Chapter 1 #2
“Are we all ready?” Janice asked as she and Robert marched out of the house. Nally’s dad was still tying his tie as he walked. No one in the family looked completely put together, but that was the Hawthornes to a tee.
“Nally, where’s your date?” Robbie, one of Nally’s other brothers, asked as he and his husband, Toby joined them.
“Good question,” Nally said with a frown.
He pulled out his phone as Janice went about organizing who would drive in which car and where they would park in the city. His intention was to call Sam to see where he was, but he didn’t even get that far. There was a text from Sam waiting for him that had been sent half an hour ago.
Sorry, can’t make it tonight
That was it. No further explanation or deeper apology. He hadn’t even called to explain. It said something that Nally wasn’t all that disappointed. If anything, he was just miffed at being inconvenienced.
“Nally, you’re with us,” Janice ordered him.
“Right,” he said, tucking his phone back in his pocket and following his mum to the old MG that she refused to get rid of, no matter how vintage it was. She loved it because it was vintage. “Sam canceled on me, by the way,” he said as he climbed into the back seat. “So don’t worry about him.”
“I’ve never worried about him, darling,” Janice said as she and Robert got into the front of the car as Rebecca slipped into the back with him.
“I can call one of the Polys,” Rebecca suggested as Janice started the car and recklessly pulled out of her space to head up the caravan of Hawthornes headed into London. “I think Jeremy is free tonight.”
Nally smirked. Rebecca’s little threesome had grown into a sprawling, complicated polycule in the last few months. They’d nicknamed themselves “The Polys”. “Thanks, but no thanks,” he said. “I’ll just call Jude.”
“I don’t see why you didn’t invite Jude in the first place,” Nally’s dad said, glancing over his shoulder at him.
“Jude is my best friend,” Nally said, even as he pulled out his phone and tapped the first number on his speed-dial. “You don’t invite your mates to attend movie premieres with you.”
“Why not?” Janice asked indignantly. “That’s exactly who you should invite.”
Nally didn’t have time to answer. Jude picked up the call right away with, “Mate, aren’t you supposed to be at a posh film premiere?”
“We’re on our way right now,” Nally answered, falling into conversation with his bestie as if they were still going from that morning, when they’d sent each other WhatsApp messages for an hour while going about the rest of their weekday business. “Sam just canceled on me.”
“Wanker,” Jude said, not sounding at all surprised. “He didn’t pull a Timothy on you, did he?”
Nally winced inwardly. Timothy had been their friend back in their first year of uni.
For a while, they had been the Three Musketeers.
Then things had heated up between Jude and Timothy.
They’d had a hot, intense, three-week relationship before Tim had decided he didn’t want to be tied down after all.
He’d dumped Jude hard, Nally had been caught in the middle, and for the first and only time in their tenure as besties, it had looked like Nally and Jude would go their separate ways, too.
Fortunately, that hadn’t happened. Instead, they’d gotten drunk and cried on each other’s shoulders about how they would be friends forever and never let anyone come between them. Bridges were patched up, and Timothy was declared the wanker for fucking and running.
“Things never got close enough for Sam to pull a Timothy,” Nally said. “No harm, no foul.”
“Good. I don’t want to go through that again.”
“Neither do I,” Nally said, then rushed right into, “Want to attend a posh film premiere?”
“With you?”
“In the general proximity of me, yes,” Nally said, grabbing the side of the door as his mum made a particularly nail-biting turn onto the M2. “I suddenly find myself with an extra ticket.”
“Just what every boy wants to hear,” Jude said with a laugh. “Second choice for a night at the cinema.”
“If it makes you feel better, there’s a red carpet,” Nally said with a grin. “Apparently, I get to walk it as the film’s composer.”
“Really? Why didn’t you lead with that?” Jude asked.
“I assumed that you knew how these things work, gigantic social media influencer as you are.” When Jude laughed, Nally went on with, “They only told me this morning. Someone told them people are interested in the score to this thing, so the studio rang me this morning to tell me I’ll be walking the red carpet. ”
“In that case, how can I say no?” Jude said, sounding genuinely excited. “Where and when?”
“The Odeon, Leicester Square, in an hour,” Nally said.
“I’ll be there,” Jude answered.
They said goodbye, and Nally relaxed back into his seat.
That took care of that. And actually, he liked the idea of Jude walking any sort of red carpet with him a thousand times more than he would have liked Sam filling that role.
Not only did Jude know everything there was to know about presenting oneself to the media, he really was Nally’s best friend.
The two of them had met in primary school.
Maybe because he was the last of the Hawthorne children, or maybe because his musical talent had made itself known early, but instead of attending the same local school as the rest of his family, his parents had sent him to a posh arts school in central London.
