Like he’d be able to tell anyway.
Behave.
It takes a moment for the next reply to come through.
Have you left the parents’ yard yet?
Yeah en route home
And???
It went well in the end, I think. I think his rents are overcompensating a bit by telling me how beautiful my complexion is a ton of times, but think they mean well.
Are you being careful?
I am.
Are you sure?
I don’t reply.
It’s only when we’re stopped in traffic that I really look at James again. I don’t often look at the people I love, not in the incisive way I look at everyone else. And yes, I’ve used that word, “love.” I love him, or at least who I am when I’m with him. But as I take in his form, hands on the wheel, eyes on the road, I notice that there’s something dishonest in the set of his shoulders. Like his voice, the echoes of a private education sounding through the London twang that sharpens his vowels. When we first met, it immediately struck me as affected. A false easiness. Having met his family, I now know that it is. The tightness is gone from his jaw, but it still threads its way through his body, almost imperceptible. Almost.
The echo of a rusty tang coats my tongue. And for a moment, I’m back with James outside that bar, his teeth sinking into my lips. And then I’m curled up on a hardwood floor, my body rattling with shock. And with this second memory, I know what the echo means. What that taste is trying to tell me. James and I are more similar than I knew.He sometimes needs protecting from his family, too. But it’s okay. Perhaps we can be each other’s family now. Perhaps we could one day start a family of our own.
Even so, as I look at him, really Look, I can’t help but let Will’s words echo in my head.It’s never going to work between you two.
11
Ex Number Two
Luca
This is the worst place I could be, and the only place. Foreheads boast a sweaty sheen as bodies jostle and jump together, bass-heavy music vibrating through my chest. In the crowd I can see some people I like and many I don’t. The party is being thrown by some of the football boys, Red Bull sponsoring the sprawling debauchery, free cans flowing between hands and little baggies passed around behind closed doors. I know Luca will be here somewhere, and I know I have to find him.
It’s been hours since I first saw the video. Hours of calls and texts to ask what the fuck is going on, only to get some half-hearted apologies back.
So sorry. No idea how the fuck this got out.
And
I know babe. Someone hacked my phone I swear.
And
I swear I told you about the camera you were just drunk remember? Maybe you’ve forgot. We’ll talk properly later yh? So sorry about all this.
I’ve seen Luca’s casual way of fobbing people off in action before. It looks like you’re getting his care and attention when really, you’re getting none of it. I can feel it in the three messages he’s sent today. If he really cared, he’d have been by my side in an instant, not straight to the pub with his football boys after the game and straight to a house party after that.
And he knows he didn’t tell me he was filming. For a split second, I almost believe that he did, but I don’t get blackout drunk like that, not since Marc, and I know in my bones that I would never consent to what he’s saying even if I did. Still, a seed of doubt writhes in my brain, and I hate him for planting it there. It’s far too hard to kill a thought.
As I make my way through the crowd, hunting for Luca—and I am unmistakably hunting—I feel eyes sliding over me when in close enough range. Sometimes hands, too. The smirks would tell me all I need to know even without the crude words that follow. I’ve leaped into a lion’s den.
It takes me some time, this hollowed-out student house vast and cavernous, the building converted from an old pub. But eventually, I find him. He’s slouched in a corner of a basement room, body making a solid imprint on the faded sofa as his friends pass a small plastic pouch filled with off-white crystals between them. Although Luca declines the contents of the bag, his smile is so easy, the slump of his body so relaxed, that I want to scream. He gets to his feet as I approach him, an unsteady rock as he straightens up. I eye the beer in his hand and wonder how many he’s had.
“Babe, you made it!” he says, as if he’s expecting to see me here. Asif I’ve not obviously tracked him down from a passing comment made about these plans. He kisses me on the mouth, and it’s too quick and I’m too shocked to prevent it. Before I know it, his arm is slung around my shoulders. “Max, get us a beer.”
One of his friends slides off the sofa and lopes off upstairs, leering at me as he goes. I’m so knocked off course by Luca’s easygoing demeanor that I let myself be pulled down to the sofa, squeezed in next to another of his friends.
