Chapter 28
GERALD
Five minutes to go, and despite spending the preceding hours in bed, indulging in what Alaric calls awesome sexing, I’m still twitching like I’m trying to outrun my own nerves.
The awesome sexer himself—we’ve comprehensibly established we’re both fans of an occasional spanking—is now dressed and sprawled on the sofa, answering Stefan’s latest barrage of texts.
Marcus and Stefan’s lives are a soap opera I find myself reluctantly glued to.
The latest episode unfolded this afternoon when Stefan’s drama queen of a fiancé packed his bags and walked out.
Broadly, this is good news; Stefan is better off without him.
Alaric has spent the last half hour comforting, bitching, reassuring, and generally being an excellent friend.
He’s promised to call in on Stefan after work tomorrow night, to cheer him up.
That’s an integral part of his skill set too.
I need to tell him how I feel, how I think we’ve gone beyond the whole landlord with benefits thing.
But more overtly this time, and maybe tonight.
Or at least show him, though how my eyes don’t give me away every time I fucking look at him, I have no idea.
The pantomime of pretending this is a no-strings thing has gone way beyond its sell by date.
I should sit him down and lay it all out. Float out that relationship word again.
A fork slips from my clammy hand to clatter across the floor tiles. “Damn.”
Abandoning Stefan, Alaric pads across to where I’m buffing the cutlery for a third time with a tea towel.
Truth be told, I’m being a bit of a drama queen myself.
“Hey, calm down.” He wraps his arm around my waist, giving me a squeeze.
I wonder if he’ll be this tactile in front of my dad.
Probably, I decide, realising I won’t mind.
“It’s only your dad.” Alaric rests his head against my shoulder. “You’ve been on stage in the West End, for fuck’s sake! And dog danced your way into Crufts!”
“I know.” I sigh, rubbing my jaw. “I’m being ridiculous.”
“Everything will be fine,” he promises. “I’m here, for starters.”
Yes, but for how long?
The doorbell sounds, and my heart nearly stops. I let Alaric answer, giving myself a minute to calm the fuck down. Alaric’s right. I don’t lack confidence in any other sphere of my life. All will be fine in this one. It’s only my dad coming for dinner, for heaven’s sake.
Dad’s nervous too, running his palm across his jaw and through his hair, mimicking my own gestures.
Bustling around us, Alaric’s thrust a glass of red into his hand before he’s scarcely removed his coat.
The flat feels comically small with four people in it.
We’re stepping aside for each other and apologising for squeezing past like we’re on the set of a TV soap and I’m about to drop the tray of lasagne on the floor.
Downing his wine in three quick swallows, Dad coos over the cooking smells, Sandra asks if there’s anything she can do to help, and Alaric insists she reveal from where she bought her spotty scarf, because it’s absolutely divine and he wants one, like, yesterday.
Before I know it, Dad’s uncorking a second bottle of red, the lasagne tray remains intact between my sweaty palms, and we’re crammed around my tiny table playing Jenga with our elbows. One wrong move and Sandra’s going to find my garlic bread in her lap.
“This is very cosy,” Alaric remarks as he snakes his arm through the narrow gap between his wine glass and Sandra’s, to reach the salad dressing. Even under this table, there’s enough space for his bare foot not to be twisted around mine. Not that I’ll ever push it away.
“Lovely, though,” insists my dad stoutly. His gaze ping pongs between the two of us. “Is it…ah…is there something to celebrate?”
“Oh, Alan.” Alaric doesn’t miss a beat. “Gerald can always find a reason to celebrate something.” He nudges me. “Isn’t that right, Big G?”
The little bugger’s shoulders are going up and down as he holds in a hoot of laughter.
“Yeah,” I manage and flush beetroot, suddenly terribly busy with the salad dressing. Lasagne prep aside, we’ve celebrated all fucking day.
“So what’s the occasion this time?” chips in Sandra, also smiling at the both of us.
Oh fuck, do they think Alaric and I are… do they think we’re about to make an announcement? That we’re… together…engaged? At this point, I’d settle for reassurance Alaric isn’t about to move out. I don’t dare begin to dream beyond that.
Under the table, his small hand sneaks onto my thigh and stays there. He’s been remarkably restrained; that hand has landed on my dad’s arm more times than on mine. Which is fair enough, I suppose, considering we aren’t actually a couple.
Aware of three sets of eyes on me, all kindly, I settle on the truth. Sometimes, it’s the easiest option.
“I… um… I guess I wanted to thank you—both of you, actually—for continuing to show up here, week after week. Not stepping away, even when I gave you plenty of reason to.”
I put my hand over Alaric’s, and he gives it a squeeze.
“I don’t want to rehash the accident. But I always knew you weren’t to blame, Dad.
I should have… well, I should probably have tried harder to help myself get over it psychologically, tried more with the counselling or whatever.
Mum wouldn’t have wanted us to be like this. But I’m—“
Embarrassingly, my throat chokes up.
“It’s all right, son,” Dad interrupts, bless him.
“You don’t have to explain anything. We all come to things in our own time.
God knows it’s not been easy.” He casts his gaze at Sandra.
“For any of us. Not a day goes by when I don’t wish I’d not been driving up that hill or I’d braked sooner, or swerved into the hedge. But it won’t change anything.”
“I know you did your best. Neither of you stood a chance. I know that—I’ve always known really.”
