by Alexis Hall
Having managed to get less of my breath back than I might have hoped on the ascent, I made a wheezy sound.
“Arden St. Ives?” She had powerful eyebrows and clearly wasn’t afraid to use them, lofting them into enquiring domes. “From Milieu?”
“Yes. Sorry I’m late. Circle line was carnage.”
She was way too professional to acknowledge this transparent lie. “They’re waiting for you in the conference room.”
“Thank you.” I found myself weaving from foot to foot like a small child who has forgotten to use the bathroom. “Should I just, like, go in?”
Bellerose would have said something cutting that would have, in some perverse way, made me feel better. The newcomer just gave me a meaningless smile. “Whenever you’re ready, Mr. St. Ives.”
Welp. I guess this was it. And it didn’t help that the last time I’d been in the conference room, I’d gate-crashed a meeting of Important People TM in order to confront Caspian with my feelings. Of course, it had ended with an arse-twitcher of a kiss against the floor-to-ceiling windows of Caspian’s office. But that probably wasn’t on the cards today—or ever again—unless Caspian and Nathaniel had way less conservative ideas about matrimony than I’d imagined.
Taking a deep breath, I made my way extremely carefully to the conference room. Frankly, I’d already pratfallen enough around both of them. And as God was my witness, I would pratfall no more. I was going to conduct myself like a motherfucking professional.
Except the door wouldn’t open. I pressed harder. Then nudged it with my shoulder, probably looking like a really bad mime—Arden trapped in a glass box—to the people inside.
Not-Bellerose cleared her throat. “Next one along.”
Fuck me. I finally saw the metal edge that differentiated the door from the windows and seemed to have been designed with the express purpose of being as obscure as possible. Seriously, what was the point of that? Who had thought it was a good idea? Because, if you asked me, that was some hard-core Bernard Tschumi space-violating-bodies shit.
Annoyed, embarrassed, and nonconsensually architecturally defiled, I finally got inside. Caspian, of course, was at his most icy and expressionless. Nathaniel just looked politely bemused.
“The door”—I flapped my hand at it—“looks like the windows. Or the windows look like the door. Either way, you should know it’s pretty nonideal in terms of accessibility.”
There was a long silence.
“Where’s Bellerose?” I asked.
There was another long silence.
Nathaniel, somehow, got even more polite and even more bemused. “Is that part of the interview?”
“No.” I stared at Caspian, right into the diamond laser of his gaze. “I just want to know.”
“I’m not sure,” he said finally, “why it is your business how I conduct mine.”
“What happened? Is he okay? Are you?”
“Why would we not be?”
Apparently making a fool of myself in Caspian Hart’s conference room was not a one-off for me. “Because he loves you. And he would never have left you voluntarily.”
Nathaniel made a gently disbelieving sound. “I think you might have misinterpreted my fiancé’s relationship with his executive assistant.”
“Oh God, no.” I gave a nervous wriggle—wondering if this was how magazines got sued for slander. “I didn’t mean they were shagging. I just…I don’t know what I meant…nothing bad.”
Nathaniel looked like he was about to reply, but then Caspian put a hand on his arm, which, frankly, I did not enjoy. “Even so,” he said, “Nathaniel is right. Bellerose was my employee. I have never treated him otherwise, nor would I, nor should he have expected such a thing.”
“What did he do?” The glassy emptiness of the conference room seemed to swallow my voice. Swallow me.
“That is not your concern.” Caspian had never been such a stranger to me. Even when he’d been nothing more than a voice on the phone. “And you have no reason to think it is.”
Oh God, I was going to cry. Please no. Not that. Not now. “I know. But, Caspian, he cared about you. You…you shouldn’t…I mean, nobody should…throw that away.”
“Perhaps,” put in Nathaniel softly, “you should start your interview. Since you seem so interested in the people who care for Caspian.”
