Page 33 of Love, Academically

Expound (verb)

to make known (as an idea, emotion, or opinion)

to make plain or understandable

Rhys

Dan would know what to do. Well, Dan would take the absolute piss first, and then tell him what he should do. Because once again, he had not managed to articulate himself very well and in the process had probably done exactly what Elin had said not to do. Fucked it up.

Last night had been so perfect. Lila had been so perfect. She had charmed his family, been on his side one hundred percent with his father, played the dutiful girlfriend to perfection.

Rhys cringed. He’d run away like a scared teenager and hadn’t explained himself. She hadn’t wanted him to explain himself. That was fair enough, because she must have felt so rejected. He must have made her feel so rejected.

The wait for eight o’clock was interminable.

He tried working, but the words all merged together and he couldn’t get the taste of her out of his mouth.

His dick had been in a state of near permanent semi-hardness since he’d gotten home last night and release in the shower had been unsatisfying and pointless.

The memory of Lila’s leg wrapped around his waist plagued him and was catnip to his not-neglected dick.

He went for a run, but ended up running in circles because he couldn’t concentrate, so he cut it short after half an hour.

It was just after seven when he buzzed Dan into his flat. Rhys handed him a beer. Dan took a long look at him in his pathetic jogging bottoms and faded t-shirt worn thin around the neckline.

“You look like shit,” Dan said.

“I didn’t sleep well.”

Yeah, because every time he closed his eyes, all he saw was a red-faced and glassy-eyed Lila on her doorstep, slamming the door in his face.

“So.” Dan took a swig of beer. “What did you do wrong?”

Rhys clenched his jaw. Fuck, talking about this was hard. But Dan understood him and the situation. Dan had the insight that he sorely lacked.

“Did you tell her you want to take her on a proper, non-fake date?”

“No,” Rhys looked at the bottle in his hands. “I didn’t get the chance.”

“Because?” Dan prompted.

Rhys slammed the bottle on the table.

“I spent the entire night looking at her, touching her. I took her back to hers, we kissed, she undid my trousers and I stopped her.” Rhys’s voice was too loud, and echoed around his sterile grey kitchen.

Lila had different coloured glasses and floral tea towels and he had dull white plates and perfunctory cutlery.

“She practically had her hands on your dick and you stopped her?”

Dan’s lips were pressed tightly together, but his eyes sparkled with mirth.

“Dan,” Rhys warned. He did not need to be laughed at right now.

“I’m sorry, man,” Dan said. “And then she kicked you out?”

“Yeah. That’s about it.”

Dan tilted his head. “She was obviously up for it. Why did you stop her?”

It was a question he had asked himself a million times, in a million different ways, since Lila’s door closed in his face.

“Did you not want to? Because that’s all right, man,” Dan said, his eyebrows pulling together in a concerned frown.

Rhys gave him a look.

“All right, just checking! You’ve not had a girl for so long, I thought perhaps—”

“Perhaps what?” Rhys raised an eyebrow at him. Where was he going with this?

“That you were ace or aro or whatever,” Dan said, draining his bottle of beer.

“No,” he said, looking at the table. “I wanted to, Dan. I really fucking wanted to.”

Dan grabbed another beer from the fridge and passed it to Rhys.

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Because I didn’t want her to think it was expected. I didn’t want her to think that the fake date stretched to sex. I didn’t want to take advantage,” he said.

Dan leaned against the kitchen counter and crossed his arms.

“Did you treat it like a real date?”

“Did I hold her hand, put my arm around her, stare at her all fucking night?” Rhys said, voice rising again. “Yeah, I did.”

“Did you tell her that you wanted to go out for real? That you actually liked her?” Dan’s voice was quiet.

“I was going to, but then we were kissing, and…” Rhys glanced out of the window.

“So that’s your next move. You explain,” Dan said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“She probably won’t answer the phone to me.”

Dan assessed him. “Tell me you’ve called her? Texted her?”

Rhys shook his head.

“I thought she wouldn’t want to talk to me.” His voice was small.

“She probably doesn’t. But if you don’t try to talk to her, she’ll think you don’t want to,” Dan said.

Why were people so complicated?

“So, I should text her?”

“Yes.”

“No! Don’t fucking send that!” Dan cried.

“I’ve already sent it,” Rhys said, bewildered. “But what’s wrong with that? It’s true.”

“It’s not you, it’s me? That’s what you say when you want to break up with someone,” Dan said.

“We’re not together yet. I’m trying to get us together,” Rhys explained, like Dan was the most stupid man in the world.

