Chapter Twenty-Three
Twenty three
Christian
Iwatch, impressed, as Felix plates up steaming hot bowls of buttery prawn linguine. He grates parmesan over the top, sprinkles some parsley, and lifts both plates over to where I’m sat at the dining table.
I lower my head to sniff. “This looks and smells absolutely divine, sweetheart. Thank you.”
“I actually really like cooking, as it turns out.”
“You just needed the right teacher.”
I twist the lengths around my fork and manoeuvre it into my mouth. It tastes as good as it looks. Garlic, lemon, butter, and cheese are melting around the perfectly cooked pasta.
“Nico is a frighteningly good cook. I had to start making an effort.”
I grin. “That competitive streak is still alive and well, I see.”
“Now I’m better at cooking and dancing than he is,” he says with a playful smirk.
We eat in comfortable silence for a while before I take a break to drink my wine, white and chilled, while Felix has water.
“So, when are you coming home?” he asks as he tears a small, fingernail-sized piece of bread from the roll he’s been eyeing since he sat down.
“I don’t know.”
“Surely the heart attack helped shift things into perspective? You don’t want to die over there; they’d ship you back in the cargo hold with a Union Jack over the fucking coffin like some kind of morbid Spice Girl throwback.”
I laugh, coughing up the piece of bread I’d just swallowed. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Well, it’s true,” he points out. “No one deserves that.”
“I’d be dead; it would hardly matter.”
“It would matter to me!” He sounds personally offended by the mere concept.
“Felix, you can just say you miss me and that you want me to move home.”
“Well, that’s a given. My friendship circle is embarrassingly small these days—through no fault of my own.” He doesn’t quite manage to hide the look of hurt that flickers over his face. “And I’d very much like to cook for you more.”
“How have things been with Ava?”
He tenses a little. “They’re good. I mean, she’s still so careful with me, like she’s afraid of making the wrong joke or saying the wrong thing.
It’s weird because it’s never been like that between us; we were always just on the same level, right away.
It’s why we worked so well. But, yeah, it’s better. Better than when you left.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear it. And Charlie?”
“Who?” he says coldly. “When he left for Vienna, I ceased thinking about him; he doesn’t exist to me.”
“Sorry, sweetheart.”
“It’s fine. So, what about you? Do you have any friends over there? Leo’s still there, right?”
“I resent the assertion that my only friend is my son.”
“I never said that. Anyway, does he even like you?” He gives me an angelic smile before shovelling a forkful of pasta into his mouth.
“Honestly, I’ve no idea. He’s been lying to me for months.”
Felix’s eyes go wide before he wipes his mouth with his napkin. “What do you mean?”
I sigh, twisting the wine glass around on the table. “Bridget asked me today how he was getting on at his new role in DC. It turns out he left his job with Kelly six months ago on the premise he had a new job with me in Washington.”
“And I’m guessing he doesn’t?”
“No.”
“Shit. So what’s he been doing for the last six months then?”
“Good question. I’ll speak to him when I get back. I didn’t want to do it over the phone because I want to see his eyes. I’ll know if he’s lying about it that way.”
“Surely he knows you’d find out from someone here? There’s no way it wouldn’t have come up.”
I nod, acknowledging the point. “Perhaps he just doesn’t care. I don’t know what’s going on, I mean, I knew he was unhappy at Whitehall, but I don’t know why he wouldn’t just tell me he’d quit.”
“Well, maybe he was scared?”
“Of me?”
“Of letting you down.”
“He could never let me down,” I say. “I knew he’d leave politics eventually, he’s not cut out for that world. I just wish he’d talked to me about it.”
“So talk to him,” Felix says simply.
“He doesn’t want to talk to me, I’m his father.”
“Then I’ll talk to him. Give me his number and I’ll do it right now.”
I laugh gently. “You can speak with him next month at the ambassador’s soiree. You’re both still coming?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
“And then you’re going to New York after?”
Felix nods. “Mmm. Nico is also dragging me to see his favourite band. He’s such a nerd about them, it’s sort of cute.”
“What sort of band?”
“Guitars.”
I laugh again. “You’re kidding. How unusual.”
He looks at me and then shrugs. “How should I bloody know? There’s a guy who sings and another guy who plays guitar and then another guy who plays guitar. Oh, I think there’s a girl on guitar, too. Look, I’m trying to be interested in things he’s interested in.”
“Yes, I can see that.” I grin around my food.
“They’re just not my cup of tea. Our music tastes diverge quite dramatically; he hadn’t even heard of Little Mix when we met.”
