The Gentleman Has Left the Building Read online

  I tried to work out how to sound happy for her. No, wait--I was happy for her. But also jealous, and it clawed at me like a raging beast. Some big brother I was.

  “So it’s definitely over with Craig?” I asked.

  Another awkward gulp on her end. “Definitely. Rhys…it was like what happened with you and Kate. He admitted it. He‘d been seeing her for months.”

  I preferred not to think about Kate at all. She didn't deserve it. “Oh. Bastard," I said quickly. "You’re well shot of him. Do you need me to kick-box his ass?”

  “If you catch him in the street, I wouldn’t have any strong objections. Listen--got to go. We’re going to see some weird manga film at the cinema with Olly and Chan.”

  “You have fun now.”

  “I will.” She made a faux-kissing noise. “I’ll see you next Sunday, yeah?”

  “Yep. I promise to be more awake, too.”

  There was a deep, male voice in the background as Bailey hung up, and a kissing noise that was disturbingly non-faux.

  This was not the way I wanted to wake up.

  When I staggered into the living area, Harper was curled up on the leather sofa with her laptop while a music channel hummed in the background. She was wearing the little work-out clothes that I always secretly perv over (shorts that cling to a girl’s arse as if they’ve been sprayed on by a legion of adoring pygmies) but my vision was still too blurry to make out any chance flashes of nipple.

  “You’re conscious,” she said, not looking up. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you, Rhys Frost.”

  “Can it wait until I’ve ingested half a box of paracetamol?”

  “No.” The laptop closed with a foreboding click. “Since when do you and Nathan go out drinking together?”

  “Since…?” I straightened, remembering. “Oh. That.”

  It was true; we weren’t exactly bar buddies. Last night, he’d been out with someone else from work. One thing lead to another, and we were soon wandering the streets of London together while I told him…

  …Embarrassing stories about Harper. Fuck. Come to think of it, he’d wanted to know quite a lot about her. He was quite possibly plugging me for info (but he did it with beer, so hey…can’t hold it against the guy).

  “So there was a good reason for him being in our kitchen at one in the morning?” she went on.

  Oh. That.

  “He wanted to see the flat,” I said feebly.

  “And you couldn’t have warned me?” she squealed. “I was almost naked! He could’ve caught me doing anything--”

  “But you were saying how much you liked him. It didn’t…it didn’t cross my mind that you wouldn’t want to see him. Sorry, dude.” My hand hovered over the sink. “Wait. You didn’t…fucking hell. Did you sleep with Nathan?”

  Harper blew her fringe up, her arms folded beneath her breasts. “No. Funnily enough, he asked the same thing about you.”

  “He wanted to know if I’d slept with him…?”

  “If you and me were sleeping together, dickhead.” She sighed. “But he did kiss me.”

  Great. Everyone’s getting some but meeeee. “If you got off with him, why do you look so miserable?”

  “Because…” She leaned forward on her elbows, and there it was…ahh. A teeny crescent of pink areola just peeking out of her top. Harper was such an ace room-mate (hey, a bloke can look). “Because now it might all be ruined.”

  “Pretty sure kissing doesn’t fuck up a relationship.” I swallowed two fat paracetamol with half a pint of water. Hangover cure stage one: in progress. “Fucking somebody else--that fucks up a relationship.” The fridge offered ingredients with a knowing hum: sausages, bacon, eggs. “That’s if you have a relationship, mind. Processed meat products?”

  “Eugh, no. Can’t stomach it. I’m too on-edge.”

  “More for me, then.” All I needed now was a cold glass of Coke, and my magic formula was complete. “So where do you two go from here with your little game? Did his balls explode when you sent him packing?”

  She gave a nervous laugh. “That’s just it though. I wasn’t the one who said we should just kiss. He was.”

  “You discussed how far you were going to go before you even started? Did he print out a contract and make you sign in vag juice?”

  “Rhys. Jesus.”

