Chapter 31
Sunny
The thing about day drinking is, at some point you have to make a decision.
Sometime in the afternoon, when the shadows are getting long and the air is beginning to cool, you have to flip a coin.
It’s still only five or six o’clock. Most people haven’t even started their pre-drinks for a big night out yet, but you’re already wankered.
So, do you leave the venue, grab a kebab, walk it off for a bit, and go home to sober up before bedtime?
Or do you push on through, order another round of drinks, and try to beat your own liver at a game of who’s the hardest?
The moment for decision came. I (metaphorically) flipped that coin, and, inevitably, it landed on “stay out with your crew.”
I checked GayHoller. Still nothing from Ludo.
He’d said he was going home to shower and change and then he’d join us at Miss Timmy’s, but he’d never turned up.
After inviting him, admitting that fact to the boys, changing my mind, having Ludo say yes, and mentally preparing myself for him coming anyway, to have him jilt me was…
maddening. I’d messaged to say we’d moved on to the Duncan for the early drag show and to join us there, but nothing.
It was clear I had been stood up, which, obviously, the boys ragged me about mercilessly. I was miserable.
“I’m fine,” I said. “For someone who’s been ghosted by London’s foremost vomit correspondent.”
“You do like him, don’t you?”
My heart hurt. I looked into Dav’s big brown eyes, pleading for the inquisition to stop. He put up his hands in surrender, then flung an arm around me. He leant his head against mine, the bulk of his turban a soft cushion between us.
“The boys want to hit Vauxhall,” he said. “You up for it?”
In a moment of clarity, I put my drink down on the bar.
“I think I might go home,” I said.
Sometimes, when you flip a coin, you get the wrong outcome.
There’s no dishonour in altering course.
Minds, like underpants, are meant to be changed occasionally.
I hugged Dav goodnight and dropped a metaphorical smoke bomb on the evening.
On the Tube ride home, I crafted Ludo a withering GayHoller message.
Ginger: Dead rude, mate. A text is cheap and manners cost nothing. Bang out of order.
* * *
By two in the morning, there was still no word from Ludo and I was lying in bed, smashing GayHoller.
I was on a mission. A headless torso at a house party a few streets away was trying to convince me to put some pants on, join him for a few drinks, “and see how it goes.” The only thing I wanted less than more booze was to leave the house.
All I wanted at this point was to efficiently bust a nut with someone with a full set of teeth, an OK physique, and a face that didn’t look like it had been freshly unzipped from a body bag.
I wanted shallow, meaningless, transactional sex.
I wanted a bus stop boy to come upstairs, swipe his Oyster card against my reader, and piss off back to his own life so I never had to see him again.
My phone chimed.
GayHoller: Cabbage98 has sent you a message.
Shit! I threw my phone onto the duvet. I sat bolt upright and rubbed my eyes, trying to sober up or wake up or whatever up it was my body needed to be a normal functioning human being in that moment.
I straightened my hair. I checked my breath.
Pointless, but standards, and all that. I opened the message.
Cabbage98: Sunny. Sorry. I’ve been at the hospital. It’s Uncle Ben. They think he’s had a stroke. I’ve only just got home. Sorry to miss meeting your friends. Another day, for sure. I hope you had a lovely time. Ludo x.
I felt like a douchebag. I’d been out partying and celebrating and cruising for an online hook-up, getting angrier and angrier with Ludo, while Ludo was sitting in the hospital, worried sick about his godfather.
I thought about my nan when she was in the hospital and how lost I’d felt.
I just wanted to comfort Ludo in whatever way I could, to be the shoulder he needed.
Suddenly sober, I jumped out of bed and grabbed my work rucksack, rummaging through it to find the folder Torsten had given me on the plane.
I rifled through the papers, looking for the page with everyone’s contact details on it.
And there it was. Ludo’s actual phone number.
I sat on the edge of the bed and typed it into my phone.
My heart was in my throat, waiting for the call to connect, to hear Ludo’s voice.
It went to voicemail.
I tried several times, with the same result. If I thought I’d felt like crap before, I’d just found new depths to my misery.