Right. The interview. The fucking interview. Caspian seemed on the verge of saying something else—ideally, This is a terrible idea, why don’t we stop—but he didn’t. So I had no choice, really, except to sit down uninvited and plonk my phone on the table.
Chapter 11
I’ll be recording this,” I announced, “to make sure I don’t forget anything.”
Nothing from Caspian, but a slight nod from Nathaniel.
There was a bottle of excruciatingly posh mineral water in the middle of the conference table, except I would literally have had to crawl across the glass to get it. That left me, dry-mouthed and sick to my stomach, peering at it longingly.
I pushed the corners of my lips into a distorted coat hanger of a smile. “Congratulations on your engagement. How did it happen? Who asked whom?”
“I asked Nathaniel,” offered Caspian, finally. “I’m afraid it wasn’t as romantic as these things should probably be.”
Nathaniel cast him a glowy smile that made me want to kill myself. “It was romantic enough for me, my prince. You see”—he glanced at me again—“we have a long and somewhat complicated history together. But don’t they say the course of true love never runs smooth?”
Yeah, they did say that. Shame they didn’t also say, when you’re being interviewed for a magazine, don’t talk in fucking clichés. God. This was awful and I was being awful too. I could barely look at either of them, and the bitter little voice inside me that was providing running commentary on the whole thing was making it difficult to do the actual job I was here to do.
Most basic rule of interviewing: fucking listen.
Which meant I had two choices. Give up and run away and spend the rest of my life—or at least the next few years—proofing other people’s more exciting stories. Or channel Tim Gunn and make it work. And there was no way I was letting down Tim Gunn. Even in my imagination.
“Did your complicated history,” I asked, “mean you were surprised when Caspian asked you to marry him?”
“Hmm.” Nathaniel frowned thoughtfully. “Yes and no? We’d broken up a few years ago, but Caspian has always had my friendship. And deep down I think I knew it wasn’t over between us.”
I turned to Caspian with what I hoped was a super bland look. “Did you feel the same way?”
“It’s…” Caspian paused a moment too long. “It’s complicated.”
“Complicated seems to be coming up a lot.”
I hadn’t meant to sound arch but I guess I must have, because Caspian instantly frosted over. “That’s because adult relationships tend to be, Arden. Passion can be a compelling distraction, but what you want is less important than what is good for you.”
Watching Caspian piss off both his ex and current partner simultaneously shouldn’t have been endearing. But you had to admit, it took some skill. I mean, I wasn’t mad keen on being characterised as the romantic equivalent of a McFlurry, but then, I don’t think Nathaniel could have been enjoying his role as love kale either. And maybe I’d just hit my how much hurt can this one person cause me limit because, right then, I felt sorry for Nathaniel. Yuck.
“So…uh…” I tried to get his attention, but it just wasn’t happening. Instead I volumed up, with about the same poise and naturalness I had, at the age of six, delivered the line “I bring Frankenstein” during the school nativity play. “Tell me about the proposal?”
Nathaniel had been staring at his hands, but now he looked up again. And God knows I hated to admit it, but he was such a pretty man, all gold and chiselled like the sort of classical sculpture owned by especially dodgy popes. “Caspian had been staying with me for a while after some adverse personal cir
cumstances, just as friends. But I think it reminded us both of all the ways we worked. And then he woke me up one night and we had a long talk about our history and our future. At the end of which he told me he couldn’t live a life without me in it anymore, and promised to become the man I deserved.” Nathaniel paused briefly, the tawny shades of his eyes softening. “Perhaps Caspian’s right that it wasn’t conventionally romantic, but I’m not really interested in the…the…markers of things. I prefer what’s real and comes from the heart.”
“Yeah, I get that.” It scraped at my soul a bit to agree with Nathaniel. But I did actually agree with him. And I wasn’t going to get through this interview at all if I kept responding to him as if he was the villain in my story. Rather than an ordinary person who was the protagonist of his own. “But given you’d broken up before, didn’t you have any concerns?”
