“You think because my name is Sunny, I should have a permanently sunny disposition?”
“Sunny by name, sunny by nature?” Ludo offered.
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “You don’t automatically expect someone called Marina to provide a safe harbour for boats, do you? Or someone called Molly to shaft Ecstasy tablets on a Friday night?”
To be fair, I did actually know a girl called Molly who did that. But that wasn’t nominative determinism, that was because her brother Geordie was the local dealer and she got her gear for free.
Ludo laughed. We were tucked up beside one another under his duvet. The heat generated by our bodies and the motor of the laptop had made it slightly sweaty and damp, but neither of us moved to lift the bedspread and let some air in. Ludo was lying close beside me, our legs touching. It felt… lovely. I wasn’t quite ready to say goodnight, even though it past midnight.
“You never told me your middle name,” I asked. “Do you have one?”
“Benjamin,” he said. “For my Uncle Ben. Ben Diamond. He’s our theatre critic. If you’ve ever read ourarts section?”
In all honesty, I had never read the arts section of theSentinel, though there was no point telling Ludo that. But Ben Diamond was one of the oldest names on Fleet Street. Everyone had heard of him.
“I remember him being on TV when I was a kid,” I said. “He was old even then. He must be ancient now.”
“He’s eighty-eight, but he has the spirit of someone who’s twenty, and I love him for it.”
Ludo’s whole face was alight, the way a parent’s face lights up when they talk about a favourite child. A realisation hit me.
“At Maxime’s, when you said you took the job at theSentinelbecause you wanted to work every day with the man you most admire in the world, I assumed you were talking about your father. But you were talking about Ben Diamond, weren’t you?”
“That’s right,” Ludo said, smiling. “More than anyone else in the world, he’s the person who made me who I am.”
I grinned. In part at the lovely sentiment, and in part at knowledge that Ludo didn’t hero-worship his terrifying father and probably wasn’t destined to become his clone.
“Uncle Ben sounds amazing,” I said. “I have to meet this man.”
The idea seemed to please Ludo. He leant his head against my shoulder and shuffled down into the bed a little to get comfortable. It felt more intimate than I was expecting. Like he was testing to see how I would react, whether I was interested in him. And I liked it.
But warning bells were going off in my head. We were entering a danger zone. This level of physical contact was not just well beyond collegiate but beyond simple friendship too. This whole situation was like a box of Guy Fawkes crackers left too close to the bonfire. It could go off at any moment. I could feel the beast in my joggers surging into life. If I didn’t put a stop to it now, the beast would be in control—and there would be no telling what the consequences of that would be. Not just on the rest of this trip but on my career long term. Thishadto stop.
“I’m quite jealous of you, working with someone you admire every day,” I said, making small talk to buy time while I worked out how to get myself out of danger. “I can’t think of anyone I admire at theBulletin. It’s a soul-destroying place. It’s not what I had in mind when I dreamt of becoming a journalist.”
“It has its place in the market,” Ludo said. “They’re lucky to have you.” He smiled up at me, and I got a waft of warm linen and cashmere. So cosy.
“Thanks. Still, I don’t want to be there forever. I want to work for a respectable paper. But we all have to start somewhere, right?”
Ludo sighed. He sat up and pulled away. I was grateful for it. He’d unknowingly saved me from myself, from doing something I’d live to regret. All the same, my shoulder felt cool where the heat of his body had been, and I kind of missed it. My cock sent my brain a sad face emoji.
“I’m tired,” he said. “It’s bedtime, I think.”
That was my cue, and I grabbed it, although Ludo didn’t smile or make eye contact and it gave me the odd sense he might have been pissed with me somehow. I closed my laptop, picked it up, and crawled out of bed, holding it in front of my joggers to hide any lingering awkward evidence of the beast’s recent arousal. I should probably have worn pants, but you just don’t with joggers, do you? I tried to find a way to show no hard feelings.
“I had fun tonight,” I said, as I opened the door. Ludo smiled, but there seemed to be no joy in it.
“Goodnight, Sunny,” he said.
“See you in the morning,” I said.
Then I waved—because sometimes, apparently, I am the Forrest Gump kind of awkward—and stepped out of the room and pulled the door shut. I stood in the hall for a moment. All the air emptied from my lungs. It had been a near escape—although I wasn’t sure I’d pulled it off without causing collateral damage. Ludo seemed off. Maybe he really was just tired?
I sniffed my shoulder—a completely normal thing to do. It smelt of Ludo. My heart raced. Did I… like him? When did that happen? I shook it off, then took a deep breath, stepped into my room, and closed the door behind me.
Chapter20
Ludo
