by Liam Livings
“Promise I won’t cut you.” He kissed my neck and squeezed me tight from behind. “Please.”
I turned, and with those piercing blue little-boy-lost eyes and that bright white smile, I knew it was useless to resist. And so, using the little hand mirror, sitting behind me in the bath, Sky foamed up my face and neck, and one gentle stroke at a time, he shaved me. He didn’t nick or cut me once, and did it in exactly the way I’d taught him to shave himself, in exactly the same order that I shaved myself: starting on the right side, moving to the left side, then the right moustache, left moustache, then the chin and neck area.
As he finished, he splashed me with water, then kissed my smooth cheek.
It was the most intimate thing I’d ever done with another man, and after the shaving gel had gone on my face, it felt completely natural, relaxing and normal. I would never have allowed anyone else to shave me, but with Sky, it felt right.
I think this might just work out. I think I might have really found my soul mate, which up to that point, I’d always thought a bit of a cheesy concept continued by Hollywood romcoms and Mills and Boon-type romance novels. But then, at that point, in that bath, with that man, I believed totally and utterly in soul mates.
Chapter 36
One Saturday morning Sky and I were at a café near my flat, enjoying a glorious morning of doing absolutely nothing together. While he collected our third round of coffees, I checked my email on my phone. A message from an address I didn’t recognise was at the top of my inbox. It had no attachment, so I wasn’t worried about it being a virus, and I opened it.
It was from Alex Clements, he thought that I at least was owed the truth about the past, and since Bobby hadn’t told me, he wanted to clear the air.
I wasn’t aware of any air not being clear, and since Bobby had moved out of my flat, I hadn’t heard anything from either of them. No need to. What would we have talked about? Why would we need to be in touch with one another?
Even the first few lines sent a shiver down my back. Alex was a lot of things, but he was not someone who did things for other people—not unless there was a very clear benefit for him along the way. All this “clearing the air” business didn’t convince me one bit.
I read on. After a bit of boasting about how he and Bobby were “blissfully happy together” and “living in an airy, light apartment in Shoreditch,” I got to the main event, the real reason he’d sent the email.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up. Sky stood next to me, holding our drinks. “What’s up?” he said.
“An email from Alex. Wait a minute, I’m reading.”
I read the next paragraph, then reread it, just to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake. I knew there was more to Bobby and Alex knowing each other. I knew that next to one lie would be another one, juicy and ready to uncover.
“What is it?” Sky asked. “Come on, that’s all in the past now. Don’t get yourself upset about it.”
“I knew they had worked together, but at the time, I never did find out why Alex lost his job. Well, now I know. He and Bobby were caught having sex in the stationery cupboard one lunchtime.”
“Hardly very original, is it? It’s one step up from ‘man has affair with secretary.’” Sky was showing off his popular culture and Internet research skills. “How come only Alex got fired? What about Bobby?”
“Says here they got rid of Alex because he was quite junior, and ‘easily expendable,’ as Alex puts it. Apparently, Bobby was one of their best PR account directors and brought in a lot of money for the company. They couldn’t afford to lose him.”
I thought for a moment of all the late nights when he had returned from work exhausted. Was it really exhaustion from work, or other things? I’d never know now unless I confronted him. Did I want to open up that whole emotional can of worms again? Until I received this email, I hadn’t thought about either of them once. Not since every trace had been removed from the flat.
“What’s going on in there?” Sky tapped his head.
“Just thinking. Wondering what other lies he told me while we were together. One lie usually leads to another in my experience. They’re like weeds clustering around you.”
“What are you going to do?” He kissed my hair.
“Nothing. I’ve not got the energy to do anything. I’m going to delete the email and leave it. Doubt I’ll hear from either of them again. Still, it’s interesting Alex felt the need to tell me this after all this time.”
“I suppose he wants his own version of closure, or something….” Sky sounded thoughtful.
“‘Closure,’ ‘affairs with secretaries’? Have you been watching those soap operas again?”
