Page 72 of For Real

“But aren’t there, like, secondary explosions and stuff when bombs go off?”

“Sometimes.”

“And you went down there anyway?”

“It’s my job. I was probably terrified, but I didn’t really think about it.”

“You’re one of my favourite people in the universe.” He nuzzled under my chin like an overly enthusiastic, slightly amorous cat. “And you totally blow my mind sometimes.”

For lack of any other response, I cleared my throat, pleased and embarrassed and slightly overwhelmed. What was I supposed to say? Ditto? Because he did, with his honesty and his playfulness, his unexpected strength.

“You know what else blows my mind?” he asked.

“What?”

“Just other people’s lives generally. How fucking real they are sometimes. Like, take my great-granddad. He was in the war, right? He doesn’t think he was brave either because it was just what he had to do, you know?”

His voice had grown a little husky. I stroked his hair a bit, letting its wayward strands fall softly between my fingers, and then he began to speak again.

“We used to do Poppy Day together every year and—”

“Used to?”

“Yeah, he’s not well. We missed last year. Had to watch it on the telly. We’re not religious or anything, but we always used to go to a service with his army mates. And I’d get all kind of…tight inside…when I saw them, always one or two less than the year before, shuffling and limping and hobbling into the church, all these frail and, like, totally valiant old men, you know.”7

“I know.” I kissed him close-lipped and still tasted salt.

He sniffed rather wetly into my collar. “Once in Africa, Granddad’s whole unit got killed or scattered so there was just three of them left, starving and ragged and desperately trying to get back. But there was this minefield between them and the British Army, and they were all like, ‘Well this is it, curtains.’ But he was like, ‘No way. I’m a Jacobs; I’m going to be first against the wall when the Germans catch us.’ So he just, like, leads them over this…this fucking minefield, y’know. This kid from East London whose name nobody is going to remember but me.”

Oh God. Toby, my Toby. I held him tightly, though really, I was the one who felt held. Surrounded by him and all his deep, fierce love. “Toby…”

“Yeah?”

Yeah what indeed. “Let me take you to bed.”

He blinked, damp eyelashes scraping my neck. “Why are you even asking? Hell yeah.”

We untangled, stood—in my case rather stiffly. I held out my hand, and he took it, and we went upstairs together.

I stripped him, laid him out, and covered him with my body, and he lifted his knees and wrapped his legs around me. “I don’t think I’m ever going to do anything amazing.”

“You’re already amazing,” was the last coherent thing I said to him that night.

* * *

He woke me the next morning with a kiss, a cup of tea, and a plate of his inexplicably delicious scrambled eggs. We were both a little shy after the intimacies of the night before, but even that was pleasure of a kind. I’d shuffled away, bruised, almost satisfied, and slightly shamed, from so many semi-anonymous encounters that I could no longer differentiate them, but I couldn’t remember the last time it had been like this. If it should even have been possible to be thirty-seven and feel so new.

“Laurie?” Toby was sprawled naked on his stomach, his feet swinging in the air, the silverish sunlight pooling on his back and shining on the curve of his arse. He was entirely at ease, beautiful, some Wildean wet dream given form. Just for me. God. Was this my taste now? Hyacinth boys? Or could I say my taste was simply Toby?

“Yes?”

“What’s in the Bluebeard room?”

I should have expected it—he never let anything go—but, nevertheless, the question hit me hard enough to make the blood roar in my ears. “Nothing. I mean, almost nothing. Just some relics. It’s mostly empty.”

He propped his chin on his hand and eyed me slyly. “Mostly empty except for a single rose in a glass case, wilting slowly, petal by petal, and, like, waiting for you to learn to love again.”

For a moment I thought I was angry, but it turned out I was laughing—a slightly odd laugh, edged with pain. Was that really how he saw me? My love as abstract and ridiculous as a fairy tale? “Fine. You can look if you want.”

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