Page 17 of Tangled With the Wrong Guy
‘Yep. One year ago today should’ve been my big day. Today is my un-wedding anniversary.’
They’d just turned a corner, and Oscar Wilde’s tomb came into view. ‘Here’s your man,’ she said.
He glanced briefly at it, then back at Chloe. ‘Look, I really am sorry. What shitty luck, getting sucked into this stupid prank today of all days.’
‘Maybe now you understand why I’m angry.’
‘I do.Totallyunderstandable.’
They stopped talking as they reached the grave, which was watched over by a strange, enormous sculpture featuring a horizontal winged Egyptian figure, like something on a pharaoh’s tomb. It was surrounded by a glass barrier, erected to stop people leaving red lipstick kisses all over the stone. Who knew howthattradition had started.
‘Oscar,’ said Joel, resting his free hand on top of the barrier, gazing at the tomb. ‘Hello there, mate.’
His face was so serious; he looked incredibly sad. She remembered – he’d negotiated his entire stag weekend around a visit to this grave.
‘Here,’ she said quietly, passing Joel the sunflower she’d saved from the bouquet. ‘Give him this.’
He took it from her, and she couldn’t read the expression in his eyes. ‘Thanks.’ He tossed it in, and it landed on the stone beneath the sculpture, a splash of bright yellow in the gathering dusk. She saw him mentally messaging the dead playwright.
‘The love that dare not speak its name,’ he said, after a while.
‘Were those his words?’
‘His lover’s.’ He turned to her. ‘Oscar got married because it was expected. Had two kids – did you know?’
‘Did he? No, I didn’t know that.’
‘There wasn’t really an alternative, back then,’ he said. ‘And look what happened when he finally found the courage to be himself. Two years in prison, hard labour.’
‘Yes, so sad. But people still love his writing, his plays, and even now they come to visit him. I wish he could know that.’
‘He said,Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.’
Chloe laughed. ‘Are you tired, Joel?’
He smiled. ‘Very tired, yes. Are you curious, Chloe?’
‘No. I know about men now.’
As she gazed into those soulful eyes, it was as if he was trying to tell her something. And then a lightbulb went off in her head.Oh my god.
Joel was gay. Those beautiful, sensitive eyes; his lack of enthusiasm for all the glorious sleaze on offer in Paris, his need to come and pay tribute at Oscar’s grave. For some reason, perhaps because of his family, he was afraid to come out, and was about to begin living a lie, married to a woman who perhaps he didn’t love.
BUT. She remembered their moment by the tree. A wholly heterosexual male reaction to a girl landing in his lap.
BUT also – what had he said?I don’t usually … I mean, I’m not …
What had he meant?I don’t usually fancy girls?I’m not into girls?
Maybe he was bi. Kind of … gay in nature, in spirit, in his heart, but neutral when it came to the physical side of things? Chloe, with her one serious relationship and her suburban-Yorkshire upbringing, had little experience in the nuances of sexual orientation.
Her only gay friends were a couple of guys on her university course, and she’d lost touch with them since coming to France. And she would never be cool enough to make friends with the beautiful gender-fluid people who wafted around the boulevards of Paris.
All at once she felt a crushing sadness, a sense of defeat.Joel’s gay. She should have known he was too good to be true – someone this good-looking, so nice. And she admitted to herself the reason for that sadness. She fancied him. Shereallyfancied him. No, it was more than that – she was drawn to him, like a bee to a blue flower. Herheartwas drawn to him. When she looked into those eyes, she saw his soul, and it was beautiful.
Damn!Damn it all to hell and back.
But then … he was getting married, for whatever reason. She shouldn’t be entertaining thoughts – fantasies – that might lead him to do to his fiancé what Dan had done to her. In fact, it would be even worse than what Dan had done to her. A night of passion in a cemetery in Paris (hell yes), would be a greater offence than five minutes with a hooker in Huddersfield.
