by Alexis Hall
He was quiet for what felt like far too long. “I think,” he said at last, “when you claimed to be bad at this, you were either lying or sorely underestimating yourself.”
“I wouldn’t lie to you, Mr. Hart.” It was hard to tell because we were on the phone but I thought I heard him draw in a sharp breath. Something I said? Or his name, which felt intimate somehow, in my mouth? Even though the formal address should have maintained a sense of distance, rather than the reverse. “It was just a thing I thought.”
“That I should make a donation to my old college? Rather a convenient notion to cross your mind at a fund-raising telethon, don’t you think?”
“Well, yes…I mean no…I mean. Fuck. All I meant was…I couldn’t think of anything more powerful, or more important, than being able change the course of a life. To be able to give someone who truly deserved it an opportunity that money or circumstance or social inequality would otherwise deny them.” That was when the magnitude of what I was suggesting finally sank in. I squeaked. “Or…or you could just buy a plant for the JCR. That would be cool too.”
I was relieved to hear him laugh again. “You are a very dangerous young man.”
“I’m really not.” And I wasn’t sure whether it had been intended as a compliment anyway.
“I’m going to say goodbye now and think about what you’ve said.”
This was all moving a little fast for me. I wasn’t even entirely sure what had happened. “God. Are you sure? You don’t have to.”
“No, I do. Charming though this conversation has been, I’m a very busy man and I never make financial decisions without considering them thoroughly first.”
“I meant…you don’t have to…give any money. Or anything.”
“Courage, Arden. Never flinch before you seal the deal.”
“But I wasn’t trying to…to deal with you.”
“Perhaps that’s why you succeeded. I had forgotten how potent sincerity can be.”
Maybe I should have been celebrating but I felt terrible. As if I’d accidentally perpetrated an epic deception on a billionaire alumnus. And then I suddenly remembered there was a formal dinner and I was supposed to invite anybody who seemed donatey. “You should come visit,” I blurted out.
“Pardon?”
“Before you decide anything. You could come to the dinner at the end of the week. I mean, it’s free food.” Oh, what was I saying? “Though I guess that probably isn’t much of a motivation for you. But can…do you think…would you…”
He cut over my flailing. “Put me down as a maybe.”
A click. And the line went dead.
Chapter 2
My shift ended at nine, the next group of eager volunteers filing in to reach out to alumni in different time zones. While I hadn’t spoken to any more billionaires, I’d actually done okay. Somehow, my conversation with Caspian Hart had given me more confidence in what I was doing and my ability to do it. He’d said I was doing a good job, after all. And, coming from him, that had to mean something. Unless he was being sarcastic.
Oh shit. What if he was?
In any case, I’d even started to enjoy myself once I got into the swing of things. Nearly everyone had memories to share or stories to tell, and as I made my way back to my room across the moonlit quad, I found myself wondering what my story was.
I’d done so well at school that I’d come to university expecting a cross between Brideshead Revisited and an English version of The Secret History, and fully prepared to be a genius. Except Oxford wasn’t like that at all. And neither was I.
And here I was, two and a half years later, finals looming and…
Fuuuck.
I climbed the stairs and pushed open the door to my room. Well, rooms technically—set of rooms—the ultimate Oxford status symbol. I’d come bottom of the ballot, which meant I should have been living in a dustbin round the back of college, but Nik had come near the top, and since he needed someone to share with, that had hiked me up.
He was huddled on the sofa under a duvet, looking tragic.
“Feeling better?” I asked.
“Blah.”
“I’m sorry.” It was hard to know how to sympathize with someone who sounded like Emperor Palpatine. “But, hey, you can do an awesome impression of Emperor Palpatine.”
That seemed to perk him up.
“Go on. Say Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station.”
“Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station,” he rasped.
I gave him a thumbs-up and went into my bedroom to slip into something less socially acceptable, emerging a few seconds later in my boxers and an I’M FABULOUS AND I KNOW IT My Little Pony T-shirt.
We’d been roommates long enough to have established our chairs—though, unfortunately, mine was currently a make-do revision station, consisting of my laptop, a pile of books, and a half-drunk bottle of £1.99 Tesco’s own brand booze. Which you could tell was the good stuff because it was just called wine and had a screw cap.
Mooching over, I grabbed the nearest book and curled up, waiting for knowledge to miraculously osmote from page to brain. Because that was totally how it worked.
Nik stirred in his duvet cocoon. “How’s it going?”
“Terrible.”
“What have you got to worry about? It’s English lit.”
He wasn’t actually being mean. My course had a reputation for being easy—probably deservedly, since the earliest lectures started at eleven and, while they weren’t presented as optional, hardly anyone went to them anyway.
“Yes, but how am I supposed to revise every book written in English from 650 to the present day. That’s”—my voice went a bit shrill—“not reasonable.”
“Can’t you prioritize the important ones or something?”
“Do I look like Harold Bloom?”
“I’d be able to tell you if I knew who that was.”
