CHAPTER 14 #3
Amour No More , Jeremy publicly discovered, was about a young writer named Gabriel (inexplicably written as if Miles was from a working-class background, rather than having always been comfortably middle-class), who discovered after a drunken and erotically tense night out with a mutual friend that his writer’s block could be overcome by cheating on his loyal yet slightly stupid boyfriend, Jerome.
With a sinking sensation, Jeremy recognised the night in question as a real one early in their relationship: a house party from which he’d excused himself early.
He realised the guy Miles – or Gabriel – was sleeping with was their mutual friend Simon, also from the workshop.
By this point, Jeremy understood he was uncleverly disguised as Jerome, a pretty yet neurotic doofus, who Miles wrote about in the fond yet patronising way you’d describe a stupid puppy who kept pissing inside.
Every romantic gesture, every conversation about their future, every moment that had made Jeremy swoon in real life, was reinterpreted in the book as him being naive or embarrassing – and invariably pathetic.
One chapter featured a night they’d spent in a big hotel, where Jeremy had first told Miles he loved him.
Jeremy remembered the way the sounds of the city traffic, and the faint reflection of neon light off Miles’s glasses as they’d lain stretched out in bed, had made the moment feel huge and important and adult, the fear he’d felt battling the surge of affection, until he’d finally blurted it out.
He remembered the way Miles had rushed in to kiss him before he could even finish the sentence.
It was the most romantic moment of his life.
In the book, Miles revealed he’d just been sent a nude by a guy he was flirting with, and Jeremy had managed to drop the ‘I love you’ bomb right into the middle of his ethical crisis.
Miles read: ‘ I didn’t want to say “I love you” back, so I just kissed him – the thought of another man’s cock emblazoned across my thoughts the whole night. ’
Jeremy had left at that point and stayed up all night reading the unwieldy 150,000-word Amour No More .
It was, as the blurb promised, a psychosexual exploration by one man who finds freedom and creative expression through the act of infidelity.
Gabriel – Miles – spends years sleeping with man after man, and all the while his sweet, doting, bland boyfriend Jerome suspects nothing.
‘I could recognise enough of our lives in there to understand it was pretty much all true. I recognised friends and acquaintances he cheated on me with, I remembered the parties where I was dancing elsewhere while he was being sucked off in a toilet cubicle, the classes he was “late” to because he was having his back blown out in an abandoned lecture theatre by a tutor,’ said Jeremy woodenly.
‘But I was so … blindsided by it all that I still didn’t quite understand – until I got to the chapter where he had a threesome on the night of my birthday, while I was passed out from too much bourbon in my room. ’
Sam was glancing at him in between watching the road, concerned and sympathetic, and by the stricken look on his face, it seemed he had cottoned on to the thing Jeremy had failed to get for so long.
‘All my friends knew,’ Jeremy said. ‘They all knew. Some had participated in it, some had helped him cover it up – some even thought he was an asshole for doing it, but nobody told me. This went on for almost four years.’
‘Jesus,’ muttered Sam.
Jeremy had done a kind of deranged round robin, calling all his friends and demanding the truth from them.
He didn’t remember a lot from that time – he’d almost gone into a fugue state, cut off from any emotion except shock.
It had been awkward, but in one way or another – sometimes apologetically, sometimes defensively, sometimes blatantly lying – his friends had confirmed that the stories in the book were mostly, even entirely, true.
‘It’s so easy to summarise the whole thing as a bad breakup, as heartbreak,’ Jeremy went on, ‘but really, it’s more about realising I spent four years of my life being an absolute joke to everyone I loved.
And as much as I loved Miles at the time, I was also deeply in love with that whole friendship group.
It was the first time I’d felt part of …
a community. I used to imagine we’d graduate and live a Friends -style sitcom life, all together in the big city in the same block of flats.
This is why you should never date a writer,’ Jeremy joked half-heartedly.
‘Makes Taylor Swift’s red scarf situation look tame, doesn’t it? ’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Sam said, sounding genuinely appalled.
‘I didn’t even get to the best bit,’ Jeremy said with a sigh.
‘That book was something of a bestseller. I mean, no Harry Potter or Da Vinci Code , but it was big. Miles won some awards, he did the press circuit, got an agent, got a two-book deal. Not that I’ve thought too much about this, but my estimation is he’s earned at least a hundred grand from writing about me, which, I dunno, makes it worse – like he’s been rewarded for fucking me over.
Or not only that – like it was necessary : like literature is better because of people like him.
I used to love reading and writing narratives, but I don’t really do either now. ’
Sam drove for a while, clearly thinking things over.
‘And every time I tell anyone this stupid story,’ Jeremy said into the silence, ‘I have to admit to being a huge sap who got turned into a literary laughing-stock and watch any respect they have for me drain out of their eyes.’
Without taking his eyes off the road, Sam shook his head. ‘You did nothing wrong. You made the decision to love someone, some people, who didn’t deserve your love. Nothing shameful about that.’
‘Perhaps,’ muttered Jeremy, his heart still pumping hard from divulging all this to Sam.
‘I haven’t spoken to any of them for years and years now.
I just disappeared, although I don’t think any of them tried to contact me anyway.
Miles sent a text or two, but that was it. So yeah. Does that give context?’
‘Yeah,’ said Sam thoughtfully. ‘You’re still insane and petty, but I do get it. Confirms my Reputation era theory even more.’
‘If I could hurt them all I would,’ admitted Jeremy. ‘Does that make me a bad person? I can’t, of course, so all I can do is somehow try to win. Out of spite.’
‘And I’m going to help you,’ Sam said, taking a moment to lock eyes with him.