He pats my shoulder, only briefly, and I’m glad, because anything more would feel awkward, as if he was trying too hard. My mum was the demonstrative one. “But me and Sandra are really glad we’re here now. Hopefully, this is the first of many dinners. We got there in the end.”
No recrimination, no reproach. No nothing really, because after Dad swallows his last mouthful of lasagne, he turns his attention to Alaric and asks him how his parents find living in Spain.
Sandra quizzes me on the latest book club choice.
The tension doesn’t dissipate immediately, but as Alaric proffers second helpings and talks about the salad dressing ingredients as if he made it instead of continually poking his finger in it, something heavy inside me slips away.
“We can’t offer you a pudding, I’m afraid,” Alaric declares as the last of the lasagne is scraped from the dish. “Gerald,” he throws me a dramatic, hard-done-by look, “thinks I should cut down on refined sugars.”
“You liar! I did not say that!”
He pouts. “Each time you add a sprinkle of blueberries to my Coco Pops, it’s implied.”
“And you wolfed a huge bowl of them this morning. Coco Pops might technically be advertised as a cereal, but nutritionally, they’re dessert.” Faced with that ridiculous pout, my severe expression fights a losing battle with the corners of my mouth. “So, no pudding required.”
“Don’t we have anything sweet at all?” he wheedles as if he’s a nineteenth century street urchin peering through a bakery window.
Please, sir, can I have some more? He’s laying it on thick, for Dad and Sandra’s benefit.
My dad’s laughing behind his hand. “I’m not thinking of me, Gerald—I’m thinking of our guests. ”
Wide and beseeching, his eyes are almost the colour of blueberries. As ridiculous as he is, I’m a puddle of goo; I can deny him nothing. Rising to my feet, I gather our plates. “I’ll see if I can rustle up something.”
Alone in the kitchen, I give myself a minute.
Having achieved his goal, Alaric’s entertaining Dad and Sandra with tales of the many disastrous meals he’s prepared in the past. My dad contributes a couple of his own from the immediate aftermath of Mum’s death when he barely knew how to put together beans on toast. In his own quiet way, he’s funny and self-deprecating, much as he’s always been.
Why did I wait so fucking long? Pushing away the one person who knew my mum and me best, carrying all that misery alone, as if my pockets were weighed with stones.
For all these years, I’ve felt so bitter and cheated losing my lovely mum.
And it took one single dinner with Alaric supporting me to recognise, a few years too late, that, in life’s draw, getting my parents was like being gifted a gold rosette.
Even though one of them was snatched away far too soon.
Speaking of rosettes…
“So, Gerald’s been a rather busy bee over the last few months, down at Sutton Common church hall,” Alaric announces. I know what’s coming. He’s persuaded me that if I want my dad back in my life, then I actually have to open the door and let him in.
I bring out the lemon cheesecake. He does a double take. “Where the hell was that hiding?”
“Somewhere you wouldn’t find it.”
I made it first thing this morning whilst Alaric was lounging in bed.
It’s mine and my dad’s favourite, a recipe my mum used to make for our birthdays.
We exchange grins as Alaric treats me to an expression reminiscent of a toddler having his sandwich cut in half the wrong way.
I’ll make it up to him. Clowning around, flattering Sandra, showing interest in my dad, he’s right, the best wingman I could wish for.
“What’s been keeping you occupied in the church hall?
” Dad queries, with interest. Sandra looks faintly alarmed, as if I’m about to announce I’m in training for the priesthood.
Until Alaric, I might as well have been.
I give her a reassuring smile, hoping I’ll get to know her better.
She’s lovely to my dad. They bounce off each other really well.
“Brace yourself,” Alaric warns. “You’ll never guess in a month of Sunday sermons.
Gerald here, along with his beautiful, intelligent, dashing, and loyal partner—” Alaric’s blue gaze flicks up to our guests, “not me, alas, though I can see how that sentence could easily be misconstrued, given that I possess every single one of those attributes—has been perfecting a dance routine.”
With a flourish, he pulls out his phone.
“And the next time Gerald and his delightful four-legged partner, Elsa, perform it,” cue drumroll on the edge of the table, “will be in front of a television audience of roughly eight million. At the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham. At none other than…Crufts!”
Fuck. Cold sweat beads on my back. “Not sure I needed to know that figure, babe,” I murmur, but I’m a lone voice lost amongst familiar high-pitched squealing (Alaric) and a mish mash of surprised but happy sounds coming from my dad and Sandra.
I’m caught between basking in the glory of their praise and wanting to sink beneath the table.
Me and attention-seeking aren’t natural bedfellows, begging the question what the fuck I’m doing parading my shit at the world’s biggest fucking international dog show.
Mind you, four months ago, having three people crammed around my kitchen table, laughing and enjoying themselves, was unimaginable too.
The cheesecake forgotten, they huddle around Alaric’s phone whilst he gives them the full video run down of me and Elsa at the regionals with the sound turned up to the max– a mix of Jake Shears and the Scissor Sisters’ thumping bass line.
Over the top is Alaric’s voice saying omg I can’t watch, and go on Big G, and sock it to them, Elsa.
I watch him playing it to Dad for a second run through, all gappy smiles and glossy lips.
He’s the plot twist I never saw coming, the course I never imagined steering.
He doesn’t fit the mould. He’s not the guy I scripted.
But somehow, this loud, weirdly wonderful, sexy unscripted man fits me better than anything I ever imagined.