Boyfriend Material

by Alexis Hall

  “Yeah,” I said, “very important part of French culture that. Along with Edith Piaf, Cézanne, and the Eiffel Tower.”

  “Eh, have you seen what our kings used to wear? Their faces were beat for the gods and their heels were sickening.”

  Oliver laughed. “Thank you. I think.”

  “It is true. You should never let anyone tell you it is wrong to be how you are.” Mum was watching him with an expression I recognised from every childhood setback I’d ever had. “It is like the special curry. Luc has been telling me for years that it has too much spice, that I should not put sausage meat in it, and that I should never make it for guests.”

  “Where are you going with this story?” I asked. “Because all those things are true and your curry is terrible.”

  “Where I am going with this, mon caneton, is that I don’t give a shit. It is my curry, and I will make it the way I fucking well want to. And that is the way Oliver should live his life. Because the people who matter will love you anyway.”

  “I…” For the first time since I’d known him, Oliver seemed genuinely speechless.

  “Come along.” Mum reached for the remote. “Let us watch episode three. The queens are going to be in a horror movie.”

  Apparently deciding that bzns had become srs, Judy got up and dimmed the lights. As we all settled in for what was probably going to become a Drag Race marathon, I really wasn’t sure how I felt or was meant to be feeling. Life with Mum and Judy had been this bubble I’d kept other people away from, partly because I was worried they wouldn’t understand, but also because, I guess, in some odd way, I wanted it to stay mine. This private space where Mum would always be cooking—or saying—something awful, and she and Judy would always be far too into whatever hobby or book or TV show had caught their attention this week, and I would always be welcome and safe and loved.

  I’d brought Miles to visit, of course, but I’d never tried to make him part of our world. We’d usually gone down to the village pub and had scampi and chips on our best behaviour. But here I was with Oliver, and while it was a little exposing and a little unnerving, it was also… What’s the word? Nice. And he hadn’t run away yet, despite Mum and Judy being at pretty much peak Mum and Judy.

  I let my head rest against his knee, and, somewhere between the mini-challenge and the runway, Oliver’s hand began stroking softly through my hair.

  Chapter 27

  Oliver was still busy with his case (which he couldn’t talk about, but refused to let me pretend was a murder) for the next few days. And I, of course, had a weekend with my dad looming and, as a fabulous aperitif for that three-course shit banquet, I also had to meet Adam and Tamara Clarke. Hopefully at an excitingly trendy pop-up vegan dining experience, rather than something Rhys Jones Bowen had just made up in his head.

  I got there well ahead of time so that I could scope the place out and, in an absolute emergency, come up with a flimsy excuse to cancel. Thankfully, it seemed to be legit. Yes, from the outside the venue was your typical, generic pop-up space—a white-painted shop front with a sign over the awning reading “By Bronwyn”—but inside it was full of hanging baskets and repurposed furniture that hopefully the Clarkes would find ethical and carbon neutral and stuff.

  When I’d given my name to the teenage hippie running front of house, I was ushered into a cosy corner and given a complimentary bowl of, um, seeds? Which was kind of the worst, because I didn’t particularly want to eat them, but they were there so I was definitely going to, and I’d probably have finished them before my intended schmoozees had arrived. I was trying, and failing, to stop picking at the seeds—they were actually quite well seasoned, insofar as you could season something that was itself basically seasoning—when a large woman in chef’s whites, her abundant chestnut hair stuffed into a hairnet, came over to greet me.

  “You must be Luc,” she said. “I’m Bronwyn. Rhys told me all about you.”

  “Look. Whatever he said, I’m not actually racist against Welsh people.”

  “Oh, you probably are. You English are all the same.”

  “And how,” I asked, “is that okay?”

  “I think you’ll find it’s a complex question of intersectionality. But basically my people never invaded your country and tried to eradicate your language.”

  I slumped lower on the upcycled whisky barrel I was sitting on. “Okay. Good point. Thanks for taking the booking.”

