Boyfriend Material(20)

“Are you sure that’s a joke? It just seems like facts about a bar.”

“Once again,” I told him, resigned to my fate, “you’ve hit the nail on the head. I’ll try and do better tomorrow.”

I toodled back to my office, actually in a pretty good mood for once. My date with Oliver had been, as predicated, a disaster. But, somehow, not in a bad way? And there was something strangely liberating about having a pretend boyfriend because it meant I didn’t have to worry about all the usual relationship things. You know, like being shit at them. Even my morning tabloid alert had been borderline positive. Someone had snapped us at the restaurant but, crucially, they’d got the moment before Oliver recoiled from me in disgust. So it had come out looking kind of romantic, with Oliver’s coat billowing around us and his face turned up to mine as my lips came down. The headlines were mostly variants of “Package Judge Club Kid Son In New Gent Squeeze Shock,” which I liked because it suggested I had good taste in new squeezes. New fake squeezes.

As I sat down and checked the donor lists to see if anyone else had dumped me, the phone rang.

“Oh my God,” cried Bridge. “You won’t believe what’s happened.”

“You’re right. I probably—”

“I can’t really talk about it, but we’ve just got the English language rights for a really prestigious Swedish author. And everybody has been clamouring to read her debut novel, which is being billed as A Hundred Years of Solitude meets Gone Girl. But there was a lot of debate amongst the team over whether to give it an English title or stick with the Swedish original, and it all wound up being sorted out very last minute and so now the book’s gone to press as I’m Out of the Office at the Moment. Please Forward Any Translation Work to My Personal Email Address.”

“I don’t know. I think it’s got a certain meta-textual cachet.”

“I’m going to get fired.”

“You’ve not been fired yet, Bridge. They’re not going to fire you over this.”

“Oh.” She perked up. “That reminds me. How did your date go?”

“It was awful. We have nothing in common. I think I might have sexually assaulted him. But we’re going to pretend to give it a go anyway because we’re both desperate.”

“I knew you’d work it out.”

I rolled my eyes, but only because she couldn’t see me. “That’s not working something out. That’s making something up.”

“Yes, but you’ll slowly discover that you’re not as different as you initially assumed, and then he’ll surprise you with how thoughtful he is, and then you’ll come to his rescue in an unexpected moment of need, and you’ll fall madly in love with each other and live happily ever after.”

“That’s never going to happen. He doesn’t even like me.”

“What?” I could hear the look on her face. “Why would he agree to go on with a date with you if he didn’t like you?”

“Remember that bit where we’re both desperate?”

“Luc, I’m sure he likes you. How could anybody not like you? You’re lovely.”

“He told me he didn’t when I tried to kiss him.”

She gave a little squeak. “You kissed?”

“No, I attacked him with my lips, and he was so repulsed he jumped into a potted plant.”

“Maybe he was surprised.”

“I was surprised when you guys threw me a surprise birthday party. Okay, I wasn’t surprised because James Royce-Royce accidentally told me. But I didn’t pull away in horror, saying I only go to parties with people I like.”

“Wait. He actually said that?”

“Pretty much, if you replace go to parties with kiss.”

“Oh.” There was a moment’s silence. “I thought you were just being obsessively negative. You know, like usual.”

“No. No. Those were his exact words.”

She sighed. “Oliver, Oliver. What are you doing? He can be so hopeless sometimes.”

“He’s not hopeless. He’s an uptight git. Um, like, in general. Not because he was bothered by me nonconsensually kissing him. Okay, let me rephrase: he’s an uptight git who, independent of his uptightness and gititude, isn’t into me.”

“Luc,” she cried, “that’s not true.” Then she gave a weird hiccough. “I mean, he’s not an uptight person. He’s very… He always wants to do the right thing. And, honestly, I think he’s quite lonely.”

“I increasingly think some people are meant to be lonely. I’m lonely because I’m a wreck and nobody wants me. He’s lonely because he’s awful and nobody wants him.”

“See. You do have something in common.”

“Not funny, Bridge.”

“Are you seriously telling me there was nothing about the date that went well? Nothing you liked or connected with?”

Well, there was no denying the man had excellent taste in fish sandwiches. And lemon posset. And there was that hidden softness in his eyes sometimes. And his rare smile. And the way he said Lucien, like it was just for me. “No,” I said firmly. “Absolutely not.”

“I don’t believe you. You only make such a big deal about hating people when you’re secretly into them.”