  “Sorry.” The bacon hit the pan with a rough, lardy sizzle and I stood on tip-toe to wedge the window open. “Just seems a bit…well. Like the pair of you are seriously over thinking all this. Now I can understand you, after what happened with Bitch Face and Cock Wad--but him?”

  “I suppose he might be rebounding too,” she said slowly.

  “Hey. We are not rebounding. It’s been six months. We’re…works in progress.”

  “In fact, what do you know about him? You’re apparently best mates, all of a sudden. Tell me everything about Nathan. Everything!”

  The sausages hissed at me as they were turned in the pan.

  “Well. Let’s see. Um.” What did I know about him? “He doesn’t talk about himself very much.”

  She put her laptop aside--goodbye, semi-nipple-and strode over to the fridge. “But he didn’t mention a girlfriend? Or kids? A woman of any description?”

  “He mentioned you a fair bit,” I said. “That’s all I remember. Will you do me some Coke as well, please?”

  It frothed into glasses with a comforting, carbonated gasp.

  “So.” She leant back against the fridge, drink in hand. “Let’s hope kissing hasn’t screwed up the balance, and he still wants to…whatever it is we’re going to do. Sex, maybe. I hope it’s sex.”

  “If it is, will you give me a heads-up first so I can go out?”

  “Shush. What were you talking about last night, anyway? Apparently, you’re a rapist called Hannibal…?”

  That would be when I crawled along our corridor on my hands and knees, groping about the carpet like it had directions printed in Braille. Yeah. Last night was kind of shameful. I really wasn't myself of late.

  But there was nothing for it, really, and nobody who could give me better advice than Harper. So over a heap of greasy brunch, I told her about Nicole; how I’d been watching her in the park for weeks, how I had absolutely no idea to talk to a stranger (let alone seduce her), and how Aidan had left my teeny chance at a less-than-jaunty angle.

  Harper grinned like an evil pixie. “Nicole? Papa!” She sniggered. A French snigger.

  “Look. Stop laughing at me. The first girl I’ve really like for ages, and it’s over before--”

  “--It even started. You said last night. But that’s not strictly true.” She patted my arm in sympathy. “You should try again. What do you have to lose? If she still thinks you’re a weirdo, there are other places to go running. Think of it as practice. I’d never have gone near Nathan if he didn’t start the proceedings, so to speak. You’ve got to start being that guy.”

  “But why? Why do I have to do all the running, literally?” I whined.

  “Because you want to get laid. Being confident gets a man laid, Rhys. It’s that, or you might as well start browsing for fat forty-somethings on the internet.”

  She had to go there, didn’t she? To my secret pit of despair…the place my mother still thinks I’ll end up. Brilliant.

  “Or there’s Mimi from the office,” she went on.

  “I already told you, she’s not my type. She's got a really weird-shaped head."

  "Oh, she so hasn't. Stop making excuses."

  "Look.” I drew a sad face with my fork in the swathes of bacon fat. “Let’s make a deal, yeah? We’re supposed to be in this together.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “What kind of deal?”

  “You stop being a damsel in dick-stress with Nathan--just fucking go for it already--and I’ll try to approach Nicole again.”

  Harper cocked her head and a blond fringe obscured slate eyes. She was thinking. This could not end well. “All right,” she said finally. “You’re on.”


  ****

  The internet has nothing new to say on seducing women. I knew this because I Googled for it at least three times a week.

  I don’t remember being such a neurotic man-bitch before all of this happened. I had moderate success with girls (fourteen notches on the bedpost in twenty nine years isn’t bad, is it…?) so I can’t have been that unfortunate where looks were concerned. I wasn't fat, or too short. No lisp. No halitosis. My ears were nicely close to my skull. The only debt I had was my car and my job was just forty percent gay (which is pretty good for London). I could talk about normal things; I didn’t pick my nose in public; I could cook, for fuck’s sake. Why did the idea of asking Nicole out terrify me? Harper was right--what did I have to lose?