Nathaniel blinked. Even his fucking lashes were gold. “No. My feelings hadn’t changed. But then, I don’t believe love does change, only context.”
“And how is the context different for you both this time?”
At this, they exchanged the swiftest of looks, but it was still Nathaniel who answered. “Obviously, it’s been difficult these last few years, for each of us, in our different ways, but being apart has made us stronger. It’s helped us to understand what’s important and what’s worth fighting for. Looking back, I don’t think it was the right time for us before. Now I know it is.”
“Not least,” I offered, “because you can get married. Not so long ago that wouldn’t have been possible.”
“Indeed.”
I tilted my head in what I hoped was a journalist-asking-an-incisive-question way. But truthfully, I just needed a break from Nathaniel telling me all the ways he was better for Caspian than I was. “How do you feel about that?”
“I’m a businessman”—Caspian shrugged—“not a politician.”
“Well, yes. But you’re a gay businessman.”
“My sexual preferences have never been a strong part of my identity.”
This left me kind of stymied. I guess in an ideal world nobody’s sexuality would have to be a strong part of their identity, but my queerness felt integral to me like…my arm or something. I mean, obviously I’d still cope without an arm, but my life would be very different.
“That’s because,” Nathaniel said softly, “you’re rich and white and upper class enough that it has never mattered.”
“Has it mattered to you?” I asked him.
He was silent a moment. Then, “I’ve never been ashamed or wished I was otherwise and my family have learned to accept me—despite the fact my sexuality is beyond their understanding. But I do remember my father telling me that I would always have to work harder, do more, be better than everyone else around me. Simply because of who I am and who I love.”
“Do you think that still holds true?”
“My experiences tend to bear it out. And”—Nathaniel’s eyes slid to Caspian—“I don’t know how you can insist on an apolitical position when one in five LGBTQ people living in this country have experienced hate crimes, nearly half of LGBTQ students are bullied because of their identity, and in seventy-two countries across the world, same-sex relationships are actually criminalised.”
“It’s yet another example,” murmured Caspian, “of your being an infinitely better man than I am.”
The thing is, he was speaking to Nathaniel but he was looking at me. And there it was. Finally. A crack in his prison of ice. I couldn’t have told you what I’d been wanting to see—a hint of who I’d fallen in love with or maybe some soft echo of my own sadness. But not the utter desolation of him, like coming back to the place you once called home, and finding it in ruins.
I don’t know how long we stared at each other, his eyes as blue and empty as a noonday sky, but he was the first to glance away. And there was something so fucking defeated about it that it caused this volcano of new hurt to open up inside me. I really really needed that bastard to stop breaking my heart. I’d thought him being over me was rough. But not being able to comfort him was way worse.
In my head, I was on my knees for him and not in submission, exactly, but because we both needed it. That impossible spinning top of give and take and strength and vulnerability. But obviously, all I could actually do was sit there at the opposite end of a conference table, nodding intelligently, and making the occasional note that I knew I would later find absolutely meaningless.
I shifted my attention to Nathaniel, but he didn’t seem inclined to comment further. Which left me holding the ball…or bat…or other kind of sporting-type metaphor I had no idea how to use.
“But,” I said to Caspian, “don’t you donate a lot of your personal fortune, as well as some proportion of your company’s profits, to a range of charitable causes?”
Caspian crossed one leg over the other, his foot moving restlessly. “I don’t see why that’s relevant.”
“It’s my interview. I decide what’s relevant, Mr. Hart.”
His attention snapped back to me with the force of a cane strike—something I now had legit experience of, and had discovered I was not at all into. I honestly hadn’t meant to call him that. It had just slipped out. A glob of ectoplasm from the ghost of happier times, when I got to cheek him, and tease him, and turn him on, and he’d not only let me, but maybe even loved me a little bit for it. “I only discuss money in the context of business.”
“But this is, like, a matter of public record. It’s in your company’s annual report. You donated over two billion last year alone.”
