Page 36 of Boyfriend Material
“You’re right. That would be awful.” Except for the French toast. And his cuddly Sunday afternoon jumper. And the rare moments when he’d forget he thought I was a dick.
“Still, now we’re committed, we should do this properly.” He jammed a tulip into place slightly too hard, splitting the stem. “And that means not telling everybody that the whole affair is a pathetic hoax invented by two lonely men. And also getting used to spending time together like we would if we genuinely got on.”
I was starting to fear for the rest of the flowers so I sidled back up to the table and pried them from his fingers. “I’m sorry I let the cat very slightly out the bag. I won’t do it again.”
He was silent for a long moment so I started sticking things back into the vase. They didn’t look good, but at least nothing snapped.
“And,” I added grudgingly, “we can do all the logistics and stuff that you think we need. Just let me know when you want to…logist with me and I’ll be there.”
“I’m sure we can negotiate matters as they arise. And you’re still welcome to stay. If you’d like. If you have no other engagements.”
Engagements? Oh, Oliver. “There was this tea dance I was meant to go to in 1953, but I can probably skip it.”
“I should warn you”—he gave me a cool look, apparently unimpressed by my dazzling wit—“I shall be quite busy with work.”
“Can I help?” Honestly, I’m not a big fan of helping in general. But it seemed only polite to offer. And anything was better than going back to my empty, barely habitable flat and thinking about how the father I hated-slash-was-indifferent-to might be dead soon.
“Not remotely. It’s confidential, you have no legal training, and I saw the mess you made of the washing up.”
“Right. So I’ll sort of…sit then? In the name of learning to put up with each other.”
“I wouldn’t put it quite like that.” He seemed to give up on the flowers. “And please make yourself at home. You can read, or watch television, or… Actually, I’m sorry, this was an awful invitation.”
I shrugged. “It’s probably what I’d be doing anyway. Just in a nicer house with more of my clothes on.”
“Keeping your clothes on is probably for the best.”
“Don’t worry. I know the drill: no kissing, no dick pics, no nudity.”
“Yes. Well.” His hands moved absently. “I think any of those would unnecessarily complicate the fake boyfriend situation.”
“And I’m never unnecessary or complicated.”
There was an uncomfortable pause.
“So,” he asked finally, “are you staying?”
And, God knows why, I nodded.
We settled down in the living room, me sprawled out on the sofa, and Oliver sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by papers, with his laptop balanced on his knee. It wasn’t exactly awkward, but it wasn’t exactly not awkward either. We were still figuring out how to talk to each other without having a fight, so working out how to enjoy a comfortable silence was a bit next level for us. Or maybe it was just me. Oliver had vanished into the law—his head lowered and his fingers flurrying occasionally across the keys—and for all I knew, he’d already forgotten I existed.
Snagging the remote, I turned on the TV, sheepishly installed ITV Catchup and bopped through the recentlys until I foundThe Whole Package. There were two episodes now. Joy.
I pressed Play.
And was immediately treated to a thirty-second montage of how great my dad was: clips of him performing interspersed with sound bites from people I assumed were famous music types, but either far too old or far too young for me to have any idea who they were, and all saying stuff like “Jon Fleming is a legend in this business” and “Jon Fleming is the elder statesman of rock music—prog, folk, classic, he can do it all” and “Jon Fleming’s been my hero for thirty years.” I almost turned it off, but then another montage kicked in and I realised they were saying basically the same things about Simon from Blue.
Once they’d finished shamelessly promoting the judges, we cut to the studio where the four of them performed a frankly bizarre take on Erasure’s “Always” before a live audience who reacted like it was a cross between Live Aid and the Sermon on the Mount. My unqualified hot take was that it was the kind of track that could just about take a spurious flute solo, but definitely did not need a rap break from Professor Green.
After that, they got into the show proper which, it being the first ever episode, included a really pace-killing explanation of the format that I only half understood, and the presenter—who I was pretty sure wasn’t Holly Willoughby but could have been—didn’t understand at all. There was something involving points, and bidding, and the judges getting a wild card they could use to steal people, and sometimes the contestants got to pick which judge they went with, but mostly they didn’t. And, finally, someone came on and wailed out an aggressively emotional version of “Hallelujah” before being snapped up by one of the Pussycat Dolls.
They filled an hour, plus ad breaks, cycling through variants on the six people who are always on these shows: the cocky guy who nobody wants and is nowhere near as good as he thinks he is, the forgettable one who gets picked up but is destined to be cut in the first of the head-to-heads, the one with the tragic backstory, the quirky one who will go out in the quarter final but will wind up doing better than the actual winner, the one you’re supposed to underestimate but blatantly won’t because Susan Boyle happened, and the good-looking, talented one who the public will uniformly hate for being too good-looking and talented. Between the performances and the saccharine vid packages about people’s mums and hometowns, the judges had the sort of banter you’d expect from people who’d never met and had nothing in common except having reached a point in their careers where judging a reality TV show was their best option.
It was annoyingly watchable, is what I’m saying. And even Oliver would glance up occasionally to offer a comment. Apparently he hadn’t got the memo that the only socially acceptable way to watch reality TV was ironically because he kept saying things like, “I was very concerned for the shy girl with the NHS glasses and the braces, but I was very moved by the way she sang ‘Fields of Gold.’” And then I’d wish I had a blueberry to throw at him.
We got to a bit where Jon Fleming bid heavily on a girl with a harmonica (quirky one: will go out in quarter finals) only for Simon from Blue to play his wild card early and steal her out from under him. And it was the best moment so far by a mile. My dad tried to act all chill about it, but you could tell he was pissed off. Which meant, for about thirty seconds, I became a massive fan of Simon from Blue, while also not being able to name a single one of his songs.
I’m not entirely sure why—it could have been masochism, or Stockholm syndrome, or secretly feeling kind of cosy—but I queued up the second episode. It was pretty much identical in format to the first: the judges still didn’t know how to talk to each other, the presenter still didn’t seem to understand the rules, and the contestants were still telling heartwarming stories about their dead grandmas and day jobs at Tesco’s. We kicked off with a mum of three throwing everything she had at a two-minute version of “At Last,” which nobody went for, but then insisted afterwards they should have gone for before promptly forgetting about her. Then we got a seventeen-year-old boy, peeking shyly from behind the world’s floppiest fringe, black-painted nails on fingers curled tightly round the mic, who gave a weirdly fragile and affecting performance of “Running Up That Hill.”
