Commitment Issues by Ali Ryecart
Chapter Twenty-Five
Freddie
“Just here’ll be good,” I tell the cab driver, and I’m opening the door almost before he’s parked. It’s been a long, awkward and frankly fucking awful day, but it’s about to end because as soon as I slam the cab door closed, it’s over.
“Freddie,” Elliot says, and I turn to him when what I really want to do is run. “Thank you for… Well, just thank you. I’m not sure I’d have got through it without you.”
He smiles but everything about him is stiff and strained, just as it’s been stiff and strained between us since we set off together from the villa, which now feels like a lifetime ago. We’ve barely talked. Elliot’s been on his laptop and I’ve been surgically attached to my phone via earbuds, music playing in an attempt to drown out the noises in my head.
“Glad I could help. We both got what we wanted out of it.”
Elliot jolts, and a tiny thrill of bitchy triumph fizzes through me, but it immediately goes as flat as week old cheap cola. It was only sex, just a bit of mindless fun, and no big deal. The words I said to him this morning. And I believe them, I believe every single one. But then why do I feel like every one of them is a knife that’s twisting in my guts?
I force myself to smile, and it’s probably as lifeless as his. It’s time to say goodbye.
“Thanks for the lift back.” I climb out onto the pavement where my luggage is already waiting for me, but I don’t close the door. “I, erm, hope you get everything sorted. You know, with Gavin and that.”
“Gav?” he says, his smile morphing into something that’s more like the Elliot I’ve come to know, and I can’t help but smile back. “And you too. Good luck with Oslo and advanced Norse fishing techniques.”
I laugh and roll my eyes. “Don’t forget shipbuilding and weaving, but yeah, thanks.” It’s only a few words, but it feels like the first truly easy and genuine ones we’ve exchanged all day, and I’m glad of that. Elliot’s been good to me, in so many ways, and I don’t want us to end badly. But end it must. “Come here,” I say.
He leans towards me and I plant a quick kiss on his cheek, the hint of stubble rough against my lips.
“Take care.” I bundle up my luggage as the cab rolls away and I blink away the prickling behind my eyes.
* * *
“Hello?” I call, stepping over flyers for pizza and fried chicken shops. I wrinkle my nose as an assortment of takeaway food smells attack me. I already know the place’s in a mess because it always is when left to Cosmo.
Dumping my stuff in my room, I sag onto the bed, letting my head drop forward as bone weary tiredness throws its arms around me.
“You haven’t got much of a tan. I swear you’re whiter than when you went away. Did he chain you to the bed all day, and ravage you?”
Cosmo’s leaning against the door jam, wearing his feral Rudolph PJs, his hair sticking up all over the place. He looks like he’s spent all day in bed, and probably has.
“And you haven’t grown another six inches. Why are you in your pyjamas at eight in the evening?”
“Didn’t see any point in getting dressed, not after I made the call. To work. I was feeling poorly.”
“You mean you were hungover?”
Poorly — code for too many tequila shots or lurid cocktails in the pricy bars he keeps in business.
“You’ve a very low opinion of me,” he says, pouting. “And you haven’t answered my question. Did or did Elliot not chain you to the bed, and radish you with his—”
“Enough.” I raise my hands, palms out, as though to push his words away. “No, he didn’t chain me to the bed, and no he did not ravish me. I can assure you, no vegetables were hurt in the course of my sojourn in the South of France.”
“Are you sure about that? You’ve gone all blotchy, which isn’t a good look. And, if you rub at your neck any harder, it’ll disappear.” He advances into the room, peering at me.
Fuck it. It’s impossible to fob the little sod off. It’s like he has a radar honed and primed to find evasion tactics.
“Something happened, didn’t it? I knew it would.” He grins triumphantly, hopping from foot to foot in glee. “And you’re going to tell me all about it.”
* * *
“So, you slept with him. You’d have been mad not to so I don’t understand what the big deal is. He’s a big boy, you’re a big boy — or maybe not, don’t forget I’ve seen your dick way more times than is decent.”
