Page 162 of Oleander

Just then, someone tried to squeeze past us, a little too forcefully, so that Cas was pushed into the table. Where he’d positioned his hand meant it was thrust between his body and the table. He gasped in pain, his drink tipping over across the wooden picnic table.

“Hey, would you bloody watch it?” I rose to my feet, saying a little too loudly, a little too aggressively: “He’s fucking injured.”

“Shit, sorry man, sorry bud,” the guy said to me and then to Cas. “Sorry, man.”

“Are you okay?” I sat down again and looked at his hand.

“I’m fine.” Caspien hadn’t even looked at the guy; he was just staring at me from behind his dark wayfarers.

I offered to get him another drink, but he stood and announced he’d get it himself as he needed the toilet. I watched him pick his way through the crowd before Emmeline took ourorder and slipped off to the bar. When we were alone Bast levelled a long look at me from across the table.

“Don’t even bother, Bast.”

He threw his hands up. “I never said anything.”

“Okay, good, don’t.”

He waited a few beats. “So, have you fucked him yet?”

I rolled my eyes as I downed the last of my pint. “No. Of course not.”

He made a thoughtful noise. “Fuck, he is pretty, isn’t he? I see it, Jude, I get it.”

“Get what?” I frowned. “You’re not even a little bit into men?”

“Hey, I’ve always said I could be for the right man. And he has the look.”

“What look?” I was curious despite myself.

He shrugged. “Pretty, rich, English. It’s a shame you’re only two out of three. Or you could have been the right man for me.”

I laughed.

“Will you make a move on him?” he asked after a moment.

“No of course not, he’s with someone.”

“And if he makes a move on you?”

My heart lurched. “He won’t.”

“But if he did? Maybe he’s lonely, maybe he’s in a sexually unfulfilling relationship with his lawyer – they are bad lovers, I hear. What then?”

“He’s not going to try to fuck me, Bast. The last time was...” I shook my head. “A mess.”

“You were just a boy! You can’t be too hard on yourself. Next time will be better,” he said jovially.

I didn’t even know what part of that to argue against. I’d told no one about the night in Oxford, so for all Bast knew, the lasttime we’d been together was before he’d broken my heart. That night in Oxford lived somewhere deep inside me that I’d never shown to anyone – anyone but Cas. Partly as I was ashamed, but mostly because it was ours: Cas’s and mine. And I wanted to keep it that way. And he’d never mentioned it, hadn’t even made reference to it in the last seven days we’d spent together.

It was as if he’d completely forgotten about it.

To Bast, I said, “He isn’t going to make a move.”

Before he could refute this, he gestured with his eyes over my shoulder. Cas sat down next to me with a fresh G&T in his hand. Over the next two hours, I watched him, quietly impressed, as he sunk another five without showing a single hint of drunkenness.

Until, that is, we got up to leave.

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