Harry starts patting down his shirt like it’s made of pockets and scanning the ground, probably looking for his phone.
“You can stay here.” The words fall from my mouth without any brain engagement. “If you want to, I mean. If you want to stay here tonight . . . you can.”
“Not to . . . ?”
“No. No, of course not to do that. Just . . . you know, we could watch a movie or something?”
What. Am. I. Saying?
“But you hate me?”
“Yes. And you hate me.”
“Yes,” he says. “So, we’d be like hate-watching a movie?”
“I guess so,” I say. “Maybe we could like . . . hate-cuddle a bit?”
Harry snorts with laughter, then rubs a hand down his face. “Fine. Let me pee first.”
“Do you want to borrow PJs?” I ask, desperately trying to keep any evidence of my skittering heartbeat out of my voice.
He flexes his biceps. “Your pyjamas won’t last a second against the strain of my enormous muscles.”
In all honesty, he’s probably right, and I can’t afford new pyjamas right now. “Oh, just fuck off already. You’re not sleeping naked, though.”
“I’ll find something!” he calls out from the other room.
While Harry is in the bathroom, I head downstairs to the kitchen to fetch some snacks. I don’t stock Jaffa Cakes or Rice Krispie Squares in the cupboard any more, so I grab spicy nuts—because he used to love them—and chocolate-covered pretzels for me, plus a few cans of zero beer. I’m certain Harry doesn’t need any more alcohol in his bloodstream.
It’s just gone ten and the party in the marquee is in full swing. The bass from the music thrums through the house, vibrating the window frames and the silverware and vases on the sideboards. Colourful disco lights pierce the pitch black of the Hooke Manor grounds.
When I get back to my room, Harry’s perched on the end of the bed. He’s wearing an old T-shirt I got when Mathias had leftover stock from a VIP meet ’n’ greet last year. Harry’s shirt, suit trousers, and socks lie crumpled on my rug, and his freckly legs are bare.
“That’s Mathias’s T-shirt, by the way,” I tell him.
The speed at which Harry removes the shirt and tosses it across the room should be studied and replicated by aeronautical engineers. “Ew.”
“Put a movie on, then,” I say, dumping the contraband on the bed and tossing him the remote, before crossing back into my closet and changing into my PJs. I find a plain black LABRUM T-shirt that’s oversized on me so will probably reach down to Harry’s knees.
He’s sitting with his back against the headboard, a can of zero beer in one hand and the remote in the other. He stashes the remote on the bedside table and looks up at me. I throw the T-shirt to him.
“It’s mine. You don’t need to worry about sleeping in Mathias’s clothes.”
A black and white procession of funeral cars driving through a 1920’s Chicago street flickers on the TV screen. There are sirens, and then lots of pistols being fired, and suddenly we’re in a car chase.
“Some Like It Hot?” I phrase it like a question. It’s obviouslySome Like It Hot. I must have watched this movie over a thousand times. What I meant to ask him was, why? Why would he choose this movie?
He seems to understand my unspoken words. “You’re sad, right? Like, clinically, depressively sad?”
I have a sudden, almost overwhelming urge to cry. He remembered.
I don’t say anything else, I just climb into the bed beside him and grab a beer and a handful of nuts.
“These pretzels are shit, by the way,” Harry says.
“They’re vegan,” I reply. “Do you want to wake up covered in faecal matter?”
“Yeah, no. I really don’t.”