  “That’s okay. Rhys said you were a hopeless berk and you’d be fired if this didn’t go perfectly.”

  “Nice to know you’re both on my side. So what’s good?”

  “It’s all good.” She grinned. “I’m amazing at my job.”

  “Let me rephrase. Suppose I was a committed meat-eater trying to impress two potential donors who run a chain of vegan cafés. What can I order that will make it look like I know what the fuck I’m doing?”

  “Well, if you want something relatively predictable, then you could go for the sunflower seed and cashew burger, but that might make you look like you’re really wishing you could have a steak.”

  “No offence, but I probably really will be wishing I could have a steak.”

  “Yes, that is a little bit offensive considering you’re in my restaurant. If you want to pretend you actually know what a vegetable is, you could go for the jackfruit Caesar or the tomato lasagne. And if you’re feeling adventurous, you could try the sesame-rolled tofu.”

  “Thanks. I do have some self-loathing issues, but I don’t think I’m quite ready for bean curd.”

  “Little bit of advice if I may, Luc. Stop talking like this when your guests are here. They won’t like it.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m just trying to get it out my system before I have to be polite to the Clarkes.”

  Her face contorted. “What, you mean the Gaia people?”

  “Not a fan? Are they like the Starbucks of veganism?”

  “It’s not so much that. But they’re very… Well, let’s say I do this because I think eating animal products is unnecessarily cruel and an avoidable environmental catastrophe. I don’t do it because I want to bathe the world in healing goddess energy and flog yoga mats.”

  I gave her a faintly alarmed look. “You’re not going to say that to them, right?”

  “Of the two of us, which was the one dissing tofu in front of a vegan chef?”

  “I thought I was more dissing myself, but fair enough.”

  “Anyway, I’ll leave you to the… Oh, you’ve eaten all the seeds.”

  Fuck. I had. “I don’t suppose I could have some more? What do you put on them, anyway? Crack cocaine?”

  “Salt, mostly, and a few spices.”

  “They’re really moreish.”

  “I know, and they don’t even come out of a dead cow.”

  A few minutes after she’d gone back to the kitchen, and the teenager had replenished the seeds, Adam and Tamara wafted in, looking willowy, bronzed, and smug. They Namasted at me and sat down across the table, making it feel unpleasantly like a job interview. Which, I suppose, in a way it was.

  “Oh, this is charming,” said Tamara. “Well done, you.”

  I put on my best smile. “Yes, the chef’s been on my radar for a while. And when I heard she was doing a pop-up, I thought of you immediately.”

  “I feel like it’s been a while since we’ve spoken.” Adam popped a seed into his mouth. He was handsome in this weird picture-in-the-attic sort of way. The last time I’d Googled him, he’d been in his early fifties but he looked like he could have been anything between thirty and about six thousand and nine.

  “It has.” I was pretty sure Adam was hinting that I hadn’t stroked their egos enough recently so I fell back on the strategy of making an excuse that sounds like a compliment. “But now the franchise rollout is underway, I’ll be a lot less worried about bothering you. I hear it’s
going well?”

  Tamara, who was just enough younger than Adam that it came across as creepy but not so much younger than you didn’t feel judgmental for thinking it was creepy, pressed a hand coyly to what I strongly suspected was a chakra. “We’ve been very blessed.”

  “If you put good energy in the universe,” Adam added, “good energy comes back to you.”

  God. By the time this was over, I was going to have a near-fatal buildup of unused sarcasm. “I think that’s a really positive philosophy, and I know it’s one you’ve always lived by.”

  “We very much feel we have a duty to set a positive example.” That was Tamara.

  Adam nodded approvingly. “It’s particularly important to me because I used to work in a very negative industry, and even with Tamara’s help, it took me a long time to come through that.”

