Page 39 of One Last Try (Try for Love #1)

Owen

I’ve been ushered to sit at the table Viv typically occupies.

It’s right in the centre of the pub and faces the big screen telly on the wall.

Daisy places a pint of Hooker’s Dribble in front of me and holds out two packets of crisps—cheese and onion, and salt and vinegar.

Evidently, I’m supposed to make a selection.

I grab the salt and vinegar. Will Shakespeare curls up against my legs, and nestles his dribbly jowls in my lap, and suddenly I’m lamenting my decision to don shorts this morning.

“What is all this in aid of?” I ask.

Daisy takes the rejected bag of crisps, opens it, and starts munching them. Urgh, that’s my stock she’s abusing. “Before we start the quiz, we’ve put together a presentation for you. Well, Mathias put together the presentation, but we’ve all contributed.”

“All?”

“Yep, everyone. Lan, Viv, Tom and Bryn, Rodge, Ange, even little Willy.” At the mention of his name, Will Shakespeare lifts his head, smushing his slobber along my bare thigh. His tail thuds lazily against the flagstone. “Mathias bought a special pointer for the presentation.”

“It was either a plain boring pointer, or this one.” Mathias takes something from his back pocket. It’s a short silver stick, and with one sweeping motion, he extends it to over a metre in length. On the end is a tiny white pointing Mickey Mouse’s hand.

Today Mathias is wearing pale-pink dress shorts and a navy floral shirt unbuttoned to the base of his cross.

On anyone else, the outfit could be comical, but Mathias looks like a fucking catwalk model.

His hair has that “just been railed,” tousled vibe, and frankly it’s all very distracting.

I’m doubtful whether I’ll absorb any of this presentation; I’ll probably just be watching Mathias all night with my jaw on the floor.

I’m almost definitely dribbling more than Mr Shakespeare.

“What kind of idiot needs a pointer to do a presentation?” Roger yells from behind me somewhere.

“Hey! I don’t shit on your dreams,” Mathias snaps, and it fills me with unbridled joy that he doesn’t hesitate to tell Roger off. And also that his dream is to do a presentation with a pointer. Jesus. I don’t know why that makes me feel all weird and fuzzy.

Mathias’s fancy laptop is positioned on the edge of the bar. He fiddles with it, and an image appears on the TV. It’s an opening slide from PowerPoint. On it, cut-outs of everyone’s heads seem to float around the edges like a border, and in the centre the text reads: Operation Under One Roof.

“That’s the official title,” he says, smashing his pointer against the screen.

“Watch out you don’t break my telly,” I say .

“Owen, I’ll be honest. This thing’s so old and decrepit that at this point, breaking it would be doing you a favour.” He slaps the TV again. “Official title. Operation Under One Roof .” The way his mouth ticks up at the corner, I know he’s proud of that pun.

“But what about—” Roger begins.

Mathias puts his hand up. “No. We are no longer entertaining project name ideas. You had your chance, and you couldn’t come up with anything not stupid. Thatch Wankers is not it, okay? I don’t find it funny. I don’t want to be a thatch wanker.”

“It is pretty funny,” Daisy whispers. She takes the seat next to me.

Mathias scowls at her. “Right, so this presentation is split into two parts,” he says loudly.

“During the first part, everyone is gonna take turns explaining why your roof is not just your responsibility to fix—it’s all of our responsibilities—and why this pub is so important to them.

Then, part two, I am going to propose a solution for raising the money needed. You with me?”

I’m nodding, but I’m already feeling awkward, like opening a gift in front of the giver, but you’re not sure whether you’re gonna like it. “It’s not, though. It’s not everybody’s responsibility. It’s m—”

“Will you let people say their piece before you go off saying things like that?” Mathias says to me.

I take a deep breath, roll my eyes closed, and nod. I can do that. I can hear everyone out first. Doesn’t mean I have to agree with them. It’s not their problem, it’s mine alone.

“Roger, since you’re so fucking important, you’re up first.” Mathias hands Roger a clicker and the pointer. “You just click this little button here to move to the next slide and this one to go back.”

Roger clears his throat. “Right, Boss, here goes. I’ve put together the following slides with the help of your boyfriend.” He says the word so casually, so unassumingly.

I pretend as though my pulse isn’t spiking. Mathias watches me, but doesn’t respond in any way, doesn’t even flinch like I’m sure I just did, so I keep quiet .

Despite Roger’s earlier opposition to the pointer, the man is a fast convert, and begins wielding the thing with gusto. He presses the clicker and slams the tiny white hand against the telly.

