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.
Chapter 18
Caspian was back in a couple of days, probably having made, like, $100,000 an hour while I’d flailed around trying to come up with pitches and eating a lot of Coco Pops directly from the packet. It was disconcerting because I’d never lacked for inspiration before. There’d always been something going on at college—news or gossip or drama or simply a fresh target for satire. And even at school, I’d got serious column inches out of stuff like the time Glen Lowrey got a D on his chemistry homework, set it on fire with the Bunsen burner, threw the smoldering pieces in the bin, and then the bin exploded. We went to print with the headline BIN BURNER LOWREY IN NEW ARSON SHOCK. And I’d got detention for gratuitous sensationalism.
The problem was, here at the top of One Hyde Park, there was nothing. Just wealth and quiet and bulletproof glass. I mean, unless I wanted to write about being the…kept man? temporary fucktoy? of a gay billionaire. Except no. Just no. I would never do that to Caspian. Or, for that matter, to myself.
In any case, I was glad for the promise of distraction when Caspian texted to tell me he was on his way. And, of course, excited to see him. Because yay for prenegotiated short-term encounters. Also I was hoping now we’d got the nervous-making first bonk out of the way he’d feel more comfortable sharing his kinky side with me. Of course, I could have been reading too much into a few rough kisses and the occasional command, but he seemed to get off on being in control. I could still remember the way he’d responded when I’d gone to my knees on the balcony. The raw need in his voice over the phone before my finals. And I was so very up for more of that: his unheld-back self, unleashed for me.
Except there was also how dismayed he’d been, apologizing for the bruises he’d left on my hips. His mouth-fucking hit-’n’-run at St. Sebastian’s. Probably he was worried about hurting me or pushing me into something I didn’t want, and I guess I could have done a better job of reassuring him I was okay. Admittedly, I only had passing practical experience with BDSM but pornography could be super educational and I’d been seriously hot for everything Caspian had done up till now. Besides, I think I just…liked sex. In all its innumerable, multicolored shades.
The trick, though, was making sure Caspian got that. How did you broach that sort of topic without it being embarrassing or just incredibly presumptuous? I even semi-wussed out on thinking about it properly—settling, instead, for dangling a teeny-tiny pair of decorative handcuffs from one of my nipple shields. Just as a kind of…hint.
