Commitment Issues by Ali Ryecart

Chapter Seven

Freddie

“… And of course Andrew’s a top barrister, but he also made a fortune in…in…” Cosmo clicks his fingers, his brow scrunching as he tries to remember what it was that made one of the grooms drip with money. “Property development? I don’t know, I can’t remember, but whatever it was, it’s made him filthy rich. And as for Marcus, he’s the youngest son of minor aristocracy, but a pauper compared to Andrew. He won’t get a bean because he’s not the heir, not that there are enough beans to make even a rather small vegan stew from what I’ve heard. He worked in design, or house interiors, or something. He gave it all up when he met Andrew and took up the new profession of spending Andrew’s money which, according to James, he excels at. But I think he actually did make a name for himself when it came to picking which colour paint to use. Made a lovely job of the French villa, James says, and—”

“Are all these people multi-millionaires? If I find a fiver screwed up in the back pocket of my jeans, I think I’ve hit the jackpot.” Not that I find many of those.

I glare at Cosmo over the rim of my mug of hot chocolate from my corner of the sofa, but it’s hard to be intimidating when dressed in a pair of stretchy PJs covered with faded prints of Christmas puddings studded with holly. Not that Cosmo looks much better, with a feral-looking Rudolf emblazoned on his chest. Friday night, and two young gay men are tucked up in novelty pyjamas drinking hot chocolate. We really know how to par-tay.

The hot chocolate’s curdling in my stomach. Cosmo’s not stopped talking about how exciting it’s all going to be, how amazing the villa is — not that he’s actually been there — how rich, and beautiful, and what an utterly fabulous time I’m going to be having with Elliot. And with every gushing, breathy word my stomach’s knotting tighter and tighter with the certainty that this is a really, really bad idea. Because what do I have in common with any of these people? Property developing barristers? Interior designers? People who are cool and sophisticated?

“Fucking hell.” I put my drink down, and slump back into the sofa. “I’m never going to be able to pull this off. They’ll rumble me in seconds, and I’ll make Elliot look stupid. I can’t go through with it, Cos, I really can’t.”

“What are you talking about?” Cosmo puts his mug aside and shifts across, throwing an arm around my shoulders and pulling me into him. He’s long ago stopped protesting that I always shorten his name to that of a variety of lettuce, but I know I’m the only one who can get away with it.

“I don’t know why you’re suddenly having cold feet. You’re smart and more than a match for any of them. You’re doing a PhD, for fuck’s sake. If they try and belittle you or put you down or try any of that crap, just slay them with some killer facts about Eggnog the Bad and his band of butch Vikings. You’ll stun them into silence.”

I huff. “Yeah, I expect I would but not in the way I’d hope.” I pull back out of Cosmo’s hug, and look him square in the face. “First I let James talk me into it, then Elliot himself.” I pick up my mug and bury my face into it to hide the heat I can feel creeping up my cheeks. I glance up through my lashes to see Cosmo’s cat-like eyes boring into me.

“I wouldn’t mind letting Elliot Hendricks talk me into anything. Especially bed.” Cosmo sniggers. “Have you discussed that aspect of your arrangement?”

“We touched on it,” I mumble into my chocolate.

“Stop hiding.” Cosmo plucks the mug from me. “Touched on it? You’re going to have to do more than touch on it. You’re going as his boyfriend, which means they’ll stick you in the same room. With one very big bed.” His grin’s a bowl of wicked with a side order of salacious. “I wouldn’t say no to sharing a bed with Elliot. I tried to chat him up, once, at a party at James’. Anyway, he didn’t take the bait and instead, gave me a very polite and very emphatic no. He could have made me feel stupid, I suppose, but he didn’t. He’s a really nice guy, but Jimbo says he’s got a reputation for being a hard-nosed businessman, so there’s obviously another side to him. What would you rather encounter, his soft side or his hard side?”

“Oh, fuck off.” I shove a now giggling Cosmo away. “But doesn’t that just go to show how much I’ve not thought about it? There are too many, I don’t know, traps I suppose, to fall into. Call it cold feet if you want, but I’d rather that than make fools of both of us. I’m going to back out.” I say it with more conviction than I feel.

“Freddie, you’re not marrying the guy,” Cosmo says, all trace of laughter gone. “All that’s being asked of you is to smile and look drop dead gorgeous in the sunshine. For what, four days? You get what you want out of the arrangement, and so does Elliot. It really is that simple, so stop overthinking it. You need this, and not just for the money. And you know what? You might just enjoy yourself.”

In a flash, Cosmo lunges for my phone on the coffee table, and all but pirouettes across the floor of the living room, his thumbs flying over the screen before I have time to even move.

Realisation puts a rocket up me, and I leap off the sofa, knowing I’m already too late.

“And—send.” He holds my mobile over his head, like a trophy, and with triumph scrawled across his face.

I grab it from him, anger burning up inside me. “What the fuck have you just gone and done?”

“I’ve made the decision for you, because you weren’t bloody going to do it. And it’s the right decision.” Cosmo crosses his arms over his chest, tilting his chin up as he glares at me in cocky defiance.

“It wasn’t your—oh, shit.” I jump as the phone vibrates in my hand, sending nervous tingles all the way up my arm. I swallow hard.

