Chapter 12
Harry
Lando’s en suite is bigger than my parents’ bathroom back at home, and fancier than an actual spa. I’ve only ever been inside one spa, and that was on a cruise with my family two years ago, but it has nothing on the luxuriousness of this place.
It’s all black marble tiles and programmable mood lighting, and towels softer than goose-down quilts. There’s even a fucking telly set behind a mirror.
“I spend so much time in this room, I had my dad have someone install it,” he’d said after the first time he’d had to run to the toilet. He’d told me not to pause the movie, that he could still see it from his throne.
During the second trip, when five minutes had elapsed and he still hadn’t returned, I went to investigate.
“Oh my god!” he’d yelled, covering his lap.
“Relax, I shower with a bunch of guys every single day. I’ve probably seen more cock and balls in my life than you have, and that’s saying something.”
“I’m really sorry about this.”
“Why?” I’d leant against the sink and let my eyes rove over the space. Damn, it sure seemed cool to be fucking loaded. “You literally told me this would happen. Do you need me to fetch you some water or some rehydration pills or more TP or something?”
“You don’t mind?” He’d tilted his head to the side and frowned up at me.
“Everyone shits. Also, I can’t smell. Also, I kinda forced you to make me a grilled cheese sandwich, so that’s on me. Also . . .” I’d stopped myself from finishing that sentence.
“Also?” he’d said.
“Also . . .” I hid my face behind my palm. “At least your ass is finally seeing some action tonight.”
Lando had barked out a laugh. “Alright, fuck off and go get me something to drink. There’s some Lucozade in the little fridge in my room.”
“There’s a fridge in your bedroom!? Oh, how the other half lives.”
That was almost an hour ago. Now I’m lying in Lando’s bone-dry bathtub while he battles it out on the toilet four metres away from me.
There’s a black privacy screen that hides him from my view, but if I sit forward, I can see everything. His trousers are bunched around his socked feet, his elbows rest on bare knees, and his head is propped up in his hands.
Occasionally he whimpers, or cries out, “Ow, ow, ow, ow,” but I’ve learned not to respond. Every time I have responded, he’s told me he’s fine, or more recently to fuck off, and now when I look at him, he waves me away with a very particular finger.
We’d finished watching The Muppet Christmas Carol and despite Lando’s insisted dislike of the musical, he seemed to know an awful lot of the song lyrics. Now Some Like It Hot plays on the hidden-mirror TV, and I am . . . invested. Who’d have thought I’d be into a movie older than my parents?
So far, our lads have accidentally witnessed an absolute bloodbath in a Chicago garage, and now they’re in full drag in the Floridian sunshine trying to escape the bad guys. Currently, Old Matey Boy is pretending to be a rich bespectacled oil tycoon in order to catfish Marilyn Monroe.
“Wait, what the fuck is that accent?” I say leaning forward. “Is he meant to be English or . . .”
Lando simply shrugs and laughs.
“I don’t like him. He’s a sleazeball.”
“Yeah, a little bit.”
We’re quiet for a while as we watch the movie. Lando’s guts have stopped gurgling like a broken coffee percolator, and now he’s just perching on the loo as a precaution.
“Do you get flare-ups often?” I ask.
“Ehh, sometimes. Dairy sets it off, but other things can do it too. Booze is pretty bad, stress too. Stress is a killer, actually. Like if I’m nervous, or upset . . .” He pauses, his eyes flicker up to the ceiling. “When my mum died I . . .” He doesn’t finish his sentence, and I don’t ask him to.
I lie back in the tub again. On the telly, Daphne is dancing with an old guy, and Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe are snogging on a boat.
“I like someone. A dude,” I say before I realise I’ve spoken.
Suddenly my heart is pounding a mile a minute.
The toilet creaks, and I lean forward. “I’ve had a crush on this guy for years.
He works with my mum, and recently he broke up with his boyfriend, and I thought maybe I might .
. . have a shot?” I don’t know why I’m phrasing it like a question.
“But like, I’ve never been with a bloke before, so . . .”
“So you were going to practice on me first?” Lando asks. “Have me pop your boy cherry before shooting your shot?”
“Yeah?” Still phrasing things like questions. “Is that bad?”
