Page 152 of Boyfriend Material
“I mean, I used to be a professional songwriter, so I wouldn’t say it in such a boring way but…yes? I don’t think Oliver changed your life, mon cher. I think he helped you to see it differently. He has gone now, but you still have the job you pretend you don’t like, and the friends who have stuck by you through all of your bullshit, and you have me, and Judy, and we love you very much, and will always be here for you until we are both dead.”
I squidged along and she put an arm around me. “Thanks, Mum. That was lovely until the crushing reminder of our mortality.”
“Since your father is not dying anymore, I thought it was a good time to remind you to appreciate me while you can.”
“I love you, Mum.” This was embarrassing but, well, sometimes you had to. “Is it okay if I stay tonight?”
“Of course.”
Half an hour later, I was lying in my childhood bed, staring at a ceiling whose every crack I already knew by heart. It was weird how, in a month, Jon Fleming had gone from being this idea I’d grown up with to a real person to an idea again—and, while that hurt, my life was already healing around him like skin closing over a cut. Oliver, though, was a whole different kettle of misery fish. But Mum had been right, hadn’t she? I couldn’t take everything he’d shown me and given me and shared with me and lose it in the…the shittiness of now. He’d helped me see that my life was better than I’d thought it was—thatIwas better than I’d thoughtIwas. And I could hold on to that. Even if I couldn’t hold on to him.
Chapter 50
“Okay,” I said to Alex.
He glanced up happily. “Oh, are we doing a joke? What larks. We haven’t done one in ages.”
“Right. What’s a pirate’s favourite letter of the alphabet?”
“Well, I suppose the average eighteenth-century seaman wouldn’t have been literate, so probably most of them wouldn’t have had one.”
“Fair point. But, that aside, if you were thinking of a generic movie pirate, what would his or her favourite letter of the alphabet be?”
He wrinkled his nose. “I can honestly say I’m not certain.”
You sometimes got a guess with this joke. You sometimes didn’t. “You might think it’d bearrrrrr,” I explained in my best pirate voice, “but my first love shall always bethe sea.”
There was a long silence.
“Why would you think it would ber?” asked Alex. “I mean,piratebegins with ap. As doplunder,pillage,purloin,privateer, andPort au Prince.”
“Arrrrrrrrrrr. Like a pirate.”
“No,piratebegins withp.”
My phone went. Thank God. I answered on my way back to my office.
“Luc,” cried Bridge, “there’s a crisis.”
What was it this time? Had they accidentally sold a set of film rights for five magic beans? “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Oliver!”
Suddenly I was paying attention. “Is he all right? What’s happened?”
“He’s moving to Durham. He’s there right now. He’s got a job interview tomorrow morning.”
We’d broken up. And I’d come to terms with being broken up—okay that was sort of a lie, but I was certainly moving in a termward direction. Even so, my heart still felt like it was going to vomit. “What? Why?”
“He said he wanted a fresh start. Somewhere far away.”
I was very inclined to panic. But this did not sound like Oliver. “Bridge, are you completely sure? He loves what he does. And, if I had to pick a word to describe him, it wouldn’t be ‘impulsive.’”
“He’s been weird for ages. I know I’m not supposed to talk about you to each other, but this is an emergency.”
“It’s certainly odd,” I agreed. “But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about it.”
“You have to stop him, obviously. I mean, it’s your fault for letting him go in the first place.”
