Page 35 of Glitterland
He gave a slightly self-conscious laugh. “You like it, yeah?”
“Yes. It’s beautiful.” The other photograph was slightly more conventional—Darian leaned back on his hands, one knee raised for the sake of modesty. It showed the lean, strong muscles of his thighs and arms, the ripple of his abdomen, the vulnerability of his exposed throat. “They both are.”
“You’re staring at ’em like you stared at me in Brighton,” he said. “Don’t go making me jell of me, babes. My head’ll esplode.”
I was jealous of the camera. The one-eyed monster that had pinned him in its possessing gaze.
“What were you thinking?” I asked.
“Lots of fings, babes. I was finking abaht ’ow to make it look right, cos it takes a lot of finking to picture summin when you can’t see it prop’ly cos it’s you. And I was finking ‘ow, my back.’” He grinned down at me, his foolish pirate grin, and I was suddenly sure he was, if not lying, at least eluding me. Not that I had any right to complain about that. Lying was my last unsullied talent. Then Darian’s hand slipped past mine, a swift, insubstantial brush of skin, as he detached the page and handed it to me. “Go on, you can ’ave it, babes,” he said.
I stammered something along the lines that I couldn’t possibly.
“But you like it,” he said, shrugging. “And I like finking of you looking at me like that when I’m not arand.”
“But, your portfolio.”
“I got uvvers, babes. And I done more commercial stuff now anyway.” I stole another glance at the—atmy—photograph. The sick flood of jealousy was receding now. And, instead, I felt oddly moved by the notion that some stranger, looking with a stranger’s eyes, had seen Darian as I did, had caught a moment of his beauty beyond the inadequacies and uncertainties of memory. “Besides,” he added, “I fink you like me better like this. Not talking and wif my bum in the air.”
He surprised a laugh out of me, the sound ricocheting off my kitchen walls like a bullet.
“You’re right,” I lied.
He cackled. “Slay-ted. Now come ’ere and say fank you properly.”
I twisted round and kissed him. “Thank you. I’ll treasure it.”
Or try to. Until my next depression convinced me that everything I valued was worthless and I destroyed whatever I could that used to matter to me. I was the climber of a sheer cliff, dragging myself on bleeding hands towards a summit that I’d never reach and sometimes didn’t want to reach. The things I cared about were the hooks I’d driven into the rock face. Depression snapped them, one by one, one by one. My only certainty was the fall. Perhaps I should have told him: don’t trust me with anything precious. But I wanted what he had given me too much to be anything other than selfish.
Darian left me with his portfolio and went back to unpacking. “You gonna ’elp, babes?”
It took me a moment to shake myself free of sentimentality.
“Not in the slightest. I’m going to sit here, doThe Timescrossword, and occasionally divert myself by leering at your arse.”
He tsked. And wriggled. And I had to hide a smile in my palm.
“Well, ahwight,” he said. “You can get away wif it this once, cos you did all the shopping. But I’m gonna need some music.”
I nodded towards the iPod dock, and he turned it on, filling the kitchen with one of Bach’s cello suites. He hastily turned it off again. “Not what I ’ad in mind.”
I glanced up fromThe Times. “Not to your taste?”
“Naw, it’s not that, babes, it’s just I don’t wanna be crying on the floor when I’m trying to cook my nan’s cottage pie. Are you like allergic to fun or summin?”
“Yes, I’m in a programme. I have my five year token.”
He gave me a look I couldn’t quite read, before swapping my iPod with his. A pounding remix of “F**kin’ Perfect” burst out of the speakers.
“Aw, I love this choon.” I couldn’t help watching him as he Ibiza-ed it up all over my kitchen, one hand in the air, hips slithering about like a pair of snakes in a bag, as he hummed along, paying only passing tribute to the rhythm.
It was frankly…
Well.
It was just the slightest bit charming.
I put my head in my hands. “Come on, babes.”
