by Alexis Hall
I stared at him helplessly for what felt like far too long. He was in stripy pyjama bottoms and one of his plain, excitingly clingy T-shirts, and he had that slightly overchiselled look he’d had when I first met him. It made him feel slightly like a stranger.
“I’m trying to think of a good excuse,” I told him. “But I can’t.”
“Then”—he folded his arms—“why don’t you try telling me the truth?”
Well, it couldn’t be any worse than “I happened to stop by with all my friends to ask you a legal question.” “Bridget told me you were moving to Durham. So I went to Durham. To tell you not to go to Durham. But it turned out you weren’t in Durham. You were at your house.”
He seemed to be having trouble processing this. Which made two of us. “Is that why you called earlier?”
“Um. Yes.”
Long silence.
“I’m…I’m not going to Durham.”
“Yes. I figured that out when you weren’t in Durham.”
More long silence.
“Why,” he asked slowly, “do you care?”
“I don’t know. I just…didn’t want you to be in Durham. I mean, unless you really wanted to be. But, I think…not that it’s my place…you probably don’t actually…want to, that is. Be in Durham.”
He was giving me this “what the hell is wrong with you” look. “Yes, Lucien. That’s why I didn’t go.”
“Yeah, but you applied for an actual job. Booked an actual hotel. Which means you must have been pretty serious for a while there.”
“I was. Or rather”—he blushed a little—“I had a moment of wanting to be somewhere else. Far away from everyone I’ve let down.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I protested, “you haven’t let anyone down.”
“You didn’t seem to feel that way when we last spoke.”
I waved my arms in exasperation. “I can’t believe you’re making me defend your right to dump me. But you didn’t let me down. You just made a decision I didn’t like. They’re not the same thing. I think you made the wrong call but it’s not your job to make me, or your parents, or anyone else happy.”
A chorus of “kiss, kiss, kiss” rose from the truck. I’m pretty sure Bridge started it.
Wheeling round, I gave them my hardest of hard stares. “Not the time. Really not the time.”
“Sorry, Luc, my sweet.” James Royce-Royce leaned over from the far passenger side and stuck his head out the window. “It’s hard to hear from this position, and we seem to have misread the body language.”
“You definitely have.”
“If it’s not too intrusive a question,” said Oliver, “why have you brought all your friends to my doorstep?”
“I didn’t bring them, they brought me. They’ve got this idea that if I turned up and told you how much I cared about you that you’d fall into my arms and we’d live happily ever after. But, frankly, they’ve wildly underestimated how fucked up you are.”
His expression Wheel of Fortuned through hurt, relief, and anger, before finally settling on resignation. “Well, I’m glad you’re finally seeing me clearly. Can I take it you agree you’re better off without me?”
“Fuck a goat, Oliver, no. I know I haven’t always got you, and I know there’s been a bunch of times where I was a dick to you without meaning to…and also a bunch of times where I was just a dick…but I was never into the guy you think you should be. I’m into the guy you are.”
“Is now a good time?” asked Bridget from the truck.
“No,” I called back. “Very much not.”
“Okay. Sorry. Can you let us know?”
“I really can’t. Kind of getting shot down again, actually.”
“I’m not shooting you down,” interrupted Oliver, making a valiant effort to ignore the fact I’d accidentally brought an audience. “But you have to understand that I’m not someone people stay with. I try and I try to be a good person, and a good partner, but it’s never enough. And it’ll never be enough for you.”
“Tell him you’ve got incredibly low standards,” suggested Priya.
“I do not have incredibly low standards. Well, I do. But it’s not relevant here.” I put my back firmly to the truck and faced Oliver. “Look, you’ve got it super wrong. I can’t answer for your past relationships, but…what you think pushes people away is what lets them in. And, God I sound like an inspirational Instagram post, but not letting people in is what pushes them away.”
“What pushes them away”—Oliver had that tight, frowny expression—“is that I let things slip. My parents see it. You’ve seen it. When I was with you, I wasn’t taking care of myself. I was eating too much, taking too little exercise, I was leaning on you far more than I should have. And God, those scenes I subjected to you to with my family and afterwards. That’s not who I wanted to be with you.”
“Oh, Oliver. Haven’t you listened to a word I’ve said? I wasn’t with you because you had a V-cut and no problems.” Even as I said, it didn’t sound quite right. “Okay, I was at first. But I stayed because you’re… Fuck, I was going to say perfect. But you’re not perfect and no one’s perfect and you don’t have to be perfect.”
“Of course no one’s perfect, but I can be better.”
“You don’t have to be better. You’re everything I want right now.”
“Can I just remind you that you opened this conversation by telling me how fucked up I am? That cannot be something you want.”
“It absolutely can.”
“You’ve seen me have one bad day, Lucien. That doesn’t mean you know me.”
I laughed. “Oh, you have no fucking idea. When we met, I was too busy drowning in my own shit to pay much attention to yours, but you hide it way less well than you think you do.”
“I’m not sure I like where this is going.”