“Fuck me, Rhys. You really are dense sometimes,” he muttered, tapping at his phone. “Let me call Jasmeet, she can run interference for you.”

“No! Don’t do that, Dan,” Rhys said, reaching out to cover his phone. “I don’t want Lila to think I’ve been gossiping about her behind her back.”

“I’ll ask her to be discreet. I can be discreet.”

Rhys scoffed.

“Can you? Can you really be discreet?”

“Yeah, course I can,” he said. “Look, I’ll just tell her the truth, that you’re even more miserable now that Lila won’t talk to you. I won’t give her any details. She won’t be able to help but get involved. You know how she is when it comes to Lila.”

Jasmeet had indeed threatened him, but he still had both his balls, so he could only imagine that Lila hadn’t told her best friend what happened.

But that was the kind of stuff women told each other, wasn’t it?

Rhys blew out a breath. He didn’t have anything to lose.

“Fine.”

“I think the words you’re looking for are ‘yes please Dan, that would be a great help, thank you’,” Dan said.

Rhys rolled his eyes.

“Thank you for your help, Dan.”

Dan grinned.

“You’re welcome, lover boy.”

“Yeah, don’t call me that,” Rhys said. “Besides, you’re one to talk.”

They migrated to the sofa and Rhys found some football on TV.

“I’ll have to see her at work tomorrow,”

“Ask her if you can talk. Make an arrangement to see her. Don’t corner her. If she says no, she says no.” Dan pointed his beer bottle at the screen. “That was a free kick.”

They sat in an easy silence for a few minutes. That’s what he liked about Dan, they’d known each other long enough that silence was just as easy as words.

“Besides, she might need some time to get over the fact that you led her on and then pulled her hands off your dick and ran away.”

“Fuck you.” There was more venom in his voice that he’d really meant.

“What else is going on, Rhys? This is more than you falling out with Lila, isn’t it?”

Rhys blew out a breath.

Telling Lila about applying for the Fellowship had made him warm inside. She’d been so excited for him, and perhaps Dan would as well.

“I’m applying for the Fellowship at the Royal Historical Society,” he blurted. “The application is due in soon and it’s just so weak. I don’t have a big enough body of work.”

“That’s fucking amazing, Rhys!” Dan said, but his grin soon turned to a frown. “Why are you applying then? Why not wait until next year or the year after, when you’ve published more?”

“You know what my father is like. I promised him I would do five years in academia and if I hadn’t made a success of myself, I would go back to the family business.”

“But you hated Dallimores. You’ve never been so miserable than when you were there after uni,” Dan said, pointing at him with his beer bottle. “What’s this ‘five years’ shit all about?”

“It was to ‘get it out of my system’, unless I became a success,” Rhys said. “Now I’m nearing the end of it and my Fellowship application isn’t likely to be accepted. I’ll have to go back.”

“Why?”

“Because I promised.”

“So? Don’t do it if you don’t want to. You’re a grown up.

” Dan shrugged. Obviously, he had never met Llewellyn Dallimore.

Rhys had staunchly kept him as far from his family as he could.

The Dallimores had a tendency of flashing power and money, pulling you in and then using you to further their own agenda.

He’d wanted to keep Dan as far away from that as possible.

“It’s not that easy, Dan,” Rhys said, and Dan nodded. There’d been enough conversation across the years for Dan to get it.

He turned back to the football. “Lila took your richy richness all right then, I take it?”

“She didn’t care at all,” Rhys said, with a little laugh. “It was refreshing, actually.”

“I think you’ll find most people don’t,” Dan muttered staring at the screen.

Lila

If Lila was in a spy movie, she thought, she’d be one of those glamorous film noir heroines with a pencil skirt, a slash of red lipstick and a long cigarette.

Perhaps a French accent. As it was, she was wearing a deep purple woollen dress, tights and flat boots, no lipstick and certainly no cigarette.

Sneaking through the History Department like she was in the French Resistance was both exciting and terrifying.

Exciting because peering round corners with her heart in her mouth was kind of exciting. Terrifying, because what if she saw Rhys? Worse, what if she had to talk to Rhys? She’d explode from mortification.

Not that she’d let him see that, oh no. After her call with Jason (and the seven missed calls, fourteen unread messages and three unopened emails later) she was empowered. If Rhys didn’t want to sleep with her, then it was him who was missing out, not her.

And that was fine. Absolutely fine.

She did not need stupid Rhys Aubrey-Dallimore in her life.

Peeking around the door to the staff kitchen (you know, just in case), it was a relief to see that she could make her pot of chamomile tea without the presence of the devil himself. Well, you know. Rhys.