I could have explained The Western Canon, but nobody deserved that. And Nik, whose full name was Niklaus Johannsson-Carrington, was my best and oldest friend. We’d been on the same staircase in my first year and stuck together ever since, despite having nothing in common (except maybe the time he’d been drunk enough to let me wank him off).
He was reading Materials, whatever that meant, and constantly getting internships at MIT. He was also captain of the first VIII (which I thought was a rowing thing), played football for the men’s seconds, and had recently returned from Uganda, where he’d been part of a team that was repairing a health center. All of which made him the perfect person to do fund-raising telethons…except for the temporarily-sounding-like-Emperor-Palpatine thing. That would have probably been pretty off-putting.
“In Stephen Fry’s autobiography—” I began.
“Which one? The man’s written more autobiographies than you’ve written essays.”
I mimed being stabbed through the heart. “Impugned! But he said he did well at Cambridge by memorizing a set of first-quality essays and then shoehorning them into whatever question happened to be on the paper.”
Nik nodded. “Sounds like a good plan.”
“With one minor drawback.”
“What?”
“I haven’t written any first-quality essays.” They were mostly seconds and upper seconds, and one returned to sender because it was about Finnegans Wake, and I’d written it stoned at half four in the morning when the book had taken on this terrible clarity and I’d been briefly convinced that maybe I was brilliant after all.
“You can still memorize what you’ve got.”
“Except they’re so banal and half-arsed it hardly seems worth it.” I sighed. “I swear to God, I found one that opened ‘Bleak House, the Victorian novel by the Victorian novelist Charles Dickens’…Oh my God, I’ve wasted three years of my life.”
“You haven’t wasted them,” Nik said consolingly. “You just haven’t done any work in them.”
I made sad otte
r noises.
“Seriously, it’ll be fine. Worst-case scenario is you get a two-two.”
“Worst-case scenario is I fail or get a third.”
“And imagine how glamorous that’ll be.”
“I won’t look like a loser?”
“No, you’ll look like a misunderstood genius.”
Nik’s voice was getting even more sinister and whispery. Great, I was essentially making a sick person comfort me. “Maybe you shouldn’t be talking. Does it hurt?”
“No, but it’s weird as hell. It’s like my voice has just disappeared.”
I offered a sheepish smile by way of apology for being self-absorbed. “Did you make a dodgy deal with a sea witch? Don’t you know, you’ve gotta kiss de girl.”
“I’m worried I’ll give de girl a throat infection.”
Unscrewing the cap, I took a swig of wine straight from the bottle. “There was something seriously wrong with that guy.”
“What guy?”
“Prince Eric.”
“What’s wrong with Prince Eric? He was kind to animals, lived in a palace. Good dimples.”
“Yeah, but how can you respect a man who needs a singing lobster to tell him when to make a move?”
Nik gave me a withering look. “Sebastian’s a crab.”
“How can you remember that? Are you sure you’re mostly straight?”
“He was a comedy sidekick with a racist accent. You don’t forget that shit unless you’re too busy speculating about whether the male lead is any good in bed.”
“You’re right,” I conceded. “That is pretty gay.”
I took the opportunity to consume more alcohol. A toast. To myself: Disney queer failing Oxford.
“So,” asked Nik slyly, “who would you go for?”
I made a thoughtful hmmming noise. “It’s a hard one.”
“Or you’re hoping it is.”
“You do know”—I regarded him with severity—“that not every observation your token pansexual friend makes is a cock joke, right?”
“I would, if my token pansexual friend made fewer cock jokes.” He waved a hand imperiously. “Come on, Arden, who’s it going to be?”
Maybe the telethon had left me in a funny mood but I found myself wondering how I’d feel when I looked back on this: another night with my best friend in a dreamy, golden city, talking about the Disney princes I’d like to bang. I wondered if I’d still understand or if I’d think I was ridiculous. Or if I’d feel some sense of loss. “Well,” I said, “it’s not exactly a great pool, is it?”
“Bunch of hot royals? Jesus, man, what are you looking for?”
“Um, somebody real? Somebody who loves me? Somebody who’ll fold me up like a fishing stool and fuck my brains out. Give me that and I’d scorn to change my state with kings.”
“From the amount of people who’ve trooped through here, doesn’t seem like you’re short of volunteers.”
I pulled my knees to my chin and let my gaze drift out the window to the quad below. A typical Oxford night: green grass and ancient stone, ghosts of the gold-washed dark. “Eh, they’re all Erics.”
“They’re taking dating advice from crabs?”
“There are no crabs anywhere near my sex life, thank you very much.” He gave a wheezy laugh, and gratified, as I always was to please him, I went on. “Which leaves me with…God…the early princes are kind of nonentities, aren’t they? And on the date-rapey side in the case of Phillip. And Aladdin’s out, obviously.”
Nik raised his brows.
“Not because he’s Middle Eastern. Because he’s a delinquent. I know I’m not exactly awesome, but I think I can do better than a homeless man.”
“You’ll have a degree in English. You’re going to be Aladdin.”
“Oh shut up.” I ran quickly through the pantheon. It was slightly scary how much Disney I’d watched over the years, some of it fairly recently. “Prince Naveen is cute with his ukulele.”
