Boyfriend Material(84)

“I think what you’re underestimating here is how much better I can get and still be a complete disaster.”

“You’re not a complete disaster, Lucien. I just don’t want to be going through this again in a fortnight—and you haven’t been able to give me any reassurance that I won’t.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay. Look, the truth is, we’re both terrible at relationships. That’s how we got into this position in the first place. But it feels to me that you’re asking for the wrong thing.”

“Is that so?” He raised an unconvinced eyebrow. “I flatter myself that I’m asking for something quite reasonable, which is that our relationship, fake or otherwise, isn’t going to be constantly punctuated by your appearing on my doorstep apologising for your shitty behaviour.”

“And I see why that’s not great. Except I’m not sure it’s the real problem. I don’t know how to promise you that I won’t overreact, or lash out, or say something I shouldn’t. All I can promise, and I really think it’s what I should be promising, is that I’ll be honest with you about…about what’s going on with me.” This was hell. I’m pretty sure this was hell. “That’s what I should have done tonight. And that’s why we’re here.”

There was a long silence. It was fifty-fifty whether this was good silence or bad silence.

“All right.” Oliver eyed me warily. “So if you had been honest with me, as you’ve suggested, what would you have said?”

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

“I think,” Oliver murmured, “we’ve discovered the flaw in this plan.”

“No. No. Give me a minute. I can do this. I can trust someone. With, like, my feelings and shit.”

Why was this so hard? I mean, it was Oliver. Basically the most decent person I’d met in the last decade who I wasn’t already friends with. Fuck.

“Um,” I tried. “This is probably going to sound totally bizarre, but do you mind if I go in your bathroom?”

“Sorry, I assume you’re not asking to use the facilities?”

“No I…I think I’d just like to go in there.”

“If you dump me through a door again, I’ll be very angry.”

“I’m not going to. And my end goal is to get to the stage where we can have this kind of conversation in the same room. But, y’know, baby steps?”

He made a defeated gesture. “Fine. If that’s what you need.”

So I went to Oliver’s bathroom, locked the door behind me, and sat on the floor with my back to it. “You can still hear me, right?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Okay.” Breathe. Breathe. I had to breathe. “This…whatever it is…that we’re having, it’s…the best thing that’s happened to me in five years. And I know it’s supposed to be fake, but it’s not felt that way to me for… I don’t know. A while. And that’s, I guess, rearranged my messed-upness in ways that are overall really, really…good. But I also feel vulnerable and frightened, like, all the time.”

The door shuddered slightly, which took me a moment to interpret. But then I thought maybe Oliver was sitting on the other side of it, with his back to mine. “I… Lucien. I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to. Just, um, listen or something.”

“Of course.”

“So when I saw that article, it brought up all this old stuff that I… Yeah. You see, my last boyfriend—Miles…we were together all through university and a little bit after. And I think it was one of those relationships where the stuff that keeps you together at uni doesn’t work in the real world. We were sort of going through a rough patch, but I guess I didn’t know how rough, because he went and sold his story…my story…our story…to the Daily—I can’t even remember which. For fifty fucking grand.”

I heard Oliver draw in a breath. “I’m sorry. That must have felt awful.”

“Pretty much. What I couldn’t hack was… I thought when you’re in love, it’s supposed to be safe, isn’t it? You’re supposed to be able to do things and try things and make mistakes, and it’ll be okay because you know who you are to each other. I genuinely believed we had that, but he took it and flogged it to the press, and they turned five years of my life into a couple of threesomes and that one time we did cocaine at a party in Soho.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Oliver whispered through the door. “This is clearly very difficult for you, and I appreciate your trust.”

I should have been done. But, somehow, now I’d started talking about this shit, I couldn’t stop. “He met my mum. I told him about my family, about my dad, how I felt, what I wanted, what I was scared of. And he made it all so ugly and so cheap. And now everyone thinks that’s who I am. And half the time I believe it too.”

“You shouldn’t. And I know that’s easy to say and harder to believe, but you’re far more than pictures in papers, and a couple of sad little articles written by sad little men.”

“Maybe, but it came back on Mum as well. She’s gone through enough without the tabloids turning her into a crazy has-been.”