Chapter Twenty-Three #2
“Yes, you’re right,” I agree. “But he’s not. He’s a man, a much younger man. And the idea of telling the world about that is petrifying. I think maybe… maybe I’m not quite the man you think I am, Felix. I’m a bit of a coward, really.” Weak and afraid.
“You’re exactly the man I think you are, Christian,” Felix says firmly.
“You forget I know you, intimately. What is it you’re actually afraid of?
What people will write about you in the tabloids?
What people in the commons will think, knowing you like men?
What Leo will think? What Stella would think? What is it, exactly?”
It’s too gigantic a question to answer. It’s all of it.
I’m afraid of everything. I’m afraid of falling in love again, of losing him the way I lost Stella, I’m afraid of losing my son, my career, my reputation.
I can’t address any of this right now, so I say something else instead.
Something I know will distract Felix from demanding I answer the question.
“He’s a porn star.”
The expression on Felix’s face is one I’ll remember my entire life.
??
After clearing up the kitchen while he badgered me with question after question about Asher—he’d understandably had quite a few—we sit on the sofa with warm cups of tea.
Felix had been mainly stunned by the revelation, but understands why it’s not just a matter of announcing to the world that I like men.
Asher being… Asher, complicates things. There is no scenario where I get to take Bridget’s offer and keep Asher.
None. And I won’t ask him to give up doing something he loves just so I can do a job I would likely hate.
Though being in America in a lesser role had allowed me to have this with him, Adrian Brooke had still managed to find out about it.
In the UK, as Chancellor and then PM? It was an impossible relationship.
It is one or the other. I know that.
It is Asher or it is No. 10.
I’d known it this afternoon, and tonight had crystallised it.
And if I could fully commit to him and offer him more, what would our lives look like?
What does a life with Asher look like? Would he continue to do his job?
Do I want him to? I have no issues with it now, so why should I have any in the future?
He would paint and do porn, and I would do what, exactly?
If there were no rules or expectations, what would I do?
Go back to the law? Doubtful. There’d been a reason I’d left it.
My mind is drifting this way and that while Felix tells me about what he and Nico have planned while they’re in New York, when the front door opens and Nicoló strolls in.
It’s like someone’s switched on a light inside Felix as I watch his entire demeanour shift and brighten before my eyes.
Nico has a rucksack over one shoulder, a Sainsbury’s shopping bag, and a large bouquet of sunflowers.
He comes around the sofa to plant a kiss on the top of Felix’s head.
“Hello, princess. These are for you.” He hands over the sunflowers, and Felix attempts not to swoon, gazing up at his Italian boyfriend adoringly.
“Eh, what are these for?”
“So you’d look at me like that.” Nico smiles indulgently before shifting his attention to me. “Christian, nice to see you. Recovery going good?”
“Perfectly, thanks, Nicoló. How are you doing?”
“Yeah, I’m great. You guys ate already, right?”
“We did,” says Felix. “I made prawn pasta. There’s some leftovers in the fridge for you.”
“Perfect, thank you, baby. So, what’s happening over the pond, anything exciting?” Nico directs at me as he moves about the kitchen, looking very much at home.
“Ah, nothing too exciting. The president is playing golf while the world burns, usual stuff.”
“Got it. Guy’s a fucking tool, for sure.”
“They asked him to be Prime Minister again,” Felix says, beaming.
Nico turns, eyes widening on me. “Really? Congratulations! You’ll be back in London soon, then?” I’m not sure of the tone, but when he glances at Felix and back at me, I understand it to be hopeful. My social circle is embarrassingly small these days.
“I’m still thinking it over. There are some considerations.”
“Like his twenty-five-year-old porn star boyfriend,” Felix says, practically kicking his feet.
“What? He’s going to find out when we meet him at the party, anyway.
Plus, it’s very cool. You just can’t go to the papers or my father about it,” he warns Nico, playfully.
I haven’t told Felix that his father already knows about Asher and me.
I’m not sure what he might do with that information, and I’ve caused enough of a rift between them already. I have no desire to do more damage.
