Boyfriend Material(56)
I’m just very aware the aim of this exercise was to generate positive publicity for you.
Which we can’t if we aren’t seen in public.
So we have lunch
As I suggested
In my other text.
So he’d panicked then.
As a world-class panicker, I was well-placed to read the signs. There were a bunch of things I could have done. I could have teased him or pressed him or fucked with him. But none of them seemed right just then. So I…I let it go. That sounds great, I sent, but what about your case?
If you’d be so good as to bring me something. A wrap or something. I thought we could eat it on a bench.
Play your cards right I’ll get you a packet of crisps to go with it
That won’t be necessary, thank you. A pause. You’re teasing me, aren’t you?
I guess you’ll find out tomorrow
Meet me by the Gladstone statue at 1. We’ll go somewhere nice and photographable.
God he was…thoughtful. And in whatever the texting equivalent to silence was that followed his last message, I sat on my sofa with my knees tucked under my chin, my brain churning restlessly. It was that weird space where I didn’t actually know what I was thinking, only that thinking was kind of happening. But afterwards there came this calm, like fine rain on a too-hot day.
Hell, I had a lunch date. With a barrister. A fake lunch date, admittedly. But a real barrister.
And suddenly my job didn’t look quite as crap.
And my flat didn’t look quite as impossible.
And I didn’t feel quite as hollow.
Grabbing my phone again, I jumped into the WhatsApp group, which was currently called All About That Ace, and sent out a quick cry for help: Have been too bad at adulting for too long. Flat is unliveable in. Fake boyfriend horrified. HLEP!
Priya was the first to respond with Luc, do you only ever message us when you want something?
Followed by Bridget. ILL COME HELP YOU. JUST SAY WHEN WHERE. HOW IS FAKE BOYFRIEND?????
Oh dear. So much for not telling all my friends. Maybe I could ask them to keep extra special double quiet about it. What was that saying? Three can keep a secret if two of them try really, really hard.
My flat, I typed. This weekend. I’ll pay you in pizza. Though frankly that might make things worse
Do NOT order pizza! Somehow James Royce-Royce sounded camp even in text. The big chains are all run by Nazis. And also the pizza’s terrible. I will make a picnic and bring it with me.
TIDY PARTY!!!!!!! Bridge, of course. I think she’d had her caps lock stuck on since 2002. IM SO EXCITED!!!!! HOW IS FAKE BOYFRIEND?????
Then Priya: You just want me for my truck, don’t you?
I bet, I couldn’t help myself, you say that to all the girls
HOW IS FAKE BOYFRIEND?????
What I say to all the girls is that’s my sculpture. Wanna fuck?
LUC IM GOING OT KEEP ASKING YOU HOW THINGS ARE WITH OLIVER UNTIL YOU ANSWR OR MY THUMBS FALL OFF
I took pity on her. Or maybe on everyone else. It’s wonderful. We’re getting married. Why do you think I need to clean my flat?
YOUR BEING SARCASTIC THAT MEANS YOU SECRETLY LIKE HIM!!! SEE YOU ON SAT CANT WAIT!!!
From there the conversation moved on to other things, and I stuck it out for long enough to prove that, whatever Priya said, I didn’t only talk to my friends when I needed something from them. Then a bit longer to prove that I wasn’t just sticking around to prove I didn’t only talk to my friends when I needed something from them. Then a little bit longer than that because I realised Priya had been right all along and I was a bad person. And, besides, it was nice. I hadn’t realised how far I’d drifted from them, because they’d kept sculling towards me anyway. But I had. And I shouldn’t have.
Chapter 22
Pictures of me and Oliver having lunch on a bench near a statue of Gladstone didn’t exactly make headlines—Two Men Eat Sandwiches was never going to get the traction of Minor Celebrity Vomits on Other Minor Celebrity—but they were out there, showing me off in all my nice-boyfriend-having, nonthreatening glory. We did lunch again on Friday, without much expectation of anyone caring, but we felt we should keep up appearances anyway. And also I, y’know, liked, y’know, seeing, y’know, him. And stuff. True, it wasn’t going to last because come a discreet time after his parents’ anniversary, we’d be going our separate ways with no need to ever speak to each other ever again, but maybe that was…a good thing? It turned out that there was way less pressure when it was all just pretending. And for now I didn’t have to think too hard about what I’d do when the pretending stopped.
Saturday rolled around and, despite Bridge’s all-caps assurance that she couldn’t wait to come and tidy my flat, I wasn’t entirely surprised to get a call from her at nine in the morning.
“Luc,” she wailed. “I’m so sorry. I super wanted to come round for the tidy party. But you will not believe what’s happened.”
“Tell me what’s happened.”
“I can’t really talk about it, but you know The Elf-Swords of Luminera? Robert Kennington, series of twenty-something fantasy novels that’ve been going since the late ’70s.”
“Didn’t he die?”
“Yes. Back in 2009, but he gave his notes to Richard Kavanagh, and he was going to write the last three books in the series. But then the first one had to be split into three other books for publication, and the other two have been broken into a quadrilogy and tetralogy—”