Page 121 of For Real

I brushed his fringe out of his eyes. “Yes, really. I told you. And you know, it’s bad manners to get excited when you hear about someone being miserable.”

“Yeah, but I was miserable without you too, so it’s comforting. And for the record”—he turned back to Grace and Sam—“I didn’t fuck off. I had, like, a thing, and I didn’t have his number.”

I could feel my friends’ attention on us like heat. It wasn’t intrusive, but it was certainly intense. I could understand their curiosity and their concern, and I was tired of hiding. Since Robert, I’d been so wary. I’d lived like a jackal, hoarding my happiness as though it could be stolen from me at any moment. I slid an arm round Toby and drew him tight against my side where he belonged. “He had a funeral, and it was my fault he couldn’t contact me.”

“Well, I’m just glad I don’t have to worry about you anymore because frankly”—Grace gestured illustratively at herself—“I have better things to do with my time.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, now worrying about Laurie is off the agenda, you’ve got space for a whole new hobby. You should… What’s the name you Poms have for that thing where you jump up and down and hit each other with sticks?”

“Sex?”

“Gardening?”

He snapped his fingers. “Morris dancing. You could do that.”

“I will not,” said Grace coldly, “be doing that.”

I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry you felt you had to worry about me.”

“Oh, you know.” She shrugged. “Love. Friendship. Comes with the territory.”

“And thank you for coming round.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to watch When Harry Met Sally with you while crying into a tub of Häagen-Dazs, or anything like that. I was going to take you to a party tonight and try to get you laid.”

“Well, thank God he came back.”

I gave Toby a grateful little squeeze, but he clearly had other ideas. “Ooh, party. I like parties.”

“I do not like parties,” I said firmly.

“Hey, look.” The unexpected seriousness of Sam’s tone startled everyone. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to mention it. The elephant in the room.” He leaned forward, interlaced fingers hanging between his knees. “Laurie, you reek of sex, and there’s…lemon sauce, I think, in your eyebrows. Can you go take a shower, mate?”

I ran out of the room, leaving them laughing.

When I came back, Toby had made tea, and his lemon meringue pie was sitting in the middle of the coffee table.

“We’ve been promised,” Grace said, “that you had sex in the vicinity of this pie, involving only the components of the pie, and not the pie itself. So we’ve consented to eat it. Though apparently we have to wait awhile until it’s cooled.”

The afternoon passed pleasantly between my friends, my lover, and a lemon meringue pie. I thought Toby was a little nervous—as he had been initially at Oxford—but he soon relaxed. Sam was so laid back he was generally believed to be impossible to dislike, and Grace was Grace.

And, as it happened, Toby’s lemon meringue pie was incredibly good. Foodgasmic was Grace’s word. Though I’d liked eating it from Toby’s fingers better.

They left around seven to get ready, furnishing me—at Toby’s insistence—with the party details, in case I changed my mind.

“Are you being ashamed of me again?” he asked, as soon as they were gone and we were clearing up the tea things. “Not wanting to take me places?”

“No, it’s just going to those kind of parties was what I did before I met you.”

“Those kind of parties?”

I cleaned a stray fleck of meringue from the pie plate. “Private parties, Toby.”

“What, you mean like sex parties?”

I nodded, hoping that would be enough to shut him up.

“If we go,” he asked, undeterred, “do we have to like…do anything?”

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