Boyfriend Material(2)

“You’re Luc Fleming, aren’t you?” he asked.

Why, hello other shoe. I’d been wondering when you were going to drop. Eff my effing L. “Actually,” I said, like I always said, “it’s Luc O’Donnell.”

“But you are Jon Fleming’s kid?”

“What’s it to you?”

He blinked. “Well, nothing. But when I asked Angie”—Malcom’s girlfriend, currently dressed as Alice because of course she was—“who the hot, grumpy guy was, she said, ‘Oh that’s Luc. He’s Jon Fleming’s kid.’”

I didn’t like that being the thing people told each other about me. But then again, what was the alternative? That’s Luc, his career’s in the toilet? That’s Luc, he’s not had a stable relationship in five years? That’s Luc, where did it all go wrong? “Yeah. That’s me.”

Cam folded his elbows on the bar. “This is exciting. I’ve never met anyone famous before. Should I be pretending I really like your dad or really hate your dad?”

“I’ve never even met him.” A cursory Google would have told him that, so it wasn’t like he was getting a major scoop here. “So I don’t particularly care.”

“Probably for the best because I can only remember, like, one of his songs. I think it was about having a green ribbon around his hat.”

“No, that’s Steeleye Span.”

“Oh wait. Jon Fleming’s Rights of Man.”

“Yeah, but I can see how you got them confused.”

He gave me a sharp look. “They sound nothing alike, do they?”

“Well, there’s a couple of subtle differences. Steeleye’s more folk rock, whereas RoM’s more prog rock. Steeleye used a lot of violins, whereas Dad’s a flautist. Also, the lead singer of Steeleye Span is a woman.”

“Okay”—he flicked another smile at me, less abashed than I would have been in his position—“so I don’t know what I’m talking about. My dad’s a big fan though. He’s got all the records. Keeps them in the attic with the bell bottoms he hasn’t been able to get into since 1979.”

It was beginning to sink in that, about eight million years ago, Cam had described me as hot and grumpy. Except, right now, it was clearly 80/20 in favour of grumpy. “Everyone’s dad’s a fan of my dad.”

“That must mess with your head.”

“A bit.”

“And it must be even weirder with the TV thing.”

“Kind of.” I poked listlessly at my drink. “I get recognised more, but ‘Hey, your dad’s that guy off that stupid talent show’ is marginally better than ‘Hey, your dad’s that guy who was in the news last week for headbutting a policeman, then vomiting on a judge while off his face on heroin and Toilet Duck.’”

“At least it’s interesting. The most scandalous thing my dad’s ever done was shake a bottle of ketchup without realising the lid was off.”

I laughed in spite of myself.

“I can’t believe you’re giggling at my childhood trauma. The kitchen looked like something out of Hannibal. Mum still brings it up every time she’s annoyed, even if it’s not actually Dad she’s annoyed at.”

“Yeah, my mum brings up my dad when I piss her off as well. Except it’s less ‘This is just like the time your father got a tomatoey condiment all over the kitchen’ and more ‘This is just like the time your father said he’d come home for my birthday, but instead, he stayed in LA snorting cocaine off a prostitute’s breasts.’”

Cam blinked. “Eeesh.”

Shit. Half a cocktail and a pretty smile, and I was singing like a lovable urchin on a barricade in France. This was the sort of stuff that ended up in the papers. Jon Fleming’s Other Secret Coke Shame. Or maybe Like Father, Like Son: Jon Fleming Junior’s Childhood Behaviour Compared to Father’s Drug-Fuelled Rampages. Or worst of all, Still Crazy after All These Years: Odile O’Donnell Rages at Son about ’80s Fleming Hooker Binge. This was why I should never leave the house. Or talk to humans. Especially not humans I wanted to like me.

“Listen,” I said, with zero poker face, despite knowing how badly this could go wrong, “my mum’s a really good person, and she brought me up on her own, and has gone through a lot so…like…can you please forget I said that?”

He gave me the type of look you give someone when you’re mentally shifting them from the box that says “attractive” to the box that says “weird.” “I’m not going to tell her. I don’t even know her. And, yes, I might have come over to hit on you, but we’re quite a long way from meeting the parents.”

“Sorry. Sorry. I…I’m just protective of her.”

“And you think she needs to be protected from random guys you meet in bars?”

Well, I’d ruined this. Because the answer was basically “Yes, in case you go to the tabloids, because that’s a thing that actually happens to me,” but I couldn’t tell him without putting the idea in his head. I mean, assuming it wasn’t there already, and he wasn’t playing me like a flute or a fiddle, depending which ’70s band he thought I was in. So that left option B: Allow this funny, sexy man I’d like to at least try for a one-night stand with to believe I was a paranoid creep who spent way too much time thinking about his mother.