Page 37 of The Dramatic Life of Jonah Penrose
“It’s fine. Casey is away for work, so we can put on face masks and watchFunny Girl.”
“It’s two and a half hours long, Bastien.”
“Best we hurry back then, huh?” Bash smiled at him and linked his arm with Jonah’s, directing him toward the tube. “I kinda need the company too. I’ve had a shit day.”
Jonah allowed himself to be led down Shaftesbury Avenue, Bastien’s words clear despite the noise and hundreds of people congregating along the streets.
“You have?”
“Yeah,” Bastien said, his eyes ahead, focused. “Casey has been offered a job in New York.”
Jonah stopped abruptly, the people walking behind him barging into his back then grumbling as they stepped around him. Bastien looked at him, brows furrowing. “New York?” Jonah asked.
“Yeah. He’s asked me to go with him. Actually, he asked me a couple of things last night.”
Shaftesbury Avenue seemed to fall into slow motion. The only things in focus were Jonah and Bastien as they stood looking at each other on the road that led down to Chinatown, the huge red lanterns glowing in the night sky.
“What else did he ask you?”
“He proposed.”
“Bastien!” Jonah exclaimed, unable to keep the wide smile from taking over his face. “What did you say?”
“I said I needed to think about it.” He took Jonah’s hand into his to urge him forward, and the street catapulted back into blazing color and motion. “And he left for work this morning and we didn’t talk about it and now he’s away for three days.”
“You don’t want to marry him?” They rounded the corner and headed along the road leading to the tube station. “You’ve been together forever.”
“It’s not the marrying him I’m not sure about. It’s New York.” Bastien groaned, then stopped, more people tutting and muttering as they blocked the path yet again. “I’m so sorry, I’ve just realized I haven’t asked how things went in Cornwall.”
“What? It was fine. Don’t apologize, you’ve clearly got a lot going onright now.” Jonah watched as Bastien wiped a hand across his eyes, tears just beginning to fall. “Come on,” Jonah said. “I think Barbra Streisand will make everything better.”
“She will, won’t she?” Bastien laughed with a sniff. “I love you, you know that, right?”
“Don’t get sappy on me,” Jonah warned. “Or I will cry, too, and then we will just be two weirdos crying instead of going home.”
Bastien nodded. “Right. Okay, I hate you.”
“That’s more like it.”
Bastien choked on a mouthful of ice cream. He pounded his fist against his chest, then grabbed the glass of wine beside him and used it to wash the cold dessert down his throat.
“Don’t say something like that when I’m eating, you bloody psychopath,” he whined, throwing a cushion from the sofa at Jonah’s head.
Jonah batted it away with a smile. “It’s not my fault you’ve been shoveling ice cream into your mouth for the past twenty minutes. I couldn’t hold it in anymore.”
“Dexter Ellis kissed you?!” He dumped the tub of ice cream onto the coffee table and shuffled closer to Jonah. “Tell me everything.”
“We kind of kissed each other.”
“But you hate him.”
“I don’t hate him.”
“He hates you.”
Jonah rolled his eyes. “Apparently not. And he texted me when I was in Cornwall and was super flirty and asked me to meet him for a drink on Thursday. But he’s since canceled, and I think he’s just messing with me.”
“I knew he liked you,” Bastien said, a smug grin plastered on his face as Barbra sang on the TV. “Omari said the same thing. It’s a simple case of a boy pulling girls’ pigtails in the playground because he likes them.”
