Page 42 of How to Belong with a Billionaire

This earned him one of Ellery’s long, hard stares. “Who gives a fuck about the bathroom?”

I did. A little bit. But it was winter in the garden of my fucks right now. “I’m not doing this. My face needs food and then all of me needs to be unconscious.”

At this, Innisfree, who had been absorbed in the piece of music she was writing with Ellery, looked up. “I can make you something if you like.”

I wilted like old broccoli. “Oh God, Inn, please don’t think I’m ungrateful. It’s the sweetest thing in the world the way you try to take care of me. But what I really want right now is a cheese toastie on, like, bad-for-me white bread full of gluten, with bright yellow cheese that has been squeezed directly out of a cow. And maybe some artificially preserved factory-made Branston Pickle.”

There was a long silence. Innisfree’s mouth opened and closed a few times. Fuck, I think I’d really upset her.

Eventually she said, “Are you sure you can eat that?”

“I’m going to eat it so hard.”

“No, I just mean…”

Ellery had covered her mouth with both hands, and was now actually rocking back and forth as if she was having some kind of seizure. Well, that was in no way worrying.

“I don’t understand,” Innisfree went on slowly. “Ellery told me you were a lactose-intolerant vegan with coeliac disease.”

A wild honking sound emerged from between Ellery’s fingers. After a second or two, I realised she was laughing—and laughing like I’d never heard her laugh before, without a trace of control or self-consciousness.

Innisfree gazed at Ellery with utter incomprehension. “Why did you do that?”

“Because…because…” Ellery’s eyeliner was running unchecked down her cheeks, giving her the air of a deranged harlequin. “Because…I knew you’d both be…too nice to say anything.”

“For most people,” said Innisfree, “that wouldn’t be a good reason.”

Ellery shrugged. “You know how I feel about most people.”

I left them to what would inevitably devolve into gentle bickering and wandered into the kitchen area, where I was relieved to discover half a loaf of bread and some moderately unmolested cheddar in the fridge. Of course, there was no Branston, or even Marmite, because Ellery had a somewhat disturbing capacity for both—and tended to eat them straight from the jar.

Ilya trailed after me, in a far too puppyish fashion for a man who looked like a catwalk model. “Can I help?”

I was going to point out that it was a cheese toastie, not the storming of the Bastille, but he seemed to like being involved in things, no matter how menial. “Sure. You can grate and I’ll butter.”

It was strange to see him clumsy, especially after the ease and effortlessness of his knitting. I didn’t say anything, though. Just stuffed my toastie with too much cheese and covered the bread with too much butter, and flopped the whole thing into a frying pan, Ilya watching me with an intensity the task really didn’t deserve.

“There’s not going to be a test later,” I told him.

“But maybe”—he gave me this forlorn little smile—“someday I will meet someone who would like a cheese toastie.”

“Well, this is how my mum makes them. The key is cheddar that tastes just a little bit like socks and lots of butter on the outside.”

In a minute or two, I was done. The bread, which had gone a perfect golden-brown in the pan, had lost a little bit of structural integrity, but thankfully all the cheese that had squoodged out the sides had acted as a sealant. It was a perfect specimen of toastiness is what I’m saying. I eased it onto the one clean plate I could find and sawed it diagonally—ithadto be diagonally—in half. Nudged one side towards Ilya.

“There you go.”

He blinked. “For me?”

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his toastie for his friends.”

“But…”

“I’m kidding. Have a piece. I mean”—let’s face it, authority did not come naturally to me—“unless you don’t want to. Then, obviously, um, don’t.”

“Thank you.”

Gingerly, he manoeuvred his half off the plate and took a bite. I should probably have warned him that toasties tend to fight back, because within seconds he was embroiled in his very own action thriller:Attack of the Sixty-Foot Cheese String. In general, people did not look good with food dangling out of their mouths. But I guess because Ilya was usually so terrifyingly immaculate, I actually found him kind of adorable just then.

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