Page 24 of Pansies

“I think one should generally celebrate not being on fire.”

He sighed and stared moodily into the shadows of the room. “I liked him, you know. Really liked him. I thought there might be something there. And now it turns out I’m just some dick-bag who made him miserable. And who isn’t worth forgiving.”

“At least you got laid,” said Greg.

“There’s more to life than sex, y’know.”

“Steady on, straight boy.”

“I mean it. I’m nearly thirty. And I’ve spent most of my life looking for”—Alfie didn’t quite have the balls to sayfor love—“for a person in totally the wrong place.”

“Which is why you need to put yourself out there.” Greg did something that was probably supposed to be a grand gesture. “Have some adventures. Make terrible, glorious mistakes.”

Kitty nodded. “I definitely approve of terrible, glorious mistakes.”

“What part ofthirtyare you two ignoring?” Alfie squirmed on the crappy pew thing he was sitting on. Though he wasn’t sure whether he was uncomfortable physically or…emotionally. “I’ve already made enough mistakes to last me a lifetime. And I don’t want to be fucking around. I want to be settling down. I want to wake up next to the same person every day.”

“Well, I want to be mercilessly ravaged by six or seven incredibly gay firemen. But”—Greg shrugged—“as a great philosopher once said: you can’t always get what you want.”

“God.” Alfie tried to get to his feet and nearly knocked the table over. “God. I wish I was straight. I want straight things, I don’t want gay things. I’m shit at being gay.”6

Greg put a hand on his arm. “Trust me, sweetie, you’re very good at some of it. I’m sorry this…flingyou had in South Shields didn’t work out, but you’ll meet someone.”

Finally Alfie managed to stand up, shaking off Greg at the same time, because he really wasn’t in the mood to be stroked or soothed or treated like a pet. “Ididmeet someone. And he hates me because it turns out I bullied the shit out of him fifteen years ago. And there’s nothing I can do to change that.”

“Alfie, come on.” Greg gazed up at him with an infuriating mixture of pity and frustration. “Sometimes sex is just sex. You don’t need to invest deep meaning into it.”

“So, what, that was eight meaningless months we had?”

It was not a good time for Greg to roll his eyes. “No, of course not. I didn’t say that. You’re just so provincial sometimes.”7

“Provincial? Just because I have some fucking values? Fuck you. No. Really. Fuck you.” Alfie pulled out his wallet and tossed some twenties onto the table. “That should cover my round. I’m done.”

He shoved the whole pew physically out of his way, scraping it over the flagstones with a nails-on-blackboard squeal, and stormed out.

6

Alfie hailed a cab on the street and was home in about half an hour. He lived in—or rather slept in and occasionally visited—a penthouse apartment at the top of the Landmark West Tower in Canary Wharf. It had interior design.

Sometimes, he kind of hated it.

Dragging a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale out of his otherwise empty fridge, he drank it on the glass-walled balcony. The city glittered silver and gold, its reflection burned into the river and onto the sky.

His phone rang. Kitty. He ignored her.

He was trying not to think. He’d been doing too much of that.1 Except it didn’t seem to be helping with anything. It just meant he was distracted at work, distracted at home. And every time he looked in the mirror, he wasn’t sure who was going to look back at him. He thought he’d finally got a handle on who he was, but South Shields and the wedding and Fen had messed it all up again. The truth was, the boy that Fen had known—known and rightly hated—was still part of him. He would be as long as that was all Fen saw when he looked at Alfie.

A text came in. It was from Greg. It said:Oh and fuck you too.

Alfie’s thumb hovered over the touch screen. It wouldn’t take much to send aSorry mate.

But he didn’t.

Because tonight he was Alfie Bell: Shithead.

When they’d been carefully finding their way back to being friends, Kitty had told him she thought caring about someone was pretty resilient, once you got past hurt and anger and all the bad stuff. It was a nice idea, this tough-toffee love of hers stretching between people, but Alfie wasn’t sure he believed in it. He thought maybe it was more like those sugar sticks he used to get from the corner shop, glossy and brittle and easily snapped.

He stared across the water, his mouth full of the taste of home, and remembered different lights.

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