“They’re educational, the handover note said. Part of me immersing myself in real life.”
“Real life?” I rolled my eyes, then took a breath, my mind back to the email. “Poor Alex—but he took my boyfriend with him when Bobby left. I think I’m the one who should be seeking revenge in this situation. But I’m not. Why should I waste time and energy on it? I can think of much better things to spend my time doing.” I stared him in the eyes and smiled. His deep blue eyes sparkled back at me, with his one-hundred-watt grin.
I thought back to that morning, lying in bed together, basking in our warm post-sex glow. It was only now, having been with Sky for a while, that I could understand what had been so wrong with me and Bobby’s relationship. Bobby had used the first-boyfriend card to get an awful lot of what he wanted…, which I wasn’t too keen on, now I thought about it. Because I had nothing to compare it with, I had just gone along with his suggestions, although my gut knew they didn’t feel right. Right back to the suggestion of a threesome as a proper couple. Even then my gut knew that wasn’t something I wanted. Having a relationship and shagging around were two mutually exclusive concepts in my head. They always had been; only I hadn’t had the chance to test out the former, until meeting Bobby.
I snapped out of my thoughts and returned to the here and now. Sky sat opposite me, wearing casual dark jeans and a blue-and-white striped jumper. He looked like a model for a well-known French perfume. If he’d had a little white sailor’s hat on and his jeans had been a size tighter, he could have definitely passed for one of those sailors. I looked at my phone and deleted the email.
I felt fresher, lighter, unburdened with the news. I knew I couldn’t un-know what Alex had told me. There’s no way you can do that, unless you forget something. I would always know what had really happened, but in the same way that I knew that Henry VIII had six wives and treated them all with varying degrees of awfulness, it didn’t touch me. It wasn’t part of my experience any longer. What Bobby and Alex had done, was as relevant to my life now as Henry’s philandering hundreds of years ago.
“What do you want to do?” I asked, looking him up and down, taking in his French-perfume looks, and enjoying every striped, denim-bulging inch.
“About the email?”
“That’s done now. I’ve deleted it. No, I mean now, today. Shall we stay here, or leave and see where the day takes us?”
He looked at our empty coffee cups. “Let’s see where the day takes us.”
Chapter 37
Friday night, and I headed for the bar where Sky was having after-work drinks with his colleagues. We hadn’t seen one another for the whole week, and really, all I wanted to do was jump off the train as it arrived in Brighton and jump straight onto him. A week of phone calls and two virtual-sex sessions—he really was getting the hang of the Internet—wasn’t quite the same as “touching, smelling, feeling his weight press down on top of me” sex session.
I walked into the Australian-themed bar on Fight Street, braced myself for a shouted comment, then realised I was still in my work suit, so I looked pretty ordinary—no vest or tight jeans for me tonight.
Sky waved from the corner where he stood with a group of people huddled around a high table, on which they had all put their drinks. He kissed me hello, then said, “This is, Richar
d, my boyfriend. Richard, this is everyone.”
“Everyone” was a group of men and women in their twenties and thirties, wearing suits of various shades of grey, with the odd dot of colour in the form of a tie loosened around a few of the men’s necks.
Sky left for the bar, taking orders for drinks.
“I’m Catherine—I Work in Policy” shook my hand, pushed her chunky black glasses up her nose, and flicked her brown hair behind her ears.
I introduced myself more fully than Sky’s brief intro. “Policy? Isn’t it a food-related membership organisation? How does Policy fit into that?”
“Food Standard Agency—lobbying government about food labelling, having traffic light stickers on food, red for fat and sugar, green for healthy stuff, more recyclable packaging for food, that sort of thing.”
“Now I understand.”
Catherine smiled, and then said, “Oh you’re Richard. The Richard! We’ve all heard so much about you. It’s Richard this, Richard that. You’re all he ever talks about. I worried at one point he’d made you up or you were actually someone else’s boyfriend he was spying on from his bedroom.” She laughed and pushed her hair back over her ear, despite it still being there anyway.
