Page 38 of Glitterland
“Oh no.” He gave himself a little smack on the forehead. “Forgot to take the leaf fing out, didn’t I? What am I like? Just don’t eat it by accident, ahwight? It tastes well rank.”
“I think I can just about manage not to eat a bay leaf.”
“It’s easy done, babes. Specially if you’re distracted.”
I raised my brows at him. “Why, what are you going to be doing to me while I’m eating?”
He gave one of his little gasps. “You’re so rude.”
At first I’d thought his shocked reactions were a form of flirtation—some sort of heavy-handed Essex irony—but now I wasn’t so sure. Innocence was not a word for the twenty-first century. Nor did it seem the natural quality of so glittering a creature. I thought about asking him, but I stopped myself. He wasn’t here to satisfy my idle curiosities. And it held its own fascinations: a man who talked like an innocent and fucked like a sybarite.
Later, he served up his Nanny Dot’s cottage pie, and I presented my salad. “Babes.” He peered into the bowl. “What’s all this?”
“It’s pear and Roquefort,” I said, with an airy wave.
“I was maybe finking some lettuce and tomatoes. This is properMasterChef.”
Truthfully, it didn’t go. Not even a little bit. The cottage pie was about as wholesome and straightforward as you could get. It was food for winter evenings and happy days. And the salad was rich, complicated, a little bit sweet, a little bit sharp, and seemed to be trying way too hard to be impressive. We’d both served each other a metaphor.
Fan-bloody-tastic. If Darian noticed I couldn’t have served a less suitable salad if I’d tried, he didn’t mention it. He just said he liked it and pronounced himself well stuffed at the end of the meal. Since he’d done the cooking, it seemed good manners to handle the washing up, which I did by bundling everything into the dishwasher and leaving it to thrash away in its own time.
I felt a sudden, anxious flutter of uncertainty. What was I supposed to be doing with Darian now? I needed to transition this cosy domesticity back to the safety of fucking—not all that advisable after a heavy meal. Mainly I just felt like sprawling on the sofa and…relaxing. What was wrong with me? Maybe he’d put sedatives in the cottage pie.
We drifted back to the living room, silence bumping along awkwardly beside us. In an ideal world, I would have been able to retire for brandy and cigars, and then come back when I was ready to fuck him. Dinner had just about exhausted my capacity for conversation, and besides, what else could we possibly have to say to one another? Physical desire was about as much as I was capable of mustering for anyone, and even that was transient, a thing of fading moments.
Darian bounced onto my sofa and, once again, I was reduced to perching in my own bloody home. I just didn’t want either of us to get too comfortable. “Come on, babes.” He grabbed me by my jacket and pulled me down. I landed half on top of him, half between his long, long legs. Which he then proceed to wrap lazily around me.
“You’re creasing my suit.”
He just grinned.
I tried to think of something to say, came up utterly blank, and then panicked. When had something as basic as talking to someone turned into an impossible task? If I survived tonight, perhaps I could take up spinning straw into gold.
But I should have known I could count on Darian. “So what else you like?” he asked incorrigibly.
The answeryou, which served as both evasion and flirtation, rose to the tip of my tongue, but I didn’t say it. What did I like? My pursuits were solitary to the point of solipsism and essentially performed the function of marking time. They were the things I did in the spaces between depression. Like Vladimir and Estragon passing bowler hats around. And about as meaningful. My entire life subsumed into the act of waiting: waiting to be ill, then waiting to be better, the one consuming the other.
Desperation consumed me. “How about a game of Scrabble?”
“Aww, babes, I would, but you’ll ’ave me. I’ll be like sitting there spelling, I dunno,catandjugand you’ll be like gettinghypoallergenicon a triple word score.”
“Hypoallergenic? Good God.”
“It’s on moisturiser, innit?” His fingers played idly along the back of my hand, sending little ripples of sensation across my skin. I shook him off and tugged down my cuffs.
“Of course it is. But, um…” I dug deep into my past as someone who was fun to be with. “We can play Nabble instead.”
“What’s that, then?”
“Well, it’s the opposite of Scrabble.”
“I fink maybe rugby is the opposite of Scrabble.”
I tilted my head so I could bestow upon him my most lascivious look. “Well, you’re very welcome to come scrum with me.”
“Wish I ’adn’t eaten all that cottage pie now. Let’s do…wassit… Nabble. And I don’t mind losing, really. Cos you’re sexy when you’re being clever.”
“Oh. Um.”
