by Alexis Hall
“They were, but then Little Timmy was taken by the sweating sickness. Yes, it’s the twenty-first century, so my family are fine. But what the hell is wrong with you? Have you forgotten how to human?” Yikes. I probably shouldn’t have drunk that cosmo so quickly.
He dropped into a chair with an unusual lack of elegance. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long day.”
I plonked my hands on my hips and stared at him in a way I couldn’t categorise. “Still want me to be here?”
“Yes.” His voice was soft, but terribly sincere. “I’ve missed you.”
“Then”—I also decided being in a chair might be good—“maybe you should have thought of that before you dumped me.”
“Arden.”
“What?”
He gave me this impossible look, his eyes as stark as his suit, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to cry or beg or smack him in the nads. “It was the right decision. You have no idea how important your happiness is to me.”
“Y’know something? You’re right. I don’t.”
At that moment, Nathaniel came in, balancing dishes, and I realised I didn’t know what volume I’d been employing or how much he’d heard. From his serene expression, I was guessing…all of it.
“To start,” he said, “halloumi with honey and spiced nuts.”
Only Nathaniel could make pieces of cheese look elegant—but they did, artfully balanced against each other, with their almost geometric grill stripes. I mumbled a thank-you.
“Oh”—he set the last plate down in front of Caspian—“and it’s nearly eight, my prince. Don’t forget.”
Caspian glanced over at him. “Hmm?”
With a soft laugh, Nathaniel dropped a thin square of something on the table beside Caspian, which, in a moment of legit hysteria, I briefly thought was a condom. Then sanity returned and I saw it was a nicotine patch.
“Of course. Excuse me a moment.”
He went to stand but Nathaniel stopped him with a “Here, let me.” Caspian didn’t object, but he didn’t look exactly comfortable either as Nathaniel helped him out of his jacket, undid a cufflink, and rolled up his shirtsleeve. For the record, Nathaniel was far too good at removing other people’s cufflinks. As in, practiced good. Which I wasn’t—though not for lack of wanting to be.
It was an intimate thing, knowing how to take someone’s clothes off, and I’m pretty sure we were all very aware of it. So, yeah, I was miserable. I’d also had kind of a thing for Caspian’s arms. Well, I’d had a thing for Caspian in general, but he had such gorgeous arms. I loved the strength of them—to hold me down and hold me close. The tenderness of the secret skin along the underside. The kissable bouquets of bone and sinew at his wrists.
Urrrgh. I suddenly wanted to cry. For fuck’s sake, Ardy, get a grip. It’s a nicotine patch. They’re not dry-humping against the table. Oh God, I bet they had, though. If this was my table, I’d want to be fucked over it. Even though it was incredibly rude—and I’d been raised better—I grabbed a fork and stuffed all the halloumi into my very sad mouth.
“This is delicious,” I announced, somewhat muffled through the food. “Cheese and honey. Who’d’ve thought it.”
Cheese and honey and ashes.
Eventually, Nathaniel finished faffing with Caspian and took a seat. “Sorry about that. Shall we star—oh.”
“I was hungry.” I blinked defiantly.
“Of course you were.” He was giving me an oh, poor starveling wolf doesn’t know any different look that was not liable to improve my behaviour. “We’re all running late.”
Caspian poured Nathaniel some wine—it had been perspiring gently in an ice bucket much like the rest of us. “My fault, as ever. Arden?”
“What? No. It’s fine. I could have waited.”
“Actually I meant, did you want some wine?”
“Hey”—probably I should have kept my mouth shut but I was feeling aggrieved on way too many levels—“you had a go at me for bringing white wine this evening.”
Nathaniel gave a polite cough. “I thought we’d come to a truce on that. It’s customary for a guest to bring wine to accompany the main course rather than the starter. But as we’ve established, it was unfair of me to expect you to know that.”
Well fuck. Now I looked both uncultured and petty. Scrutinising the place settings, which included a small orchard of glassware, I picked one at random. “Wine me.”
