“I feel like shit,” I say.
“Oh, my king.” Lando immediately manoeuvres us so that his back is against the headboard, and now my head is in his lap.
“I just feel like . . .” I don’t want to say it out loud because it’s cringe as fuck, but also, this is Lando. He should know how I feel. I owe him total honesty. “That I’m always overlooked. That I’m always second, or third, or fourth best. And maybe I should be happy for Pi, he’s my best friend. And I should be happy for Eggo—he’s bonkers, but he deserves it. And I should be happy for Mathias, because . . . you know.” I can’t finish my thought, so I shrug.
Lando knits his fingers into my hair. “Just because people expect you to feel or behave a certain way, doesn’t mean you actually have to. It’s all performative.Just so you can tick off a little box inside their brains that makes them feel better. But fuck them. And fuck making our feelings more palatable for other people. That’s never been my jam. Who are we even performing for anyway?” Hepfftsthe air out of his mouth. “Jealousy is a valid emotion. You’re not destructive about it—well, notthatdestructive, so it shouldn’t be wrong to experience it. You once told me I’m allowed to feel things.”
I lift my head and look right at him. “Your mum died . . . that’s a different kind of emotion.”
“Baby, you have got to stop comparing yourself to other people.”
“Wait.” I push myself to my knees. He’s so painfully on the money that it robs me of the ability to speak. To think even. “You’ve been studying hard for your therapy sessions, haven’t you?”
“I think I’m finally winning them,” he says, smiling. “But in all seriousness, you have to stop looking at other people and thinking they have it better than you. Maybe they do. But harsh truth: they’ve probably worked harder to get there. Or maybe they’re just luckier. It’s not like things are shit for you; you’ve got an incredible life. You’re twenty-three years old and you play for the Bath Centurions. How many guys would kill to be in your position? You’re young, you’re hot, you’re talented, you’ve got an amazing family, and a fucking stellar boyfriend. You’ve got a lovely flat, in a lovely part of town, you have friends who care about you, and you have an infallible digestive system. I’m not saying there’s no need to feel jealousy because we all do sometimes, but you should recognise that undoubtedly there will be people who’re envious of you. Like me.”
I scoot up the bed and tuck myself in next to him, lift his arm over my shoulder, and press my head to his chest. I want to tell him that he doesn’t need to be jealous of me—of my family, which is what he meant. That my family, whether he likes it or not, are now his family for the foreseeable future, and that he’ll probably want to watch out for Casper and Jack especially. But the words get lodged in my throat.
“But also, do you know what?” he says, his fingers now tracing circles on my crown. “I love jealous Harry. He’s fun, and a bit rude, and he makes me laugh.”
“I could try to be less of a cunt,” I say.
“You could, but I didn’t fall in love with Harry Ellis, the happy-go-lucky, positive-vibes-only guy. I fell in love with your grumpy ass. The guy who got drunk because Mathias got played and he didn’t, the guy who stood up to my dad, the guy who shouted at Daisy on Sunday.”
Ah, she must’ve told him. I cringe inwardly and hope they’ve made up.
“I fell in love with Waldorf.”
Lando’s heart thumps steadily against my ear. It beats faster when I laugh at his comment, and faster still when I say, “I love you too.”
29
Friday 18th June 2027
Lando
“According to your CV, you’ve only been working for your current employer for . . . six weeks. Can you tell me why you want to leave?” Nikki says, tapping the end of her fountain pen against her chin. She’s sitting opposite me at a vintage Formica table in an overstuffed staffroom.
On the wall behind her is a shelving unit with books and DVDs and borderline antique issues ofElleandVogue, plus old point-of-sale interior shop signage, and to my right is a lead-panelled lunette window looking down onto the bustling streets of Bath. People are milling about with iced coffees and shopping bags, and tourists are snapping pictures of the grand Georgian and Roman architecture.
Everything Harry and I had uncovered online whilst researching interview techniques suggested I should approach this particular question with trepidation, and well . . . it said I should lie, lie, lie.
“It says here, don’t tell them you hate your job and that all your colleagues are bellends because they’ll just think you’re a whiny bitch baby and you won’t get the new position,”Harry had said last night while we were preparing for today. He’d had my laptop open, dropping Rice Krispie Square crumbs all over the keyboard, while I paced my rug and pre-emptively dosed up on Imodium.
“It says those words?”I’d asked.
Harry had shrugged.“Pretty much. But then later it goes on to say that you should never lie in an interview, and you should always be yourself.”He’d given up at this point and slammed the lid closed on the laptop.
So here I am, in my first ever job interview, panicking because in complete honesty, I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing or saying.
I open my mouth to speak. Close it again. Scratch my upper lip. Take a breath. “Okay, I have to be honest with you. I . . . hate it there.”
I hide my face behind my palms, and a moment later when I peer through my fingers at Nikki, she’s smiling curiously, encouraging me to explain, or else humouring me before she turfs me out of her shop.
“My father set it all up for me. He wanted me to get a job, and he had his team hand me this one on a platter. Which I guess is a nice thing for him to do, but working in an office where everyone wears polyester is . . . not quite my dream career,” I say, praying, hoping I’m not being a cunt about it.
Nikki nods politely. She’s mid to late fifties, Black, with a short tapered hairstyle and the most vibrant clothes I have ever seen in all of my twenty-one years. A pink button-down shirt with yellow palazzo pants and mint-green platform Adidas trainers. She has spectacles on a shimmery turquoise chain and geometric yellow acrylic earrings, and she’s easily the most effortlessly chic person I’ve met IRL. I want to be her when I grow up.
Her shop, Tia’s, named after her late daughter, is an independent boutique department store in central Bath, about ten minutes’ walk from Harry’s flat. It sells a range of designer and indie womenswear brands, some I’ve heard of, and others I had to research, but all have good credentials and are either sustainable, women owned, support worthy causes, or are a mix of those three things.
