Chapter 29
Sunny
Stavros: If there’s not an indie band called the Soviet Honeypots by five o’clock this afternoon, youth culture is dead. Congratulations on your big scoop, Sunster.
Davinder: Hi, actual music journalist here.
Pleased to inform you the Soviet Honeypots formed at ten minutes past midnight last night, when the early edition hit the streets.
Their debut album, “Fingerbang,” is already topping the UK charts and is Spotify’s “most downloaded.” If you tune in to PureFM right now, you can hear my talented husband playing their debut single, “Bob Chooses the Nuclear Option and Ends His Career.”
Petey Boy: Dav, that’s peak, man. Sunny, congrats on the splash. If it was a weekday, we’d have got you on the yellow couch, boyo. Believe the hype!
Jumaane: Celebrate after yoga, yeah? Miss Timmy’s for Bloody Marys and a fat slice of Occasion Cake?
* * *
By eleven o’clock I had knocked off a bit of national breakfast radio, toned my tummy on the yoga mat for an hour, and was sitting opposite Jumaane in a booth in Miss Timmy’s, waiting for the other boys to turn up.
I loved Miss Timmy’s. As gender non-conforming teahouses go, it was the best one on Old Compton Street.
The house specialty was a chocolate torte covered in edible glitter.
It looked like a unicorn turd, but the menu said it was perfect for any occasion—hence the name Occasion Cake.
Specifically, the cake was “the ideal way to celebrate your birthday, bar mitzvah, coming out, going back in, changing your mind, changing your gender, gay wedding, gay divorce, meeting a new lover, reheating an old lover, getting over a lover, getting over the clap, the release of a new Zac Efron movie, or even just a particularly invigorating wank.” They knew their market.
My phone rang. It was that time of the week.
“Hiya Mum, did you hear me on the Today programme?”
“I didn’t, love. I’m down the food bank cos I done a swap with Wendy from number thirty-three.
She’s taken Shirley Trimble down A & E, cos that leg of hers has gone septic.
I said to Wendy, better you than me. I ain’t holding Shirley’s hand while they lop her leg off.
The doctor’ll be hacksawing away at her knee joint, and old Shirl will be rolling her eyes and telling him to stop making such a fuss. You can’t help these old dears.”
“Mum, a little focus.”
“Sorry, love. Well done on your big story. I haven’t read it, but I’m sure it’ll make a real difference.”
“I’m just sitting here with Jumaane. We’re having cake to celebrate.”
“HELLO, JUMAANE LOVE!” Mum was shouting into the phone. I had to pull it away from my ear.
“Did you hear that?” I said, as if they hadn’t heard it three tables over.
“Thanks, Stace,” Jumaane said, waving at my phone as if this were a video call. Honestly, the pair of them.
“THANK YOU FOR THE CHRISTMAS CARD,” Mum shouted.
“Mum, it’s nearly May.”
“You’re welcome, Stace.”
“YOU’RE A VERY WELL brOUGHT UP YOUNG MAN.”
“OK, can we call time on this love-in, please? We’re meant to be celebrating me today,” I said.
“Orright, love. Well, stay safe. When are you coming to visit me?”
“Soon, Mum.”
“OK, love. BYE, JUMAANE. And Sunny, remember what I said about fisting—”
I hung up the call. Jumaane looked at me in disbelief.
“Don’t ask,” I said.
“No, we’ll be circling back to fisting in a minute, but does Stace really not read your work?”
“Never has.”
“Sod that, babes. My mother has every single copy of Pastiche Magazine I’ve ever worked on. Even if all I did was write the captions.”
“I think Mum does it to stop me getting ideas above my station.”
Jumaane looked horrified. A drag queen rolled up to take our order.
* * *
I was three Bloody Marys and a Long Island iced tea into our brunch when the notorious GayHoller chime pealed from a telephone. Every gay in the vicinity (except Dav and Nick, who had no need of GayHoller because they were unbearably loved up) checked their phone.
“It’s for me,” I called out, like a teenager in a nineties sitcom who had answered the family phone to find her girlfriend on the other end, ready to gossip.
A round of applause went up from nearby tables.
Gays were so sarcastic-slash-supportive.
It was hard to know which this was. I had so much booze in me, I didn’t much care. I opened the app.
Cabbage98: Bravo, Ginger. You kept that quiet.
Father was so miffed he smashed a plate, so you’re pissing off all the right people.
He’s making me work tomorrow, as punishment for missing your “sexclusive.” I’d cut the brake cable on your car but I’m not sure if you even drive. Still, well done. Posh x
That made me smile. I replied telling Ludo where we were and suggested he join us.
