“To Owen!” everyone chimes in.
Throughout the next three speeches—Mathias’s dad’s, Owen’s daughters Daisy and Molly’s joint speech, and Dan’s best man speech during which Dan’s wife frequently covers his kid’s ears—I funnel all my energy into not thinking about Lando redecorating his own stomach. Instead, I watch the speakers’ mouths flap open and closed until their faces become tunnelled in my vision and everything else blacks out around them. I periodically sweep over Lando with my gaze, and by the way his mouth ticks up at the corner and his cheek puffs out, I’m convinced he can read my thoughts.
And I wait for my erection to deflate. It seems to be taking longer than usual.
Dan’s recounting a story about a group karaoke session Owen had at his pub two years ago that all the Cents lads attended. That was the first night I met His Royal Highness, Prince of Perfect.
Abruptly, Lando stops slouching, sits upright, and snatches his father’s unused place setting. He leans over the table for a few seconds and then relaxes back in his chair. A few moments later, the card appears at his hip, and he’s written something on the reverse. It’s the same unnecessarily flamboyant handwriting he uses on everything.
“Stop staring at me.”
My core temperature spikes, heart rate trebles. How fucking dare he?
I mean, he’s not wrong, I had been staring, but the absolute audacity of this statement.
I inch out of my seat and snatch the note from his fingers. He doesn’t turn to look at me, but he does offer me his pen. I don’t take it; I have my own.
In return I jot down,“Try not to shit your pants this time,”and I push the card back into his grip.
He returns with a hastily scribbled,“Valid.”
I have no idea who’s won this exchange, but it doesn’t feel like it’s me.
As soon as we’re allowed to get up and move about, I’m off. I don’t spare Lando another look before finding the nearest slit in the marquee fabric and slipping out into the fresh May evening. It’s almost seven o’clock, and the sun is still defiantly clinging on in the distance, casting lanky shadows over HookeManor’s lawns. I need a drink, but they’re rearranging the tables inside to make room for a dance floor, and every other person has been banished to the bar area to wait it out.
I jam my hands into the pockets of my brother’s suit jacket and discover a vape. It’s watermelon and CBD flavour—you know, that classic combo—and I take a drag. It just about takes the edge off.
I can’t go back in there. The risk of bumping into him is too great. What if people force us to have a civilised conversation? I also can’t bear to watch him flounce around the tent with his floppy fucking hair and his billowy shirt, and see him with everyone else. Daisy and Serasi, Owen and Mathias—fucking Mathias—and all the other people he has kissing his feet.
Without properly thinking through my next move, I begin meandering towards the house. I wonder if the entry code is still the same as it was last year, but I don’t even need it. The doors leading to the kitchens are wide open. Catering staff—outsourced for the wedding, I expect—busy themselves in a corner of the room. Nobody notices as I slip through into the corridors.
It’s as though I never left. Everything is exactly the same as it was the last time I was here. The decor hasn’t changed, the lighting, even the humidity is the same. We used to sneak into Lando’s father’s specially constructed, and precisely chilled, booze cellar to pick off dusty and ancient bottles of wine to drink in his bedroom while we watched Netflix.
Out of habit, or spite, I head there. The entrance to the cellar is right next to Warwick’s office. I’m told back in the day it used to be a library, but the door is closed and there’s no sign of life beyond it.
The cellar itself is a narrow galley-style room with floor-to-ceiling racks on either side. I choose what I assume is a bottle of red wine, since that’s my preference, but so long as it costs more than my rent, it doesn’t make much difference to me if it turns out to be white, or rosé, or anything else. There’s a system to the way his father organises his collection—colour, region, vintage, et cetera—but I’d never listened to Lando when he’d explained it.
He’d always said,“Give me a number between thirty and three thousand,”and had selected something based on that. I’d assumed that number was the price his dad had paid for the bottle.
I uncork it, but don’t bother to look for a glass, and then I continue my self-guided tour through Lando’s house.
My footsteps echo across the floorboards, but aside from the kitchens, the place is empty. Lando is in the marquee along with his stepmother, and his father is probably in Montreal or Beijing or somewhere else thousands of kilometres away. I chug directly from the bottle as I climb the grand staircase in the main hall. Yay, it’s red.
Lando’s bedroom door is wide open, and I head straight inside. I kick off my shoes—because I’m not an animal—and I collapse onto his antique four-poster bed, flicking the TV on as I go. I turn it to the first streaming service I land upon, and instead of hitting play on anything, I scroll through his most recently watched media.
He’s halfway through the season finale episode ofProject Runwayseries one. It’s so absurdly on point I actually roll my eyes. I feel like being a total cunt, so I click the“Play From Beginning”button, then I hop off his bed and start rummaging through his things.
Of course he doesn’t have anything incriminating like porn or lube beside his bed—unlike me—but on his desktop are papers and letters that all bear the same insignia and address. Oakham Industries. In the top drawer, I find a lanyard. It’s blue, with white vinyl printing along the ribbon that also spells out“Oakham Industries.”And the photo on the ID badge is of Lando himself.
Does this mean he has a job?
He’s not smiling in the picture. In fact, he’s got his miserable expression on. I’ve seen that one plenty. I stash his lanyard back in the drawer, taking care to place the ribbon exactly as I’d found it, and I wiggle my finger across the touch pad of his laptop. It bursts to life on the last thing he’d been looking at. An article fromBritish Voguetitled “23Times Jenny Ortega Annihilated the Red Carpet.” All of his other open tabs are fromVogue,Elle, andGrazia.
Except for the final tab. It’s a page from a sports website. The date is Valentine’s Day last year, and the accompanying photo shows us both at the end of the stands post rugby match, me in my Cents’ kit and Lando in his designer raincoat, kissing each other on the mouth.
My pulse spikes and my palms sweat. I’ve spent so long agonising over this particular photo, crying over it, zooming in on our faces—slightly blurred from the rain—and his fingers digging into the flesh on my shoulders.
Though it feels oddly comforting to know Lando hasn’t changed in the slightest. I wonder exactly how much of him hasn’t changed. I drain half the bottle and push his closet doors open.
