Page 74 of Darling
“Oh my god,fuckthe optics!” he snaps, looking immediately guilty about the outburst.
“It’s not as easy for me to say ‘fuck it’ as it is for you, Felix. You’re not naïve enough that you don’t understand that. A lifein politics means that every single decision I make has to be weighed up with the potential for ruin. An affair with someone half my age is not the sort of thing a man like me can just shake off. Last year, it lost me my job; this time, I’ll likely lose everything else.” Leo finding out I’m sleeping with someone his age, who fucks on camera for a living, is… is… well, I don’t know what it is, but I can hazard a guess at what it would do to our relationship.
“What if it was a woman?” Felix says, giving me a very calculated look. “If you were sleeping with a twenty-five-year-old woman, we’d be having a very different conversation right now. Your friends in the commons would be patting you on the fucking back.”
“Yes, you’re right,” I agree. “But he’s not. He’s a man, a much younger man. And the idea of telling the world about that is petrifying. I think maybe… maybe I’m not quite the man you think I am, Felix. I’m a bit of a coward, really.” Weak and afraid.
“You’re exactly the man I think you are, Christian,” Felix says firmly. “You forget I know you,intimately. What is it you’re actually afraid of? What people will write about you in the tabloids? What people in the commons will think, knowing you like men? What Leo will think? What Stella would think? What is it, exactly?”
It’s too gigantic a question to answer. It’s all of it. I’m afraid of everything. I’m afraid of falling in love again, of losing him the way I lost Stella, I’m afraid of losing my son, my career, my reputation. I can’t address any of this right now, so I say something else instead. Something I know will distract Felix from demanding I answer the question.
“He’s a porn star.”
The expression on Felix’s face is one I’ll remember my entire life.
??
After clearing up the kitchen while he badgered me with question after question about Asher—he’d understandably had quite a few—we sit on the sofa with warm cups of tea. Felix had been mainly stunned by the revelation, but understands why it’s not just a matter of announcing to the world that I like men. Asher being…Asher,complicates things. There is no scenario where I get to take Bridget’s offer and keep Asher. None. And I won’t ask him to give up doing something he loves just so I can do a job I would likely hate. Though being in America in a lesser role had allowed me to have this with him, Adrian Brooke had still managed to find out about it. In the UK, as Chancellor and then PM? It was an impossible relationship.
It is one or the other. I know that.
It is Asher or it is No. 10.
I’d known it this afternoon, and tonight had crystallised it. And if I could fully commit to him and offer him more, what would our lives look like? What does a life with Asher look like? Would he continue to do his job? Do I want him to? I have no issues with it now, so why should I have any in the future? He would paint and do porn, and I would do what, exactly? If there were no rules or expectations, what would I do? Go back to the law? Doubtful. There’d been a reason I’d left it.
My mind is drifting this way and that while Felix tells me about what he and Nico have planned while they’re in New York, when the front door opens and Nicoló strolls in. It’s like someone’s switched on a light inside Felix as I watch his entire demeanour shift and brighten before my eyes. Nico has a rucksack over one shoulder, a Sainsbury’s shopping bag, and a large bouquet of sunflowers. He comes around the sofa to plant a kiss on the top of Felix’s head.
“Hello, princess.Theseare for you.” He hands over the sunflowers, and Felix attempts not to swoon, gazing up at his Italian boyfriend adoringly.
“Eh, what are these for?”
“So you’d look at me like that.” Nico smiles indulgently before shifting his attention to me. “Christian, nice to see you. Recovery going good?”
“Perfectly, thanks, Nicoló. How are you doing?”
“Yeah, I’m great. You guys ate already, right?”
“We did,” says Felix. “I made prawn pasta. There’s some leftovers in the fridge for you.”
“Perfect, thank you, baby. So, what’s happening over the pond, anything exciting?” Nico directs at me as he moves about the kitchen, looking very much at home.
“Ah, nothing too exciting. The president is playing golf while the world burns, usual stuff.”
“Got it. Guy’s a fucking tool, for sure.”
“They asked him to be Prime Minister again,” Felix says, beaming.
Nico turns, eyes widening on me. “Really? Congratulations! You’ll be back in London soon, then?” I’m not sure of the tone, but when he glances at Felix and back at me, I understand it to be hopeful.My social circle is embarrassingly small these days.
“I’m still thinking it over. There are some considerations.”
“Like his twenty-five-year-old porn star boyfriend,” Felix says, practically kicking his feet. “What? He’s going to find out when we meet him at the party, anyway. Plus, it’s very cool. You just can’t go to the papers or my father about it,” he warns Nico, playfully. I haven’t told Felix that his father already knows about Asher and me. I’m not sure what he might do with that information, and I’ve caused enough of a rift between them already. I have no desire to do more damage.
Nico looks positively bewildered. “Porn star boyfriend.Is that more English slang I don’t get?”
Felix lets out a bubble of laughter. “Nope, it’s just what it sounds like. Christian is fucking aliteralporn star. It’s fucking mind-blowing. Fuck, I can’t wait to meet him—he refuses to tell me his full name in case I’ve seen his dick or his hole.”
“That’s not—” I protest, looking at Nico for some assistance. “It’s not that it’s just, well, okay, yes, perhaps it is that.”