Boyfriend Material(34)

“You know you’re wearing pyjamas wrong, right?”

He didn’t look up. “Oh?”

“Yeah, you’re supposed to just wear the bottoms, and have them hanging low on your hips, displaying your perfectly chiselled V-cut.”

“Maybe next time.”

I thought about this for a moment. “Are you saying you have a perfectly chiselled V-cut?”

“I’m not sure that’s any of your business.”

“What if someone asks? I should know for verisimilitude.”

The corners of his mouth twitched slightly. “You can say I’m a gentleman and we haven’t got that far.”

“You”—I gave a thwarted sigh—“are a terrible fake boyfriend.”

“I’m building fake anticipation.”

“You’d better be fake worth it.”

“I am.”

I hadn’t quite been expecting that and didn’t quite know how to reply. So I just sat there, trying not to think too hard about what Oliver’s idea of “worth it” might be.

“Good book?” I asked, to distract myself.

“Relatively.” Oliver glanced my way briefly. “You’re being very talkative.”

“You’re being very…not talkative.”

“It’s bedtime. I’m going to read and then go to sleep.”

“Again, starting to see why people don’t stick around.”

“For God’s sake, Lucien,” he snapped. “We’ve made an agreement to be useful to each other, I have work in the morning, and you’re in my bed, wearing rather skimpy hedgehog boxers. I’m trying to maintain some sense of normalcy.”

“If it’s upsetting you that much, I can take my skimpy boxers and leave.”

He put the book on the bedside table and did that massaging-his-temples thing I was seeing way too often. “I’m sorry. I don’t want you to leave. Shall we try to sleep?”

“Um. Okay.”

He flicked the light off abruptly, and I tried to settle myself down without impinging on his personal space or sense of propriety. His bed was firmer than mine, but also way nicer, and probably way cleaner. I could just about catch the scent of him from the sheets—fresh and warm, like if bread was a person—and I could just about feel the shape of him beside me. Comforting and distracting at the same time. Damn him.

Minutes or hours crept by. Determined to be a good sleeping partner, I was assailed by a thousand itches, niggles, and a terrible fear of farting. Oliver’s breath was steady enough that I became hyperaware of my own, which was on the edge of going full Darth Vader. And then my brain started thinking stuff, and wouldn’t stop.

“Oliver,” I said. “My dad’s got cancer.”

I was fully prepared for him to tell me to shut up and go to sleep, or to kick me out entirely but instead, he rolled over. “I imagine that’s going to take some getting used to.”

“I don’t want to get used to it. I don’t want to know him at all. And if I do have to know him, it’s deeply unfair I have to know him as a bloke with a cancer.” I snuffled in the darkness. “He opted out of being my father. Why does he expect me to opt in just for the shit bit?”

“He’s probably scared.”

“He was never there when I was scared.”

“No, he was clearly a bad father. And you can punish him for it if you want to, but do you honestly think that will help?”

“Help who?”

“Anyone, but I’m thinking mainly of you.” Under the plausible deniability of the bedclothes, his fingertips brushed mine. “It must have been hard to go through life after he abandoned you. But I’m not sure it’ll be easier to go through life after you’ve abandoned him.”

I was silent for a long time. “Do you really think I should see him?”

“It’s your decision, and I’ll support you either way, but yes. I think you should.”

I made a plaintive noise.

“After all,” he went on, “if it goes badly, you can walk away at any time.”

“It’s just…it’s going to be all hard and messy.”

“Lots of things are. Many of them are still worth doing.”

It was a sign of quite how fucked up I was feeling that I didn’t try to make a joke out of hard, messy or, indeed, worth doing.

“Will you,” I asked, “will you come with me? If I go.”

“Of course.”

“You know for…”

“Verisimilitude,” he finished.

He still hadn’t moved his hand. I didn’t ask him to.





Chapter 15


“Okay, Alex,” I said. “How do you get four elephants in a Mini?”

He thought about this for longer than it should have required. “Well, I mean, elephants are very big so normally you wouldn’t expect that even one of them would fit in a Mini. But if they were very small—if they were, for example, baby elephants—then I suppose you’d put two in the front and two in the back?”

“Um…y-yes. That’s right.”

“Oh good. Have we got to the joke yet?”

“Nearly. So how do you get four giraffes in a Mini?”