I woke up pretty late the next day and pattered woozily in the direction of the kitchen, noticing only just in time that the place was full of cleaners. I was sure Caspian paid them generously, but nobody needed my unsolicited wang at eleven o’clock in the morning. Diving back into the bedroom, I lurked under the duvet until they were finished. I mean, obviously I could have got dressed and gone about my business, but I didn’t want to be in their way. And also the bed—as I’d previously discovered—was ridiculously big and cozy, probably because the mattress was Swedish, cost six figures, and contained a gazillion pocket springs, and the sheets were Egyptian cotton with a thread count higher than my salary would be. When I had a salary.
Wow. How was this my life? Even just for six months.
Eventually the cleaners left. And, respectably trousered—well, semi-respectably as, actually, they were my rainbow unicorn pajama bottoms—I crept over to the kitchen. The fridge, I discovered, was full of…I guess you’d call it gourmet luxuries? Or to put it another way, food that nobody really ate. Caviar and quails eggs and wild strawberries—oh, okay, I’d eat those. My drinking options were Veen Velvet, which I finally figured out was water, and champagne, which I identified instantly because I was just that classy. There was also a coffee machine, but it looked like a torture device, and I was too scared to use it. Clearly, living the high life was going to be tougher than I’d imagined.
And that was when I caught sight of the flowers on the dining table. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen a hundred roses before, but there they were: a splash of wild scarlet in the middle of all that muted, designer extravagance. Caspian had sent a note too: Thank you for a wonderful evening.
Well, that was nice. Sort of. I definitely appreciated the thought. Except it seemed more of an I took you to the opera, where your heartfelt response to the music warmed my cynical cockles gesture than an I fucked your arse until we came type of thing. But then, Caspian was inconceivably wealthy: they did things differently on his planet. I guess I was just lucky he hadn’t tried to endow a professorial chair or name a building after me or something. The Guy I Shagged Memorial Library & Ancient Languages Center.
Anyway, it probably meant he’d enjoyed what we’d done together. Despite the awkward beginning. And the awkward middle. And the—well, honestly, the whole thing had been awkward. But hot too. And there were places I could still feel him, a deep, warm ache in my skin, like kisses he had left behind. Better than any other gift he could have given me.
I breakfasted on strawberries and tap water, sitting rebelliously on the edge of the gold-veined marble worktops. Then I swam and did some yoga, feeling somewhere between the Real Housewives of Kensington and Will Smith in I Am Legend. In the sense of being kind of on my own a bit. Not in the sense of fighting any zombies.
But the truth was, I wasn’t used to being alone. My living arrangements in Oxford had been highly prestigious in student terms, and guests had often come by to point and gasp at our genuinely nice sofa, but they’d still amounted to three rooms and a kitchenette I was sharing with another guy.
Plenty of people in our friendship circle had moved to London—either chancing it like me (although most likely without the billionaire backing) or to take up actual positions in investment banks or the civil service or whatever else properly ambitious Oxford graduates did when they finished their degree. But if I wanted to casually socialize with anyone, I’d probably have to arrange it. Which wasn’t to say I couldn’t, but it felt very different to trotting down the corridor with a packet of Hobnobs, hoping someone would put the kettle on.
I knew it was pretty normal. That it was just growing up. That it was just change. But, right then, it seemed more like loss.
Still, there was no point getting all days of wine and roses about it. Speaking of which—roses, that is, not wine—I owed Caspian a thank you. Grabbing my drug dealer phone, I took a photo of the flowers plus my face, whapped a flattering filter over it, and sent it off. A response came back in less than a minute.
I’m glad you liked them. Do you want anything from Japan?
I wasn’t quite sure how to answer. Since I was pretty sure someone like Caspian would have been able to get anything from anywhere just by making a phone call or getting someone else to make a phone call, it was incredibly sweet that he would offer to pick up something for me personally. And so I really didn’t want to say no. On the other hand, my materialistic desires weren’t quite global enough for a challenge like this. On top of which, I didn’t actually want to put him to expense or trouble. After a moment or two, I sent: Some Glico chocolate crush matcha cookie pocky and a photo.
Of me buying pocky?
I laughed. Just you.
Nothing.
Please? I typed shamelessly.
And a second or two later, a Caspian Hart selfie popped into my inbox. He was on a plane—private jet probably, considering how plush it was—and he looked pale and dark-eyed, his tie loose enough to expose the lickable places of his throat.
Did you sleep okay? Oh wow, fussing over him. Very attractive, Arden.
Yes. I just had to get up early.
Suddenly I felt incredibly bad about last night. I’d been so upset about Caspian’s leaving, I hadn’t paid much attention to his—no innuendo intended—coming. When what really mattered wasn’t that he hadn’t been able to stay long; it was the fact that he’d made the effort to see me at all. Most people who were about to fly six thousand miles might reasonably have fancied going to bed early with a cup of cocoa.
Not having sex with an ungrateful dickhead.
Can you rest now? I asked.
I could, but I need to stay on London time.
Wow. The man didn’t even yield to time zones. But I guess it made sense. Given how much he probably traveled, the alternative was probably permanent jet lag. I could help you stay awake.
I need to work. But I think I’d prefer your methods.
I grinned. How do you know? I didn’t say what they were. I might sing a song that’ll get on your nerves right in your ear.
Then I’d gag you.
Yes please.
He didn’t text back. But I felt we’d left the conversation in a promising place.
Besides, I was also supposed to be working.
Settling myself in the study, I opened my laptop and stared miserably at the arid desert of accomplishment that was my CV. Did my best to spruce it up. Truthfully, I hadn’t been completely idle at Oxford—if anything, my near pathological avoidance of my degree had made me pretty productive in other areas. I’d written for any paper, magazine, and doomed websperiment going. And then there’d been my celebrated stretch as editor of the Bog Sheet—indeed, upon such foundations were Pulitzers won.