“Tough. You literally asked for this. You’re prissy and insecure and uptight and use pretentious language because you’re afraid of making mistakes. You’re so controlling you keep your bananas on a separate hook and such a god-awful people pleaser that it borders on self-destructive. Which is weird because you’re also convinced you know what’s best for everybody—and it never occurs to you to actually ask them. You’re smug, patronising, and adhere rigidly to a set of ethics I don’t think you’ve thought through anywhere near as well as you pretend you have. And I honestly think you might have a little bit of an eating disorder. Which you should probably see someone about, by the way, whether you go out with me or not.”
“I thought you came here to try and win me back. Not to elucidate for both of us why I’m the last thing you need.”
“Luc, you’re doing this all wrong,” yelled Bridge. “You’re meant to tell him he’s wonderful, not that he sucks.”
I kept my gaze on Oliver. “You are wonderful. But you need to believe that I don’t like you in spite of all…all of that. I like you because you’re you, and all of that is part of you.” In for a penny. “And, anyway, I don’t like you—I mean, I do like you, but you probably should know that I love you as well.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bridge literally punch the air. “Yes. Better.”
Oliver, however, was silent. Which didn’t seem like a good sign.
So I kept talking. Which was probably also a bad sign. “And I know you’re in a weird place at the moment. And I was in a weird place when we started this. But I’m in a way better place now, and that’s partly because of you, and partly because of these dickheads.” I indicated my friends who still had their noses pressed right against the windows like puppies for sale. “The thing is, even then, when I kept fucking up—and let’s face it, I fucked up a lot—I knew on some level that we were right. And I kept coming back to you and you kept taking me back. Because you knew it too. And this time, I hate to say it, but you’re the one who’s fucked up. And
I’m still coming back to you because I still think we’re right. So, y’know, it’s time for you to do your bit.”
Okay, even my friends were being quiet. And my stomach felt like it was about to fall to the centre of the earth.
It carried on feeling that way for a very, very long time.
This was it. This was the moment where he got what was I saying, and threw his arms around me, and told me…
“I’m sorry, Lucien,” said Oliver. “It’s not the same.”
Then he turned, walked back into his house, and closed the door.
Chapter 53
“You know,” said Bridget, as Priya drove us to Shepherd’s Bush, “I really thought that was going to go better.”
I sighed and wiped my eyes. “I know you did, Bridge. That’s why we love you.”
“I don’t understand. You’re perfect for each other.”
“Yeah. We’re both perfectly messed up.”
“In complementary ways.”
“If it was complementary, he wouldn’t have dumped me, then left me standing on the doorstep when I begged him to undump me.”
At which point James Royce-Royce chimed in. “I didn’t want to bring this up. But I’m not sure you handled the situation quite as well as you could. I mean, opening with ‘Here are all your personal flaws and, by the way, I think you have an eating disorder’ is possibly not the best way to strike a romantic tone.”
“No.” Bridge squidged her face between the headrests. “I thought that at the time, but it was the right thing to do. Oliver needs to know he’s loved no matter what.”
“I see what you’re saying”—James Royce-Royce was nodding sagely—“but I think if what you wanted to communicate was that he was loved no matter what, you should have gone with ‘Oliver, you’re loved no matter what.’”
I curled further into the corner. “Not massively appreciating the postmortem of my utter romantic failure.”
“Bullshit, James.” Priya had, of course, chosen to ignore me. But she did seem to be broadly on my side. “People don’t believe stuff just because you tell it to them directly. If they did, visual art would be completely worthless. Otherwise I’d go around writing things like ‘Capitalism has significant problems’ and ‘I fancy girls’ on walls.”
“Stop getting sidetracked.” That was Bridge. No surprise. “Point is, we need a new plan.”
I closed my eyes. “No. More. Plans.”
“But, Luc, you’ve been so much better since you’ve been with Oliver. And I don’t want you getting all sad and in the tabloids again.”
In her defence, it wasn’t an unreasonable concern. After all, that was exactly what had happened the last time I’d broken up with someone I cared about. I mean, apart from the minor detail that Oliver hadn’t sold me out to a third-rate gossip rag for an insultingly small sum of money. “Thanks for looking out for me, Bridge. But at the risk of sounding like a chick-lit heroine from the ’90s, I don’t need a man to complete me.”
“You complete me, darling,” said James Royce-Royce to James Royce-Royce.
I glared at the backs of their heads. “Way to undercut my point, guys.”
“Sorry, I got caught up in the moment.”
“The moment of my relationship falling apart?”
James Royce-Royce’s shoulders hunched in a wincey way. “Oh dear, that does make me sound rather selfish, doesn’t it?”
“Look,” I said, “being with Oliver has been so good for me. It’s helped me sort through a lot. And I’m sure, in the future, I’ll be able to have a healthy, functional relationship with someone nice. But, for now, I’m still really upset. So for fuck’s sake stop being happy at me.”
The message seemed to get through, and everyone remained sympathetically miserable until we got back to my flat. Where I announced my intention to spend the next couple of hours drinking and feeling sorry for myself. “You can join me if you like, but I’ve been stuck with you all day so I, honestly, don’t care if you’d rather just go home.”