If he was remotely impressed I’d read, well, downloaded and flicked through Hart & Associates’ annual reports (Arden St. Ives: Totes Profesh), he didn’t show it. In fact, he just sighed one of his most impatient sighs. “I did, but I couldn’t tell you who it went to. I hire people to make these decisions for me.”
“Okay. And how do they decide?”
“They do research within a framework I provide for them.”
Jesus. This was like pulling teeth. From inside other teeth. Which were in cement. “What’s. The. Framework.”
“It’s complex, but it’s mostly a question of efficiency. Emotional appeal and personal experience are extremely ineffective guides for the distribution of resources. My team is tasked with funding projects that produce desirable outcomes, not desirable photo opportunities.”
“So,” I said slowly, “what you’re essentially saying here is that you want to help as many people as possible in the best way you can, rather than choosing causes you feel a personal connection to.”
He blinked. “I would never say anything so sentimental. I merely believe that there is a fundamental structural flaw in our approach to large-scale philanthropy. A cause is not inherently worthy of support just because a rich person happens to identify with it.”
“So I guess in certain contexts, being apolitical can be just as much an ethical position as…um, not being?”
“For God’s sake, Arden.” Caspian sounded somewhere between exasperated, amused, and lost. “Why are you so absurdly committed to seeing the good in every situation, irrespective of the futility of the endeavour?”
I shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a billionaire half-full kind of guy.”
Caspian raised a hand to cover his mouth, but not before I’d seen his smile. And before I knew it, I was smiling back.
A cough from Nathaniel. He didn’t seem too happy right now. I’m not sure I entirely blamed him, but at the same time, someone should have told him you didn’t need to cast other people as sinners in order to play the saint.
“We must be close to done here,” he said. And then, touching Caspian in a totally unnecessary fashion, “I know how demanding your schedule is, my prince.”
I’d been monitoring the clock on my mobile. With this being my actual job and everything, and me not being a hundred percent screwup despite my holiday villa in Screwupville. “We’ve still got about ten minutes. But speaking of s
chedules”—I attempted something vaguely conciliatory in Nathaniel’s direction, though I’m not sure he bought it—“you’ve recently been appointed director of the Ainsworth-Singh Foundation. How do you balance your relationship with two such high-powered careers?”
“Actually,” came Nathaniel’s reply, “it makes it easier because it means you know your partner will always understand that there are times when you have to make work your priority. We both have lives outside the relationship, so neither of us is sitting around in an empty flat all day waiting for the other to come home. I believe the strongest relationships come from a place of equality in all areas.”
Well. That wasn’t so much a burn as an attempt to salt the fucking earth. “What would you say were the main challenges in your relationship, then?”
Nathaniel’s hand had settled lightly on Caspian’s knee. “For me, it’s when the person you love does things you know are bad for him. When you’re with someone, you have a duty to help him be the best version of himself.” He got that glowy look again. “Caspian made me very proud when I convinced him to give up smoking again.”
“Good for you.” I grit my teeth. “How about you, Caspian?”
He’d vanished again. No more secret smiles for me. “Striving to be worthy.”
“But is love really about being worthy?”
Nathaniel curled his fingers, stilling the restless motions of Caspian’s foot. “I was raised to believe that things that don’t take hard work and sacrifice aren’t worth having.”
“I think”—Caspian hesitated, his voice barely more than a whisper—“I just want to make Nathaniel happy.”
Okay. I was done. So so done. Turning off the recorder, I stuffed my phone into my pocket and lunged to my feet. “Thank you for your time. This has been…” Out of nowhere I was suddenly giving them a thumbs-up. Even though nobody has given anybody a thumbs-up since 1973. When I was minus twenty-something years old. “This has been great.”
“I look forward to reading your piece,” said Nathaniel, with what seemed to be something close to sincerity. I guess I’d been right—this was more than an Arden-punching exercise to him. He’d really wanted it for some reason: a public statement of their unity.