I shook my head and laughed a little. “Nope, I am his boyfriend. He is my boyfriend. Very much so.”
“He’s told us all the things you’ve done together in London, and down here. You should hear him talk about it—it’s like he’d never gone on a bus before or seen the Internet before he knew you. When he told us about the flat he’s got and the washing machine, that’s when I thought he’d made you up. I thought no one this into his washing machine could have a boyfriend. I thought he was joking about the washing machine story. He was, wasn’t he?”
“He’s such a joker. I never know when to take him seriously.” I smiled weakly and shrugged. I must explain to him the concept of being too honest, and oversharing with people.
Catherine took a sip of her wine. “Thought so. It sounds like you’ve got it pretty well worked out, between your two places.”
“Yeah, it works okay. I wouldn’t want to do it forever, though. It’s nice to have the variety, change of scene, but the six o’clock starts on a Monday morning from Brighton to London are killing me. I found out it’s called a semi-detached relationship. Not quite long distance, not quite living together, but somewhere in between.”
“Where’d you read that?”
I felt myself die inside. “Cosmo mag. Not that I buy it, it was something to read last time I was at the doctor’s.”
Sky reappeared with a tray of drinks, which he rested on the table and handed out to a circle of eager drinkers. “What you two been talking about?”
“You, mainly. I need to even it up a bit since all you talk about with this lot is me.”
“What’s wrong with that?
Catherine playfully slapped my hand. “Yeah, what is wrong with that? You should be flattered. You’ve obviously made an impression on him.”
As I went to the gents, at the sink I bumped into one of the bright-ties-undone men from our group.
“Where did he grow up?” the man said, flicking his hands in the sink, then wiping them on his jeans.
“Romsey. That’s where his parents live now. Why?”
“Nothing.” He continued to rub his hands on the back of his jeans. “I thought he’d been brought up abroad, ’cause whenever I mention any TV or music from when we were kids, he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Blank, every time. They have TV in Romsey, don’t they?” He laughed.
“As far as I’m aware.” I was standing with my hands on my jeans, wanting to leave the toilet but not wanting to leave this conversation.
He held his hand out for me to shake. “Troy. I work in the Press Office and sit right opposite Sky.”
I shook his hand firmly.
“Maybe his parents were hippies, I mean, a name like that, they’re not going to be normal, are they? Maybe he wasn’t allowed any TV, growing up. I’ve heard some parents do it.”
I shrugged. “Shall we?” I pointed to the door.
“Oh yeah, no point hanging round here.”
We walked back to our corner, and Troy recounted some of the stories Sky had told him, the firsts I’d explained to him. “It makes us die, the things he comes up with. Can he break the Internet? How do buses know where to go?” He laughed to himself. “Best one I heard was not knowing why we washed clothes. He nearly had me going with that one.”
“Yeah, he loves a good wind-up, doesn’t he?”
“It’s like those geeks in that show The Big Bang Theory—they know all about particle physics, but can’t ask a girl out for a date. Sky knows his work shit, though. Like, big time. I had to write a press release about the benefits to our members from his project, and he wouldn’t stop talking. I told him to keep some back for when it’s live.” He shrugged. “Mind you, if I was asked to put a wash load on, I’d have to call the missus first, handbook or no handbook.”
Sky leant in between us. “What’s this about handbooks?”
Troy said, “I was just saying you’re pretty odd, but we still like you.”
I nodded. “Yeah, you’ll do.”
After a few more rounds and a few short conversations with some more of his colleagues, I realised that was pretty much what they all thought about him. They just wrote off his childlike enthusiasm about mundane things and his social awkwardness as Asperger’s or autism, and as soon as they saw how much of a customer-relationship database expert he was, that just cemented their views. I supposed the Higher Ones had to prioritise what they filled his memory with and what he would be left to pick up as he went along.
