AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“OK, OK,” Will said. “Enough now. Jordy, can you please get out of my boyfriend’s lap. And for the record, it would never work between you two. An ash blond and platinum blond? Gauche.”
Jordan tutted and obliged, swinging his legs off Patrick’s and sauntering into the kitchen, presumably to plunder what remained of the wine.
Patrick reached out to Will, who took his hand and allowed himself to be pulled down into an embrace on the sofa.
“You and your slutty face,” he muttered.
“Don’t tell me you’re jealous.” Patrick grinned.
“I’m not,” Will said with a pout, and Patrick’s chest shook with laughter beneath him. “I’m not,” he insisted, his mouth twitching involuntarily, threatening to break into a smile of his own. “I’ll have you know that people mistake me and Jordan for a couple all the time, actually. Come to think of it, so did you. It’s just…” The smile vanished. “Nobody’s ever going to see us together and assume we’re dating, are they? Not the way they would with you and April, or Margo, or Emma bloody Roberts.”
“Emma is actually really nice when you get to know her,” Patrick began. “She—”
“I’m never going to be allowed to stand next to you on the red carpet, am I?”
Patrick’s grin softened. “No,” he said. “Probably not.”
“And even if I were, you’d tell people I’m a good friend, or your flatmate or something. Because we both signed several pieces of paper saying that as far as the rest of the world is concerned, that’s all we will ever be to each other.”
Until next week, he thought. After then, we won’t even be that. Will had done his best to avoid broaching the subject of Patrick leaving, playing the part of someone who was just along for the ride for as long as it lasted. He kept his eyes fixed on an abstract point on the wall behind the armchair, and so he felt but did not see Patrick’s hand slip into his.
“Do you regret it?” Patrick asked softly. “The NDA?”
“I didn’t have much of an option, did I?” he said.
“That’s not what I asked.”
Will laid his head on Patrick’s chest, and Patrick enclosed his free arm around him.
“If the choice is between getting to be with you in secret and not being with you at all…No. I don’t regret it.”
He felt Patrick kiss the top of his head, felt what he said next rustling into his hair.
“I’m glad you feel that way,” said Patrick. “Because I do, too. I know for some people, this wouldn’t be enough.”
“It is,” Will said. “You are.”
It was the right thing to say in the moment. It was what Patrick needed to hear, he knew. Will even thought that he might mean it, at that very second, with the solid warmth of Patrick pressed against him. It was all the other moments that bothered him.
Chapter 24
1950
“The pot roast is a tad overdone,” Charles remarked, peering over Iris’s shoulder at the blackened hunk of meat. “That cow has seen more heat than I did in the war.”
Iris threw up her hands. “If you married me expecting somebody who could cook, I have some terrible news for you,” she huffed.
“Some of this is salvageable,” Charles said. “And there are always the potatoes. Out of the way, dear.” He kissed her on the cheek as she withdrew from the stove, removing her apron and offering it to him.
“We shall just have to keep our guests’ glasses full,” Iris said.
Charles put on the apron and tended to what remained of dinner while Iris fixed them both drinks, each of them falling into the dramatis personae of domesticity, only in reverse. He beamed. He had never felt so married. This must be what it was like when little girls played house, he thought.
They had never entertained before: The old apartment had been too small, too cold, too much like an opium eater’s garret. Their new place in Crown Heights, though, was large enough to accommodate a dining table—such luxury!—and a liquor cart in the living room. They could even afford bottles for the cart: Captain Kismet was paying his keep nicely. Iris had resisted the increase in comfort at first, claiming she would rather die than live like her parents, but she rapidly became accustomed to the pleasing little ritual of a sidecar and a cigarette after she had finished writing for the day.
And, of course, the second bedroom meant freedom for them both, from each other as much as from the outside world. Eleanor had already visited the new apartment a handful of times. She and Iris would disappear into the first bedroom, and on those occasions, Charles, working on his drawings in the afternoon light, would throw open the window and turn up the radio to give them some privacy.
God only knew where Eleanor’s husband thought she was during these visits. Perhaps she had concocted an ailing relative or secretarial lessons. She had a knack for discretion that Charles had come to trust, even admire. He had thought Eleanor unbearably frivolous at first and had judged her harshly for it. But the more often she came around, and the longer she lingered for coffee after she and Iris resurfaced, the more he realized she had a good head on her shoulders. She was not silly; she simply wasn’t serious. And who would want to be serious? Certainly not Charles, whose living was made with flights of fancy.
