“What did Pi want?” he asks.
I don’t tell him the truth. I don’t know why. I loop my arm into his and we head across the road to fetch our trainers out of my car. “He wanted to tell me that he fancied me.”
“What?!” Harry stops smack bang in the centre of the street. “What did you say to him?”
“I told him he’s not my type.”
Harry actually looks relieved, and it pulls at something painful in my chest.
We walk home together under the light from the moon and my torch. It’s cold, but our beer blankets are doing an excellent job of numbing us to the now November temperatures.
“You know we’re just friends, don’t you?” I say.
“Of course,” he replies in that chirpy way he does when he’s drunk too much. Though I know he hasn’t drunk enough to forget this conversation by the morning.
“Like . . . we can never be more than just friends.” I pause. Wait for his response. Hold my breath.
“Why n—” He cuts himself off.
He was goingto ask why not.
I don’t know if it’s that he doesn’t want to hear the answer or if he’s afraid of it, but I need to tell him. I just have to figure out a way that doesn’t put any of the blame on him, because this is an Orlando Oakham-Goodwin problem.
“We’re not compatible as anything more than friends. You and I have different needs, and neither of us can meet them.”
I will never be the right person for you. I will never be attracted to you as you are to me, and I can never expect you to love me unconditionally if I won’t let you love me in the ways you need to love a person.
I can’t get those words out.
Harry is twenty-one years old. He’s horny. He’s a typical young man with a typical young-man’s desires. I can’t be the person who denies him basic needs and expects the world in return.
“I know,” he says, in that same tone. “I’m pretty sure I’m in love with Lionel, and . . . you’re not Lionel.” I can’t figure out if he’s saying it to make me feel better, and I guess maybe it doesn’t matter. The fact that he has his sights set on someone else comforts me a little. Hopefully his friend Pi was wrong about Harry loving me.
“No, I’m not Lionel.”
I fucking wish I could be Lionel. I wish I was like everyone else.
“Can we still carry on cuddling and stuff like that? Can we still kiss?”
“I don’t see why not. We can do other stuff too, you know, like carry on doing what we’ve been doing. As long as we both understand it can’t go any further than that.”
He nods. “Okay, good. I like kissing you.”
“Same. You’re really good at it.”
“And those knickers, oh my god. If . . .” He hesitates. “If I start seeing someone, not necessarily Lionel, just another human being, this is . . . probably gonna have to stop.”
“Yes,” I say, because I can’t think of anything else to add.
“We could still be friends?”
I realise I’m wringing the torch in my hands, not even shining it down at our feet any more.
“If that happens, we could still be friends. Can’t we?” he asks again.
I shrug.
Harry doesn’t respond, doesn’t repeat himself, doesn’t demand I answer his question. “It’s okay. I get it. That would be . . . so weird for everyone.”