Later, we stumbled into Sky’s flat together. He’d got a bit better at holding his booze than the first time, but was still punching well below what his appearance suggested.
Chapter 38
“You’ve showed me all these new things, but I’ve not shown you anything you’ve not already seen. So as a thank-you, I’m taking us to Paris for the weekend. We can both experience the new things together in gay Paree. That’s what they call it, isn’t it?” Sky raised his eyebrows with a smile, the morning he told me to pack a suitcase.
“It is. I’ve never been. Always wanted to go, but never have.”
“I know. We’re going on the special train. Everyone at work who’s been said the train’s better than flying, hands down. You can drink champagne. Oh, and you get on the train from the centre of town and it takes you right to the middle of Paris.” He smiled. “Got your suitcase and passport?”
“As you asked.”
“I sound like an advert, don’t I? Sorry. I just want it to be perfect. They were so helpful at work, helping me book it all and research it.”
On the train, we ate a French picnic of pâté, French cheeses, baguette, and grapes, washed down with a bottle of almost champagne he’d bought from the buffet car.
I had to shush him a bit when we finished the champagne, as he got a bit too loud and amorous for a train carriage full of people on a Friday evening. “Not here, plenty of time for that.”
I removed his hands from my thighs and put them back on the table, with a smile.
At the Gare du Nord, he strode in front and led us to our hotel nearby. I stood back while he checked us in, using French I think he must have taught himself, rather than just knowing it, like the consultant knowledge, because there was a fair bit of hand-waving and some reference to a dictionary.
Our room was small but perfectly formed. It was on the sixth floor, with great views across Paris. Over the top of the nearby station, we saw the trains shuttling in and out. The bed was in the corner, and the room had a sloped ceiling that made standing next to the bed quite difficult, so we gave in and fell onto it together. We made love with what energy we both had, before falling into a deep sleep, wrapped in each other’s arms.
A short while later, I rocked as Sky shook me. “It’s gone ten o’clock. If we want din
ner, we’d better get a move on.”
We found a restaurant a few streets from the hotel. It had a prix fixe menu full of very French-sounding things, including escargots and canard—snails and duck, he explained.
I didn’t have the guts to try snails, but Sky did. Instead I had some sort of salad with French cheese and honey.
I tried one of his snails, and the garlicy, rubbery texture made me relieved I’d not ordered half a dozen like he had.
We toasted to our first night in Paris and discussed what we wanted to see the next day. We agreed on the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, a riverboat cruise on the Seine, the Arc de Triomphe, and Notre Dame Cathedral, in no particular order.
Over crème brûlée and profiteroles, he pointed out the Eiffel Tower in the distance. “All the guidebooks say we need to get there early if we want to go up it.”
“Well, in that case, we’d better get to bed, hadn’t we?”
He offered me a spoon of his crème brûlée, and I took it without even looking to see if anyone was watching. I felt like the two dogs in Lady and the Tramp as they nibbled the spaghetti together and met in the middle with a kiss. Part of me didn’t want to say out loud how happy I felt, for fear of tempting someone up there and it all coming crashing down around my ears again. I swallowed the spoonful of his dessert and along with it, I swallowed my desire to tell him how much I loved him.
He stood, thanked the waiter in French, and held his hand for me to grab.
Without hesitating, I took tight hold, and we walked back to the hotel, turning round to take in the view of the Eiffel Tower lit from top to bottom by white sparkling lights as it did on the hour, every hour when it was dark. It was midnight in Paris, with my boyfriend.
It doesn’t get much better than this, does it?
We stood in silence as the hotel lift took us to our floor. Sky stood on the opposite side of the lift, and I looked at him slowly from feet to face and at his reflection in the mirrored walls. And suddenly I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I had to tell him how I felt, how happy I was. I stepped to his side of the lift, put my arms around him, squeezed his bum, and looked into his twinkly blue eyes. “I love you. ‘Proper massive, write it in the sky, until I die, want to grow old with you’ love you.” I kissed him.
