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The doorbell rang, and Alex’s heart leapt. This would be the first time he’d had Greg in his home. And this was home, already, more than the big house he’d shared with his wife had ever been. The house had always been more Helen’s than his, and by all accounts she already had a lover installed there – an old friend who’d always held a candle for her. Alex had kept only things he needed and things that made him happy. He’d been sure to move himself in without asking Greg to be involved. Alex knew Greg wasn’t into that domestic stuff, and besides, he’d been run off his feet organising the installation of a miniature gin bar for events in the gallery. Anyway, there was something freeing about doing it all himself. A project that was purely his.
He nudged a box out of the way with his foot and opened the door. Greg was there, looking almost childishly excited and holding out a plastic pineapple. Alex laughed. ‘My prize, finally!’ he said, taking it. Before they even knew each other properly, Greg had offered Alex the stupid, tacky thing as a prize for guessing what it was with his eyes closed. He’d reluctantly declined, because Helen wasn’t one for whimsical décor. It was the perfect flat-warming gift.
Alex welcomed Greg inside, closed the door behind them, put the pineapple on top of the cardboard box (one of several still covering the floor) and let himself be drawn into a tight embrace. ‘Nice place,’ said Greg, once he’d let Alex go. ‘Are you happy?’
‘Do you know, I think I might be,’ said Alex, leading Greg into the kitchen. ‘Look, I got a coffee maker!’
‘Got your priorities sorted, then,’ Greg grinned, looking at the empty space where the washing machine should be.
‘It’s being installed tomorrow. You’ll just have to make do with some coffee. You and any other guests who turn up hoping to be offered clean pants.’ He busied himself with the coffee machine.
‘Terrible host. Aww, look at all this. Your own little weird house. About time.’ Alex smiled. His ‘house’ was a fairly small flat, but it was all he wanted right now. Something small, easy to maintain, about halfway between the office and Greg.
‘Yeah,’ said Alex, just as Greg’s phone pinged. Greg took it out, looked at it, and made a sound of amused surprise. ‘What is it?’
Greg showed him the phone. It was an email from Albert Quintrell’s PA. ‘Your lot want the gallery again. Another party. A formal thing this time. Now that could be interesting.’
Alex chuckled. ‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘Without the masks I’d have to be on my best behaviour.’
‘Oh, don’t worry, I’d make sure you behaved.’
Alex felt a frisson of excitement. ‘No,’ he said, carefully, ‘I mean I won’t be able to spend much time with you. I’ll have to be mingling and having awful conversations with horrible people. I’ll be work Alex, not fun Alex.’
‘I’ve had fun with you at work. Yours and mine.’ Greg was grinning wickedly. Alex was part drawn in, part irritated. Greg didn’t understand.
‘That’s different. This’ll be a room full of people and nowhere to hide. I’ll be expected to act a certain way, and it’ll kill me not to kiss you every time I see you but I won’t. No one will know we’re a…’
‘…Care to finish that sentence?’
‘…No one will know,’ finished Alex, lamely.
‘Alex,’ said Greg, pouring out the coffee as though this were his own house and Alex was the guest, ‘Are we a couple? I know the official party line is that we’re not, and I’m fine with that, but…we’ve never even explicitly established whether we’re exclusive.’
Alex tried not to meet Greg’s eye. He didn’t like putting a label on what they were. ‘I mean,’ he said, ‘I have been. Apart from Helen at the beginning. I’ve not…and I’ve not wanted to. I think I’ve been working on the basis of exclusivity.’
‘Wow. Who says romance is dead.’
‘You don’t want that traditional relationship stuff!’
‘Don’t tell me what I want!’
‘Well…but…do you?’
‘…I don’t know.’
‘Forfeit,’ said Alex, gently. Greg saw his point and smiled a little. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s just the shared everything, no space, routine overtaking spontaneity stuff I don’t want,’ Greg said. ‘Is that OK with you?’
‘Yes. Is it OK with you? You seem a bit conflicted.’
‘I’m not conflicted.’ Greg took Alex’s hand. ‘I want you. I want to be with you. I guess I’m just a bit pissed off that you don’t see us as a couple. But that’s not your problem. Maybe I’m more traditional than I thought I was. I don’t know. Not a dealbreaker. Just a…difficult feeling.’
‘I don’t see us not as a couple,’ Alex said. ‘I just…can’t reconcile my experience of couplehood with this. You know, the secrecy, the stolen moments. The wildness. Everything that makes it exciting. Maybe I’m scared to.’
Greg squeezed his hand. ‘You’re safe with me,’ he said. ‘This isn’t going to disappear in a puff of smoke. I mean it.’
‘I know you mean it,’ said Alex, ‘but no matter how sincere you are, the fact is I’m not safe with you. Not safe at all.’
‘Because I’m a man? This isn’t the stone age! If they find out you’re with a man now, who cares?’
