Chapter Twenty-Six
Twenty six
Asher
After Christian passes out, and he does pass out—on his front with his face mushed against the pillow—I climb out of bed, pull closed the curtains, and tiptoe out of the room. I’m not tired. I’m energetic. Blood and endorphins are dancing around my body like it’s Mardi Gras.
He came home early.
He came home early because he missed me, because he wanted to spend time with me.
There was no fucking journalist, and he came home early.
He brought me breakfast. He fed me and fucked me and fingered me, and we both had a fantastic time.
The sex had been everything I wanted it to be.
Intimate, hot, and natural. It didn’t feel like I was putting on a show, or performing for him, like there were expectations I had to live up to, like he wanted me to demonstrate just why I’d gotten that Dazed feature and the stupid nickname that followed me everywhere I went.
It just felt like two people who liked each other, having sex because they liked each other and wanted to.
And he didn’t have a heart attack again or die on my bed.
I feel high as a kite about the whole thing as I shoot off a text to Am:
Me:
Christian came home from London early. He fucks like the British government pay him to do it. Like he’s the best they have: world saving cock.
I accompany this with the melting emoji, the eggplant, and the British flag.
Then I flick the shower back on. This one is far quicker than the one I’d taken with him earlier—I’m in and out in under five minutes.
I dress in shorts and a tank and sit down to do some work on the painting I’d started yesterday as a panicked, spiralling mess.
As a guy who hadn’t yet been fucked by Sir Christian Darling, the British Ambassador to the United States.
I can barely remember that guy. What a loser.
My phone vibrates with Amata’s reply.
Am:
SCREAMING. So happy for you Babyboy. You deserve the best sex.
Me:
Thank you. It was the best.
Am:
Like ever?
I consider my response.
Me:
Well, I think so yeah. He’s the only one I’ve ever been in love with, so yeah, it was pretty intense.
Am:
Oh, my baby. I’m working until 6. Will I come over with wine after for a debrief?
Me:
I think he’s hanging out here today before he goes back to work. Tomorrow?
Am:
Yeah, sounds great. I’m so happy for you bb x
Me:
But worried too, right?
Am:
Yeah, that was top of list 2. But enjoying every moment with your hot older British lover was top of list 1 so…
I smile down at the phone.
Me:
I love you. Talk later
Am:
love you more bb
??
It’s close to 4pm when the bedroom door opens and a ruffle-haired, yawning Christian emerges. He has a sheet wrapped around his waist. A cum-soaked sheet. It makes me feel a little feral, if I’m honest.
“Why did you let me sleep so long?” he asks in a rough voice.
“Figured you must have needed it.”
He practically collapses onto the couch. “But I wanted to spend the day with you.” I set down my brush and try not to melt as I turn to face him.
“There’s still like eight hours of it left, what did you want to do?” He hooks a hand under my arm and tugs me between his legs. Then he puts a hand to my cheek and runs his fingers through my hair.
“Touch you.” He leans in and kisses me on the mouth. “Kiss you.” I let out a thin breath as he buries his face in my neck. “Breathe you in,” he whispers, taking a deep breath.
I loop my hands up and around his neck, and he pulls me up and onto his lap, where we make out for a long time. Slow kisses that taste of sleep and warmth. His facial hair is rough against my face, longer than it was even this morning.
“Are you hungry?” I ask when we come up for air.
“A little.”
“Me too. I never ate lunch. I always forget when I’m working.”
He tuts disapprovingly.
“We could go out for dinner?” I say. “Or, I could go out to the store and grab something nice, cook for you.” He studies me a moment before brushing my hair back from my forehead.
“Why don’t we go to the store together, come home, and then we can cook something together?”
I get an image of us in the store, hand in hand, looking at which vegetables are bruised, selecting the best cut of meat or fish. Couple shit. It makes my stomach flutter.
“Yeah, ok. Sounds good.”
He doesn’t shave. He showered and dressed—jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt and a sort of sports jacket type of thing—but left his stubble right there on his face, and I’m getting more and more attached to it each minute that passes.
It makes him look younger, more relaxed, like one of those hot youngish dads you’d see out at science parks and museums with their kids.
