Chapter 27 #2
“You scapegoated your sexuality because you’d already decided I was going to abandon you.
So you drew this wild fucking conclusion that if I didn’t get regular sex I’d do a runner, and you made that the entire reason we couldn’t be together.
Only, I don’t give a fuck about that, and I thought I’d made that pretty obvious.
” He drinks from his bottle, but doesn’t take his eyes off me.
“You were so convinced I’d leave that you figured pushing me away would lessen the pain because at least it’d be on your terms.”
I fucking hate how rigorous and succinct his dissection of me is. I guess he had been thinking about it a lot over the past year.
“You did leave me, though,” I say, the words half whispered. It’s a stupid non-argument, and Harry knows this too.
“Because you wanted me to. You spent more time pushing me away than you did just enjoying us being together. You tried to set me up with another guy because that’s how much you didn’t want to be with me.”
I can feel the tears building again.
When am I ever not crying in front of this man?
It’s not that I didn’t want to be with him. I did more than anything. It’s that . . . I was afraid.
“Because . . . because . . .” I say, then scream. Just once. To get the frustration out of my voice. It doesn’t work, but I realise . . . it’s not frustration.
It’s sadness, and a decade of repressed anger, and loneliness, and fear. Undiluted, unfiltered, unchecked terror that he would one day, as everybody else has done, decide that I’m just too much.
“Everyone I’ve ever cared about has left me.” I don’t even bother trying to stop the tears. “Why would you be any different? I wasn’t scapegoating my sexuality. I was simply doing a thorough risk assessment.”
I close my eyes and let my head fall back against the mattress, and I feel Harry scoot over to sit beside me.
“My dad left, over and over again. First, he left Mum and me, then he left his second wife, then his third. Who knows how long this one has before he leaves her. You know she’s pregnant? I’m going to have a brother or sister.”
“I’m not like h—”
“You’re not him, I know that. You’re nothing like him,” I interrupt.
“But then Mum left me. Daisy’s leaving me.
I don’t speak to any of the boys from school any longer.
” I sigh. “I wasn’t always this much of a slut.
Way back when, I tried to have a few relationships, but after I let those guys fuck me, they wanted nothing more to do with me.
I know you’re not the same as my dad, but what’s the common denominator here?
It’s me. Eventually, everyone leaves me. ”
It’s better if I don’t develop feelings first.
“Lando . . .” Harry wraps his baby and ring fingers around mine. “Your mum didn’t leave through choice.” His voice is agonisingly soft. Patient. “She’d still be here if she could. By your side, forever.”
Fuck, this hurts. I drag a hand down my face. “It’s unfair of me to include my mum in this, but that’s how I feel. You have seven hundred brothers and sisters. You don’t understand what it’s like to be this . . . alone and terrified.”
“You’re right. I don’t. That doesn’t mean I’ve never felt lonely, though.
Imagine growing up in a house with six kids, and being the middle boy.
Sure, there were people around all the time, but it always felt like a scramble just to be seen.
Everyone was always better than me at something, more deserving of my parents’ attention.
Smarter, taller, richer, better at sports, more successful, more beautiful, more ill.
I remember once when I was like thirteen, I had to have my tonsils taken out.
I got the whole week off school, just me and Mum at home all day.
Then my fucking sister went and got in a car crash, so I was totally forgotten about. ”
I groan, half wanting to laugh because only Harry could make another person’s near death experience into a reason to be pissed off.
“I’m not saying I had it as bad as you, but I need you to realise that not everything is the way it looks. I was so lonely until I met you. You . . . were . . . are, I think, the other half of my soul.”
I turn my face towards him, resting my temple against the mattress. “You’re telling me the other half of my soul has chicken grease on his jhorts?”
Harry barks out a laugh. “Yup.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I reckon we give ‘us’ another shot.”
Instead of answering him, I rotate on the spot, so my face is smushed into the duvet. I know Harry’s watching me. I feel him, hear the bottle glugging as he takes huge swigs from it.
“I’m scared,” I say without lifting my head away, the words muffled.
“Honestly, me too. And I can’t promise I’ll never leave.”
I peer at him. He gives me a cheesy Gromit-esque smile-and-shrug combo.
“I wish I could say I know for certain I wouldn’t, but shit can change. I can’t even promise myself forever. What if you cheat on me? What if I get hit by a bus?”
Now I’m smiling. “Okay, first, you’d do more damage to the bus with those thick rugby cakes of yours, and second, I would never cheat on you.”
“Then maybe I’ll never leave?” He shoots out a foot and kicks my knee with it. When did he take off his socks? “Maybe we grow old together . . . How does that sound?”
So fucking good. It sounds perfect. It sounds . . .
Impossible.
“But—”
“No buts, Lando.”
“But—”
He kicks me again, harder this time. “What did I just say?”
“But what if you cheat on me?!” I have to shout the words out so he doesn’t assault me.
“That’s not something you’ll ever have to worry about.”
“But what if I don’t want to have sex for . . . a long time?”
Harry shrugs. “So? I have a fist, don’t I? And an asparagus-shaped dildo. And a pocket pussy. Well . . . bussy I suppose. Felt more gender neutral to get the bumhole one.”
“Oh my god.” I slap a hand over my mouth. “But what if it’s weeks? Months?”
“Babygirl, I don’t mind if you never want to have sex with me ever again. It’s not a deal breaker. The sex is not why I love you, okay?”