‘I care! I’ve not actively claimed to be anything I’m not, but I’m not…out. And that’s the least of it, anyway. What if they find out the kind of stuff we do?’
‘What’s wrong with it? And who’s gonna tell anyone? I don’t go bragging about it down the pub.’
‘No, you just text me at work. Call me in public. Get me to send a dick pic while I wait for my wife to pick out a dress.’
‘Ex-wife.’
‘We’re not divorced yet, and at the time she was not an ex.’
‘Alex, are you…ashamed of what we do?’
‘No, not at all! Just worried about what people would think.’
‘Do you want to put the brakes on that side of things?’
‘No!’
‘Because now you’re separated and have your own place, I guess I don’t need to bother you outside of evenings and weekends.’
‘Bother me? Greg, that’s not fair.’ Alex frowned. He wasn’t up for mind games. Couldn’t Greg understand how dangerous this was for him? He’d pushed to the limits of what his position allowed, and it was fun, it was exhilarating, it was the best and the most he’d ever felt. Getting cosy with Greg, getting official, would mean upsetting the delicate balance they’d found. More would be expected from him if this was a relationship. More time. More consideration of the future. Before long they’d either be in each other’s pockets, bored and resentful, or else getting sloppy and risking his exposure. Greg’s, too. Greg didn’t have any sort of reputation yet, so he didn’t know what it cost to have a bad one. ‘Imagine,’ he said, ‘a time in the future. My career’s over. I’m a joke, and so are you. You and your gallery are synonymous with that one sex scandal. The one about the leaked texts, or the overheard phone calls, or the photos, or the film. You don’t know what it’s like.’
‘Nor do you! It’s all in your head!’
‘Look, what do you actually want? In terms of us?’
‘I just want you to acknowledge that we’re together!’
‘I didn’t…I don’t deny that we’re…it’s not that simple.’
‘Fucking politician.’
That hurt. He was only protecting himself and Greg. If Greg couldn’t see that, it wasn’t his problem. Except that it absolutely was his problem. ‘Can’t we just be friends with risks?’ he said, softly. ‘It’s worked up to this point.’
‘Friends are honest with each other,’ Greg said. ‘But sure. Yes. I’m sorry. I never wanted to be a hassle to you. In practice, I think I want the same things you do.’
‘You’re not a hassle! I lo-…I…like things just as they are.’
Greg sighed. ‘I’m crazy about you, but you’re a fucking coward sometimes,’ he said. ‘They’re just words.’
‘Not to me. If I say something, I like to be sure I mean it.’
‘You like to be sure no one’s hiding in the shadows with a notepad to put it in tomorrow’s paper. That’s all.’
* * * * *
They’d made up, of course, because the truth was they did want the same things in practice. That is, a continuation of their affair on a broad level and, specifically, to do dirty things in every room of Alex’s new flat. Alex never imagined they’d go through with another party at the gallery, but he’d forgotten that the one paper that ran with the bribery story didn’t mention who he was supposed to have bribed. So it was organised, and he was invited, and perhaps it was unwise to avoid the subject until the actual night, but he didn’t want the confrontation.
Alex felt strange as he entered the gallery, dressed in his smartest suit, knowing he wasn’t going to disappear up to the storeroom. All these people, his colleagues, looked wrong here. It was like seeing your boss in your kitchen making a mug of cocoa to take up to bed. He wondered how many of them knew about the bribery story. How many of them knew about his apparent meltdown at the restaurant. His overriding instinct was to find Greg as soon as possible and hide with him. Put their heads together in a shady corner somewhere. Talk about how stupid everyone else in the world was, and laugh, and kiss, and make out like teenagers. That was the one thing he absolutely couldn’t do, but he kept his eye out for Greg nonetheless. Surely he’d be here. Greg was always around to oversee events at the gallery.
He wandered over to the new gin bar – a cute, speakeasy-looking thing in miniature, run by two of the most objectively attractive people he’d ever seen. He ordered a gin and tonic – open bar, so why not – and watched as the handsome mixologist made it more complicated than it needed to be. The young man presented it with a flourish, and Alex took it with an awkward smile and mumbled thanks. Where is Greg?
Alex wandered around the room, sipping at his drink, trying to avoid conversations. But, as usual, conversation found him.
‘You’ve got a nerve, showing your face here.’
‘Jeffrey,’ said Alex, immediately bristling at the sound of the man’s grating voice. He turned around and looked at Jeffrey Balfour-Jenkins, less angry at the threatening tone than he was relieved that he didn’t have to pretend to like him. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Can you help yourself, more like. Still returning to the scene of the crime? People will talk.’
‘No crime. And as far as I can tell, no talk, apart from out of you.’
‘Which one is it, then? Your mistress? The dark-haired wench behind the bar?’