  At this point, I got a momentary reprieve when the teenager came over to take our orders, and Adam and Tamara gave him the third degree over where the restaurant’s ingredients were sourced from and which bits specifically were organic. I half wondered if it would have been a better strategy to take them somewhere less in line with their values so they could have the satisfaction of being unsatisfied with it. In the end, I went with the jackfruit Caesar—despite not knowing what jackfruit was—because I figured it was a good compromise between making an effort and trying too hard.

  “Anyway”—Tamara leaned forward earnestly—“we’re really glad to have this opportunity to speak to you, Luc. As you know, we find the work that Coleoptera Research Project does in restoring the natural balance of the earth to be incredibly important.”

  I tried to match her earnest for earnest. “Thank you. We’ve always been very grateful for your generosity. But, more than that, we’ve always felt you had a real understanding of our mission.”

  “That’s really great to hear,” said Adam. “The thing is though, Luc, our values are central to our way of life.”

  “And…” Now it was Tamara’s turn “…some of the things we’ve been hearing recently have actually been quite concerning to us.”

  “Like we were saying earlier. We think it’s really important to put out the right sort of energy.”

  “And, obviously, nature really matters to us. And being in harmony with nature and with ourselves.”

  “And, so, being frank and strictly off the record, we’ve been a little bit worried that some elements of your lifestyle are not necessarily compatible with what we see as healthy and positive living.”

  I was pretty sure that they could have gone on like this for at least another hour but, mercifully, it seemed like they thought they’d made their point. And now they were gazing expectantly at me.

  Somehow, I didn’t throw the seeds at them.

  “I completely see where you’re coming from,” I told them. “And, being frank and strictly off the record, I’ve not been in the best place recently. But I’ve taken time to reflect and look inward, and although I think it’s going to be quite a slow, holistic process, I’m beginning to take steps to really realign myself with where I’m supposed to be in life.”

  Tamara reached across the table and laid her hand across mine like a benediction. “That’s really centred of you, Luc. Not a lot of people have the courage to do that.”

  “Just to be clear”—Adam suddenly looked a little bit uncomfortable—“it’s not about the gay thing.”

  A nod from Tamara. “We have lots of gay friends.”

  I widened my eyes in a look of reassuring disbelief that I had been practicing for way too long. “You know, it never even crossed my mind that it might be.”

  A couple of hours later, they’d gone, having formally un-pulled-out of the Beetle Drive—which, y’know, they could do because their Johrei retreat wasn’t happening. I celebrated and/or consoled myself with a terrifyingly good chocolate caramel brownie. Like, seriously. Better than a real—I mean nonvegan—chocolate caramel brownie. My working theory was that getting a dessert from a vegan restaurant was like having sex with someone less attractive than you—they knew it was a tough sell, so they tried harder.

  “How was the jackfruit?” asked Bronwyn, popping up beside me.

  “Surprisingly good. There was even a thirty-second window when I stopped wishing it was meat.”

  She folded her arms. “You’ve been bottling that up, haven’t you?”

  “Yes. Yes, I have. They are the worst people, Bronwyn.”

  “I blame the yoga. All that time in facedown dog’s not good for you.”

  “They actually used the phrase ‘It’s not the gay thing.’”

  “Oh, so it was the gay thing then?”

  “Yeah.” I hoovered up the last crumbs of brownie. “They’ve got to that place where they’ve realised being homophobic is bad, but haven’t quite reconciled that with the fact they’re a bit suspicious of gay people.”

  Bronwyn oofed. “Are you going to need another brownie?”

  “I think I might actually. This is on expenses. And I kind of feel like work owes me.”

  She did, in fact, bring me another brownie. And I did, in fact, eat it.

  “Oh, by the way,” she said, swinging herself onto a repurposed wine crate, “I had a text from Rhys. He wants to know if you’re getting fired or not. He does worry about you, Luc. On account of how you’re such a bellend.”

  “I think it went okay. Bellend or not, I’m depressingly good at pandering to straight people when I have to.”

  “Well, it’s a living, isn’t it? Probably better than digging a hole.”