Elliot, replying to ‘my’ text.

“What’s he said?” Cosmo’s sounding far too smug for my liking, so I ignore him as I scroll to the message he’s just sent to Elliot. I look up at his grinning face, and want to stick the phone so far up his arse it comes out his nose.

“‘Brilliant meeting you’,” I read out. “I can’t wait to do this.’ Bloody hell, Cos. And a heart emoji? And half a dozen kisses? Jesus, he’s going to think I’m a teenager, if he doesn’t already.” I scroll down, and find Elliot’s response. “He says… he says we can, as long as we’re prepared, and,” I scroll down further. “He’s asking if I’ve got a suit.”

I look back up at Cosmo, who has one brow arched á la James.

“Then he’s on board, isn’t he? You can’t let him down now, can you?”

“I can say I don’t have a suit.” But Cosmo’s right. I’d said yes in the café, and as far as Elliot’s concerned, I’ve said yes again. With a kiss.

“You angry with me?”

I glare at him. “I’ll extract my revenge when you least expect it.”

“You can try. And anyway, you do have a suit.”

Yes, I have a suit. A skintight black leatherette one. It’s stuffed at the back of my wardrobe and it’s something I should have thrown out long before, because it’s a relic of what I’d naïvely thought was a themed party I’d been invited to.

I’d gone with an old boyfriend, and it had turned out to be our second, and last, date. Dress code was leather, rubber, or vinyl, he’d said. Which I took to mean something vaguely punkish. God knows where I’d picked up the suit from, but there’d been a lot more pasty, paunchy skin on show than anything else when we arrived. I’d hung about for an hour before fleeing. All I’d ended up with from that night had been an expensive cab ride home, and some nasty chafing from the suit.

“Or you can borrow one of mine.”

“Yeah, if I shrink by a foot overnight, and lose a stone in weight along with it.”

Cosmo’s lips purse in petulance. “Don’t be sizeist. I’m only trying to help.”

“I know all about your help, thank you.” I sigh. “I suppose I can hire one from Moss Bros.”

“Hire one?” Cosmo gapes at me, before he starts laughing.

“What?” I bark.

“But other people would have been wearing it — urrhg!”

“They’re cleaned between wears, dickhead. And anyway, I don’t have a suit, or not a proper one — and no, I am not wearing that leathery monstrosity.”

Cosmo’s lips twitch a smile.

For a second time, the phone vibrates in my hand. “It’s Elliot again. Oh.”

“What? Don’t tell me he’s now having second thoughts?”

I shake my head. “No. He says if I don’t, it can be taken care of.” I hold out the phone to Cosmo. “He’ll hire the suit for me. I mean, he did say my expenses would be taken care of. That’ll be it, won’t it? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Because, A, that’s not what he says, and B, because you’re an imbecile.”

“Excuse me? You can accuse me of many things, but not that. I’m the one doing an advanced degree. Who was it who ended up barely scraping a third, even though he was sleeping with the head of department?” I rub my chin in fake thought.

Cosmo shudders. “The old bastard promised me an upper second. I knew pushing for a first was taking it too far. I should have sued him for misrepresentation.” Cosmo’s got pouting off to a fine art, and all I can do is roll my eyes. “Yes, I was very foolish, but you’re still an imbecile.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Cosmo says slowly, as though explaining something not very hard to a very dense child, “men like Elliot, and the men who’ll make up the wedding party, don’t hire suits from Moss Bros. I told you about Andrew and Marcus. This wedding will be the full works. If Elliot’s willing to take care of it, that means he’s going to kit you out with the right togs. Ohh, he’s going to take you shopping.” Cosmo claps his hands together and a wide grin splits his face in two. “This is turning into Pretty Woman. Julia Roberts and Richard Gere—”

“Oh piss off. And anyway, Pretty Woman’s about a tart.”

He looks wounded, and all his frivolity drops away.

“Hey, I’m sorry, I was just making a joke. I didn’t mean to suggest that you were… All you’re doing is helping out a decent guy, and doing yourself some good at the same time. If I thought it was anything else, I wouldn’t let you do it. You know that.”

I do know it. We’ve always looked out for each other in our own ways. We bicker, we play verbal ping-pong all the time, Cosmo winds me up, and I wind Cosmo up. It’s what we do. But we’re good friends and I know he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me.

“If you need a suit, you need a suit. To do a proper job, any job, you need the proper tools. I mean, if you were going to build a shed, for example, you’d need the right hammer and nails, and the right wood. The same applies here. You need the right clothes to look the part, otherwise what’s the point of going through with it? Elliot realises that, so put your trust in him.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

I look down at my mobile, and imagine Elliot waiting for my response. Although he’s probably not really waiting. No doubt he’d tapped out the message, put his phone aside, and gone off to do more important things. Still, he needs an answer.

No, I thumb in, I don’t have a suit. The less said about the thing stashed in the back of my wardrobe, the better.

For the third time my phone vibrates with an incoming message, and my heart jumps. Maybe he’s waiting, after all.

“Oh.”

“What?” Cosmo grabs the mobile. “‘Meet me outside Bond Street station at ten tomorrow,’” he reads aloud. He looks up. “What was it I was saying about Pretty Woman?”