Page 65 of Boyfriend Material
Chapter 21
It was the longest week ever. Which made no sense because I’d only had a pretend boyfriend for ten minutes. And it wasn’t like I’d ever been Mr. Knows What to Do with Himself—it’s just that before Oliver came along, I’d been resigned to a lifetime of cruising Grindr, then freaking out in case I got recognised and ended up in the papers again, and deciding instead to spend my evenings half-dressed under a pile of blankets binge-watching Scandi-noir on Netflix and hating myself. And now I…I don’t know… I guess I wasn’t?
He still texted because, of course he would. Though mainly he said things like, Grabbing a bagel. Case is complicated. Can’t discuss it. Apologies for lack of dick pic.Which was lovely for about three seconds, and then just made me miss him. And what was with that? Was my life really so empty that Oliver could just walk into it, sit down, and start taking up space? I mean, it probably was. But somehow, even after so little time, I couldn’t imagine anyone doing that but him. After all, who else could be that annoying? And thoughtful. And protective. And secretly kind of funny. And—bugger.
At nine o’clock on Tuesday night, halfway through an episode ofBordertown, which I’d been paying no attention to, I came abruptly to the conclusion that all my problems would be solved if I tidied my flat. At nine thirty-six on Tuesday, I came abruptly to the conclusion that this had been the worst idea ever. I’d started trying to put things in places, but the places where I wanted to put the things were already full of things that weren’t the things that were supposed to go in those places, so I had to take the things out of the places, but there were no places to put the things that came from the places, so then I tried to put things back in the places but they wouldn’t go back in the places, which meant now I had more things and nowhere to put the things, and some of the things were clean and some of the things were very much not clean, and the very much not clean things were getting mixed up with the clean things and everything was terrible and I wanted to die.
I tried to lie on the floor and sob pathetically, but there was no room. So I lay on my bed, which I’m sure still smelled faintly of Oliver, and sobbed pathetically there instead.
Nice going, Luc. Very not a loser.
What was wrong with me? Why was I putting myself through this? This was all Oliver’s fault with his you-are-special eyes and his you’re-beautiful-Lucien bullshit, half convincing me I was worth something. When I knew exactly what I was worth down to the nearest fucking penny.
Then my phone rang, and I was in such a mess that I accidentally answered it.
“Is that you, Luc?” gravelled my fucking dad.
“Um.” I bolted upright, wiping away snot and tears and trying desperately not to sound like I’d been crying my eyes out. “Speaking.”
“I’m sorry about Reggie. He has to deal with a lot of shit for me.”
That made two of us. “It’s fine. I…”
“I’m glad you reached out to me. I know this is difficult for you.”
No shit. “Yeah, but I probably shouldn’t have told you to fuck off and literally die.”
“You’re right to be angry. Besides”—he gave a ‘I have lived and experienced and discovered where my joy is’ laugh—“it’s what your mother would have done when she was your age. It’s what I would have done too.”
“Stop that right now. You don’t get to look for any of you in me.”
A moment of silence. And I honestly wasn’t sure I was hoping he’d push it or not. That he’d fight for me.
“If that’s the way you want it to be,” he said.
“It’s the way I want it to be.” I took a deep breath. “So what happens now?”
“Like I said at your mother’s, I want to get to know you. How that happens, if that happens, is up to you.”
“Sorry. Since I never intended to meet the father who walked out on me when I was three, I didn’t have this planned out in advance.”
“Well, how about this. We’re filming at the farmhouse in a couple of weeks. Why don’t you come down on the Sunday? We should be done by then, and we’ll have time to talk.”
I was vaguely aware my dad had an absurd rock-star farmhouse-slash-studio-slash-creative-retreat somewhere in Lancashire, near where he grew up. “Fine. Send me the details. And,” I added, quite aggressively, “I’ll be bringing my boyfriend. Is that a problem?”
“Not at all. If he’s important to you, I’d like to meet him.”
That kind of took the wind out of my sails. I wasn’t exactlyhopingmy dad would turn out to be a homophobe, but I’d got really comfortable believing bad things about him. “Oh. Okay.”
“It was good to talk to you, Luc. I’ll see you soon.”
I hung up. It was the only power move I had left, but I was going to use it. Unfortunately, using it left me so exhausted, especially after my utter failure to make a meaningful difference to my existence, that I just pulled the duvet over my head and passed out in my clothes.
The next time I looked at my phone, it was a hell of a lot later, and I’d slept through twelve texts from Oliver and my alarm. The texts said:
I miss you.
Sorry. Was that too much?
