There’s a technical difference, but I don’t have time to go into it right now. Anyway, the point is, it was all going really well, and Netflix was interested in optioning books three, seven, and nine, and we were trying to get them to look at one, two, and six and I think they were about to pick them up. But now Kavanagh has also died. And Raymond Carlisle and Roger Clayborn are both saying that he wanted them to take over, and they’re refusing to collaborate with each other.”
“Yeah,” I said, “that sounds…complicated.”
“I know. And I’m probably going to be on a conference call all day. If I can’t get them to work it out, I’m definitely going to get fired.”
I rolled my eyes, only because she couldn’t see me. “You’re not going to get fired, Bridge. You never get fired. They keep getting you to deal with this sort of nonsense because you’re actually fantastic at your job.”
There was a long silence. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Fine. Why?”
“I can’t remember the last time you said something nice about, well, anything.”
I thought about this for slightly longer than I was comfortable having to think about it. “When you got that new haircut. The one with the cute fringe. I told you it looked really good on you.”
“That was three years ago.”
I gasped. “It was not.”
“Luc, I can remember when fringes were in.”
“Jesus.” I sank down onto the arm of my sofa. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. I’m saving these stories for when I’m best man at your wedding.”
“You might be saving them for a long time.”
“Then it’s going to be a very long speech. And I have to go. But please tell me how much you like Oliver first.”
“Nothing,” I insisted, “is happening with Oliver.”
She squeaked happily. “Ah, but you’re not complaining about how pompous and boring he is. That means it’s going exactly according to plan. Must dash. Ciao, darling.”
She was gone before I could ciao back.
Twenty minutes later, the James Royce-Royces appeared, James Royce-Royce with an actual picnic basket.
“Oh, Luc.” He gazed around in dismay. “I hadn’t realised it had got this bad. I’m not sure I’ll feel safe eating in here.”
“People eat in fields,” I pointed out. “Like, places where cows shit. No cows have shit in my flat.”
“Are you familiar, sweet pea, with the term ‘damning with faint praise’?”
“Did you come here to help or take the piss?”
He shrugged. “I thought I’d try a bit of both.”
A rumble outside heralded the arrival of Priya, her girlfriend, and her pickup truck. I mean, the rumbling was the truck. Her girlfriend was scary in other ways, what with being a legit grown-up and everything. By the time all five of us were crammed into my front room, surrounded by the detritus of the last five years, I was feeling pretty epically low.
“Welp.” I made a helpless gesture. “This is my life. And I wish I hadn’t invited you to come and look at it.”
“You know,” said Priya. “I’d normally say something mean. But you’re so pathetic right now, it wouldn’t be satisfying.”
Her girlfriend, whose name was Theresa, but who I had a hard time thinking of as anything but Professor Lang, elbowed her in the ribs. “That’s still mean, dear.”
“You like me when I’m mean.”
James Royce-Royce shooed at them gently. “I’d tell you to get a room, but as we can see, there isn’t one.”
“It’s not that bad.” Professor Lang picked up a sofa cushion and then put it down again very quickly. “I lived in worse in my student days.”
“Luc’s twenty-eight.” Ah, I could always count on Priya to boost me up when I was down.
“Well”—to my surprise, Professor Lang shot me a mischievous smile—“considering that when I was twenty-eight,
I was lying to my husband, denying my sexuality, and pretending work would solve all my problems, I don’t feel in any position to judge.”
I stared at them both. “I have no idea how Priya wound up with someone so much less of an arsehole than her.”
“I’m a tortured artist,” Priya shot back. “And I’m fucking incredible in bed. Now how do we tackle the pile of unadulterated skank you call your home?”
There was a humiliatingly long silence.
Then James Royce-Royce spoke up unexpectedly. “We prioritise things that need to be thrown away. Recycling over there”—he pointed to a moderately empty corner—“refuse over there”—another point, another corner—“waste, electronic and electrical on that table. Then Priya, Luc, and Theresa will go to the dump, while James and I start on the dishes. By the time you get back, there’ll be enough space to be going through the laundry. Clean”—it was pointing time again—“dirty whites, dirty colours. From there we’ll regroup and start on the surfaces.”
We all took a moment to remind ourselves that there were some jobs James Royce-Royce was scarily good at.
“You see,” said James Royce-Royce, kissing his husband’s cheek extravagantly, “isn’t he fabulous?”
We got to work and, holy shit, was it work. Having a system helped a lot, but it turned out I’d dropped a lot of things over the years, metaphorically and literally, and picking them all up and figuring out how best to dispose of them was surprisingly draining. It didn’t help that Priya kept sarcastically double-checking whether I was sure I wanted to get rid of something with such obvious sentimental value as the empty Twiglets tube from last Christmas or a lone Mr. Grumpy sock with a hole in the toe. Then we piled the pickup shamefully full of crap and drove it down to the tip.
I nearly sent Oliver a picture of our neatly sorted recycling piles so I could show off how sensible and mature I was being, but then I realised how much I wanted to surprise him with how sensible and mature I was being. He’d made it painfully clear sex was very much off the table, but maybe if I managed to get at least some of my shit together, he might like me enough to kiss me.
Not that I really had any right to expect that or ask for that or imagine how it might feel. Except now I’d had the thought, I didn’t entirely want to let it go. Which was an epic red flag. I’d built my whole life around not wanting things I couldn’t have and, yes, that had left me alone and bitter in a messy flat, but I was still worried the alternative was worse.
