My phone was bleeping insistently and I was just as insistently ignoring it. Eventually, Darian untangled himself and went to retrieve it.
“I’m starting to fink you gotta secret lover, babes.”
He tossed my phone to me. I had accrued an extensive collection of emails and text messages. “Oh fuck. Oh, wanking fuck. I’m meant to be in Cambridge. There’s a wedding tomorrow and a rehearsal dinner tonight.” I rolled myself into sheets that smelled of both of us, pulled a pillow over my head, and whinged—in a rather muffled manner—about not wanting to go.
Unlike most of my social engagements, I hadn’t made my usual internal commitment to avoid Max and Amy’s wedding. There were some acts too low even for me. But somehow the reality of it had slipped away from me, along with everything but Darian, and I was left without resources.
Darian sat down on the edge of the bed and patted lightly at my shoulder. “Better get moving, babes.”
“I don’t want to. I feel panicky just thinking about it. It’ll be awful. What if something goes wrong?”
He tugged at my cocoon. “It’s just you being anxious or whateva. It’s gonna be fine.”
“Just anxious?” I repeated, as furiously as I could from beneath a pillow. “Just anxious! Fuck you. That’s like saying, it’s just a broken leg, start climbing that mountain.”
“Sorry,” he said with a distinct lack of repentance. “I just don’t fink you should miss summin what’s important to your mates.”
“I’ve spent the last however many years letting my friends down. Believe me, they’ll cope.”
“Aww, that’s sad.”
I snarled at him.
“Sorry.” A pause, and then, “You ’aven’t let me down, babes.”
“Give me time.”
He slowly began to peel away my sheets, and I slowly stopped fighting him.
“But you did modlin and everyfing.” He pulled off the pillow and put it back in its usual place. “What do you normally do when you ’ave to do somefing what you feel all anxious abaht?”
“I don’t do it.”
“That ain’t true.”
I sat up, sighing. “It’s mostly true. I suppose I could take some diazepam, but I hate it. It makes me feel sub-human. I think Hamlet must have been on it.”
“Don’t fink they had that back in ’istory, babes.”
“‘O, that this too too solid flesh would melt.’ It’s exactly like that. And it’s addictive, so if I’m not careful, I’ll end up a clinically anxious, bipolar depressive with a drug problem.” I waved a finger at him. “Oh, oh, and let’s not forget its many many side effects. One of which is . . . depression.”
He made a snuffling sound and hastily clapped a hand over his mouth.
“It’s fine, laugh it up. It’s funny, it’s fucking ridiculous.”
“But there ain’t nuffin else?”
“Yes, Darian,” I said with sharp-edged patience. “I really want to medicate my medication with medication.”
“Suppose not,” he said. “I remember finking you ’ad a lot of pills first time I stayed over.”
I gaped at him. “Wait, you knew all along?”
“I knew you ’ad summin going on, but I wouldn’t pry, babes. I fought you’d tell me when you wonnid.”
“And you still slept with me? Wanted to be with me?”
He shrugged. “Course.”
“You’re a strange man, Darian Taylor.”
“Takes one to know one, babes.”
He made me smile. Just a little. And, in return, what could I give except ugly truths? “I don’t want to take more pills than I have to. It’s taken years to get this close to stable.”
And, for the most part, it worked. Yes, depression dogged my footsteps and the promise of hypomania glittered sometimes on the horizon, but I hadn’t been manic for a long time. I didn’t know whether it was the ECT, the medication, the counselling, or the very fact of being appropriately diagnosed, but it wasn’t something I dared to question, in case I broke the spell. I wouldn’t have called myself a superstitious man, but when it came to the intricacies of my biochemistry, the complexities of my illness, I was as helpless as a frightened child who prayed to a god called science.
“They’ve tried to fix the anxiety,” I said, “but if you take this, you have to take that, or stop taking the other, and the whole bloody awful cycle begins again. They did find something that helped a bit. But I stopped taking it.”
“Yeah?
“Yes. The side effects . . . I . . . got fat, okay? And I know it’s shallow, I know it’s irresponsible, Niall’s told me a thousand times, but, honestly, I’d rather be anxious than fat.”
“I’m wif you, babes.” Darian sounded suddenly about as serious as I’d ever heard him. “Also, right, if you fink abaht it, it’s stupid to ’ave medication what’s supposed to be for stopping people being depressed what also makes ’em fat. Cos that’d be well depressing.”
I shook my head. What manner of idiocy would lead someone to put their vanity above their mental health? And what manner of idiot would support such a choice? But I couldn’t help liking that he did. Accidental or not, it was the first flicker of understanding I’d ever received that I had the same right to be just as shallow and stupid as everyone else. That I did not have to be grateful to simply roll from day to day as a bloated, mindless zombie.
“Then,” I said, “we’re both shallow and deserve each other.”
“Naw, naw, it’s not abaht what you look like, it’s abaht being happy wif ’ow you look. And if you ain’t happy, then you ain’t gonna look good whateva.”
“Deep.”
He gave me a look I couldn’t quite read, frowning a little. “I know what I’m talking abaht, okay? I was a bit of a chubber when I was growing up. What wif being gay as well, it wasn’t a mayja laugh.”
Truthfully, I couldn’t imagine him as ever being less than beautiful.
“And don’t fink,” he added, in a more playful tone, “this means I’m gonna let you get away wif not going to your mate’s fing.”
I gave a hollow groan. “But I could be consoling you for your minor childhood wounds. Healing you with my sweet, sweet loving.”
“Shuh up. And stop . . . like . . . stalling. Cos getting married is important.”
“Is there any way I could convince you it’s an outdated, heteronormative construct that has no place in a secular society?”
“I fink it’s totes romantic.”
“Oh, dear God.” I dived back under the covers.