“Of course not. It’s smart, actually. I was going to let you fuck me and then dump you out into the pitch-black wilderness of Mudford, remember?”
“Touché.” I take a sip of beer, and realise I’ve reached the end of yet another bottle. I seem to be amassing a collection of empties near the drain of Lando’s tub.
“He’s older?” Lando says after a few minutes of quiet. How did he know?
“Yeah. He’s thirty, like . . . he’s a proper grown-up.
He lives in a flat near me, and likes art and shit.
I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know I exist, or well, he does, but he just sees me as this butthead kid.
I have a bajillion brothers and sisters, and I’m just Donna’s middle boy. Literally nobody special.”
Neither of us says anything. I should get up and stretch my legs, go pee, get another beer, but I don’t move.
“I just thought if I got some experience, then I wouldn’t . . . fuck things up so easily with Lionel. But I can’t even do that. The hottest guy in the Westcountry takes me to his mansion, and I can’t even keep a stiffy.” I let my head fall back against the tub’s rim. It clangs and echoes.
“You think I’m hot? The hottest guy in the Westcountry?”
I have to lean forward to see his expression. He’s hiding a smile. “You know you’re fucking hot, look at you. So don’t play dumb with me.”
I realise his trousers aren’t around his ankles any more. They’re done up, and he’s sitting on top of the closed toilet lid.
“I’m ace,” he says. Any trace of mirth has vanished. “I’m not even that into sex. Don’t really like it.” Lando rolls his eyes up to the ceiling and shakes his head. “I just . . . like the attention, I guess.”
“Oh,” I reply, then shut my mouth because I haven’t got anything else to add. Well, I do, I have thousands of questions, but I have no right to demand an answer to any of them.
I get it, though, the need for attention.
As one of six siblings, and about thirty grand and great-grandchildren, attention isn’t exactly a bottomless resource for me.
My brothers and sisters are all wildly more successful or richer or taller or better looking than me.
Even my sixteen-year-old baby bro has signed to the Bristol under seventeens squad and has a modelling contract for some kidswear brand.
I’m second fiddle to Mathias Jones, and even after making the men’s first team, I spend most of my time on the bench.
Girls like me when they’re drunk enough not to care that I’m not Mathias Jones, but nobody has ever fallen in love with me. I don’t get sponsorships like some of my other teammates seem to. And with the exception of that one thirst trap that went viral, I don’t even get picked for Instagram posts.
I understand the feeling of isolation. The desire to be desired.
“Harry?”
“Yeah?”
“You and Daisy are the only people I’ve ever told . . .” Lando won’t look at me. He’s fiddling with the hem of his T-shirt.
“That’s cool. I won’t say anything.”
“Thanks,” he whispers. “So, do you want to stay over? Or do you want me to order an Uber?”
“I could stay,” I say. “In your bed? With you?”
“I mean, we have about six spare guest rooms, so you don’t have to share my bed.”
“You don’t mind if I share your bed?” Rather Lando than whatever ghosts lurk in these enormous corridors.
He hides his smile behind a palm. “I’d kind of like that. I don’t have sleepovers except with Daisy.”
“It’s wild that you hook up with all these guys, but I’m gonna be the first to stay over.” It’s cool, actually. Even though we didn’t fuck, it makes me feel a little special.
Suddenly, Lando jumps up from the toilet and washes his hands, then he marches over to the tub and holds out a hand for me to grab. My extremities have all gone numb, and when I unfurl my legs, I feel the onset of pins and needles. I make an old-person groan as I get to my feet.
“Come with me. I want to show you something.” Lando pulls me by the hand and guides me through his bedroom, through a tiny mirrored corridor, and into another room made entirely of cupboards.
He pushes a spot in the centre of one door, and it opens by itself. Inside, lining little glass shelves, are about fifty perfume bottles in an array of different colours and sizes.
“These are . . . tokens from guys I’ve hooked up with.”
“You stole them? Or did they give you them? Or do you buy them afterwards?” I’m confused.
Lando smiles a half smile. “They . . . fall into my pocket.”
I hold my hands out in front of me. “No judgement here.” I kind of like that he’s a secret crim. A little bit wicked.
