Page 37 of Boyfriend Material
“Oh,” remarked Oliver, glancing up from his laptop, “that was rather good.”
Apparently the judges thought so, too, and Ashley Roberts and Professor Green got into a slightly crazy bidding war for him that ended with Ashley Roberts pulling out and then Jon Fleming—with a sense of the dramatic honed over a career that, as the intro kept telling us, had spanned five decades—jumping out of his chair to play his wild card. This left the kid, Leo from Billericay, free to choose between the professor and my dad.
Obviously, the show cut straight to a commercial break, and we came back after an ad for car insurance with the tense music still playing, and Jon Fleming about to launch into his “pick me” speech.
He’d gone back to his seat and was sitting with an elbow on the armrest, and his cheek against his fingers, his blue-green eyes fixed intently on Leo from Billericay. “What was in your head,” he asked, in that nonspecifically regional burr that always made him sound so worldly and sincere, “while you were singing that?”
Leo squirmed behind his fringe and muttered something the mic completely failed to catch.
“Take your time, son,” Jon Fleming told him.
The camera jumped briefly to the other judges, who were all wearing their best this-is-a-moment faces.
“My dad…” Leo managed “…he died. Last year. And we never really agreed about a lot of stuff. But music was, like, the thing that really brought us together.”
There was a perfect televisual pause. Jon Fleming leaned forward. “That was a beautiful performance. I could tell how much the song meant to you, and how much of your heart you put into it. I’m sure your dad would have been proud of you.”
What.
The.
Fuck.
Okay, I felt very sorry for Leo from Billericay, because he was clearly bereaved, and having a shit relationship with an absent father sucked. But it didn’t change the fact thatmyabsent father was having a redemptive bonding experience with some prick from Essex on national TV while I watched from the sofa of my fake boyfriend’s house.
Oliver glanced over. “Are you all right?”
“Yeahimfinewhywouldntibe?”
“No reason. But if hypothetically you stopped being fine and wanted to, I don’t know, talk about anything, I’m right here.”
On the screen, Leo from Billericay was biting his lip in that trying-not-to-cry way that made him look brave and noble and fan-favouritey, and Jon Fleming was explaining how much he wanted him on his team.
“Not a lot of people know this about me,” he said, “but I never knew my own father. He died on the Western Front before I was born, and I always regretted not having that connection in my life.”
No. Not a lot of people did know that.Ididn’t know that. Essentially making Leo from Billericay—and for that matter, Simon from Blue, and how many the fuck million people watched this show live—closer to my dad than I was. It was getting increasingly hard not to be actively glad that the fucker had cancer.
Anyway, of course Leo from Billericay picked Jon Fleming to be his mentor. I came this close to cutting my losses and turning the show off, but that would have felt weirdly like letting my dad win. I’m not surewhatit felt like letting him win, but I knew I wanted to stop him winning it. So, instead, I stared blankly at the screen while the carousel of hopefuls continued.
I was pretty sure I was getting a headache. What with Oliver and Jon Fleming, and Leo from Billericay, and my job hanging by a thread, there was too much in my brain. And the more I tried to deal with any of it, the more it just swirled around like clay in the hands of an inexperienced potter. So I shut my eyes for a moment, telling myself things would make more sense when I opened them.
Chapter 14
“Lucien?”
I opened my eyes to find Oliver right in my face. “Wuthuh?”
“I think you fell asleep.”
“I did not.” I jerked into a sitting position, nearly headbutting Oliver in the process. There was no way I was letting him think I was the sort of person who spent his evenings passed out in front of the TV. “What time is it?”
“A little after ten.”
“Really? Shit. You should have woken me sooner. I mean, not woken me. Reminded me.”
“I’m sorry.” Tentatively he unstuck a strand of hair from where it had plastered itself over my brow. “But you’ve had a long day. I didn’t want to disturb you.”
A glance around the living room revealed that Oliver had finished his work, probably some time ago, and packed everything neatly away around me. Fuck. “I can’t believe I turned up on your doorstep out of nowhere, insisted you continue pretending to date me, whined about my dad’s cancer, got in a massive argument about logistics, made you watch reality TV, and then fell asleep.”
