Chapter 6 #2
Well, it certainly wasn’t on my bingo card to confront Harry Ellis today, but how much shittier can this evening actually get? I mean, if I got any lower, I’d be propping up the gates of Hell.
“Chateau Rauzan-Ségla, is it?” I say, nodding towards his beverage of choice.
Harry reels around, almost dropping the bottle.
“For a man with limited taste receptors, you sure know how to pick expensive plonk.”
His eyes rake over me, from top to toe and back again. His frown deepens by the millisecond as though it was he who’d stumbled across me stealing his father’s vino and rifling through his belongings.
He doesn’t even seem remotely embarrassed at being caught doing those things. “God, your accent is fucking awful. Do you ever just hear yourself and think, ‘Wow, is that really what I sound like?’”
“Yeah, I guess I do sometimes,” I say, which makes Harry blink in a double take. “So, are you going to share my father’s booze with me, or am I going to call the police on your ass?”
He still doesn’t answer my question. “How expensive is it?”
“What’s the year?” I sit in an armchair and prop my feet up on the matching pouffe.
“Sixty-one.”
“’Bout three hundred.”
Harry nods, impressed with his choice no doubt, and passes me the bottle. It’s not too bad, even if I don’t much like red.
“I see you’re still a massive slag,” Harry says, nodding his head towards my perfume collection. “How many guys since me? One hundred? Two hundred? You averaging two per night, or what? Eiffel Towers all round, yeah?”
“Have you broken into my house just to throw insults at me?”
“I didn’t break in. All the doors were wide open. Don’t rich people ever lock up their shit?” He moves to drop himself into the armchair next to me, but I wedge my foot against it and push it away from him. His butt hovers midair before he straightens up again.
“That’s not for you,” I say in a singsong voice. “You don’t get to sit your plebeian behind and your cheap suit on my furniture.”
Harry rakes his hands through his hair. He’s not wearing his jacket any more so it must be in my bedroom. I’m surprised he hasn’t removed more of his clothing. “God, you are exactly the same!”
“I could say the same about you,” I bite back, and take another swig. “You’re even wearing the perfume I gave you.”
It’s like someone turned up the colour on Harry’s face. His cheeks blaze pink. He doesn’t respond, and I feel a dopamine rush from knocking him down a few pegs.
Eventually he snatches the wine from my hand, whirls the other armchair around to face me, and sits down. “I had to buy another bottle because I used the last one up. It’s so fucking pricey.”
I don’t say anything because even though two hundred and fifty pounds doesn’t seem expensive to me, I know others—especially Harry, who can’t even smell—don’t feel the same.
I also don’t ask him why he didn’t opt for a cheaper brand or a celebrity fragrance, why he felt it was necessary to replenish the bottle I’d gifted him.
I don’t ask him mostly because I’m convinced I don’t want to know the answer.
Instead, I choose to be vulnerable. “Daisy’s leaving me. Moving to fucking Scotland. And I have a job now. Urgh!” I let my head drop against the back of the chair.
“Shit,” Harry says after a few moments. The bottle swishes, swishes again, and he gulps. “Karma’s a bitch.”
I lift my head and for the first time tonight—no, scrap that, the first time in weeks—I’m fighting a smile. “You’re such a cunt.”
Harry sucks his cheeks inwards, making a fishlike face, battling his own mirth. “Takes one to know one—” he says, not that he can finish his sentence since we’ve both exploded with laughter.
I miss this.
Those words echo around in my head, and I sober up quickly enough.
“This is the part where you tell me how shitty your life has been without me to make me feel better about my catastrophic existence.”
Harry doesn’t say anything, he just chews his bottom lip, and my stomach churns.
“Jesus, you’re gonna say you’re happy, aren’t you? As if this day couldn’t get any worse.” I lean forward, grab the bottle, and drain what little remains.
“God, no. No, I’m not happy,” he says.
“Oh, thank fuck.”
We both laugh.
“Do you think a happy person breaks into someone’s bedroom and changes all their likes on Netflix?”
“You absolute bastard!” I say, but with no malice. I point to the dressing table behind him, to the ice bucket—now a pail of room-temp water, I expect—and to the bottle of champagne sitting untouched inside it. “Glasses are on the side. Chop chop.”
Harry rolls his eyes but gets to his feet. “Why are there three glasses?”
“I was expecting guests this morning. They never turned up.”
“Male guests?”