Though that’s definitely a higher body count than me, even if I include all the girls I’ve slept with. A higher body count than I could ever dream of.
And he’s ace? It doesn’t make any sense to me.
“The PC term is olfactory stimulant relocation. Or OSR.” He laughs, but there’s no humour to it. “I don’t really know why I take them, I just . . . do.”
“Do you wear any of these?”
“Ew, no.” Lando opens the neighbouring cupboard to reveal another section of approximately fifty perfume bottles.
Only this time there are no repeats. “These are my fragrances. I have a big thing for scent. And okay, I know you can’t actually smell anything, but I’m going to need you to stop wearing whatever cheapo brand you’re wearing right now and pick one of these. ”
“Hey, my mum bought me this for Christmas.”
“No offense, but I think you get your lack of smell from your mum. I’m sure she’s lovely, but the woman has . . . no taste.” He looks at me as though he’s bracing for impact.
I can’t argue with a man who has more than fifty bottles of expensive-looking fragrances and is willing to gift me one.
“I didn’t steal these, I promise. I paid for them all myself . . . with my dad’s money.”
“Fine,” I say, laughing. “But you choose.”
He stares at his collection for a few seconds and hovers his hand over a rounded yellow bottle before closing his fist around it. Then he places it in my palm. “This one. It’s one of my absolute favourites.”
I pretend those words don’t do something weird to my insides. “Loom . . . Loomy . . .” My pronunciation sucks hard.
“Lumière du Fant?me,” he says effortlessly.
“You’re giving it to me?”
“Only if you promise to fuck whatever toilet water you’re currently using in the bin.”
We’re both grinning our heads off. Then, out of nowhere, Lando pulls my T-shirt over my head, tosses it across the room to a pair of armchairs, and sprays me with the fragrance. I can’t smell it, but my heart is racing.
“Fuck, that smells so good,” he says, crowding into the space between my shoulder and jaw and sniffing deeply.
He’s close, ridiculously close, but I don’t move away. My dick stirs.
“What does it smell like?” I’m using every ounce of concentration I possess to keep my voice even, to stop my breath from hitching. It would be so cringe if now’s the time I get an erection.
Lando inhales again and pulls back. His cheeks are a little flushed, but he doesn’t seem embarrassed. “Figs, and basil, and tomato leaf.”
“Okay . . . but what do those things smell like?”
“Fuck, I . . . don’t know. Uh, I guess it smells clean and fresh, like grass . . . no. Wow, okay, it’s really difficult to describe scents to someone who’s never smelled anything.”
“It is. There aren’t as many words for smells as there are for sight or sound,” I say. “You kind of have to phrase it in terms of emotion, though I know people have different emotions about everything, so it might not be the same for you but . . .”
“Okay, okay . . .” Lando tucks his head into the gap by my neck and breathes in again.
I ignore the way the lower half of my body responds to his proximity.
Hey, Little Harry, don’t start things up now. You wouldn’t work for me earlier, and now you’re too late for the party.
“It’s a happy fragrance,” Lando says. I’m trying to think of it as though he’s a dog and I’m a tree covered in piss.
Not a good time to be getting aroused. “It’s like a creamy and sumptuous kinda smell, but also young and sparkling.
It’s like . . . an intelligent scent. That sounds so stupid but .
. . I don’t know, it just feels right on you.
It smells comforting, like a place you want to come back to.
Like a bench in a tranquil park or a beach at sunrise.
Like reading a book you already know ends with a happy ever after.
Like . . . watching The Muppet Christmas Carol. ”
Abruptly Lando sobers and erects himself to his full twelve hundred feet of height.
I can’t think of anything to say, and a heavy silence hangs between us for a while.
It just feels right on you.
Like a place you want to come back to.
Comforting.
I’ve never wanted to be able to smell something so badly before.
“Do you want to borrow some PJs?” he asks, piercing the stillness in the same way jamming a pair of scissors into a balloon would.
I hide my gasp with an, “Um . . . actually, I sleep pretty much naked. Will that be a problem?”
Lando shakes his head. “Just don’t try anything.”
“I wasn’t planning on,” I say. That ship has probably long since sailed. Besides, I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun I’ve had this evening.