  Dignity, I suppose. The scraps of it I’d clawed back in the months since Kate left. There was the fear that I was just getting used to being single--being really okay with it--and if I gave that up, even just for a few dates, it might take even longer to get it back again.

  I sat back on my bed and replayed the moment Nicole bent over in front of me in the park; the way her arse made a perfect heart shape above the taper of her thighs. Thought about how she might buck against me. My palms began to sweat with it and my cock was slippery in my hands. The idea of controlling her like that…I had no words. Just inappropriate noises.

  I should go after what I want, shouldn’t I? I could emerge from this hangover as a proper alpha bastard. I always kinda suspected it was somewhere inside me. But even if it wasn’t, I could emulate someone like Nathan if it meant that I got from A to B. Or inside Nicole. Hell, outside her, on top of her, underneath…any of those would do. Delete as appropriate.

  Delete…me?

  Part Two

  Harper and I hatched our dastardly plan on the train the next morning.

  I’m pretty sure that most super villains have lairs for this sort of thing. We had a cramped, sour-smelling corner of a tube carriage, and while there were no cats to stroke, there was a Spanish guy with an alarming amount of hair falling out of his shirt collar wedged into my left side.

  I knew three things about Nicole; two of them through pure chance (a sign?) and one because of Aidan. She went running on Saturday mornings in our park, she got coffee in the local Starbucks a few hours later, and she was almost definitely posh. I could use these, said Harper. In fact I should, because they were all I had. The problem I faced would be doing so without looking like a first class lemon.

  We’d just dodged a gaggle of Japanese tourists and were headed towards the giant glass foyer of our building when we spotted them.

  Kate and Rory. My ex and Harper's ex.

  “She’s dyed her hair again,” said Harper, subdued.

  “She used to tell me she was a natural blonde, remember?” We huddled in next to a phone box; we never walked past Kate and Rory if we could help it. It was bad enough that we had to work with them several times a week.

  “I still can’t believe she thought she’d get away with that. One night, you turned up early and she hadn’t shaved her lady garden…she was terrified you’d realise she was a brunette.”

  I squinted at Kate in the sharp sunshine. She was nodding at handsome, smarmy Rory as they puffed on cigarettes. Picking bits of lint off his collar. They looked like a normal couple just chatting before work; you’d never guess that he was a girlfriend-stealing wank bucket, and she was a best-friend’s-boyfriend-swiping slag. Not that I’m bitter or anything.

  Harper exhaled loudly and banged her head against my shoulder three times. “God. How long does it take to smoke one fag?”

  “Maybe we should suck it up and just walk past them?” I felt defeated for saying it. “We’ve got to pitch against them later this week as it is.”

  “I prefer to minimise my exposure to carcinogenic…personalities.” She gave a mournful little moan. “Why can’t they get fired already? Weren’t we going to plant something incriminating in her desk drawer?”

  “You were too afraid to ask around for a coke supplier. And then our pizza arrived.”

  “We need to be more evil.”

  I rubbed her back with brisk, comforting strokes. “No, no. This is why we’re mates and they’re…them, Harpcore. Let them be evil. We’re on the moral high ground and it’s--”

  “Pathetic, you keep saying.” She sighed. “Come on, they’re going in. Hustle.”

  Eight thirty AM and the revoltingly modern offices of Knoll and Co were, like a monster, aliiiiiive. Hot secretaries One and Three had phone receivers in one hand and low-calorie cereal bars in the other (they did have names. We just liked winding them up with chauvinism); fridges in boardrooms were being restocked with shiny bottles…and Mimi and her not-awkward-shaped head were loitering by my desk. She wasn't unattractive, really. Just a bit too shy and innocent for my liking, what with the glasses and the mid-calf skirts. A clipboard was, fittingly, leaning against her chest--at the same angle as her chin.

  “You’ve got a meeting with the FHM people at ten," she begins in her breathy voice, "and Felicity says you’ve got to flog them at least two of your spirit brands. Then the art is back for Absolut and Joanne thinks it’s too sexy--”

  “Too sexy? What?” I grabbed the clipboard. “Those models were not naked. They’re wearing spray-on latex. Can you tell her that, please?”