“Here I have outlined exactly why, if you don’t let us all help with the replacement of the roof, I’m going to take personal offence. Reason number one . . . Now, I’m gonna whisk you all back in time on a little journey.”

Viv and Bryn both moan in a “not this again” way.

“Now, many of you know that during lockdown, I lost my job. We were broke, weren’t we, Ange?

Needless to say, Owen the ‘Boss’ Bosley here saved our lives.

He brought us tea every night. Made sure we had everything we needed.

Went shopping for us. We had pie and mash, fish ’n’ chips, pasta, lasagna, stir-fry.

You name it, Boss brought it. He never asked for payment, never once asked anything from us in return.

He didn’t have to do it, but . . .” Roger looks me dead in the eyes.

“You did it because you care about the community.”

I’m about to interrupt, when he talks over me.

“Reason number two—oh, why hasn’t the slide changed?” He frantically jabs the clicker.

“No, you’ve got to press this button. That’s the fucking volume button,” Mathias says, snatching the device from Roger and sighing.

“Cheers.” Roger clicks it and a picture of a baby appears. “When our Soph was in the hospital with baby Tia, you let Tia’s other grandparents from Ireland stay in the flat upstairs rent free for weeks while Tia was in the ICU. Why did you do that?”

I wait for him to continue.

Oh . . . he’s actually asking me. “Um . . . well, I couldn’t exactly make them pay for a central Bath hotel, and your bungalow is only a one bed.”

Roger places his hands on his hips as though I’ve just proven him correct. “If you’re the type of man who’s happy to help others out in their time of need but not accept help in your own, what kind of man even are you?”

“Bloody hell, Roger,” Daisy says from beside me. “That’s a very well-made point. ”

I can feel my defences going up, the excuses readying themselves.

“Anyway, I have more,” Roger says, before launching into slide after slide of nice things I’ve done for him and his family. I didn’t even realise people remembered all this shit.

“Now it’s Lando’s turn,” Mathias says when Roger returns to his seat and everyone gives him polite applause. Mathias turns to me. “I’m really sorry about this one.”

Lando bounds forward and snatches the gadgets from Mathias’s hand. He clicks the clicker and a slide appears. It’s a collage of Orlando Oakham-Goodwin gym selfies. In the top left corner it says, “I heart Mr B,” and at the bottom, in humongous pink all-caps, it reads: GAINS!

Oh boy, here we go.

“You all know my story,” he says. “So I’m not going to repeat it because . . . I don’t wanna make anyone cry today—”

“Famous last words!” Viv yells.

Everyone laughs, but I’m filled with a bubbling sense of dread. I’m an emotional wreck on the best of days. How am I supposed to deal with an hour, two hours of folk telling me sob stories and how much they love me?

“Bet,” Lando says. I have no idea what that means.

“Mr B has been there for me in ways no one else has. At times when . . .” He trails off, looks at his feet.

“So . . . I lost my mum, yeah? But I gained a dad.” He coughs into his fist and projects his next words.

“And those are the types of gains that matter!”

“That’s really sweet,” I say, my throat feeling a little too tight.

Lando jams his tongue in his cheek and smiles at Daisy who is sternly shaking her head from side to side.

His moment of vulnerability is over. “Anyways . . . here are some of my other gains,” he says before pressing the clicker and taking us through multiple highly inappropriate photographs of his bare chest, his flexing biceps, his ass in gym shorts.

I’m a little relieved that he’s choosing not to make me cry, though his earlier words bounce around in my head .

“Thank you, Orlando, for that insight,” Mathias says, snatching the controller and looking pointedly at his watch. “That’s twelve and a half minutes of my life I’m never getting back.”

Viv goes next. She talks about all the fundraisers I’ve held in the pub for other good causes—bingo for the MacMillan nurses, the inflatable obstacle course we had in the beer garden one year for Hepton’s school camp, the Scouts’ Christmas tree sale, Bryn’s top surgery.

“If you can raise money for other people, why not allow them to do the same for you?”

I bite the inside of my lip. Don’t respond verbally.

Tom tells me how nice it is to find such a welcoming community here. “Especially one so LGBTQIA inclusive.”

Bryn explains how my pub is a home away from home. “I don’t know any English man who can cook rarebit as well as you do.”

Isobel and Rafael have slides that show the playground set in the beer garden and the recent Easter egg hunt.

Tyler describes how much he loves working for me and what a laid-back boss I am.

The other pub patrons have a little go on their slides. The sevens lads and girls.