Priya shrugged. “I’m in. It’ll be like the good old days.”
“Sorry, darling.” James Royce-Royce was already calling an Uber. “My husband and I have to go and be happy somewhere.”
“And I’ve got an early flight,” added Tom, “to somewhere I can’t talk about to do something I can’t talk about.”
“I’ll stay. It means I’ll be late for work tomorrow, but I’ve got flexi and I’m sure they can survive without me for—” She checked her phone. “Oh shit, I’ve been fired.”
For a moment, I was genuinely not thinking about my own problems. “Fuck. Bridge. I’m so sorry. Was it—”
“False alarm. There’s been a fire. And half the first print run of I’m Out of Office at the Moment. Please Forward Any Translation Work to My Personal Email Address has gone up in smoke. I have to go and deal with this right now.”
We all parted ways, except for Priya who followed me up to my flat, made an appropriately rude comment about how surprised she was that I’d managed to keep it clean, and then immediately started raiding the kitchen for booze. I can’t say I was good company but it was nice having her there—and she let me cry into my drink without looking awkward or trying to comfort me, which was exactly what I needed right then.
We crawled into bed at three in the morning, because she was in no position to drive and I was in no position to be on my own. Which meant we were both woken up when the buzzer went a couple of hours later.
“Who the fuck is that?” groaned Priya.
The buzzing went on.
“Well”—I rolled over blearily—“I’d normally say you, but you’re here. Or Bridge, but she’s probably still dealing with a warehouse full of burning books.”
The buzzing went on.
She stole my pillow and pressed it over her head. “It’s fucking Oliver, isn’t it?”
There was no one else it could be. But I couldn’t quite work out how to feel about it. This was supposed to make me happy, right? But it was also making me feel crap-the-bed nervous and giving me a headache.
The buzzing went on.
“You have eight seconds to deal with that,” Priya told me, “before I put a fucking drill through it.”
“I haven’t got a drill.”
“Then I’ll find something heavy and pointy and do the best I can.”
“Yeah, I think that would knacker my security deposit.”
“Then,” she growled, “you better answer the fucking door.”
I staggered out of bed and into the living room. “Hello,” I said, picking up the handset like I was afraid it might bite me.
“It’s me.” Oliver’s voice was slightly hoarse, though probably less wrecked than mine.
“And?”
“And I…came to see you. Can I come up?”
“Um, there’s a tiny, angry lesbian in my bed. So it’s not really a good time.”
There was a pause. “I’m not sure I want to have this conversation over an intercom.”
“Oliver.” Tears, alcohol, a ten-hour road trip, and a chronic lack of sleep had turned my brain to cauliflower cheese. “I’m not sure I want to have a conversation at all. Given, y’know, everything.”
“I understand that. But”—an anxious, needy little pause—“please?”
Oh fuck. “Fine. I’ll come down.”
I went down. Oliver was on my doorstep, dressed for work, with dark circles under his eyes.
“Okay,” I said. “What?”
He gazed at me for a long moment. “Are you aware that you’re wearing nothing but a pair of hedgehog-themed boxer shorts?”
Well, I was now. “I’ve had a rough night.”
“That makes two of us.” He took off his big, cashmere lawyer coat and wrapped it round me.
Obviously, pride demanded that I not
let him, but—having finally restored my reputation—the last thing I needed was either getting photographed in my underpants or brought up on public indecency charges. Knowing my luck, I’d get stuck with Justice Mayhew.
Oliver drew in a shaky breath. “I’m sorry to wake you. But I…I wanted to tell you I was wrong.”
It would have a good time to say something encouraging and emotionally generous, but I’d just been buzzed out of bed after two hours sleep. “Which bit?”
“All of it. Especially when I said it wasn’t the same. Because it was.” He stared at the pavement, or possibly my bare feet. “I was shaken and upset and I pulled away, and then I was too ashamed to pull back.”
That sounded too familiar for me to be able to condemn it, even though I really wanted to. “I understand. I’m hurt, and I’m mad as hell, but I do understand.”
“I wish I hadn’t hurt you.”
“Me too but”—I shrugged—“here we are.”
There was a long silence. Oliver looked kind of uncertain and tormented, but I still wasn’t inclined to be particularly helpful.
“Did you mean it?” he asked, finally.
“Mean what?”
“Everything you said.”
I was starting to realise he did that a lot—asking you to repeat expressions of affection like he couldn’t quite believe he’d heard you right. “Yes, Oliver. I meant it. That’s why I said it.”
“You think I have an eating disorder?”
He’d better not have come all this way and woken me up and exposed me to the very real possibility that Priya wouldn’t let me back in my flat to talk about my perception of his mental health. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not a medical professional. But you’re so committed to being healthy it sometimes seems unhealthy.”
“You’ve also noticed I’m very controlling. Perhaps it’s just a symptom of my being generally uptight.”
“Is this really what you want to talk about now?”
“No,” he admitted, frowning. “I’m being cowardly again. What I really wanted to ask is…did you mean it when you said you…you know.”