Page 138 of Oleander

“What a fucking prick,” Finn seethed.

“Your party was the first time I’d seen him since. He came to ask me to stop seeing you. Said the least I could do was not fuck his relatives. Something about manners.”

I felt Finn vibrate with rage. “So, what,hedoesn’t want you but he doesn’t want anyone else to have you either?”

“Actually, he said that I could fuck anyonebutyou. He thinks I chose you deliberately to piss him off.”

Finn made a strangled, frustrated sound. “He is quite literally the worst fucking person on earth. I hate him. Like, I loathe that little shit.” But then he turned to me. “Wait, did you? Choose me deliberately?” I couldn’t tell how Finn felt about this. There was a gleam in his eye that suggested he might actually like it if I had.

“Not consciously, not at the start, at least. Tonight, though.” I looked down guiltily. “Tonight, I think I was trying to prove something to myself. Or to him.”

Finn thought about this, then gave me another of his easy smiles. “Okay, so please don’t judge me for this, but what if I told you I didn’t care? What if I told you I’d very happily lie back and get fucked by you, so you could prove something to yourself?” He nudged his shoulder into mine. “Or Cas. We could go the whole way and film it for him. Oh, Christ, please, let’s do that. The next family function would be a dream come true.”

I laughed, but it felt hollow, perhaps because I was hollow. Empty of that hope that had taken hold of me for a moment as I’d thrust inside Finn. I brought both hands up, dug my fingers into my eye sockets, and let out a groan.

“You know what? Maybe you’re just not that into me,” Finn said with a small shrug.

I looked at him, shaking my head in disagreement. “I think you’re great, Finn. We get on great. You’re hot and what we do – I like, a lot.”

“Yeah, and maybe that’s not enough. Maybe to get over him, you need something else. Something bigger, something that means...more.” He turned his body towards me. We were both still naked and yet it felt bizarrely normal. “Maybe the fact he’s my cousinisan issue for you. Or maybe you’re just way too much in your head about it all and you should have gone home with the rower – what the fuck do I know?”

I thought about this. I wasn’t sure this wouldn’t have ended in exactly the same way had I gone home with someone else. Anyone else. At least this way, I’d only disappointed a friend who I knew wouldn’t advertise my issues to the entire campus.

We got dressed, drank the rest of the wine, and fell asleep talking about all the reasons we were as fucked up as we were. Finn hadn’t known about my parents until that night, and I hadn’t known that he’d been twelve the first time someone had put a dick inside him. I told him about the summer I’d thought Cas was mine and how I’d found him with Xavier.

I told him about the email address I’d created too; how that Caspien The Ghost email address had kept me sane the last two years and how the idea of Cas ever reading any of them made me feel ill. (He’d offered to scan them for anything embarrassing if I ever did decide to send them to Cas. I told him there wasn’t a single word in there I wasn’t embarrassed about.) I didn’ttell him in any detail about what had happened the night of his birthday, only that I’d been so angry with Cas that it had frightened me. He blamed Cas for all of it, of course.

As I left the following morning, it was obvious that what we’d had before was over and done. We couldn’t – I couldn’t – move forward with him, and there was no going back. We’d stay friends throughout our time at Oxford together, and even now we still keep in touch, but that night was the last time we were ever intimate. I’m certain, though, that it had less to do with Caspien’s request and more to do with the fact I’d finally figured out what it was I wanted from Finn: friendship.

But had things gone differently with Finn that night, had we decided to try being together properly, then Nathan certainly wouldn’t have happened.

Nathan, someone else who would change how I looked at myself and the world.

Nathan, who was everything I thought I wanted and needed: everything Caspien wasn’t.

Eleven

Iwas getting up to leave my Thursday afternoon film criticism tutorial when Professor Alexander said, “Jude, would you mind hanging back a minute?”

Nikita threw me a look over his shoulder that I couldn’t decipher, before saying he’d see me later. The others filed out without comment. I’d no clue what it could be about; I’d handed in my paper on Tarkovsky on Tuesday and so assumed it had to be about that. It wasn’t the best thing I’d ever written, but I also didn’t think it was ‘a quiet word after class’ bad either.

“I just need to send an email,” he said and I nodded, turning my attention around the office.

As he typed furiously on his keyboard, I perused the shelves by the door. There were well-worn books about film theory and autobiographies of long dead directors. I slid out a pristine copy of Quentin Tarantino’sCinema Speculationand flipped through it, vaguely curious about what he might have had to say. I imagined Professor Alexander got a lot of books like these as gifts and likely hadn’t read half of them.

“You can borrow it if you like,” he said.

I slid it back and shook my head. “Not a big Tarantino fan, honestly,” I said. I likely wouldn’t have said it in front of the class, a bit too risky in front of a group of rabid film critics, but I didn’t mind admitting it to him.

He smiled. “Me either. Fucking loathe him.”

I liked him already but I liked him more immediately.

“So, is it about my paper? Was it that bad?”

“Ah, no, actually. I thought it was decent.” He scanned his desk and flicked through a pile until he found what he was looking for. “Sounds like you hate Tarkovsky, too.” He held up my paper. It had notes down the margins but a ‘pass’ marked on the top right corner.

“He’s another overrated nightmare, yeah.”