I wasn’t sure why I did that. It might have had something to do with the three Bloody Marys and the Long Island iced tea.
It also might have had something to do with the fact that, in the days since getting home, I’d also started to miss his company.
I missed the banter, the cosiness, the smell of warm linen and cashmere.
I missed hanging out. Was it a good idea to invite him, though?
It was too late. I’d sent it. Somewhere across London, the GayHoller chime was pealing a notification for Ludo Boche.
“Er, who is that?” Nick said. I felt the flush of heat in my face, and I knew my skin had betrayed me. I put my phone back down on the table.
“Whoever it is, Sunny’s got the hots for him,” Dav said. “I haven’t seen his face that red since that day he fell asleep on the beach at Hornsea.”
“Shut up, I do not. It’s just a colleague.”
“A colleague texting you on GayHoller?” Stav said. “If you say so, Romeo.”
“Your message was long, bruv,” Petey said.
“It’s just one of the Sentinel reporters saying congrats. That’s all.”
A quick look at the faces around the table told me not a single one of the Brent Boys believed me. If Ludo did turn up, they’d be unbearable. It was better to rip the Band-Aid off, tell them what I’d done, and let them get it out of their system before Ludo arrived. If he came.
“I did invite him to join us a bit later,” I said. A chorus of “ooooooh” went up around the table (sarcastic, not supportive). I rolled my eyes. Petey’s hands were flapping like a maimed seagull.
“O. M. G. Which reporter? Please tell me it in’t that Ludo Boche geezer?” he said.
“Why?” I swallowed. “Christ, you haven’t slept with him, have you?” While it might be against my professional code to sleep with a colleague, I doubted Petey lived by the same rules.
“Bruv, it in’t that! I in’t supposed to say nuffin, cos Krishnan made us all sign an NDA right after it happened, but—”
“Spill. The. Tea. Peter,” Jumaane said, clapping between each word for emphasis.
“Immediately,” added Stav, with lawyerly authority.
By this point, nothing could have prevented Pete spilling the tea on Ludo.
Wild horses could not have stopped him, even if they’d been butchered and stuffed into his mouth like some sort of equine foie gras.
It all came flooding out. When Petey was done—when he’d finished describing in spectacular detail how Ludo had sat on the Wake Up Britain couch and then vomited all over the three-times Gay Times Gay Man of the Year, and when my mates were all rolling around on the (metaphorical) floor, howling with laughter—I found myself feeling a bit hacked off.
“People throw up sometimes. It happens,” I said. “To be fair, I nearly threw up all over him at one point this week, and he was proper supportive. Ludo’s a nice guy.”
“Bugger me, you have got it bad,” Nick said.
“I’ve never seen you like this,” Dav said. “And I’ve known you since we were eight.”
“He’s just a colleague.” Why did no one seem to understand this? “We’re covering the same story, that’s all. He’s still a posh bellend.”
“Why would you invite a posh bellend to join us?” Stav asked, with the precision of a jurist.
“To teach you all some table manners?”
“Is that your little arrangement?” Jumaane said. “He shows you what fork to use and when, and you show him what goes where?” The boys roared with laughter. Cake crumbs shot from Stav’s mouth and across the table. Gross.
“You’ve def’ been lipsing, I can tell,” Petey said.
I rolled my eyes very, very hard.
“See! You have!” He was triumphant.
“We haven’t. You know the rule.”
Petey wasn’t having it.
“OK, Lady Chatterley. Rules are meant to be broken—and you clearly want to lips him!” he said. “Good on you, fam. Maybe just give him a Kwell first, yeah? And maybe wear, like, some full-body PPE or sumfink.”
The more I protested, the redder my face got, the less the boys believed me.
Probably because, well, I did want to kiss Ludo.
I might have started out being nice to him to undo the potential damage I’d done to my career by insulting his family, but I’d grown to really like him.
He was sweet and beautiful and hilarious and great company, and spending time with him had been like putting on a favourite hoodie.
But I also couldn’t escape that fact that he was also infuriating and entitled and oblivious to his privilege—and giving in to the part of me that wanted to kiss him would only lead to tears.
It was why I’d pulled away when he’d tried to pull me onto the bed.
Ludo was someone who knew which knife and fork to use and when. I’d never eaten a meal that required more than one knife and fork in the first place. The cold hard realist inside me knew Ludo Boche was a bad idea. But the thing about really bad ideas is they can be really tempting.