Boyfriend Material(80)

She picked up straight away. “What’s wrong?”

“Me,” I said. “I’m what’s wrong.”

“What’s going on?” Bridge’s phone was just sensitive enough to pick up Tom’s sleepy voice.

“It’s an emergency,” she told him.

He groaned. “They’re books, Bridge. What problems can they possibly have at half one in the morning?”

“It’s not a publishing emergency. It’s a friend emergency.”

“In which case, I love you. And you’re the best and loyalest person I know. But I’m going to sleep in the spare room.”

“You don’t have to. I’ll be quick.”

“No you won’t. And I don’t want you to.”

Down the slightly shitty connection I caught the rustle of bedclothes and a kiss goodbye. And then Bridge was back on the line. “Okay, I’m here. Tell me what’s up.”

I opened my mouth and then realised I had no idea what to say. “Oliver’s gone.”

A slight pause. “I don’t know how to say this without it sounding bad but…what did you do now?”

“Thanks.” I let out a laugh that sounded more like a sob. “You’re my rock.”

“I am your rock. Which is why I know you make really bad decisions.”

“It wasn’t a decision,” I wailed. “It just sort of happened.”

“What just sort of happened?”

“I told him he’d fucked me up and to fuck off.”

“Um.” Bridge gave me the audible equivalent of her confused face. “Why?”

The more I thought about it, the more I wasn’t sure. “I’m in the Guardian, Bridge. The fucking Guardian.”

“I thought the whole point of dating Oliver was to get better press? After all, it’s a broadsheet. They’d probably only run a celebrity sex story if it was about an MP or a Royal.”

“It was worse than a sex story. It was a thought-provoking opinion piece about what a broken victim of celebrity culture I am written by that guy I failed to pull at Malcom’s T Party.”

“Should I look?”

“Why the hell not?” I huddled further into a corner of the bathroom. “Everyone else will.”

“I meant, would reading it help me support you better.”

I mumbled something along the lines of urnuhnuh.

“Okay I’m going in.”

A pause, while she switched apps and read the article, during which I shivered and sweated and felt sick.

“Wow,” she said. “What an utter wanker.”

That was less consoling than I’d hoped it would be. “He’s right, though, isn’t he? I’m this half-person wreckage of someone else’s fame, who’ll never have a normal life or a normal relationship or—”

“Luc, stop it. I work in publishing, I can spot articulate guff a mile away.”

“It’s how I feel, though. And he must have seen it, and now the whole world can too.” I pressed my cheek against the wall, hoping the chill would help somehow. “It’s not just a picture of me getting off or throwing up. It’s…Miles all over again.”

“It’s not at all like Miles. This is someone who met you for five seconds and decided to use your name to sell a completely generic article about nothing in particular. Besides, you only need that many classical allusions if you have a very tiny penis.”

I gave a weird hiccoughy laugh. “Thanks for that. Here, I thought I was having a crisis, but it turned out all I was looking for was an opportunity to insult a stranger’s dick.”

“Comfort comes in many forms.”

Perhaps it did, but it left in many forms too. “Look, I wish I was better at not caring. And, actually, I’ve worked fucking hard at not caring. Except then I started caring and look where it’s got me.”

“Where has it got you?” she asked gently. “If you mean on the phone with me at two in the morning, that’s been a constant of both our lives for as long as I can remember.”

“Bridge, when we’re on our deathbeds, I hope the last thing we do is ring each other. But I kind of meant Oliver.”

“Yes, what happened? This article has nothing to do with him.”

“I know, but”—I tried to assemble my thoughts, which remained stubbornly unassembled—“he was nice to me, and that made me feel safe, and maybe not worthless. And so I got all soft and happy and shit. And then this happened and I couldn’t cope. And it’s going to keep happening, and I’m going to keep not being able to cope as long as I’m trying to live like a normal person.”

Bridget let out a long, sad sigh. “I love you, Luc, and that does sound terrible. But I don’t think ‘make yourself miserable’ is the one-size-fits-all solution you think it is.”

“It’s worked so far.”

“Do you really believe you’d have felt better about that article if you’d read it alone in a flat full of empty Pringles tubes?”

“Well, at least I wouldn’t have had to break up with someone through a bathroom door.”

“You didn’t have to break up with him. You chose to break up with him.”