Nally and Jude had hit it off immediately.
Mostly because they were both bullied by the other kids for being genuine aristocrats and nowhere near as tough as the other boys.
Even in an arts school where half the student body was as queer as a tambourine, there were cool kids and dorks.
He and Jude had never minded being dorks as long as they could be together.
Nally had progressed with his music and composing far faster than Jude had advanced with his acting.
Jude was good, but he had never quite achieved the sort of greatness his parents expected of him.
Which summed up Jude’s relationship with his family in a nutshell.
They let him stay in the arts school in the hopes that he’d at least score character roles, but by the time they graduated and moved on to uni, Jude had become more interested in computers, web design, and being a social media influencer.
Which he was incredibly successful at doing.
“So Jude will be joining us after all?” Janice asked, glancing at Nally in the rear-view mirror.
“Yep,” Nally answered with a smile. “He’ll meet us there.”
“He still lives in Mayfair with his parents, doesn’t he?” Rebecca asked.
Nally winced a little, mostly because it was a sore subject for Jude.
“He does.” And he hated it. Nally couldn’t figure out for the life of him why Jude didn’t simply get his own place and move out.
He spent more time at Hawthorne House than in Mayfair anyhow.
He should have just taken one of the empty flats in the family wing.
“We should invite George and Margaret to supper sometime,” Nally’s dad said, putting on his posh, “Earl Voice” as he liked to call it.
“Goddess, no!” Janice snorted. “The two of them are absolute nobheads.”
The conversation continued as they wound their way into London amidst traffic and the growing excitement of attending a film premiere.
The minutes seemed to drag by, and while everyone else discussed everything from snobbery to whether Matt Bloom should have done the nude scene or not, Nally’s nerves got worse and worse.
What if people did notice the soundtrack for To Serve Him?
What if they thought it was terrible? His entire career might be over before it began.
Or potentially worse, what if people loved the soundtrack and he was dragged into some sort of high-profile situation he wasn’t ready for?
Aside from the fact that he burst out in hives when he was the center of a crowd’s attention, he certainly didn’t want to get sucked into Hollywood.
Yes, it was the epicenter of the film world, but the very last thing he wanted to do was go within a hundred miles of America.
At least Jude would be with him now to help him navigate the mess. His dad was right. He should have just invited Jude to begin with.
It was a good thing the studio had arranged a special area for those with invitations to the premiere to park near Leicester Square.
They never would have gotten anywhere close otherwise.
While the rest of the family fussed and fawned over each other, Nally stepped to the side of the building and pulled out his phone to send Jude his exact location.
He could see Jude’s dot on the map of the program they used to spy on each other moving ever closer from the other side of the square. In just a few minutes—
“Excuse me, you’re Ronald Hawthorne, aren’t you?”
Nally glanced up from his phone, smiling, and found a middling attractive, early middle-aged man in a suit approaching him with wide eyes and a cautious gait. “I’m Ronald Hawthorne, yes,” he said.
The man let out an excited breath and moved quickly forward, hand outstretched. “I’m Andrew Quentin, and I’m your biggest fan.”
Nally’s eyes went wide. “I didn’t know I had fans,” he said, taking the man’s hand with a smile and shaking it.
“Oh, you do. You definitely do,” Quentin said, pumping his hand vigorously…
and not letting go. “I’ve listened to all your music that I’ve been able to find and then some.
You’re utterly brilliant, you know. And you’re adorable.
I could just eat you up.” Quentin increased his grip on Nally’s hand and tugged him suddenly closer. Too close.
Nally swallowed hard, feeling suddenly sick.
“Gosh, no, that sounded all wrong,” Quentin said, laughing tightly and finally letting Nally’s hand go. “I just mean that I think you’re wonderful and I love…I would love to hear more of your music.”
“There’s more to hear tonight,” Nally said, starting to feel a little creeped out by the intensity in Quentin’s eyes and the way he seemed to be sweating far too much for the cool evening. “I composed the soundtrack.”
“I know, I know. That’s why I’m here,” Quentin said. “I’ve already listened to it a dozen times, though.”
“Great,” Nally said, glancing around as subtly as he could for a way to escape the awkward encounter.
Fortunately for him, Jude rounded the corner a few yards away at just that moment.
Nally’s insides pulled every which way at the sight of his friend.
Jude looked amazing, of course. He had the look of a movie star, what with his strong features, blond hair, and blue eyes.
He was a touch on the short side, just like Nally.
They actually had very similar builds and often swapped clothes.
But that wasn’t why Nally was so bloody happy to see his friend. Something about Quentin had the hair standing up on the back of his neck. Seeing Jude made it feel like a hero was coming to his rescue.