Ho hum. But at least it meant I had a portfolio. And that was…that was something, right? My social media presence wasn’t bad either. Twitter could go bite a rabid baboon, but my Instagram was popular-ish, even with people who didn’t know me personally. Basically, I was probably a credible potential candidate.
Apart from the bit where I had nothing to apply for because the career advisor had been right and I should have sorted this out last October and been on an internship right now—or an emerging writers fellowship as they’d had apparently been rebranded on account of indentured servitude being frowned upon nowadays. Of course, there was always next year but that was, well, that was a year away. Which was ages.
I was still going to try because it was probably the best way to get a foot in the door. I mean, probably they wouldn’t be all, “That intern, we mean emerging writer, is so cute and makes the best tea, let’s spontaneously hire him!” but maybe if I happened to get an interview later they might remember my face in a positive way. In the meantime, though, I was on my own. And probably I needed to apply for things and pitch things and—
Ahhhh! It was scary. Really scary. And seemed incredibly amorphous, much like revising for finals. And look how well that had gone.
It was getting pretty late and I was feeling a bit Lady of Shalotty up in my tower, which made me think I’d earned the right to give up for the day. If nothing else, I was going to need food I could actually eat so a visit to my local supermarket was probably in order. Unfortunately, that turned out to be Harrods, so, err, no. The nearest Tesco was about a mile away but there were two Waitroses and a Marks and Spencer less than five minutes down the road. Clearly this was the supermarket hierarchy of Kensington.
I stocked up on crumpets and Coco Pops—yes, okay, I panic-shopped—and grabbed a bunch of magazines as well, intending to use them for research and inspiration. My writing talents, such as they were, had always tended toward the parodic, which probably meant I had no literary identity of my own but could be useful for speculative freelancing. Once I had a good grasp of the house style, I’d probably be able to put together some appropriate pitches. That I would then have to pitch.
Ahhhh!
Everything I’d heard or read about breaking into journalism suggested you had to be persistent and thick-skinned and initiative-taking. So, now I thought about it, not an ideal career choice for me, since I would really have flourished in an industry that rewarded people who were flaky, sensitive, and lackadaisical.
Except, ever since I’d written my first…article I guess (which had been a searing and witty takedown of the school cafeteria’s top ten worst puddings, rapturously received by its audience of nine-year-olds and my mum) I’d just taken it for granted that this was what I was good at. That it was what I was going to do.
But what if I wasn’t good at it? What if I had no chance of doing it?
As I was slinking back to One Hyde Park, my non-drug-dealer phone bleeped. It was Nik, wanting to crash with me next week before he flew out to Boston. He was spending the summer at MIT, helping with a research project, the details of which I’d phased out on because science blah blah polymers blah blah nanocomposites.
I honestly felt a bit nervous about letting him stay—he might, entirely fairly, think my living situation was off and Bellerose hadn’t said anything about guests. What if Caspian wanted to sex me while Nik was there? But, equally, I didn’t want to miss a chance to see my best friend before an ocean got in the way. Even if—with Kik and the rest of the two hundred and nine social media accounts Nik posted gym selfies on—we talked nearly every day anyway.
In any case, I had time to figure it out. An abundance of time, in fact, as I was increasingly coming to realize.
It was quiet in the apartment as I unpacked my shopping and found unobtrusive cupboards for it to lurk in. The sun was setting spectacularly—not in the decorous coral-swirled skies of Oxford, but in great, bloody gashes. The way the light came flooding red-tinged across the polished floor made the whole place look like the dying warren in the animated Watership Down. Which, incidentally, is not a movie that should ever be shown to kids. That shit is Stephen King terrifying.
Wandering out onto the balcony, I rested my elbows on the rail and took in the view. Hyde Park was my back garden: this blur of green, with the city glittering behind. I was getting that I Am Legend feeling again, although the Legend part was especially ill-fitting. I Am Minor Folktale.
Caspian was probably in Tokyo by now, though it must have been three or four in the morning over there. I imagined he was in some glassy hotel gym, running or swimming, or doing whatever he did to get that amazing body, keeping himself awake for a 7:00 a.m. meeting. I wondered if he was missing me a little bit—most likely not because he’d been literally inside me less than a day ago. But did he get lonely? Always working and traveling and…actually, I didn’t know what else he did.
In any case, he’d been extremely clear about what he wanted from me. And the compensations were certainly very…compensatory. But I guess I wasn’t quite prepared for how it might feel—being someone’s prenegotiated short-term sexual encounter. Which was weird because I’d spent nearly all my time at university having one prenegotiated short-term sexual encounter after another. And resenting it—and feeling trapped—when I wasn’t.
I guess that made me a big ol’ hypocrite.
Or maybe it was because I felt differently about Caspian. Partly, yes, there was a certain amount of dazzlement going on there. After all, he was rich and powerful and beautiful…and apparently into me. He was the human equivalent of an offer from Oxford: difficult to get, impossible to turn down, and guaranteed to make you feel as if you’d only been chosen because of an administrative error.
But the truth was, there was more to it than that. I wasn’t just flattered to have earned his attention. I think…I genuinely really liked him. And what drew me most of all was what lay beneath the wealth and the status and the rest of it. The man who laughed quietly, made awkward gestures, and seemed so terribly afraid, sometimes, of hurting me.
He was like a nearly-there Rubik’s Cube—this sealed box, all perfect edges and matched-up colors, except for the occasional hopeless misalignment, a lost orange square and a yellow piece stuck in a corner. Though why I thought this made me the right person for him I have no idea.
I’d never solved one of those fuckers in my entire life.