“Piss off.” It’s pretty much my default response with Cosmo, and I pick up another slice of pizza.
I’ve unpacked, showered, and by the time I emerge, the delivery man’s dropped off something spicy, hot, and supersized. It could be the opening to a dirty joke, but I don’t much feel like laughing.
Here we were again, the two of us in our stretchy, out of shape PJs, looking like ill-matched bookends.
“Why are you beating yourself up for a night of filthy sex with a seriously hot guy? Elliot Hendricks is a silver fox pin up.” He bites into his pizza, making obscene groaning sounds. “Your problem is that you overthink everything, you always have. It prevents you from letting go.”
“Thank you Doctor Cosmo, Director of the Royal School of Bullshit.”
“It’s not BS. It’s true.”
I put down my pizza, no longer hungry. Maybe he’s right. Or just a bit. But I analyse, I don’t overthink.
“Was he kinky? Did it involve weird acts with seasonal fruit or veg? Was a gimp mask produced? Did he ask you to spank him with the back of a hair brush whilst dressed as Nanny? Or horror of horrors, was the sex boringly vanilla?”
Cosmo’s face is such a picture of innocence when I know he’s anything but. I shake my head, fighting the laughter that’s bubbling to escape, because there really isn’t anything to laugh at.
“None of those things.”
“None of those things? So, the sex was good, great, amazing, mind and ball blowing? Please tick the box which most accurately describes your experience, and you’re in with a chance to win a £5.00 Marks and Spencer voucher.”
“Stop taking the piss.”
“I’m not. What I’m doing, the good friend that I am, is trying to extract your head from your arse where it seems to be very firmly lodged.”
“What?” I rear back.
“You sit there and tell me you’ve had super hot sex with Mr Silver Fox Hendricks, looking all po-faced, when it’s probably the best thing that’s ever happened in your dreary little life. I don’t get it.”
“Don’t you?”
Cosmo says nothing, his cat-like eyes taking me in and seeing through me like they always do.
“You like him.”
I nod. There’s no point in denying it.
“I do, and that’s the problem. I can’t let myself get involved.” We won’t be involved. The cab drove off, taking Elliot with it, signalling the end of our agreement, but it doesn’t stop the twinge in my chest.
“You don’t have to be involved to be having sex. They’re not the same thing.”
“Not to you, maybe. I just don’t work like that. I wish I did because it’d save a hell of a lot of trouble,” I say, bitterness creeping into my words.
“But it’s not like you haven’t had uninvolved sex before, is it?”
There’s not much I can say to that, because he’s right. I’ve had my share — not a big share, admittedly — of bar and club hook-ups, but they’re the fast food of sex: quick, cheap, and ultimately unsatisfying. Talking about Elliot in the same breath just feels plain wrong.
“He’s on the rebound. You don’t have to be a genius to realise that if somebody comes out of a long relationship, even if it got really bad, whoever they get with first off is going to be someone to… to… practise with. Somebody to kind of get them moving again. I’ve been there before, Cos, and I’m not making the same mistake.”
“You’re mistaking Elliot for being like that tosser Paul. He’s not. No way. Full stop. Period. And rebound? Why would you be a rebound for him? Elliot’s free, you’re free. And did he do or say anything that made you think you were a rebound?” He air quotes the words as his eyes laser into me.
“Gavin was making a big play for him.”
“And was Elliot making a play back?”
“No, but—”
“Isn’t that your answer? And anyway, Gavin would. The man’s just about intelligent enough to realise he’s let go of a real gem,” he says with haughty authority.
“But you said you don’t know Gavin.”
“Oh, I don’t, you’re right. I got this from Jimbo. He knows what he’s talking about.”
“Unlike you. Can we let it drop now?”
He looks like he’s about to argue, but whatever he wants to say he bites it back.
We switch the TV on as we finish up the pizza, and I let it wash over me. I close my eyes, jerking awake when Cosmo gives me a rough shake, telling that if I’m going to snore like a pig I can do it away from him. I mutter some limp comeback, and stagger off to bed.