“I thought you didn’t like hipsters.”
“Good point, well made. Better be Prince Adam, then.”
A slight pause. “Sorry, who?”
“From Beauty and the Beast,” I mumbled. “Y’know, the Beast.”
A more substantial pause. “Is this your way of coming out as a furry?”
“What? No! Fuck you.”
“Dream on, gayboy.”
“I do, I really do, thinking of your bronzed and manly thews clenching around me in undeniable homosexual ecstasy.”
“My…thews are homosexual?” His ears had gone pink.
“By association when they’re clenched around me.”
“Look.” He did have an excellent, firm voice, a little bit football captain, a little bit headmaster. “Can we go back to you fancying animals, please?”
“I don’t fancy animals. The Beast is only symbolically bestial.”
“I know I’m a scientist and therefore don’t understand these complex literary motifs, but it looks pretty literal to me when he’s beating up wolves and roaring.”
“Okay, so he’s protective, passionate, strong—”
“—has a tail.”
I gave him a look. “Has clearly suffered but is not less deserving of love for that.”
“Yeah, but what kind of prick denies a beggar woman a loaf of bread?”
“What kind of beggar woman rocks up at the front door of a palace? That’s like a Big Issue seller getting pissy because the queen doesn’t carry cash. Also, the Beast’s got his own dungeon. I respect a man with all the conveniences.”
Nik tried to laugh again, and it came out like a rusty gate in a gale.
I winced for him and eyed my wine guiltily. “Um, can I get you something? You sound grim.”
“Sounds worse than it is.” He shrugged in this noble I’m going out for a walk and may be some time sort of way. “I just feel bad for letting the telethon down.”
“We’re doing okay. And I spoke to this guy named Caspian Hart, who’s apparently super-rich. That could come to something.”
Nik’s eyes went wide. “Caspian Hart? Seriously?”
I made what I hoped was a modest, l’il ol’ me gesture.
“You don’t know who he is, do you?”
“Of course I do! It said on the sheet. He’s like a finance guy or something.”
“Arden, he’s a big deal and famously unapproachable. He’s the second youngest self-made billionaire on the Forbes list. He’s been on the cover of TIME and everything.”
“Well, y’know, so’s Donald Trump.”
“And,” Nik added resignedly, “he’s really hot.”
Ah. That was more like it. I put down the wine bottle and reached for my laptop.
“I mean, if you’re into dicks. Literally and metaphorically.”
“He wasn’t a dick. A bit…intimidating maybe. But I guess if you’re that awesome, you would be.” My cheeks were getting warm just remembering the conversation. “He was kind to me, actually.”
“You’d have to be a monster not to be. It’d be like kicking a kitten.”
“Excuse me, I’m incredibly sexy and— Oh my God.” The results of my image search had just popped up.
“You are such a letch.”
Peeping at Nik over the top of the screen, I gave him double eyebrows. “Shit. I invited him to the dinner as well. What if I have to talk to him and look at him at the same time?”
“I guess it’ll tear a rift in the space-time continuum and we all die.”
Okay—I deserved that. I laughed, blushed a bit at my own ridiculousness. “I bet you anything I end up making a complete idiot out of myself.”
“People like that are insanely busy. He probably won’t even make it.”
Yes. That was a good point. And it would save me a lot of embarrassment.
Except I couldn’t help feeling disappointed too. I mean, not just because he was gorgeous—I was shallow, but not that shallow—but because…Meh, I was probably reading too much into it.
&n
bsp; But it would have been nice to meet him.
Hear that soft, unexpectedly shy laugh in person.
“So”—Nik broke into my daydreaming—“are you going to be working or do you want to watch Luke Cage?”
I checked the clock on my computer—it was past ten now. Hardly worth starting revision. Although, let’s face it, it was that kind of attitude that got me into this mess in the first place. “Is there room under that duvet?”
“Always.”
I settled the laptop on the table, fired up Netflix, and snuggled in next to Nik. “You’re not contagious, are you?”
“Only if I snog you.”
“Hey, it’s possible. You might be overcome by base lust and unable to keep your tongue out of me.”
He flung an arm around and pulled me closer—he smelled slightly like an ill person, but also cozy and familiar. “Yes. That’s definitely a real danger that you’re in right now. With Mike Colter right there.”
“You mean, you’re gay for Mike Colter but not for me?”
“Shhh.”
I’d had this …almost-maybe-actual crush on Nik for basically ever. It could have damaged our relationship, but in my experience, there were two kinds of straight boys in the world: the ones who were terrified that being liked by a gay meant getting bummed the moment they let their guard down and the ones who were comfortable enough to be into it.
Nik was in the second category.
And, honestly, there were probably two kinds of queer boys as well: the ones who had wholesome, healthy relationships with other queers and the ones who preferred to be in love with people they couldn’t have because they were slutty commitmentphobes.
I was also in the second category.
A friendmance made in heaven.
Chapter 3
Okay, how do I look?” I turned away from the mirror over the sink and struck a pose.
Nik’s expression was carefully neutral. “Honestly? Like a kid in his dad’s suit.”