It’s distracting. As is the way he keeps touching me as we stroll through Wegmans, aisle to aisle, looking for inspiration.
We aren’t holding hands, but a few times he’s settled his hand on my lower back to steer me towards something that caught his eye, or settled both hands on my shoulders and leaned over me to look at something.
He even presses a kiss to my head from this position over by the dried pasta.
Has he lost his mind? In public? Yeah, sure, Sunday Times Stephen is just Stephen, but surely a photo of us together is still worth something to someone?
It makes me think something happened in London to make him care less about this stuff?
I wish he’d tell me so I can be as relaxed as he is.
Instead, I’m a little edgy as we walk around being couple-y as fuck, but not enough to ask him to stop doing it.
“What about steak?” I suggest, pointing at a large slab of glistening red meat.
“I’m supposed to be cutting down on it.”
“Got it.” I nod. I don’t even know what I’m doing.
I’m not a chef; I have about three meals I make myself on heavy rotation, and one of them is cereal.
My veggie chilli for Theo and Am was a complete fluke, but I was at the toilet a lot that night afterwards, and I’m looking to keep that particular hole clear and clean if I can help it.
“I have an idea,” he says, lifting up a pack of little cubed pieces of what looks like ham. “Carbonara. I haven’t had that in a while.”
“That’s pasta, right?”
“Yep, though we need spaghetti.” We’d tossed some penne in the cart, so we turn and head back towards the dried goods aisle and switch it out for spaghetti.
After loading the car—he’d paid for the groceries, whipping out a very shiny-looking AMEX card before I’d even opened my wallet—he opens the driver’s side for me, kissing me on the head gently as I get in.
I realise in the time it takes him to get around to the passenger side that this is what it would be like.
If we were together, properly, a couple, it would be exactly like this.
I mean, he’d be working a lot more and I’d likely spend a lot of time at home alone, but when he was off work we’d go to the store and plan meals together, we’d assign each other household tasks and leave each other little notes around the house like ‘remember light bulbs for the bathroom light’ by the front door and I want it so badly that it makes my chest ache.
He’s an outwardly straight member of the British government, and I’m, well, whatever I am, and the only way he and I get to be together is if he decides to leave his entire fucking life behind, and the chances of that happening are non-existent.
So yeah, I’m never going to have this with him, so what is the actual fucking point in any of this? What am I doing?
You’re in love with him.
Oh, yeah. That.
“You okay?” he asks, waiting for me to turn on the engine.
“Sorry, trance. Yep, let’s go.”
??
In the end, Christian cooks. Because one of the three meals in my repertoire doesn’t happen to be spaghetti carbonara.
He tasks me with slicing the long French baguette and warming the bowls.
He fries off the cubed ham, pancetta, he tells me, while the spaghetti boils in the biggest pot I own, which is not a pasta pot.
He cracks two egg yolks and begins to whisk them with some black pepper before adding the cheese, explaining how so many people refuse to make it like this, the traditional way, because it uses raw eggs.
“Raw eggs?!” I stare, horrified.
“Yes. It’s how the Italians make it,” he explains. “Trust me.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about, it’s the Italians. Isn’t that how you kill a person? Raw eggs. What is this, payback?”
He laughs and begins to whisk the ingredients into a lumpy yellow mulch. I can feel my appetite disappearing. “Darling, do you trust me?” he asks, eyes like dark cocoa, mouth curled up suggestively.
“I guess…”
“I’ve never poisoned a person yet with this recipe, and I’ve been making this a long, long time.
It was Stella’s favourite. We ate it in Rome on our honeymoon, and I’d always make it when she was feeling poorly—it was her comfort food.
” He stiffens a little, as though either shocked by his own mention of her or scared of my reaction.
I’m sort of flattered he felt comfortable enough to share it with me, and so I style it out. “And it never made her more sick?”
“Not once,” he assures me.
“Okay, I’ll trust you then. I’m all done with the bread and bowl duties. Anything else you need me to do?”
“Just water for the table. It’s nice with a white or a red wine, but I don’t think we bought any, did we?”
“Uh, no. We didn’t. But I think Amata left a bottle of rosé here, if you want that?”