Page 108 of Unstitch

Instead, we’ve found ourselves in so many standoffs, these past couple of months. Max wants to watch thriller-y things like Slow Horses that honestly go over my head, even if the subtitles are on. Dex is happy with anything David Attenborough, which he says he finds “relaxing”, but excuse me if I don’t enjoy spending my evenings watching hundreds of teeny-tiny shivering baby flamingos perish in violent storms or giant, wobbly walruses plummeting off cliff edges to their messy deaths.

Happily, we’ve found a temporary compromise, and that compromise is Shrinking, even though the boys watch it purely for Harrison Ford and I watch it only for the female shrink, Gaby, and spend most of my time wishing she was real and lived in London and wanted to be my friend, because she might just be my all-time favourite TV character. (Though I will admit that the scene where Harrison Ford’s character, Paul, gets stoned at Jimmy’s party is Emmy-worthy.)

Fuck knows what we’ll end up watching when we’ve got up to speed.

It’s Friday night, and I’ve barely seen the boys all week. I’m not gonna lie—this ships in the night thing is taking its toll. They both get up at the crack of dawn to work out before hitting their day jobs, or to hit their day jobs before they work out, and I’m on stage at Alchemy at nine o’clock Monday to Thursday.

The lack of overlap in our workdays is shitty, though we do our best. I’ll meet one or both of them in the City or in Mayfair for a quick lunch whenever they can get away from their desks, but Dex isn’t yet publicly out of the closet, so we tend to keep our PDAs to a minimum when the boys are together.

In the evenings, we’ll have a bite to eat at Max’s when schedules allow. Dex can usually extricate himself from the office once the markets close, but Max is burning the candle as the IPO gathers pace. It’s in a stage called, apparently, PDIE, or Pre Deal Investor Education, which is where the research analysts from the various banks go and see potential investors and teach them the ins and outs of the company.

Apparently, this stage triggers tonnes of extra work for Wolff’s management team, as well as all its in-house analysts, because the investors invariably raise three million questions, from queries about forecasts for obscure parts of the business to bitching and moaning about the potential valuation of the shares. They’re all doing their homework on their side, it seems, and every man and his dog has their own view on Wolff’s future prospects, as well as how much a stake in those prospects is worth.

See? I’m practically a banker these days.

Anyway, it’s all stressful and frantic and a mahoosive time and energy suck for Max. He’s knackered, and he hasn’t even been on the road yet. Dex and I stay here a couple of nights during the work week, but sometimes I race back from Alchemy, fresh off the stage, and slide into bed next to two adorable sleeping bodies.

Wafting around all day when they’re hard at work feels a bit pointless. And when I’m actually on stage, I find I’m focused less on the thrill of having so many hungry eyes on my body and more focused on why I’m not at home with them. It seems, shockingly, that my inner attention whore is getting all her fixes from her two scarily gorgeous boyfriends and no longer feels the need to Mirrorball herself for strangers. Who’d have thought it?

It’s all a bit shit, as I said, because the three of us are in our honeymoon period, yet our lack of spare time is ruining that. All of which explains why, instead of being out on the town on a Friday night, or at least hanging at Alchemy with our friends, we’re on the sofa with a bottle of lovely white wine and bowls of Max’s excellent Thai green curry in our hands while Shrinking plays.

And the weirdest part of all is that I fucking love it. I’m twenty-five. I should be out on the town, dancing my little socks off, but instead I’m vegging at Max’s place, knowing full well that when the food and the wine and the downtime has restored my two gorgeous worker bees, we’ll take each other to heights no cheering crowd could ever mimic.

‘This is so fucking good,’ Dex groans, shovelling more grub into his mouth.

‘Isn’t it? Max, you’re so clever,’ I say, nestling more closely against Dex. His hair is still damp from his post-gym shower, and he smells indecently good. Also, his t-shirt is the softest. I feel bad that Max cooked for us after the long week he’s had, but he brushed off my concerns. His official line was that cooking is a way for him to unwind, but the unofficial line is that he’s a major feeder. As I’ve told Dex before, feeding is his love language.

Yep. I’ve hit the jackpot.

Dex smiles down at me, resting his fork in his bowl so he can brush a stray strand of hair off my face. He looks relaxed and so very content. They both have my absolute favourite faces in the world. Truly excellent faces. I beam back at him.

‘Fuck, you’re beautiful,’ he says, those big, expressive eyes of his so full of admiration. Affection. ‘I love you so much.’

I don’t freeze so much as gape at him, because I think he just said the L-word. And I’m pretty sure he didn’t intend to.

On my other side, Max barks out a shocked laugh, but I keep on gaping at Dex, watching for him to react, to baulk or turn away or backtrack.

But he doesn’t do any of those things. He widens his eyes and arches his eyebrows like wow, what have I just said, but he doesn’t take it back. He just watches me and bites down on his lip, and I wait.

‘Wow,’ he says, leaning forward so he can set his bowl down on the table. ‘Okay. I didn’t—I planned for it to be a lot more romantic than that when I said it.’

‘But did you mean it?’ Max presses. He slides his arm around my shoulder, like he’s showing me he has my back no matter what Dex says. I inwardly grimace a little, because Max may push Dex all the time when it comes to their dynamic, but no girl wants a guy to double down on a spontaneous declaration of love under duress.

‘It’s okay,’ I murmur, but Dex’s gaze is flitting from me to Max, those long eyelashes fluttering.

‘Of course I meant it, angel,’ he says, a beautiful smile spreading across his face. ‘How could I not? I’m surprised I haven’t blurted it out before.’

My face is hot and my heart is racing and all these feelings are happening to me, swirling around me, enchanting me like a spell. Dex loves me. Oh my God. He loves me. This incredible, sensitive, stunning man loves me. I grip my bowl tightly with trembling hands as he leans in and kisses me slowly, worshipfully. This man and these kisses could melt me down until I’m nothing but a pile of bones.

He pulls away gently and looks over my shoulder, and I feel Max’s arm tensing around me. Dex swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and there’s no mistaking the quiet intensity in his gaze as he looks at Max. If what he said to me tumbled out easily, what he’s about to say to Max strikes me as a truth it’s far more terrifying for him to divulge.

In that split second where they hold each other’s gaze, I find myself praying he says the same three words to Max. Tell him you love him, I urge him silently. Tell him. You can’t leave him hanging after saying that to me. It’ll kill him. He’s so crazy about you.

‘I love you, too,’ he whispers to Max, and their mouths crash together over my shoulder. Max is holding me tightly to him, so we’re in a kind of group hug as they kiss, but he breaks away after just a moment and stands up, pausing the TV. I look up to see what he’s doing. He pushes his and Dex’s half-empty bowls away from the edge of the coffee table and sits down on it so he can face us both.

‘So we’re doing this,’ he says, and his voice sounds oddly stiff. I’d think it was dispassionate, too, if the tremor of emotion in it wasn’t clearly audible. ‘Because this is a big deal.’

It strikes me, then, that neither of us have said it back to Dex yet. He’s given us these gifts, and we haven’t reciprocated. The formal, uptight guy I met at Alchemy a couple of months ago has gone, and the Dex sitting next to me is open-hearted and so giddy with emotion that it just bursts out of him on a quiet Friday night together in front of the TV.

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