‘I’ve told you, there’s no mistress.’
‘…Or is it a mister? The chap’s rather chiselled, too, isn’t he? More your type?’
Alex felt the colour drain out of his face. He felt the pause before his answer grow inexorably longer. Jeffrey had meant it as a jibe, a cheap, homophobic joke, but Alex hadn’t answered quickly enough. ‘No,’ he managed, finally. ‘Not my type.’ But the damage was done.
‘Oho, the plot thickens. No wonder Helen sent you packing. I always suspected you couldn’t give her, ahem, what she needed. Tell me, is she on the market, or has she been snapped up already?’
‘Keep your sleazy, clammy little hands off her,’ said Alex, his voice exaggeratedly calm to hide the fear inside. ‘You’re the king of gossip, so I’m sure you know very well that she’s seeing somebody. And even if she were single you’d have no chance.’
‘Such an impassioned defence for your show-wife. More passionate than you ever were in the marriage bed, I’ve heard. Did you ever make her turn over so you could pretend she was one of your boys? That might have helped.’
‘I’m not rising to your clumsy bait, Jeffrey,’ said Alex. ‘As a matter of fact I’m not gay, I’m tired and bored and sick of the sight of you. Excuse me.’ He walked off. It wasn’t a lie. He wasn’t gay. Just not ready to share with the world’s greatest blabbermouth that he was bi. Ugh, Jeffrey. Alex knocked back his drink angrily. One of your boys. Even when he thinks I’m gay he gets entirely the wrong idea. Like I’m going round soliciting young men to service me. He wouldn’t know a real, healthy relationship if it bit him. He fiddled compulsively with the ring on his finger, holding it, twisting it. What I have with Greg is not sordid. It’s real. It’s a real, legitimate thing. Where is he?
Greg was still nowhere to be seen. Maybe he’d just chosen not to come to this one. Or maybe it was the argument they’d had. Was this a punishment? Would Greg do that? Alex remembered with a chill the one time Greg had threatened to leave the room while he was tied up and desperate. But then there had been soft kisses and gentle hands and reassurance that no such thing would happen if he was good. Was he being bad? What if this was a delayed punishment for not wanting to put a name to what they had? He finished his drink. That was new for a work party. But this was all new territory, wasn’t it? Fuck it, then. He stalked back to the bar and ordered another. Let Jeffrey think what he wants. The young man was serving someone else, grinning flirtatiously as he flipped a bottle. The woman who mixed his drink was chic and gorgeous, straight dark hair framing her face. Experimentally, Alex tried to be attracted to her. Maybe flirting with someone else would help? But no, his heart wasn’t in it. ‘Alex Horne?’ said the girl as she passed him his drink.
‘Um…yes?’
‘My mum loves you. She’s got a right crush.’
Alex laughed. ‘That’s nice. Tell her hello from me.’
‘Are you really friends with Greg?’
‘I’d like to think so, yes.’
‘Shit, I owe Tony a fiver then. I thought the big man was making it up. You’re really friends?’
‘Something like that.’
‘How did that happen?’
‘We met at one of these parties. Before your time. Your time here, I mean. Not before you were born. Though, er…’
‘Shut up, I’m twenty-five. Just cos you’re ancient. What are you, mid-thirties?’
Alex snorted. ‘At least.’
‘Don’t get me wrong, I can’t stand men in their twenties. They’re children. Talking of which, actually…do you know if Greg’s got anything going on? He plays his cards close to his chest. None of us can work out if he’s single. Or even if he likes girls.’
Alex took a long swig of his drink, uncomfortable, playing for time. Then he said, carefully, ‘He likes girls. I think you’d have to ask him about his relationship status, though. Sorry, I have to just…’ He walked away, letting his sentence trail off behind him. He realised as soon as he was too far away to turn back without looking stupid that he should have asked where Greg was tonight. The girl might know. She obviously had an interest in the man. They’d obviously spoken, too, and Greg had clearly not painted him as anything other than a friend. Fair enough, said a rational part of Alex’s brain. You don’t talk about him either. Not like that. But Alex was spiralling a little, feeling very alone in the crowd without Greg to anchor him, and the irrational was winning. Of course. Why would he mention your ugly little affair to the pretty young thing with a crush on him? Keep your options open, Greg.
He forced himself to talk to some colleagues that were huddled together discussing policy. Work. Work would save him. He could get his teeth into this discussion. Forget about Greg. Forget he was feeling abandoned. Forget about his worry that the abandonment was a deliberate punishment for failing to acknowledge their relationship. The talk was heated. It was what he wanted. He got into it, the flow of debate, words coming effortlessly to mind but slurring a little as they rolled off his tongue. His second drink was gone and he was tipsy at a work party, and part of him felt exhilarated. Breaking his own rules. See, Greg? I can be reckless. I’m not a coward. Where are you?