Page 17 of Commitment Issues
Yes, I have a suit. A skintight black leatherette one. It’s stuffed at the back of my wardrobe and it’s something I should have thrown out long before, because it’s a relic of what I’d naïvely thought was a themed party I’d been invited to.
I’d gone with an old boyfriend, and it had turned out to be our second, and last, date. Dress code was leather, rubber, or vinyl, he’d said. Which I took to mean something vaguely punkish. God knows where I’d picked up the suit from, but there’d been a lot more pasty, paunchy skin on show than anything else when we arrived. I’d hung about for an hour before fleeing. All I’d ended up with from that night had been an expensive cab ride home, and some nasty chafing from the suit.
“Or you can borrow one of mine.”
“Yeah, if I shrink by a foot overnight, and lose a stone in weight along with it.”
Cosmo’s lips purse in petulance. “Don’t be sizeist. I’m only trying to help.”
“I know all about your help, thank you.” I sigh. “I suppose I can hire one from Moss Bros.”
“Hire one?” Cosmo gapes at me, before he starts laughing.
“What?” I bark.
“But other people would have been wearing it — urrhg!”
“They’re cleaned between wears, dickhead. And anyway, I don’t have a suit, or not a proper one — and no, I am not wearing that leathery monstrosity.”
Cosmo’s lips twitch a smile.
For a second time, the phone vibrates in my hand. “It’s Elliot again. Oh.”
“What? Don’t tell mehe’snow having second thoughts?”
I shake my head. “No. He says if I don’t, it can be taken care of.” I hold out the phone to Cosmo. “He’ll hire the suit for me. I mean, he did say my expenses would be taken care of. That’ll be it, won’t it? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because, A, that’s not what he says, and B, because you’re an imbecile.”
“Excuse me? You can accuse me of many things, but not that. I’m the one doing an advanced degree. Who was it who ended up barely scraping a third, even though he was sleeping with the head of department?” I rub my chin in fake thought.
Cosmo shudders. “The old bastard promised me an upper second. I knew pushing for a first was taking it too far. I should have sued him for misrepresentation.” Cosmo’s got pouting off to a fine art, and all I can do is roll my eyes. “Yes, I was very foolish, but you’re still an imbecile.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Cosmo says slowly, as though explaining something not very hard to a very dense child, “men like Elliot, and the men who’ll make up the wedding party, don’t hire suits from Moss Bros. I told you about Andrew and Marcus. This wedding will be the full works. If Elliot’s willing to take care of it, that means he’s going to kit you out with the right togs. Ohh, he’s going to take you shopping.” Cosmo claps his hands together and a wide grin splits his face in two. “This is turning into Pretty Woman. Julia Roberts and Richard Gere—”
“Oh piss off. And anyway, Pretty Woman’s about a tart.”
He looks wounded, and all his frivolity drops away.
“Hey, I’m sorry, I was just making a joke. I didn’t mean to suggest that you were… All you’re doing is helping out a decent guy, and doing yourself some good at the same time. If I thought it was anything else, I wouldn’t let you do it. You know that.”
I do know it. We’ve always looked out for each other in our own ways. We bicker, we play verbal ping-pong all the time, Cosmo winds me up, and I wind Cosmo up. It’s what we do. But we’re good friends and I know he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me.
“If you need a suit, you need a suit. To do a proper job, any job, you need the proper tools. I mean, if you were going to build a shed, for example, you’d need the right hammer and nails, and the right wood. The same applies here. You need the right clothes to look the part, otherwise what’s the point of going through with it? Elliot realises that, so put your trust in him.”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right.”
I look down at my mobile, and imagine Elliot waiting for my response. Although he’s probably not really waiting. No doubt he’d tapped out the message, put his phone aside, and gone off to do more important things. Still, he needs an answer.
No, I thumb in,I don’t have a suit. The less said about the thing stashed in the back of my wardrobe, the better.
For the third time my phone vibrates with an incoming message, and my heart jumps. Maybe he’s waiting, after all.
“Oh.”
“What?” Cosmo grabs the mobile. “‘Meet me outside Bond Street station at ten tomorrow,’” he reads aloud. He looks up. “What was it I was saying about Pretty Woman?”