With a slight glance towards Nathaniel—searching for who knew what, permission?—Caspian rose, took the glass from my hand, replaced it amongst its fellows, and splashed a frankly meagre measure of liquid into a different one. I thought about protesting but there were few better ways to demonstrate your immaturity than by asserting your right to consume alcohol to excess. Besides, as much as I might like to, getting sloshed was not going to help anybody here. Me, least of all.
“Ta.” I took a restrained sip. But Caspian had given me even less wine than I’d thought, so I ended up just knocking it all back.
Sitting down again, Caspian lifted his own glass. “Anyway, to you, Nathan—oh.”
They both stared at me.
“I was thirsty? Sorry. I’ll just get some water.” I leaned across the table to grab the bottle of fancy mineral water Nathaniel had provided, accidentally splotting my elbow into a carved butter flower. “Shit. Sorry.” Twisting my arm round revealed a yellow smudge on my jumper. “It’s fine. It’s fine. I’ve got this.” Thankfully, a napkin did a pretty decent job of mopping up the worst of it. Except—“Fuck, that’s the tablecloth. Nathaniel, I’m so sorry. I swear I had a napkin. Where’s my napkin? Fuck, it’s on the floor. Fuck, I’m sorry.”
Caspian had actually covered his face with his hands.
“Should I just leave?” I asked.
Which was when I realised: He was laughing. Quietly. Then not so quietly. In that beautiful, helpless way he did so very rarely. “Arden, my Arden,” he said, his voice still full of mirth, and this infinite gentleness, “what has happened to you? Have you forgotten how to human?”
“I see what you did there.” I tried to scowl at him, but instead I was smiling. “You should be nicer to me. I’m nervous as fuck.” Also apparently incapable of making myself look good when Nathaniel was present.
“And you think I’m not?”
I fluttered my lashes at him. “Because of li’l ol’ me?”
“I was afraid I would never see you again.”
“And now we’re all friends,” said Nathaniel, way too sharply for the sentiment. “But if you don’t mind, I spent rather a lot of time preparing this meal—so do you think perhaps we could eat it before it’s entirely ruined?”
Caspian touched a finger to his laugh-damp lashes. “Of course. Nathaniel, thank you so much for cooking for us.”
“It was nothing. That is”—he seemed to remember he’d just drawn attention to his efforts—“it was my pleasure.”
I scraped the last swirl of honey off the plate. “It was my pleasure, for sure. This was so good.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.” Nathaniel did not sound even the slightest bit glad.
Silence settled as cheese was eaten—eaten, I should stress, by people who weren’t me because I’d already impetuously de-haloumied myself. And then Nathaniel brought out the next course, which was pea soup with harissa. I wasn’t entirely sure what harissa was, but I got the answer a spoonful later: What it was, was hot as fuck. A rich, deep, flavoursome hot, but Jesus Christ on a moose. Thank God for the artful spiral of sour cream or I might have spontaneously combusted. Although if I had, it would probably only have improved Nathaniel’s evening.
“Soooo.” I couldn’t tell if I was socially uncomfortable or just sweaty, but either way, saying something was becoming necessary. “How’s the…um…the giving up smoking going, Caspian?”
The fingers of his left hand curled self-consciously on the tabletop. “Well, I think? At least, I assume it is.”
“We can assume that,” agreed Nathaniel m
ildly, “unless you’re cheating.”
“I’m not.”
Nathaniel’s lips curled upwards, and while there was definitely warmth in his smile, there was also a bunch of other things I couldn’t even begin to interpret. “Would you even tell me if you were?”
“Would you want to know?”
“Yes, I would want to know.”
“Then I would tell you.”
I made a weird bleating sound, which was meant to be a light aren’t we all having a lovely time laugh. “But isn’t it kind of up to Caspian?”
“Honesty?” asked Nathaniel, with a tilt of his head.
“Smoking.”
“I’m not sure to what degree choice is a factor when it comes to addiction.”
