“Did your complicated history,” I asked, “mean you were surprised when Caspian asked you to marry him?”
“Hmm.” Nathaniel frowned thoughtfully. “Yes and no? We’d broken up a few years ago, but Caspian has always had my friendship. And deep down I think I knew it wasn’t over between us.”
I turned to Caspian with what I hoped was a super bland look. “Did you feel the same way?”
“It’s…” Caspian paused a moment too long. “It’s complicated.”
“Complicated seems to be coming up a lot.”
I hadn’t meant to sound arch but I guess I must have, because Caspian instantly frosted over. “That’s because adult relationships tend to be, Arden. Passion can be a compelling distraction, but what you want is less important than what is good for you.”
Watching Caspian piss off both his ex and current partner simultaneously shouldn’t have been endearing. But you had to admit, it took some skill. I mean, I wasn’t mad keen on being characterised as the romantic equivalent of a McFlurry, but then, I don’t think Nathaniel could have been enjoying his role as love kale either. And maybe I’d just hit myhow much hurt can this one person cause melimit because, right then, I felt sorry for Nathaniel. Yuck.
“So…uh…” I tried to get his attention, but it just wasn’t happening. Instead I volumed up, with about the same poise and naturalness I had, at the age of six, delivered the line “I bring Frankenstein” during the school nativity play. “Tell me about the proposal?”
Nathaniel had been staring at his hands, but now he looked up again. And God knows I hated to admit it, but he was such a pretty man, all gold and chiselled like the sort of classical sculpture owned by especially dodgy popes. “Caspian had been staying with me for a while after some adverse personal circumstances, just as friends. But I think it reminded us both of all the ways we worked. And then he woke me up one night and we had a long talk about our history and our future. At the end of which he told me he couldn’t live a life without me in it anymore, and promised to become the man I deserved.” Nathaniel paused briefly, the tawny shades of his eyes softening. “Perhaps Caspian’s right that it wasn’t conventionally romantic, but I’m not really interested in the…the…markers of things. I prefer what’s real and comes from the heart.”
“Yeah, I get that.” It scraped at my soul a bit to agree with Nathaniel. But I did actually agree with him. And I wasn’t going to get through this interview at all if I kept responding to him as if he was the villain in my story. Rather than an ordinary person who was the protagonist of his own. “But given you’d broken up before, didn’t you have any concerns?”
Nathaniel blinked. Even his fucking lashes were gold. “No. My feelings hadn’t changed. But then, I don’t believe love does change, only context.”
“And how is the context different for you both this time?”
At this, they exchanged the swiftest of looks, but it was still Nathaniel who answered. “Obviously, it’s been difficult these last few years, for each of us, in our different ways, but being apart has made us stronger. It’s helped us to understand what’s important and what’s worth fighting for. Looking back, I don’t think it was the right time for us before. Now I know it is.”
“Not least,” I offered, “because youcanget married. Not so long ago that wouldn’t have been possible.”
“Indeed.”
I tilted my head in what I hoped was a journalist-asking-an-incisive-question way. But truthfully, I just needed a break from Nathaniel telling me all the ways he was better for Caspian than I was. “How do you feel about that?”
“I’m a businessman”—Caspian shrugged—“not a politician.”
“Well, yes. But you’re a gay businessman.”
“My sexual preferences have never been a strong part of my identity.”
This left me kind of stymied. I guess in an ideal world nobody’s sexuality wouldhaveto be a strong part of their identity, but my queerness felt integral to me like…my arm or something. I mean, obviously I’d still cope without an arm, but my life would be very different.
“That’s because,” Nathaniel said softly, “you’re rich and white and upper class enough that it has never mattered.”
“Has it mattered to you?” I asked him.
He was silent a moment. Then, “I’ve never been ashamed or wished I was otherwise and my family have learned to accept me—despite the fact my sexuality is beyond their understanding. But I do remember my father telling me that I would always have to work harder, do more, be better than everyone else around me. Simply because of who I am and who I love.”
“Do you think that still holds true?”
“My experiences tend to bear it out. And”—Nathaniel’s eyes slid to Caspian—“I don’t know how you can insist on an apolitical position when one in five LGBTQ people living in this country have experienced hate crimes, nearly half of LGBTQ students are bullied because of their identity, and in seventy-two countries across the world, same-sex relationships are actually criminalised.”
“It’s yet another example,” murmured Caspian, “of your being an infinitely better man than I am.”
The thing is, he was speaking to Nathaniel but he was looking at me. And there it was. Finally. A crack in his prison of ice. I couldn’t have told you what I’d been wanting to see—a hint of who I’d fallen in love with or maybe some soft echo of my own sadness. But not the utter desolation of him, like coming back to the place you once called home, and finding it in ruins.
I don’t know how long we stared at each other, his eyes as blue and empty as a noonday sky, but he was the first to glance away. And there was something so fucking defeated about it that it caused this volcano of new hurt to open up inside me. I reallyreallyneeded that bastard to stop breaking my heart. I’d thought him being over me was rough. But not being able to comfort him was way worse.
In my head, I was on my knees for him and not in submission, exactly, but because we both needed it. That impossible spinning top of give and take and strength and vulnerability. But obviously, all I could actually do was sit there at the opposite end of a conference table, nodding intelligently, and making the occasional note that I knew I would later find absolutely meaningless.
I shifted my attention to Nathaniel, but he didn’t seem inclined to comment further. Which left me holding the ball…or bat…or other kind of sporting-type metaphor I had no idea how to use.
