Page 113 of For Real

“How about not pissing on my life?”

“How is suggesting you take some time to deal with the loss of your grandfather pissing on your life?”

He rolled away from me onto his side, his body curving like a comma. A comma that didn’t want me touching it. “You were sneery,” he said, in a small voice.

Very tentatively I laid my hand across the smooth dip at the top of his flank, and he didn’t shake me off. “I’m sorry, Toby.”

“Nobody gets it. Nobody I knew at university bothered to keep in touch, and all my school friends who went to university think it’s weird.”

“If it’s what you want to do, then”—I smoothed my fingertips lightly over his tender skin—“fuck them.”

“Hah. Easy for you to say. Bet nobody thinks you’ve wasted your life.”

Well. No. At least, not professionally speaking, although how I came to it had been an inextricable mixture of my parents’ determination, my own temperament, and an early recognised need for purpose and stability. It hadn’t precisely been a choice, but I wouldn’t have chosen otherwise. “You can’t compare yourself to what other people are doing. Only you can know what’s right for you.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Once again, I was obliged to remind myself that it wasn’t appropriate to lose your temper with the grief-stricken. “But—”

“Laurie, like, seriously. What part of ‘don’t want to talk about it’ are you interpreting as irrelevant?”

I gave up. We didn’t have to do this now. I slid an arm over him, and curled myself around him so that we were two commas now—quotation marks, perhaps—and gradually he relaxed into me.

I was just on the verge of falling into a doze when he said very softly, “I’m sorry I can’t go away with you.”

“There’ll be another time.” I kissed the tops of his shoulders, where the skin was rough and sweet beneath my lips.

“Where would we have gone?”

“Anywhere we wanted. Paris, maybe.”

“Because that isn’t at all clichéd.” His voice wavered as he spoke, which made me think he was more likely trying to hold back tears than rebuff me.

“We still have the weekend.”

He sniffled. “I guess.”

I put my lips to the back of his neck and felt the shiver move through his skin. “Two whole days, just for us. We can do whatever you like with them.”

“Really?” His hair tickled my nose as he shifted.

“Yes.”

He seemed to be thinking about it. “I–I want to make you a lemon meringue pie.”

Not quite what I expected. “All right.”

“And have some seriously filthy sex.”

That seemed more like it. “As you wish.”

“And…and…okay, I can’t really think of anything else right now.”

“I’m sure other things will occur to us.” My ridiculous, beautiful boy. I would have found a way to give him the moon if he’d wanted it.

He pushed his arse against my cock, making me gasp. “Is there anything you want to do?”

I wasn’t sure I could top filthy sex and a lemon meringue pie. I was about to say so, when I realised there was something else I owed him. “I’d like to take you on a date.”

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