So, I’d lost this conversation. It had more layers than a goddamn cheesecake—one of the fancy ones from Maison Bertaux—and there was no way Nathaniel’s smoking talk wasn’t a backhanded dig at all of Caspian’s other “harmful habits.” And while from my point of view there was clear blue water between consensual kinky sex and something that literally gave you lung cancer, Nathaniel clearly had different opinions. And had framed his way better than I’d framed mine.
“As it happens”—Caspian had conquered his soup without any sign of struggle—“giving up smoking is very much my choice. I prefer not to be controlled by my weaknesses.”
“Obviously smoking is bad for you,” I began.
At which point Nathaniel murmured, “We agree on that at least.”
“But,” I pushed on, “weakness is a deeply subjective concept.”
“I’m sure you know more about that than I do.”
Snide!Nathaniel was probably my least favourite Nathaniel. And believe me, there was a lot of competition. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He shrugged. “Only that I was raised to value strength. It is, despite our very different backgrounds, something Caspian and I share.”
That…did not add up. Well, it made sense for Nathaniel. For Caspian, though, given what I knew of his family? Not so much. I turned to him. “Is it?”
“The world is a cold place, Arden.” Despite my name on his lips, Caspian didn’t seem to be speaking to me at all. His attention was fixed on his wineglass, and the refracted light caught in the dregs. “We master it or we are mastered by it.”
“From everything you’ve told me about your dad,” I said, as gently as I could, “that doesn’t sound like any sort of lesson he’d want you to learn.”
At that, Caspian’s gaze snapped to mine. “I didn’t say he taught it to me.”
“Oh, Caspian.” I blinked against the prickle of tears. “Please—”
“And I would prefer not to discuss my father at the moment. It isn’t an appropriate topic for the dinner table.”
“There should always be a place for love.”
“But this is death.”
“Look,” I said. “Clearly, this is a mess. We’re all miserable. Nathaniel’s not right for you, and you’re not right for him. You should be with me.”
Okay, that’s a lie. I didn’t say that. But I really really wanted to. And in my head, when I did, Caspian believed me. And then there was kissing. Lots and lots of kissing.
Also an orchestra. And roll credits.
The End in big swirly letters.
What actually happened was Nathaniel muttered something about it being time for the lamb, and took our soup bowls into the kitchen, Lillie—who had extricated herself from a shadow in the corner of the room like a squid from seaweed—padding at his heels.
Chapter 17
Probably I should have tried to get the conversation going again but I felt like Cool Hand Luke digging a pit over and over again and couldn’t quite find the strength. So Nathaniel’s lamb with caramelised figs and pine nuts, in saffron sauce with couscous, arrived to deathly silence. Shame, really, because like everything else he’d made, it was really good—even if each portion came in its own little bowl so it was all a bit I heard you like crockery, so I put a crockery in your crockery. I never knew what to do with compartmentalised food—did you cross the barricades with it or respect its hauteur? Personally, I preferred stuff that came in a big pot where everyone got to help themselves. Much less complicated.
“Arden”—Nathaniel, wielding a bottle of wine apparently more appropriate to the meal than Green Fish, yanked me out of my food dilemma—“I’m conscious that since you had to interview us, you must know far more about me than I do about you.”
I frowned, not quite sure what he was getting at, but fairly convinced I wouldn’t like it. “No more than what you told me plus what an average person can find on the Internet.”
“I just think it would be good to restore the balance.”
“It’s not a competition.”
He gave me a smile that was trying very hard not to be exasperated. “What I’m saying is that I’d like to know you better.”
“Uh?” A piece of lamb plopped pathetically off my fork and into my couscous.
“There’s no need to look horrified. Since Caspian rarely allows people to grow close to him, I’m interested in anyone he calls a friend.” Nathaniel turned his luminous, earnest gaze on me. “Tell me about yourself.”
What? Oh no. I hope there’s a special place in hell reserved for people who say “Tell me about yourself.” Maybe not right in Satan’s arsehole with the betrayers, but pretty damn near it. Satan’s taint? Just behind his balls, where it’d be all sweaty with hellfire. “There’s not much to tell.”
“There’s no need to be modest,” said Caspian. “You’re a very special and accomplished young man.”
