Page 64 of Going Solo

Another silence. Cole’s face stayed hidden behind his phone.

“One,” he said, and something in his voice sounded broken. “I don’t want to talk about it. Can’t, in fact. NDA. Pop star stuff. You know how it is.” He emerged from under his phone, his big chestnut eyes searching mine.

“What about you? Have you had any boyfriends?” He waggled his perfectly trimmed eyebrows.

“Since you?”

“Yeah.”

“No, I’ve been sitting out on my widow’s walk this entire time, quietly stitching my hymen back together and waiting for you to return from the sea.”

Cole snorted. “Come on, there must have been someone special. You can’t have been single this whole time. Look at you. You’re still gorgeous, even without the puppy fat.”

I rolled my eyes and looked away but felt the rush of heat go to my face like mission control had fired up all burners and was preparing for lift-off.

“No one serious,” I said, watching a random stranger shake off his drips. “I’ve been going solo for a decade.”

I could have told him about the hook-ups and the endless arrangements with various “down-low” lads who had more to lose than I did, but why should I? I didn’t owe him that.

Cole looked baffled. “Was I your last boyfriend?”

“You try sitting in a bar or going on GayHoller when you’re me,” I said, annoyed. “Every arsehole thinks he’s the first guy to ask if he’s ‘marriage material.’”

Cole burst into laughter.

“It ain’t funny,” I said, shifting my leg to make his head accidentally-on-purpose bump into the steering wheel.

“Ow!”

“And those are only the ones who didn’t straight-up rinse me for ever thinking I was good enough for you in the first place.”

“Come off it, no one does that.”

“A lot of people hate me because of you, Cole.”

Cole’s thumb was scrolling urgently through his phone. “Not everyone hates you. I know for a fact plenty of fans were desperate for us to get together. Did you never read any Colby fan fiction?”

“Someone wrote fan fiction about us?”

“Alotof people wrote fan fiction about us.” Cole was still scrolling. “Wattpad is a wild place.”

“When do you get the time to read fanfiction?”

“Seventy-five per cent of being a pop star is sitting around bored out of your mind, waiting for something to happen. People don’t appreciate that,” he said. “Anyway, a lot of the stories are quite good. You should definitely read some. In fact, we should read some now.”

“I don’t think?—”

“Toby stood naked before him.” Cole was reading, his voice breathy and mocking. “As naked as the day he was born. Only six shades more orange. Exactly how Cole liked him.”

“Wait, did you already have that open in your phone?”

“Toby was as hard as notorious East End gangster Reggie Kray (or whichever one was the gay one) after a particularly satisfying kill.”

“You cannot be serious.”

“Cole beckoned him over, eyes devouring him. His hole burned with desire to feel Toby inside him—burned with an intensity he hadn’t known since that time he accidentally got Veet up there?—”

I laughed. “You’re making this up!” I said, pushing Cole off my leg, so he had to sit up.

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