“Come on, babes,” he said, tugging on a toe I’d accidentally left out in the cold. “It’ll be ahwight. Want me to go wif you or summin?”
I stuck my head out. “Would you?”
“Course. I love weddings, me. I’d get to eat cake and meet all your mates.”
Oh, fuck, I hadn’t thought of that. Spending hours, and days, fucking and laughing with Darian in the privacy of my own home was one thing. Introducing him to all my Oxbridge friends as my . . . what? boyfriend? was quite another. Nobody would understand. And I couldn’t blame them—I hardly understood myself. People would smile, of course, but I would see the question behind the smile: has Ash finally completely lost it, has his self-esteem plummeted to such depths that he’s trawling Essex for totty? And, anyway, surely it wouldn’t be fair on Darian, having him stand around, being charmingly bewildered, while everyone talked over his head and laughed and speculated behind his back.
Laughed and speculated behind my back.
“Actually,” I said hastily, “it probably wouldn’t work out. You know what weddings are like. This has been meticulously planned for the last twelve centuries. Wars have been fought. If I showed up with an unplanned guest, I think it might cause the end of the world.”
“It’ll be fine, babes. I bet you anyfing there’s like a dead uncle or somebody wifout their partner or summin.”
“I don’t think we should risk it.”
“Well, call and ask. And if they’re like no, I can send you off wif good foughts and good vibes and everyfing and go back home for a bit. Cos my nan probably finks you’ve got me tied up in the basement or summin.”
“Note to self: move house, get basement.”
He laughed. “You don’t have to tie me up, babes. I’m like a volunteer.”
“But if I had a basement, you’d look good tied up in it.”
“You say the sweetest fings. Now get on wif ringing your mate.”
“Uh . . .” I had been so distracted by the basement that I couldn’t think of a single plausible excuse for why I didn’t want him to come with me to the wedding. The truth—“I don’t want my friends to think less of me than they do already, which they inevitably would if they saw me with you”—would have done the trick, of course, but came with the unfortunate side effect that I probably wouldn’t be tying Darian to anything ever.
I hadn’t entirely been lying about the wedding being an event from hell, so calling Amy seemed like it might be a sensible gamble. She would probably tell me that it wasn’t possible to accommodate a random gentleman she’d never met before on the happiest day of her life, which would liberate me to go back to bed with the random gentleman in question.
Amy picked up after a couple of rings, greeting me with a slightly wary edge to her voice I’d never heard before. I put it down to general wedding-related stress.
“Um, yes, hi. Amy . . . I kind of wanted to . . . the thing is . . .”
My flow of awkward was interrupted by the buzz of voices over the line, and I lost track of my own stammering. Amy said something I couldn’t make out, and things quieted down a bit. Then she spoke into the phone again. “Sorry, what was that?”
I tried again. “I’m sort of . . . there’s a . . . I know it’s really short notice, but . . .”
There was another interruption. “Just a minute,” said Amy, and for a moment I thought she meant me, but then she was back. “What’s the matter, Ash?”
Fuck. Shit. Wank. “Oh, um. Nothing’s the matter. I just . . . there’s a guy . . . I know the answer is probably no, but can I bring him to—”
“God, yes!” She sounded so incredibly thrilled that it was only then that I realised she’d been expecting me to pull out. Abandon her on her wedding day. As I had wanted to do less than five minutes ago. And probably would have done, had it not been for Darian.
There was no denying it. No hiding it. I was a terrible, terrible person. Selfish. Cowardly. Worthless. My stomach churned, as though I were trying to flinch away from myself.
“Are you sure?” I said. “I mean, what about the seating plans? Won’t it throw everything off? I mean, it’s okay if—”
“Not at all. It’s absolutely no problem. The seating plan is already buggered beyond belief, so he can come to the dinner tonight as well. One of Max’s great-uncles passed away a couple of weeks ago. And Greg and Laura are getting divorced so they both decided not to come in case they met without a lawyer present. Although since Max knows about eighty lawyers, I don’t know what they were worried about.”
“Right,” I said dazedly.
“I can’t wait to meet your man. But now I have to go before this turns into a blood bath. See you later, and thank you, thank you, thank you, mwah, darling.”
“Right,” I said again. I looked into Darian’s wide, hopeful eyes. “You can come.”
He grinned. “We are gonna give it large, babes. Ohmigod, I need your help.” He bounced, naked, off the bed, and started scrabbling around on the floor, emerging a few seconds later like an excitable retriever. “Do you fink these or these?”
The choice in question seemed to be silver-sequined Ugg boots or silver-sequined Converses.
“I honestly have no mechanism for forming an opinion,” I said, after a moment.
“Fink it better be these.” He waved the Converses. “Sparkle but subtle.”
“I think subtle has long since left the building.”
There was nothing for it. I had to get dressed. Thankfully it wasn’t too much of a challenge, since Niall once unkindly suggested that I always looked like I was going to a wedding, anyway.
“Check you, babes.” Darian crept up behind me and squeezed. He was wearing a jacket that looked as though it was made from the feathers of a bird of paradise—which, I suppose, passed for formal wear in his world.
“Let me guess,” I said, “I look like I work in parliament.”
“Oh, my God, babes, look at all these ties.” Peering into my wardrobe, he gave a gasp and pulled out a silver twill Stefano Ricci tie, set with Swarovski crystals. I’d bought it because I was so fucking depressed I would have bought anything. “Wear this one.”
I cringed. “With a navy suit, or indeed ever, absolutely not.”
“But it’s so bling, babes. It goes wif my shoes.”
“That tie says one of two things. It either says, ‘I’m a wanker,’ or ‘I’m mentally ill,’ and, though I am both, I have no wish to broadcast it.”
Somehow, between expressing my determination not to wear the tie and leaving the house, I ended up wearing the tie.