Nico looks positively bewildered. “Porn star boyfriend. Is that more English slang I don’t get?”
Felix lets out a bubble of laughter. “Nope, it’s just what it sounds like. Christian is fucking a literal porn star. It’s fucking mind-blowing. Fuck, I can’t wait to meet him—he refuses to tell me his full name in case I’ve seen his dick or his hole.”
“That’s not—” I protest, looking at Nico for some assistance. “It’s not that it’s just, well, okay, yes, perhaps it is that.”
“You know any porn stars called Asher?” Felix asks his boyfriend.
“I don’t know the names of any porn stars, princess. That’s your area of expertise. Does he look anything like me?” Nico asks me.
“What? No, he’s… well, no. Not at all.”
“Then Felix won’t know him, all the porn stars he likes are the ones who look like me. Isn’t that right, baby?” He winks at Felix, who rolls his eyes.
The tub of cold pasta in his hand, Nico comes toward us.
“Okay, I’m going to take a long, hot shower.
Nice seeing you,” he says to me, “and congratulations on the porn star.” He smooths a tender hand over Felix’s jaw as he passes and heads upstairs, leaving us alone again. I give Felix a chiding look.
“Oh, don’t be angry at me, daddy,” he pleads. “I’m just excited for you.”
“Stop calling me that. Anyway, it’s still as impossible as it was an hour ago.”
“Only if you say yes to the job offer,” he points out.
“Only if you come back to this fucking clown show. Otherwise, who cares? You could take your hot young boyfriend and go live in Scotland, or wherever it is you always talked about building that house. Leo would be the only person whose opinion mattered, and he’d still love you. ”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Right now, Leo feels as distant to me as though he were living on Mars, and introducing Asher into our lives would do nothing to help that, I’m sure. “What happened, you were very excited about my being Prime Minister before?”
“Yeah, that was because I liked the idea of fucking the Prime Minister. And because I think you’d be a good one.
But now, that party—my father’s party—after what they did to you?
They can fucking rot, the lot of them. You deserve to be happy, and that place would ruin you.
I remember it turned Damien Ellis bald and ugly in like two years, and he was the only other good-looking one besides you. ”
“You don’t think I would look good bald?” I say through laughter.
“Christian, you know I don’t think anyone looks good bald.” He visibly shivers. “Anyway, that job would ruin you. And I doubt you’d be happy.”
Happy.
What a strange word. Blunt and simple when the feeling was anything but, when most of the time it felt like trying to catch a rainbow in your hands. I stare down at my wedding band. It feels tight this evening. The sensation of it constricting in a way I don’t remember it ever feeling before.
“She’d want you to be happy,” Felix says. I lift my head and find his eyes fixed intently on me. “If she’s the person you always told me she was, then she’d want you to be happy, whatever that looks like.”
He isn’t wrong. She would. I can almost hear her voice urging me to be happy, to choose myself and Leo above everything else.
But I don’t think she would even recognise me now.
If she were to walk back through the door now, I’d be a stranger standing in front of her.
True happiness feels like an impossible fantasy.
It has been years since I’ve felt it, so how do I go about trying to bestow it on someone else?
Asher deserves someone who can make him happy.
Not someone who only knows how to worry and grieve, living every moment like the worst of times is just a little farther up the road.
I’ve filled years and years with work since she passed, because work is easy to control; work blocks out everything else.
To work is to put one foot in front of the other and do the task in front of you, breathe and eat and work.
Work so hard that you sleep without dreams. Work is a reason to keep moving forward.
Work is a reason to wake up every day and keep bloody going.
To walk away from that constant and pin everything, once again, on another living soul who could be ripped away from me.
Whose entire essence could disappear from my life in the blink of an eye.
That is where the true fear lies. It is too terrifying to comprehend.
And I am scared. I’ve been scared for years.
But I also know what a life without Asher would look like, without his particular brand of sunshine in it, without the colour of his rainbow, and the idea of that is equally terrifying.
Suddenly, I’m hit with the immense urge to see him.
Be near him. Wrap my arms around him and hold him tight.