Page 110 of Unstitch

He allows me a small, pleased smile then. ‘I know. Me too.’

‘Do you?’ When Darcy meets him at work for a quick coffee, I know he kisses her in Loeb’s lobby. I know he slings his arm around his ravishing, appropriate girlfriend as he saunters out into the sunshine with her. I know, because she’s told me. And I can only imagine the looks they get—looks of approval. Envy. Because they’re a beautiful couple in the exact way that society expects.

Passersby will glance at the extraordinarily handsome, dark-haired guy in a suit, his arm around the gorgeous red-head. Her head is probably thrown back in laughter—it usually is—and he’ll be smiling down at her adoringly. They make the kind of couple that you automatically look at and think they should have babies together. They’d make such beautiful babies.

I know this, because that’s how I feel when I look at them, too. They’re radiant. Darcy’s so good for him. She nurtures him. Emboldens him. Her levity is the perfect counterbalance for his seriousness. And even if what he and I have is extraordinary, what they have is the culmination of everything he’s been raised to aspire to.

Take me out of the equation, and you could argue that Darcy’s an audacious choice for him. I can’t see him telling his father his girlfriend dances naked at a sex club, although if his sister can hide the fact that her husband owns the club, I’m sure Dex could fudge the details of Darcy’s job.

Still, you see what I mean. He’s told me about his previous fuck buddies. Safe, over-achieving, impeccably groomed career women who want him for his patrician looks and job title and platinum Amex. Darcy’s a breath of fucking fresh air compared to them. Thank fuck he’s had the good sense to hitch his wagon to hers.

But that leaves me so far off left field on the spectrum of appropriate life choices for Dex that I’m pretty sure I’m sitting in the equivalent of a dung heap.

And I need him to choose me. Us. I need him to find his backbone, and make the conscious decision to fuck everyone who doesn’t have his best interests at heart, and put on a giant pair of wellies, and take a flying leap into the dung heap with me.

So when I ask him if being public is something he really wants, I’m trying to dig under those layers of manners and work out what the actual fuck he really wants.

‘I want it in that I fantasise about it, all the time,’ he says, screwing his face up like he’s articulating his thoughts in real time. ‘I want to be that person, so badly I can’t tell you. But then I imagine the steps I’d have to take to actually get there, and it’s like asking me to jump out of a plane without a parachute. I totally freeze—it’s completely terrifying.’

I have many, many things to say to this, but I force myself to be silent as he stumbles on.

‘The idea of walking into, say, the Arts Club or Harry’s Bar and having you stand up and cup my face in your hands and just kiss me in front of the entire place—I imagine it, and it makes me so proud and emotional that I could cry just thinking about it. I want that so fucking much.’

He reaches over now, cupping my face for a moment, and I wonder if he’s even conscious he’s doing it. But there’s no doubting the sincerity in his devastating eyes.

‘But it’s also so horrifying it makes my balls shrivel up,’ he confesses, and I spit out a shocked laugh. ‘Not you—but all the judgement. Being looked at and talked about and called names. It would be exactly like standing up in the middle of one of those places and stripping naked while everyone watches.’

Darcy’s rubbing his back, and she lays her head against his shoulder. ‘That’s so awful. I totally get it. And you’re not the only one who’s scared. It makes me feel a bit sick, too. I love you both so much, and I’d be so insanely proud to walk into a room with you two on my arms. I’d be like, hi, bitches. But the idea of having to explain to random fucking people every day that I’m with two guys, and knowing everyone’s thinking, wow, she must really like dick, is completely mortifying. I’d argue the queer stuff is more normalised in society than the throuple stuff.’

I’m smiling at Darcy’s humorous take on our situation, as well as her declaration of love, and so is Dex. But she’s right, of course. There are two issues at stake here. Dex is queer and still in the closet. And the three of us are in the type of relationship that our society is not yet remotely equipped to handle.

‘I love you, angel,’ he tells her, brushing his lips over her temple. ‘And I get that. It’s scary for all of us.’

‘You’re right, both of you,’ I interject. ‘But you’re wrong about one thing, Dex. You’d have a giant fucking parachute, and that’s me and Darcy.’

He looks at me, and the emotion shining in his eyes has me pushing on.

‘It’s really quite straightforward,’ I tell them. ‘It comes down to choosing yourself, and choosing us, over everything else, plain and simple. Yes, it’ll be shitty, especially for you’—I nod at Dex—‘but what I’ve been telling you all along is that none of it—none of the bullshit or judgement or slurs—is more important than your happiness and your right to live your life as the person you are fucking supposed to be.’

I blink away the wetness in my eyes. It’s so frustrating, this topic. Of course I can see how terrifying it is for him. Of course. But he’s subjugated his desires for decades now, and I need him to be so fucking sick of it that he decides enough is enough. Only he can do that.

‘There will be people who don’t understand, and people who see your choices as sick or sinful or deviant. Whatever. I’m sure there’ll be some heartbreaking choices for you to make, but I’m not asking you to choose me and Darcy over your parents or anyone else—I’m asking you to finally, for God’s sake, choose your own fucking happiness.’

I squeeze Darcy’s hand and release it before I reach over to Dex. It’s my turn to take his face in my hands and I do, cradling his jaw, marvelling at the multitude of emotions warring in his eyes.

‘I don’t know how many times you need to hear this,’ I tell him gruffly, ‘but you are perfect. I’ve told you before, and I’ll keep on telling you till you get it through that thick head of yours. You’re perfect as you are. Your needs, your choices. You have a beautiful heart, and everyone who has you in their life is the better for it. And if they don’t accept you for who you are, they don’t deserve to be in your life.

‘You get to exist in the world as yourself and not change a single fucking thing to accommodate anyone else. Understood? You’re allowed to go out there, and take up space, and stand in the middle of a restaurant full of your industry peers and fucking revel in it when a man kisses you and tells you you’re his favourite part of his day. You deserve all that. You deserve everything you’ve ever wanted, and I really, really wish you’d just finally make the decision to take it all. Because, God knows, it’s overdue.’

77

DARCY

When the going gets tough, you know it’s time to bring in the girls. Tonight’s little rendezvous with Belle and Maddy has been in the diary for a couple of weeks, but it honestly couldn’t have come at a better time.

We’ve even dragged Nat out. She and I don’t need to be at Alchemy until eight, and Belle and Maddy are done for the day, which means we have a couple of hours to enjoy some food at Sexy Fish, an Asian restaurant in Mayfair that’s totally up its own arse yet extremely fabulous.

Belle’s a couple of months away from popping, but she’s on good form, looking disgustingly glowy. Her bump is dinky and perky and ridiculously cute, and she even let me feel her baby kicking. The feel of that pressure against my hand did things to my ovaries that I don’t remotely want to acknowledge.

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