Page 134 of For Real

I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to cry. I carefully turn my head. Meet his eyes. Nearly cry anyway, because he looks so confused. “There’s nothing wrong with me, Laurie. It’s just…this is who I am. It’s who I’ve always been. Someone with a shitty job because it’s all they can get.”

He leans in like he’s going to kiss me, but I flinch back, so he doesn’t. Folds his arms instead, maybe so he won’t be tempted to reach for me, but it just makes him look faraway and unassailable. “This is what you’re doing, but it isn’t who you are. You’re a clever and talented young man with a lot of potential—”

“You sound like my English teacher before I got that D. You sound like one of the dads when they can be arsed to pretend to take an interest.”

He steps away.

And I immediately wish he hadn’t. I’m so fucked up right now that I can’t even work out whether I want my boyfriend to hold me.

“That’s not fair,” he says in this too-calm voice. But I totally got to him. I can tell from his mouth, the flush on his cheeks. “I’m not trying to be some…sort…of father figure here, and I don’t think that’s what you want either.”

It’s not, but he’s taken away what I wanted, which was what we had when he didn’t know about this stuff and I could be who he thought I was.

He sighs. He’s not angry, he’s disappointed. Yeah, yeah. Aren’t they always? “Toby, I just want you to talk to me. Please.”

“What’s there to say?”

“I want an explanation.” He knows how bad that sounds because the flush deepens. “I mean, I want to understand.”

“Why?” I give him a hard stare. “Because all of a sudden who I am and what I’m doing isn’t good enough for you?”

“It’s not good enough for you.”

My heart’s this red-hot lump. I think I’m going to be sick. “How the fuck do you know what’s good enough for me?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

But everything I’ve ever heard about me is in what he just said. Tobermory is clever, but doesn’t apply himself. Tobermory has potential, but doesn’t live up to it. Tobermory needs focus. Tobermory needs discipline. Tobermory needs to decide what he wants and work for it. I tuck my hands into the pockets of my hoodie to hide the fact they’re shaking.

“I just meant,” he goes on, like this is supposed to help, “you could do so much more than this.” I’ve heard that before too. The thing is, nobody’s ever told me what, or how. “You told me last night you wanted to have your own restaurant.”

I wish I hadn’t. It’s going to hang over me forever. “So?”

“Is that why you dropped out of university? To go into catering?”

People are always so fucking desperate for you to have some sort of plan. “Not really.”

“Then what happened?” I can tell how hard he’s trying to stay patient with me.

But that just pisses me off even more. Makes me stubborn and petulant and like I don’t want to give him anything. Which on some level, I know is stupid and unfair. The problem is I don’t know how to stop. “I didn’t like it.”

“What—I don’t—” He sighs, and I definitely don’t like this Laurie. This exasperated adult who doesn’t get why it matters that Ted Hughes doesn’t give a flying fuck about zoos. Who doesn’t get me. “What does that even mean?”

I kind of explode. “It means I didn’t fucking like it. What don’t you get? Two terms in, I realised I didn’t care about the law, I didn’t like studying it, and I certainly didn’t want to be a lawyer. So I dropped out, and here I am, working at the only place that’d take me.”

Laurie doesn’t say anything. That makes me almost happy in this awful, nasty way like I’m saying I told you so to myself. And it totally kills me at the same time, because there’s some deeply sad and pathetic part of me that wants him to see all this and love me anyway.

“Isn’t,” he tries at last, so carefully he might as well just stab me in the face and have done, “isn’t there something else you’re…interested in or want to do? You could study something. Or develop your cooking? Start working towards that restaurant?”

Does he have to keep coming back to that? I mean…yes…maybe…? “I don’t know.” My voice bounces off the stainless steel. “I just don’t fucking know, okay? I’ve never known. My entire life is just me pretending—not very well—that I have a clue what I’m doing. But I don’t. I just don’t. I don’t have, like, a dream or a goal, and I don’t know how to get one, or what’s wrong with me that I don’t.”

Great. Now I’m crying again. Just to make me hate everything a little bit more.

Laurie’s hand reaches across the space between us, but I don’t feel like touching it. “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re nineteen. It makes perfect sense that you aren’t sure what to do with your life yet.”

“Oh yeah, and what were you doing when you were my age?”

At least he has the grace to look sheepish. “Well, I was studying medicine, but—”

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