“No. Just friends.”
“Oh,” he says. There’s an audible note of relief in his voice.
“You want to hear about my disastrous life? I haven’t gotten laid since you.
That’s almost an entire year without a decent fuck, and it’s ironic .
. . annoying even because I actually like fucking.
” Harry fiddles with the champagne bottle.
He opens one of the lead-panelled sash windows and digs his thumb under the cork.
It flies free and disappears somewhere into the night-shrouded grounds.
“Yeah, that’s pretty rou—”
“And the other reason my life is shit,” he says. I purse my lips tight to trap my grin. “Is that Mathias fucking Jones still exists.”
I reach forward and take a flute from him. He’s filled it to the brim. “You know I live for your hatred of Mathias. What’s he done now?”
Harry drains his glass of champagne and refills it straight away. “Urgh, nothing. He’s done nothing. He never does. Perfect fucking Mathias fucking superstar Jones. Did you know they’re gonna make him captain?”
“Really, when did they decide that? Because I spoke to Mathias yesterday, and he told me they didn’t have anyone in mind yet.”
Suddenly, Harry’s face is only twenty centimetres away from mine. He’s leaning all the way forward in his chair. “What did he say about it?”
“Remind me to buy you a toothbrush next time I go to town.” I place my foot on the seat of his armchair, right between his thighs, and I push him back.
The counterforce ends up sliding my chair backwards across the tiled floor too.
“Mathias only said that—that nobody knows just yet. Have you heard differently?”
The question is rhetorical. I’ve grown accustomed to Harry’s “I’m going to speculate wildly and then immediately catastrophise and believe it all as fact” expression. It’s in the single raised brow, the tightly clenched jaw, the way he tugs on his earlobe, and the slight quiver to his lower lip.
He has freckles on his lips, like doughnut sprinkles clinging to a clumsy mouth. I didn’t even know a person could have freckles on their lips until I met Harry, but the man has freckles everywhere. On every single part of his body.
“It’s obvious, though, isn’t it? Of course they’re going to pick Gadget,” he says, confirming my suspicions.
I follow the Cents news pretty closely because .
. . well, I might catch a glimpse of Harry, but even if I didn’t sub to their newsletter, or follow their Instagram, or have notifications set up to my home page, I’d still have Daisy and Owen and everyone else at the pub to chat rugby with and keep me up to date.
And Harry’s not wrong. The obvious choice for the captaincy is Mathias.
His stats are fantastic, his brain is analytical in ways I didn’t even know possible, and his popularity and approval have exploded during the past two years.
In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if they don’t select Mathias, there’ll be a few rankled Cents fans out there.
Harry must read my answer from my silence.
He slumps in his chair and throws back the rest of his champagne, then starts chugging from the bottle.
“Tell me about your job, then. I need to feel better about my pathetic life.” His eyes are a little unfocused, like he’s talking to someone over my shoulder.
“I hate it,” I say, and Harry laughs. “I’ve been working there for an entire week, and I still don’t actually know what they want me to do. All I know is that they hate me.”
“Aww, but it’s not possible to hate Orlando Oakham-Goodwin,” he mocks. “He’s such a good, hardworking guy with upstanding morals and work ethic.”
Harry laughs too hard at his own joke. I don’t counter with anything, I just flip him off instead, which makes him laugh even harder.
“I need to quit my job in order to follow my dream,” I say. Harry tilts his head to the side in question. “My dream of not having a job.”
“Fuck, Lando.” He’s smiling as he says this, but his brow’s furrowed, and I have no idea what he means by any of it. “I need a piss?”
“Is that a question? Are you asking me if your bladder is full?”
He laughs again. “No, I’m asking that, if I go take a piss, can I come back and . . . continue this conversation?”
“Oh.” Shit. “Sure.” I pretend like my heart didn’t do a traitorous little triple thump at his question.
I hate him. I hate him. I definitely hate him.
But . . .
It’s nice to be smiling again.
“Do you remember where my bathroom is?”
Harry rolls his eyes so hard it almost looks painful, then he gets to his feet and stumbles three steps forward before righting himself.
“Did you drive here?”
“No, Eggo did, but . . .” He frowns, confused. “What’s the time? I should tell him where I am, and to wait for me.”
Harry starts patting down his shirt like it’s made of pockets and scanning the ground, probably looking for his phone.