When we’d been dating, Caspian’s commitment to believing I was awesome had been at once overwhelming and a little bit magical. It had helped me find my way back to myself when I was so lost I hadn’t even realised how fucking lost I was. But now? It was a knife cutting me open. Streams of then why did you dump me pouring from my veins.
“I’m not being modest.” I took a probably inadvisable gulp of wine—and, okay, fine, it did go well with the lamb, the touch of bitterness in the fruit drawing out the sweetness of the meat. “Tell me about yourself is a crappy thing to throw at someone because it makes them do all the conversational work while you get to act like you’re taking an interest without actually having to be interested.”
Nathaniel looked genuinely hurt, thus making me look genuinely like a monster. “I’m sorry you feel that way. It wasn’t my intent.”
Get on your unicycle, Arden. Start backpedalling. “It’s okay. I mean, I overreacted. I’m sorry. I guess I read Jane Eyre at an impressionable age.”
Another of those you’re a nonsensical weirdo head tilts from Nathaniel. “I don’t follow.”
“There’s a bit early on when Rochester is being all autocratic lord of the manor and he’s, like, entertain me to Jane, and she’s, like, fuck you, I’m a person. But it’s this totally amazing moment because she’s this disempowered nobody and he’s supposed to be her better in every conceivable way.”
“I see.”
It really didn’t seem that he did see, so I pressed on. “Because, like, for Jane, the things we ascribe power to don’t matter. Just the inherent equality of hearts and souls and minds.”
“You seem very passionate about her.”
“Well”—I attempted a smile—“she was very passionate too. Don’t get me wrong, the book is batshit crazy and kinda racist, but I guess she’s a hero of mine.”
“Is that so?”
My grin was fossilizing on my face. “Yep yep. I’d love to be as brave and principled and badass as she is. Unfortunately, in practice, I just end up being a dick at dinner parties.”
“It’s all right,” Nathaniel told me graciously. Fuck’s sake, couldn’t he meet me halfway on anything?
“You weren’t a dick.” That was Caspian, whose gentleness I really didn’t need right now. “Just, as we have discussed, passionate. Which is a trait I’ve always admired in you.�
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I closed my eyes in case I lost control and stuck a fork in one. Probably he was only trying to be nice, but I couldn’t shake the conviction his one-man Arden Pep Rally was more for his benefit than mine. Like he was trying to prove to Nathaniel he hadn’t just been slumming it with me for six months. Which I suspected was just going to make everyone in the room feel shitty. “Thanks,” I said, in a totally not-thankful voice. “But we’re not together anymore. You don’t have to look out for me or take care of me, and my self-esteem is definitely not your problem.”
For the first time that evening, Nathaniel looked happy.
Caspian just got frosty. “I apologise.”
“I’ll get over it.”
“Your point is well made. As was your previous.”
At this, Nathaniel prickled slightly—if he’d been a cat, I’m sure his ears would have gone back. “I think you’re both reading far too much into a simple question, politely meant.”
“I’m sure it’s equally applicable to me.” Caspian’s manner softened again. “There must have been many occasions on which I made Arden feel as frustrated as Mr. Rochester did Jane Eyre.”
I shrugged. “Reader, she married him, didn’t she?” And actually, I’d always found Caspian easy to talk to—even from that very first, bewildering phone call.
“Yes, well.” Nathaniel poured himself another glass of wine, splashing a little as he did so. “In that regard, your story and Jane’s end rather differently.”
“And from your perspective, I’m probably the madwoman in the attic.”
“Nonsense.” He sighed. “I see no reason why I should be concerned by Caspian’s prior associations. It’s not as if you have any legal claim on him, and if he wanted to be with you, he would not be with me.”
Ouch. But then, if Nathaniel was that fucking unthreatened, he wouldn’t feel the need to go on about how threatened he wasn’t. I didn’t say that, though. On account of being either too nice or too cowardly.
“Nathaniel,” said Caspian, very softly. And I couldn’t tell if it was reassurance or rebuke or a little bit of both.