Page 129 of For Real

But I think I’d look like a rent boy. A cheap one.

So funeral suit it is. I leave the collar undone and the tie behind, so at least it’s kind of smart-casual funeral. Laurie’s in dark blue. It makes the grey in his eyes all pale and pearly, more than usually wolfish. I love it.

He takes me to this place in Mayfair. It has a Michelin star. I have no idea how he’s managed to get a booking at such short notice, but he just gives me a mysterious look and tells me he knows people. I don’t know if he’s feeling nostalgic for Oxford, or if it’s the only place he could get into, or if he thinks I’ll like it, but it’s very…brown. Wooden floors and oak panelling gleaming darkly under this huge skylight thing. The tables are all squished pretty close together, but soon we’re seated at one, and nobody has made any comments about me looking like a rent boy or Laurie looking like my dad.

So it’s all good.

I disappear into the menu, and Laurie lets me order for him. He’s indulging me a bit, and even though we only do kinky stuff in a sex context—honestly, it’s the only context I want to do kinky stuff in, the rest of the time I want a boyfriend—I think we’re sort of flirting around the edges of it right now. I’m pretty sure it’s as far as we’re ever going to take it, but it’s kind of obvious to both of us we’re each getting our own thrill out of it. I like choosing for him, and he likes being chosen for.

Laurie blushes a little bit as I engage the waiter, but the guy is either really well trained or a really nice person or just really used to accepting the dynamics of other people’s relationships, because while he talks to both of us, he defers the decisions to me and answers all my questions. Because I’ve got loads.

We have pork belly with snails. The crackling is crisp and velvety at the same time, and the snails come with carrot purée and roasted garlic, and they’re kind of this perfect earthy contrast. I practically swoon, and Laurie faffs with the napkin over his lap and hisses at me to stop having sex with the food.

That kind of sobers me up, not because of what he says, but because I shouldn’t be allowed to be this happy right now. Not with my granddad being dead and Monday coming at me like a train down a tunnel.

Laurie spots it, though—the shift in my mood—and holds my hand over the table. In public and everything. I cling to him and let him make it okay. He tells me the stuff he’s been telling me all weekend: it’s natural, and not wrong at all, and sometimes I’m going to feel bad, and sometimes I’m not, and there’s no rules. It doesn’t mean I loved my granddad any less if I’m not sad all the time.

I get it. I do. Rationally what he’s saying makes sense. But it’s like there’s something between us, between me and the world, this…crust I know is there but can’t break through. I try to remind myself that Granddad wasn’t, like, a psychopath. He wouldn’t want me to be miserable. But that’s somehow worse in a way because all he is anymore is dead. And he can’t want anything for me or from me ever again.

And I don’t know how I’m supposed to deal with that. I’m kind of dizzy but in my brain, all the time. Like I’m going to fall over. I don’t want to go back to work. I want to stay with Laurie. I want him to take me to Paris. I want him to hold me until my world stops spinning and I’m strong enough to stand on my own again.

Which is so completely fucking pathetic.

Besides, if I don’t go in, Joe will probably fire me, and then I’ll have to figure out what to do next. And I can’t. I just can’t do that right now.

We have the bouillabaisse for our mains, which Laurie—I think trying to make me laugh again—confesses he would never have ordered on account of not being able to pronounce it and not knowing what it is. So I go on about Marseille bouillabaisse for a while, showing off basically, until I feel a bit like me again. It’s a portion for two, and it comes in this huge copper pan thing, along with croutons and rouille sauce, and it’s weirdly romantic, sharing this vat of stew on a chilly winter-spring evening.

I think the main fish in there is hake, not rascasse, but the amount of saffron in the stock is so completely wonderful I pretty much do want to have sex with it. Even Laurie seems a bit dazed about how fucking good the whole thing tastes.

We finish with honey ice cream and crushed honeycomb, which I’m slightly dubious about because I’m convinced it’s going to be too sweet. But it isn’t. Somehow it’s subtle. I guess that’s the sort of shit that gets you a Michelin star.

I’m discussing this with Laurie as we’re crunching through honeycomb, and somehow…I don’t know…but somehow I’m too relaxed, or not paying attention properly, or love struck and food hypnotised, but what he says is, “Are you going to have your own restaurant some day?” and what I say is, “Yes.”

And then I’m completely terrified.

Because once you’ve thought something like that, or said it, all you’ve done is given yourself something to fail at.

Or have taken away.

We don’t have sex that night. It’s kind of the first time ever. But I’m too happy and sad and scared of tomorrow and, on top of that, scared of not having sex in case Laurie minds, but he doesn’t seem to. He just holds me while I’m very, very small. Too small for everything.

All because my weekend with Laurie is over, and I have to go back to Greasy Joe’s and the life I’ve kind of accidentally made for myself that I don’t know how to live and don’t know how to change.3

I wish I could stay in the circle of Laurie’s arms where everything’s all right.

Which is probably why I forget about tomorrow, and don’t even set the alarm on my phone, and I sleep, at last I fucking sleep, deep and dreamless and stupidly happy, in the world Laurie makes for me. Until Greasy Joe wakes me up with a phone call at half nine, because I’m late, I’m so late, and Luigi’s sick, and Bella’s had to go home, and everything’s a mess, and I’m a fucking irresponsible kid, and what the fuck do I know, and I need to get the fuck down there, right the fuck away. For fuck’s sake.

Like insanely angry is his modus operandi.

I know he doesn’t mean it mean it.

But the shock…after everything…after being so safe and cared for…practically rips my skin off.

And suddenly, everything with Laurie seems like bullshit. A soap bubble, fragile and floating away from me. And I’m so not a prince. I’m a kid, a fucking irresponsible kid who can’t keep a shitty job at a shitty caff properly.

This is how it really is.

Not…this…this fucking bullshit soap bubble with a man who’s going to wake up one morning and see how fucking crap I am.

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