“You can stay here.” The words fall from my mouth without any brain engagement. “If you want to, I mean. If you want to stay here tonight . . . you can.”
“Not to . . . ?”
“No. No, of course not to do that. Just . . . you know, we could watch a movie or something?”
What. Am. I. Saying?
“But you hate me?”
“Yes. And you hate me.”
“Yes,” he says. “So, we’d be like hate-watching a movie?”
“I guess so,” I say. “Maybe we could like . . . hate-cuddle a bit?”
Harry snorts with laughter, then rubs a hand down his face. “Fine. Let me pee first.”
“Do you want to borrow PJs?” I ask, desperately trying to keep any evidence of my skittering heartbeat out of my voice.
He flexes his biceps. “Your pyjamas won’t last a second against the strain of my enormous muscles.”
In all honesty, he’s probably right, and I can’t afford new pyjamas right now. “Oh, just fuck off already. You’re not sleeping naked, though.”
“I’ll find something!” he calls out from the other room.
While Harry is in the bathroom, I head downstairs to the kitchen to fetch some snacks.
I don’t stock Jaffa Cakes or Rice Krispie Squares in the cupboard any more, so I grab spicy nuts—because he used to love them—and chocolate-covered pretzels for me, plus a few cans of zero beer.
I’m certain Harry doesn’t need any more alcohol in his bloodstream.
It’s just gone ten and the party in the marquee is in full swing. The bass from the music thrums through the house, vibrating the window frames and the silverware and vases on the sideboards. Colourful disco lights pierce the pitch black of the Hooke Manor grounds.
When I get back to my room, Harry’s perched on the end of the bed. He’s wearing an old T-shirt I got when Mathias had leftover stock from a VIP meet ’n’ greet last year. Harry’s shirt, suit trousers, and socks lie crumpled on my rug, and his freckly legs are bare.
“That’s Mathias’s T-shirt, by the way,” I tell him.
The speed at which Harry removes the shirt and tosses it across the room should be studied and replicated by aeronautical engineers. “Ew.”
“Put a movie on, then,” I say, dumping the contraband on the bed and tossing him the remote, before crossing back into my closet and changing into my PJs. I find a plain black LAbrUM T-shirt that’s oversized on me so will probably reach down to Harry’s knees.
He’s sitting with his back against the headboard, a can of zero beer in one hand and the remote in the other. He stashes the remote on the bedside table and looks up at me. I throw the T-shirt to him.
“It’s mine. You don’t need to worry about sleeping in Mathias’s clothes.”
A black and white procession of funeral cars driving through a 1920’s Chicago street flickers on the TV screen. There are sirens, and then lots of pistols being fired, and suddenly we’re in a car chase.
“Some Like It Hot?” I phrase it like a question. It’s obviously Some Like It Hot. I must have watched this movie over a thousand times. What I meant to ask him was, why? Why would he choose this movie?
He seems to understand my unspoken words. “You’re sad, right? Like, clinically, depressively sad?”
I have a sudden, almost overwhelming urge to cry. He remembered.
I don’t say anything else, I just climb into the bed beside him and grab a beer and a handful of nuts.
“These pretzels are shit, by the way,” Harry says.
“They’re vegan,” I reply. “Do you want to wake up covered in faecal matter?”
“Yeah, no. I really don’t.”
We’re quiet for a bit as we watch Joe and Jerry playing sax and double bass in a cool jazz bar while the crims all drink milk around a tiny table.
“Hey, Lan?” Harry doesn’t turn to look at me. He keeps his eyes trained on the screen. “Did your dad make you take the job at his place?”
“He cut me off. Told me I need to start contributing to the family if I want to stay part of it.”
“That’s . . . rough.”
“Thanks.”
“Why don’t you just get a different job . . . like doing something you actually enjoy?”
I have thought about it, but in all honesty, where would I even begin? I have no formal training for anything, so I’d have to start at the entry level. I googled national minimum wage, and I don’t know how folk are supposed to survive on that. How do they pay their bills? Where do they shop?
“What would I do?” I ask him instead.
He shrugs. “Maybe you could become an official toilet paper tester.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” I say, genuinely fighting a smile. “I hate it when people I hate make me laugh.”
“Do you ever think about the night we first met?”
“Never. Do you?” I’m lying.
“No,” he says, too quickly. “I wish I never met you.”
“Same, girl.”
But Harry’s cheeks puff out into a smile, his lips tick up at the corner, and his eyes crinkle.