I rub my jaw. “You don’t think it looks… virile?”
“Maybe if you weren’t otherwise giving ‘shipwrecked.’ I’d ask where’s the rest of your baggage, but it’s under your feckin’ eyes.”
I think I must’ve winced, because Bad’s expression goesfrom piss-take to pity. His steps slow. “Brighten up, boyo.” He lands a playful punch on my shoulder. “Laurent has three sisters, all with friends who’ll be here. And some of the girls from his modeling agency are coming too. This time tomorrow you’ll be up to your pecs in hot birds.”
I give a wry sniff. “No thank you.”
“All right, not that, then.” He throws out a sweeping gesture at the fields of champagne grapes. “So walk a bit, touch grass, breathe the country air, remember who you are.”
I stop on the path, probably looking more hopeless than I intend. “That’s just it, Bad. I don’t fuckingknowwho I am. There’s no ‘real’ me—I’m a box full of cheap disguises. For a few weeks, with Sage, I thought I finally had it. I hadeverything. I was becoming… fuck, I don’t know, someone? Myself. Mybestself. And now…” I shrug.
He squeezes my upper arm. “Iknow who you are, bruv. You can’t see it ’cause you’re too close.” He chuckles. “There’s always been a ‘real you,’ Piano Twat—take it from Drum Twat.” He slowly sets off in motion toward the house again. “Still haven’t talked with her?”
“I think she blocked my number—my texts went green the first night, so I stopped writing them. I won’t be an utter mug and send my pathetic pleas into a void.” I shove my hands into my pockets as we walk, and even a small gesture like that makes me think of her; she once told me it looks sexy when a man wearing a suit has his hands in his pockets.
The setting sun is throwing beautiful long shadows, fringing the ground beside the stands of grapes, and I think of all the pictures Sage and I exchanged just weeks ago.
Hers from Miami: an amusing misspelled sign, a flower she saw growing out of cracked pavement, the pillows on her bed withWish you were here.
Mine from London: a broken umbrella in a puddle, a wound on a tree where the branch sheared off and left the shape of a heart, my hand on my piano keyboard withWish you were here.
The next morning, I stand at the window in the little slope-roofed dormer room, gazing at the sun on the grass below, the chairs set up in their tidy rows, the arbor arch hung with grapes and jasmine and honeysuckle.
“Bloody hell,” Badrick mutters, faffing with his tie in front of the antique mirror, “it’s still crooked. The fuck do I need atripleWindsor for?”
“Because it looks better, you plonker. Here—let me fix it.”
“Regular knot’s fine,” he says, veering aside at my approach.
“If you’re a pleb. Hold still, for fuck’s sake.” I whip the necktie into shape and smooth it down. “There, neat as a pin.”
He turns to the mirror, inspecting, then eyeing me through the reflection. “Thanks.”
“Cheers.” I go to a rustic armoire and lean against it. “I hope you know I really am happy for you and Laurent. I’ve taken the mick plenty, but I do like him. You two are a good couple, and I was wrong about it being ‘too sudden’—you’ve been together over a year. I was purely being a sulky shit, and I apologize.”
“No worries. Appreciate it, bruv.” He focuses on affixinghis boutonniere—a purple iris entwined with a red Tudor rose. “I suppose six weeks with your little racing bird changed your mind about how soon you can know you’ve found your person.”
His words paralyze me like an icicle to the chest. “Fuckin’ hell, Bad.Don’t.”
He shrugs. “I ain’t gonna go easy on you when I think you gave up too quick. Laurent has a weakness for those angsty romance books and made me read a couple of ’em myself, and there’s always a ‘grand gesture’ in the story. A dramatic moment where you show your heart, lay it all bare.”
“My heartwasbare, pretty much from day dot.”
“Then she thought you stabbed her in the back, and when she said it’d all been bollocks from the start, you told her—according to your account—‘I’m not giving up,’ followed bygiving up within twenty-four hours. You think that’s gonna change her mind? Make her think she’s wrong about your feelings not being genuine?” He makes a disgusted scoffing noise.
“The texts I sent that night after she walked out made it clear that—”
“You said yourself she probably blocked your number, mate. She was furious.” He gestures toward the window. “You think I ain’t seen that shit a thousand times with Laurent? He’s got a temper like a rabid badger. You let ’em cool down, then you talk it out.”
I fold my arms, offering a sarcastic “Oh, and now I should organize a flash mob to do a dance outside her trailer while a fuckin’ jet sky-writes ‘Alexander will love you for all eternity’?”
“Not a bad place to start,” he says with a crooked smile.
“She knows where to find me if she wants to talk.”
“With an attitude like that, you deserve to lose her.”
My arms drop and I stumble a step back, feeling like I’ve taken a shot to the chest. “Oi! Steady on. That’s un-fucking-called for.”
