Page 5 of Commitment Issues
“Here you go.” He thrusts a mug at me, picks up the Hobnobs, and leads the way back to the living room, where we sit down on the sofa.
“Do you really think somebody with integrity would agree to a scheme like this?” I chew on a Hobnob, because who can resist its buttery, crumbly allure? “Being paid to lie, essentially. And, if his friend doesn’t want some stranger hanging off his arm, why doesn’t he just tell James to go to hell? I mean, it doesn’t say much for this Elliot guy.”
“There are two ways you can look at it.” Cosmo stares at me over the rim of his mug. “One way is to dismiss it as a lunatic idea, and in some ways it is. Or, you can see it as somebody doing his best to help out his best friend in his hour of need. That’s exactly what James is trying to do. Just like I was trying to do when I said you might consider it. You and Elliot are both in a fix, so this could benefit both of you.”
I look away, unable to hold Cosmo’s steady gaze. James and Cosmo, two men each in their own way looking out for their best friends.
“Oh, God.” I run my fingers through my hair. I’m going to be paying off my student loans for years, and honestly, they’re the least of my worries, because I’ve got more pressing, immediate bills and expenses I can’t ignore. A bundle of ready cash could take care of them. And the South of France… My skin aches to feel the heat of a hot, foreign sun. It’d be a chance to get away from London for a few days and escape the cold, dank, late spring weather. But I could never pull off being a stranger’s boyfriend, even just for a few days.
Could I?
And there’s that last line of James’, before he cut the call… If I was just expected to hang off Elliot’s arm…
No, there’s no way I can do it.
“Before you dismiss the idea, take a look at this.” Cosmo opens up his phone, his fingers flying over the screen, before he hands it to me.
“Fuck.” Lickable? Oh, yes, and a whole lot more.
Next to me on the sofa, Cosmo chuckles. “I think that’s optional, but why wouldn’t you want to?”
The guy who stares out from the mobile is featured on the cover of what looks like a business magazine, under the headlinegame changer. My skin prickles and my traitorous dick perks up, because isn’t Elliot Hendricks everything that reduces me to mush?
A sharp suit, the knotted tie very slightly loosened. Short, salt and pepper hair that’s a lot more salt, slightly longer on top and swept back from the brow. Pushing fifty, or thereabouts, I reckon. Fit and strong looking, a guy who takes care of himself. A man who’s cool and sophisticated, a man who knows the world. A man who’s described as agame changer. He’s everything I should step away from. I should hand back the phone to Cosmo, but instead pull it nearer, studying every inch of Elliot Hendricks.
He’s closely shaven, but it’s not enough to disguise the hint of dark scruff on his high cheekboned face. Intelligent, clear, light blue eyes stare out at me, like the eyes of a man who could sniff out a fraud at a hundred paces. The combo of ice blue eyes and sharp cheekbones could have made him look hard, but his full lips with the tiniest impression of a lopsided smile soften the edges. He’s gorgeous, and the more I stare at his picture, the harder all my buttons are being pressed. And for a few days he could be mine.
“He’s—”
“Yeah, he is. Look, Freddie,” Cosmo throws an arm around my shoulder, and pulls me into him. “I know things went bad with Paul, but he was a turd. He was probably born a turd and will die a turd. Turds come in all ages, shapes and sizes. A man’s measure on the Turd-O-Meter isn’t defined by age.”
Paul Stringer, sophisticated, worldly wise, and over twenty years my senior, the man who took my heart and, in the end, used it to wipe his arse.
“I’d never lie to you Freddie, you know that. I can say with my hand on my heart that Elliot isn’t a turd. I first met him when I was a teenager, and I’ve run into him from time to time over the years. If I didn’t think he was a decent guy,Iwould have told Jimbo to take a hike. I know you can do with the money, but that’s not the whole reason why I think you should say yes. You should say yes because it’d be good for you.”
“What do you mean?” I pull out of Cosmo’s embrace and look at him.
He smiles, but there’s none of his usual mischievous good humour in it. Instead, there’s a kind of sadness I’m not sure I’ve seen before.
“I think it’s about time you had a bit of fun.”
“What do you mean by that? I have fun. Didn’t I go to birthday drinks two, three, okay five weeks ago, in Soho?”
It had been fun, but I’d been careful not to get into rounds, and I’d done that by turning up a bit late, and buying myself an overpriced bottled beer that I’d made last until it was warm.
When the pub closed, everybody was going clubbing and they’d done their level best to try and persuade me to go with them. I couldn’t, because I had an early shift at the supermarket, so there was no way I could stay out until the early hours of the morning. Plus, I’d some work to assess, from the first-year undergrads, on the Norse mythology module. Those had been my reasons, but the truth was they’d just been lame excuses. I hadn’t gone to the club because I didn’t have the admission money and I certainly didn’t have the cash to pay out for pricey drinks.
“You don’t, not really. When you’re not working on your PhD you’re barely eking out a living piling up cans of beans, or dog food, or whatever it is, and being used as cheap labour by your departmental professor whenever she feels like throwing you scraps of work.”
“It’s good experience, you know it is. If I’m going to make a career in academia—”
“Why will saying yes to James stop you from doing that?”
I don’t have an answer for him.
“You’re skint, all the time. You live the most humdrum life I can imagine, and I think this is an opportunity for you to cut yourself some slack. If Jimbo had come to me with the proposition, I’d have been at it like a rat up a drainpipe. Elliot Hendricks is one fucking gorgeous man. And he’s a really nice guy. There isn’t even the whiff of turdiness about him. If you see what I mean. Jimbo wouldn’t be talking to you about this if he didn’t believe you were the right person for the job and I meanrightin the widest sense of the word. Somebody who can be trusted. Somebody smart.
“I know you have your reasons for being wary of doing this, but constantly being hard up, being as poor as a church mouse, never going out and mouldering away isn’t doing you any good. Jimbo’s trying to look after his friend, and I’m trying to look after mine. Now, are you going to tell him you’re up for this, or shall I?”