  I squirmed. “You don’t think it’s…messed up?”

  “No point asking me. I’m not the gay pope. You do it. What do you think?”

  I carried on squirming. “It’s not a massive part of my job. It just feels like it right now.”

  “You mean,” she offered, helpfully, “because you were in the newspapers being a massive junkie slutbag?”

  “Excuse me. I’ve recently been in the newspapers having a very nice boyfriend.”

  “Yes, but that’s only for pretendsies, isn’t it?”

  I face-palmed. “Has Rhys told everyone in Wales about this?”

  “Oh, I doubt it. I don’t think he knows anyone in Llanfyllin. Anyway—”she stood up again—“you should bring your fake boyfriend here on a fake date. I’ll even serve him a fake burger.”

  “He is actually vegetarian.”

  “There you go, then. Hopefully I’ll get some publicity out of it, and you’ll get to enjoy my food without the casual homophobia.”

  Now she mentioned it, Oliver would really like this place, and since all I’d managed to bring him during our lunch dates were two identically average avocado wraps from Pret, I owed him some nice food at some point. Plus I could let him order for me, and I’d get to watch him being all earnest and gastronomical and—

  Publicity, that was the main thing. I mean, I was sure going to vegan restaurants with the lawyer you were monogamously dating was donor-friendly behaviour.

  “Thanks,” I said. “That’d be…um…great.”

  She nodded. “I’ll get you the bill.”

  I wriggled my phone out my pocket and discovered I had a picture of Richard Armitage waiting for me. Which was definitely my kind of dick.

  Want to come to a pop-up vegan restaurant with me? I sent.

  And few minutes later I got back, Of course. Is this for work or broader reputation management?

  Both. Because it was. But also, it wasn’t. You’ll like it though

  That’s very thoughtful of you, Lucien.

  It wasn’t. It was very thoughtful of a Welsh lesbian. Still, it was the closest I’d come to trying for a very long time. And that was scary as fuck.

  Just not quite scary enough to stop me.

  Chapter 28

  I hadn’t thought much a
bout how to get to my dad’s. My plan, such as it was, had been to put it completely out of my mind until Saturday night, then panic, and maybe discover I couldn’t make it after all. Oliver, however, had not only pre-Googled the route but rented a car for the weekend. Which was very considerate. And also infuriating.

  With an eye for logistics that could have seemed romantic if you squinted—and our relationship wasn’t a total fiction—he suggested that it would be most efficient if I was to stay at his place the night before. I’d have found the idea intensely appealing except I was finding the together-not-togetherness of our arrangement increasingly difficult to navigate. My brain didn’t know what to do with a kind, considerate, supportive man except tell me to get out, get out now before he uses what you’ve given him to hurt you. Which, obviously, I couldn’t because we both needed this and we’d made a deal.

  It would have been so much easier if we were just fucking. Then, he’d be a guy I was having sex with and I’d know what it meant—and, yes, afterwards he could go to the papers and tell them a bunch of dirty sex anecdotes. But, at this point, that was barely news, and I’d take it any day over stories about how much I loved my mum or how much my dad had screwed me up or the fact I had a tragic French toast fixation. Stuff about me.

  Anyway, I took him to By Bronwyn on Saturday evening, and shamelessly showed off my knowledge of vegan cuisine for about twelve seconds before he gave me an “I call bullshit” look and asked me what a jackfruit was. So I admitted I didn’t have a clue and asked him to order for me, which made him far happier than that should make anyone. He had the rolled tofu, and showing far too much insight into my preferences, he got me the burger I’d have felt too shallow ordering for myself. And it was actually a really nice evening—we talked about Oliver’s case, now it was finished, and I did my impression of Adam and Tamara Clarke, and somehow halfway through a bottle of vegan wine (because apparently most wine contains fish bladder for some fucking reason), we got onto the finer points of Drag Race. And from there to basically everything, the conversation twisting and meandering and turning back on itself the way it normally only did with my oldest and closest friends.