Chapter 28 #2
I rush straight to the bathroom to apply new deodorant, new perfume, and some makeup to my face. Honestly, he said I looked lovely and I wasn’t even wearing foundation today. I shake my head in disbelief and add a little, redo my eyeliner, and brush my hair out.
When I’m done, I step back into my living room and call out into the void, “Damien, get your arse in here, will you?”
It takes him a few minutes, but then he’s popping into the centre of my living room.
“I need you to do me a favour,” I tell him.
“Ugh!” he says dramatically.
“You don’t even know what it is yet.”
“Fine. What is it?”
I point to McGruff who, after our long walk this morning, is spread out on the sofa, snoring his little fluffy head off.
“Would you dog-sit for me tonight?”
“It’s Friday,” Damien points out. “I have plans.”
“No, you don’t. You only ever have plans with me, and I have other plans, which means you have no plans.”
“I might have other plans,” he says, examining his fingernails. They’re painted to match his outfit. All bright orange today. Even his horns and his hair.
“Do you though?” I ask.
“No,” he admits. “Okay.” He huffs and pouts. “I’ll do it, but you have to give me that human’s phone number.”
“Damien, I’m not doing that.”
“Fine, I’ll watch him until his bedtime,” he says with a toss of his mane. “Where are you going anyway? How do you have plans on a Friday night without me?”
“I’m going with Horatio to his parents,” I say, so quickly and so quietly I hope he doesn’t hear me.
Damien eyes me with suspicion. “Repeat that.”
“Horatio’s going to his parents’ tonight for dinner. He needs moral support, and I offered to go with him.”
“You’re meeting his parents.” I bite my lip again and nod. “Wait, doesn’t that mean something in human culture?”
“No, not really,” I say casually and breezily.
“Uh-uh. I remember the ex-boyfriend. I remember you being really pissed off because he’d never introduced you to his mother. In fact, didn’t he lie and tell you she’d emigrated to Spain when in fact she lived right around the corner?”
“You’re misremembering. Several millennia of age can seriously affect your memory like that.”
“I’m not that old.”
I grin at him, but he’s still staring daggers at me.
“Okay, it does mean something in some cases, but in this case it doesn’t. I’m just helping out a friend.”
“A friend you have feelings for?” he hisses, as we hear footsteps in the corridor.
“I’m totally in charge of these feelings.”
“Hmm,” he says.
“Completely in charge.”
“Hmm,” he says again. And then, as there’s a knock on the door. “Just be careful,” he warns me.
“I will be,” I say, blowing him a kiss, and walking out the door.
* * *
I have to admit I’m not exactly hating being back in Horatio’s snazzy car. I could get used to ditching the unreliable, smelly, sweaty public transport I usually rely on in favour of cruising around town beside an exceedingly attractive man instead.
As this could be my last trip in this car, I insist on forgoing the air conditioning, opening the windows and blasting the radio.
Horatio does seem to have one fault. He’s not a big fan of pop, wincing whenever Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter come on.
Although the wincing could, in fact, be in response to my singing, because I’m singing my heart out.
I sing all through the streets of London, not caring about all the people who turn to stare at us or the fact I am definitely out of tune.
Once we’re on the motorway and heading out towards Oxford, having the windows open becomes too impractical, my hair blowing all around my face and into my eyes. I submit to having the windows up and the air conditioning on, turning down the radio too.
“Tell me about your parents,” I say as I settle into my seat and comb my fingers through my unruly hair.
“There’s not much to tell,” he says, and if I weren’t about to meet them both, I’d be willing to drop it.
It’s obviously a topic of conversation he doesn’t enjoy.
But I need a little help, especially if I’m passing as the fake girlfriend.
If I’m passing as the fake girlfriend. Am I passing as a fake girlfriend?
“What have you told them about me?”
“Alex already told my mom about you,” he tells me.
“He did?” Horatio nods. “So, your mom and Alex talk?”
“Yeah,” he scratches his cheek, “probably more than my mom and I do.”
“Why is that then?” He shrugs. “Come on,” I beg. “Please give me a little bit. Just some tidbits would help. My acting skills are appalling, especially my improvisational acting skills.”
He snorts at that and adjusts his hands on the steering wheel.
“My mom’s a lawyer,” he explains.
“What kind of lawyer?”
“Divorce, mostly. She helps women in cases where the man has a lot of power and a lot of money. Usually, they’re trying to screw over their ex-wives in one way or another. Mom’s very good at not letting that happen.”
“She sounds amazing.”
“She is, yes.”
“What about your dad?” I say gently. “Your real dad.”
“He was a surgeon,” he explains. “Orthopaedics. They met in college. We lived in the suburbs of Chicago. Pretty ordinary, boring family stuff.”
“But then?” I say, suddenly feeling uneasy, like someone’s poured icy cold water down the back of my neck.
“Turned out my dad was having an affair with his secretary.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Mom divorced him. It wasn’t pretty. Turned out my dad was a nasty piece of work. There wasn’t just the secretary. I wasn’t his only kid.”
“Oh, shit wombles,” I mutter. “Are you still in touch?”
He shakes his head. “He died a few years ago.”
“And so how did you end up over here in the UK?”
“My grandma is British,” he explains. “After the divorce, we moved back over here. My mom wanted to be around her family. She met Alan – my stepdad – through friends a year later. They were married when I was sixteen. I guess I didn’t take it very well.”
“I don’t think many teenagers do,” I say sympathetically.
“He’s a difficult man, though,” he explains. “He was always on my back, never happy, always arguing with me.”
“What do you mean?”
He shakes his head. “My grades were never good enough. Room never tidy enough. Chores never completed well enough. I was always being grounded or punished or whatever.”
“Horatio,” I say, my voice trembling, “did he hit you?”
“No, he never did that. But I couldn’t wait to get out of that house. And even though I’m thirty-three now, things have never really changed.”
“What did your mom say?”
“She stays out of it mostly.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I can’t imagine what it must be like not to want to go home, not to want to see your family.”
Okay, my family drives me round the bend, drives me absolutely bonkers, especially my mum. But I love them. I love them dearly. I can’t imagine not wanting to see them and be with them.
His hand is resting on the gear stick between us, and I reach out and cover it with my own. His gaze momentarily flicks from the road ahead to meet mine, and then he allows me to thread my fingers through his.
We stay like that for a long time, our hands linked, and I think to myself that I don’t remember having a conversation like this with any of my previous boyfriends.
It was always surface level. We’d talk about music, we’d go out partying, we’d have sex.
We never talked about the real things, the intimate things, the important things.
I think I’ve learned more about this man in the last week and a half than I have about anybody at all, really.
This relationship may be fake, based on potions and bewitching and all sorts of immoral things.
But it’s also the most grown-up relationship I’ve ever had.
“When this is all over,” I tell him, my hand still linked with his on the gear stick, my gaze fixed straight ahead, “I hope we can still be friends, Horatio.”
“Friends,” he says coolly.
“Yes. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Yes, Molly,” he says. “We’re friends.”
“I hope we can still be friends,” I say again, “even after I’ve brewed the antidote.”
He’s silent. Then he revs the engine, and, not letting go of my hand, yanks on the gear stick. I peer down at it.
“You still owe me that driving lesson,” I say, suddenly remembering our deal last weekend.
“Ah, shit! I hoped you’d forgotten about that.”
“Sneaky little rascal.”
“Well, I can teach you a bit now.”
We keep our hands linked on that gear stick and he explains to me what he’s doing and how he’s doing it.
And it is the most natural thing in the world.