“Well, I think the point is, you’re trying.
And you do seem happier, sweetheart.” There was a calmness about him now that he’d never had before, an assuredness that went beyond the surface-level bravado he so often displayed.
He sets down his fork and smiles that brilliant smile of his, which this time is entirely genuine.
“I’m happy. Which is partly down to you, you know.”
“Me? How so?”
“Well, you didn’t laugh at me when I told you about Nico, and you didn’t think the idea of us together was ridiculous—even when I did. You encouraged me to go for it.”
“Well, I think you’d have found your way to him eventually with or without me; he was quite determined, and he practically fell into your lap. He’s rather perfect for you, Felix.”
“He is perfect for me. Ugh.”
I’m reminded of something I said to Asher in the hotel in New Jersey, something he’d rightly called me out on. Rather perfect for you, he’d parroted. You know, for someone constantly warning me off, you sure give mixed signals.
“Is there any point in my even asking about you?” Felix interrupts, as though he has a direct line to my thoughts. “Or are you doing your best monk impersonation over there?”
Well, it’s now or never. If I’m going to talk to Felix about Asher, then now would be the moment. The slight delay in my response has Felix on high alert, gaze sharpening to the point of a pin.
“What aren’t you saying right now?” he asks suspiciously.
“I… well… it’s very… I’ve met someone. Sort of. He’s… well… it’s… I’m not sure.”
Felix’s mouth drops open. “What in the lovestruck Hugh Grant was that?” He waves his fork in my direction.
“Pardon?”
“Oh, my god.” His fork clatters to his plate as he turns all the way around in his chair to face me fully. “You’re fucking smitten! What is going on?? Who is he?”
My cheeks catch fire as I look away from him, which I’m aware only makes this much, much worse. I say: “Don’t be absurd. Smitten.” I scoff at the word.
“Your neck is red.”
I place my palm on it, partly to cover it, partly to check the temperature. It is rather hot.
“I am not smitten,” I insist, lifting my wine to take a good slug.
“Okay, well, whatever this is. Enamoured. Bewitched. Beguiled. Besotted.”
“Are you reading these from a thesaurus?”
“I don’t understand why you’re avoiding my questions.” There’s a slight pout to his lower lip.
“Because it’s… absurd.” I close my eyes at the guilt I feel about saying that. “He’s younger. We’re… It’s silly.”
“I was younger,” he says. “Were we ‘silly’?”
“Yes. We were. Extremely. It’s why your father just about destroyed my career when he found out.”
Felix’s expression turns to guilt and sadness.
“Sorry, sweetheart.” I put a hand on his arm. “That was cruel. I didn’t mean that. We weren’t silly. I was. I was a stupid man, and I did a stupid thing, and I paid the price for it. And it seems I’ve not learned my lesson because I appear to be doing it all over again.” But far more emphatically.
Felix pouts. “Well, my dad only has one of us, so how can you be doing it again?”
I want desperately to open up to someone about Asher.
Before tonight, I’d wondered what it would be like to have Felix’s thoughts on this.
Though I can guess what his advice will be: throw myself at it with all four limbs.
I still very much want to say it out loud to someone, a friend—to give it a voice and form and to see how his name feels spoken on my lips in that very specific context.
His name, which feels like a caress on bare skin.
His name, which feels like a balm over my splintered heart. Asher. Asher.
“That’s his name?”
I nod, realising I’d spoken it aloud. “Yes. His name’s Asher.”
“And how much younger are we talking?” he asks tentatively.
“He’s twenty-five.”
Felix frowns. “So then what the fuck is the problem here?”
“It’s about the optics of the thing, Felix.”
“Oh my god, fuck the optics!” he snaps, looking immediately guilty about the outburst.
“It’s not as easy for me to say ‘fuck it’ as it is for you, Felix.
You’re not na?ve enough that you don’t understand that.
A life in politics means that every single decision I make has to be weighed up with the potential for ruin.
An affair with someone half my age is not the sort of thing a man like me can just shake off.
Last year, it lost me my job; this time, I’ll likely lose everything else.
” Leo finding out I’m sleeping with someone his age, who fucks on camera for a living, is…
is… well, I don’t know what it is, but I can hazard a guess at what it would do to our relationship.
“What if it was a woman?” Felix says, giving me a very calculated look. “If you were sleeping with a twenty-five-year-old woman, we’d be having a very different conversation right now. Your friends in the commons would be patting you on the fucking back.”