  Mimi blushed riotously and averted her eyes. Christ…all I said was latex. And naked.

  Ooh.

  “Lunch is at the Greek place near the tube station, with…smug Ian from ITV…”

  “Fucking marvellous.” I tossed my coat over the back of my chair and flicked on my desktop. “Any good news? No? Anything free and exciting in the post?”

  “There were some tickets actually.” She tapped her nails across the clipboard. “Theatre, I think. You’ll have to ask Joanna because she gets dibs.”

  “Thanks. I’ll catch you later.”

  Fortunately, Mimi took the hint (or was still embarrassed by bondage chat before nine AM) and scuttled off. I was about to shout after her for coffee when my Blackberry messenger went off.

  AIDAN: How vanilla r u?

  RHYS: wtf? Like ice cream?

  My work email was practically groaning at the seams. Figures requests, random CVs (why did people send me them?), fragmented copy corrections.

  AIDAN: Cock. Hosting party tomorrow. Want to help u with ladies. U should come.

  RHYS: how can u help me with ladies exactly? Ur the cock!

  AIDAN: trust me?

  Oh, and look at that--emails with attachments that don’t actually have attachments. That’s fucking helpful.

  RHYS: why?

  AIDAN: I WILL GET U LAID AND U WILL BLOODY LIKE IT. SO CUM 2 MY FUCKING PARTY OK?!

  RHYS: I’m not sleeping with u.

  AIDAN: u’ll feel better about going 4 Nicole.

  Oh, Nicole. Nicole, Papa! Nicole. I’d only thought about her arse and her slinky shoulders about seven times this morning.

  RHYS: I’ll see. Vanilla ice cream party?

  AIDAN: Vanilla like sexually. Google.

  So I did.

  Erm. Well, that wasn’t safe for work.

  “Mimi!” I croaked as she appeared in the doorway. “Can I have a coffee please?”

  “Milky, three sugars.” She gave me a little salute. Bless her.

  AIDAN: so?

  RHYS: er. Er.

  AIDAN: c u tomorrow then.

  I’m going to a sexy party with only a tactless ginger Zoolander and my own sparkling wit for protection.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

  ****

  I can’t believe I spent forty five minutes picking out the shirt on my back--especially since it was the first one I tried on. It was doubly mortifying that I had help from another bloke; Aidan span me about, prodded necklines, stroked his chin. I got the impression he did this quite regularly and I wasn’t about to ask why.

  "Stop mithering, dude," he told me as I stared into the mirror for the umpteenth time. "Y
ou're hot."

  I didn't dislike the guy who stared back at me, exactly; he had mussed up hair, and murky dark eyes that looked a lot more dangerous than I felt. Maybe I'd been so focused on work and Nicole that I'd neglected to notice the brazen, hardened new me. What a cynical shit I am.

  Now we watched inky evening London scroll by from the back of the cab, headed towards a town house in Belgravia. I definitely preferred this to the reeky tube I took to my advertising job each day.

  “How come you’re hosting something that isn’t actually at your house?” I asked Aidan.

  He glanced at his phone, tapping absentmindedly. He wore a finely tailored black suit and powder pink tie, which somehow defied the laws of logic in making him seem more masculine. Chiselled bastard. “My flat’s like a box, Rhys. I’m doing it for a mate. Playing ringmaster.”

  “I’m deeply honoured to be arriving with you, then.”

  “Hey--think yourself lucky!” He poked me in the ribs. “We hardly invite any single men to these shindigs...and the ones we do, they have to pay for their tickets.”

  “What?” I spluttered. God, I hope the cab driver didn’t just hear that. “Please tell me this isn’t a swinging party, Aid.”

  He squared his shoulders. “It’s a get-together for likeminded people. Who…like sex.”

  “You can’t take me to a swingers’ party, you plonker! I’m--” I gestured to myself, groaning. “Me.”