“You would care, though. Imagine a few months have gone by and we haven’t fucked. I couldn’t blame you for seeking it elsewh—”
Harry yells out a string of incoherent sounds to shut me up. “Orlando Oakham-Goodwin, I’ve gone an entire year without sex. Not even a sneaky handie or BJ, because it wouldn’t have been with you. I can go longer. Wanna test me? Put your father’s money where your mouth is?”
I’m laughing. And moaning. “It’s not that easy.”
“Of course it is. I want us to be together, officially and exclusively this time. I want everyone to know that you’re my boyfriend, and I love you.”
I hide my face again, crumpling forwards onto the rug.
Harry doesn’t interrupt my existential crisis or rush me for an answer. Instead, he gets to his feet and moves away from me towards the desk. He moans as—I presume—he shoves more meat into his mouth.
“Also, I was thinking,” he says with his mouth full. “You could move into my apartment with me.”
Okay, now I’m on all fours staring at him.
“If you like. But if you need somewhere to put all your clothes and perfumes, we can rent a two bed together. There’s one in the building right across the street.
The neighbours are moving to Devon. They own the flat but are thinking about letting it out.
It’s basement, but it’s massive, and it has a garden.
And . . . maybe in like ten years or something when I retire . . . we could get a dog?”
“Harry, are you okay?”
He scoops another handful of prosciutto into his mouth and talks around it. “Yeah. I’ve had a lot of time to think about stuff. I’m miserable without you. You’re miserable without me. I mean, you’re miserable with me, but why not . . . just be miserable together.”
It’s actually a very decent argument.
I down a quarter of the bottle in one go. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
“So we’re gonna do this? For real? You’ll be my boyfriend?” Harry kneels next to me.
I’m still terrified. “What if—”
“I won’t,” he says.
“Okay, but what about—”
“I won’t do that either.”
“You don’t even know what I was trying to say,” I yell.
He takes my hands in his sweaty, meat-greased ones. Honestly, my bad for bringing him an entire deli. “What if I get bored of waiting for you to give me a blowie? What if I find some other thing I hate about you and leave? That sound about right?”
I don’t answer. Don’t need to. He knows he’s bang on.
“You’re forgetting how well we know each other. I know you better than I know myself. I’ve seen you poo. You know all my secrets. All of my deepest, darkest desires.”
“Harry, your deepest, darkest desires involve Mathias falling flat on his face in front of a stadium full of people, and you giving me a cream pi—”
“Oh my god!” He glances over at my closed bedroom door as though my father—who hasn’t stepped foot in my bedroom for at least a decade—might come bursting in any second and overhear how perverted his son’s boyfriend is.
Boyfriend. Fuck, that actually sounds so good.
“I don’t deserve you,” I say.
“Of course you do. We’re Statler and Waldorf, remember? Two grumpy old men together.” He makes a rainbow gesture with his hands. “Forever.”
I hide my face behind my palms and breathe out the world’s longest sigh.
“I missed you so much. I think about you all the time. Some days I’d convince myself that we could be perfect together.
That we could simply exist the way we used to, having fun and watching movies and getting drunk.
And then it feels like I’m waking up from a dream, and I remember you’re just a human, with human needs, and it would be so unfair for me to ask you to suppress them. ”
Harry opens his mouth to say something, but I hold up my hand. He’s had his turn to speak, now it’s mine.
“I know it’s not only about sex, but sex has always been such a .
. . heavy presence in my life. It’s either something that’s felt incredibly wrong, or it’s been .
. . a weapon for me to wield in order to get what I wanted.
If we become boyfriends, sex wouldn’t be off the table indefinitely, like .
. . I enjoy watching you come, making you come. I enjoy being that close to you.”
I groan and drag my fingers over my face again.
Why am I trying to sabotage this for myself?
Why am I trying to make Harry as miserable as I am?
He doesn’t deserve to be miserable. He deserves to be the happiest person alive.
He’s been nothing but kind, and gentle, and patient with me.
Fuck, he’s been so patient. And I’ve been such an asshole.
He deserves to have everything his heart has ever desired . . .
“I love you,” I say. “I’m such a fucking idiot. I’m so sorry for everything. I’m so fucking sorry. We weren’t ever officially a couple, but like . . . technically we were, and I behaved like such a dingus.”
“You were a dingus.”
“I thought that if I kept you at a distance, neither of us would get our hearts broken, but I’m only realising now that my heart had always been broken, and you were the glue that came along and held the pieces together.”
I’m fucking crying again, because of course I am.
“Harry, I can’t promise that I won’t have random freak-outs.
I’m too deeply embedded in this idea that I’m not .
. . loveable. But I love you, actually, and I know you love me too.
And I’m so fucking scared, oh my god, but yeah, okay, you’re right.
I want to be with you. I really want you to be my boyfriend. ”
I exhale as though I’ve just ridden the world’s most exhilarating roller coaster.
Harry punches the air. “Fuck yeah! We’re in this now. No backsies. I love you.”
“Oh my god!” I scream. I still can’t quite believe that this imperfectly perfect man before me is mine. All mine. One hundred per cent Orlando Oakham-Goodwin’s. “I love you too.”
“Can I kiss you?”
“Absolutely not, salami breath. No, you can’t.”
Harry swigs his red wine, swishes it around his mouth, and swallows. “Now?”
“Fine.”
He abandons the plonk beside the bed, cups my face with both hands, and kisses me.