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Right?
“I didn’t know,” I said as I sprinkled the onions atop the coiled noodles, then grabbed the pièce de résistance—the melted uni sauce I’d been working on since that trip to the fish market with the girls—and dribbled it over the rest of the meal. “If I had, I would have told you.”
Without waiting for him to answer, I slid the bowl across the counter and offered my friend a pair of chopsticks. As always, he didn’t wait to dive into what I’d made.
“Shiiiiiit,” he muttered through a mouthful of noodles. “Fuck me, that’s good. What is it?”
“House-made somen noodles with uni, truffle-infused sesame oil, and mizuna,” I said. “I made it for Sofia last weekend, and she went bonkers. Thinking I might put it on a kids’ menu at the next spot. Something cute for a placemat or what.”
Jagger blinked at me like I was speaking a foreign language.
“Placemat?” Jagger repeated when I told him. “Kids’ menu? I’m sorry, who the fuck are you, and what have you done with my best friend?”
I smirked, then gazed out at the panoramic view of London my flat afforded. For years, this was the only place I found much solace. I’d come from nothing, maybe stepped on a few shoulders, but in the end, found myself on top of a city so many said could never be mine. I would come here at the end of every day, and the sight of London would remind me that I wasn’t all the labels that were thrust upon me. I was the man I wanted to be.
But for the last few months, when I would enter this tower in the sky, I felt as alone as I did right after Mum died. When I had to sleep in our flat by myself, wondering if there would ever be anywhere in the world I could call home if she wasn’t in it.
I’d thought I didn’t need a home. I’d thought I didn’t need anyone.
Now I knew it was a lie.
I wanted to be with her. Them. There was a piece of my heart living across the ocean, and she was about three feet tall with a smart mouth that could challenge the Prime Minister.
I was just about to admit it too when there was a loud knock at my front door. Jagger and I both turned toward the sound.
“Doorman?” Jagger asked.
“Must be.”
I went to open the door and found a small man in a tracksuit with an enormous wood box balanced on a cart.
“Xavier Parker?” he asked.
“That’s me. Did David send you up?” I wondered, thinking of the doorman.
“He did when he saw who sent me,” said the man with a distinctly northern accent I wasn’t particularly fond to hear. “Sign here.”
I accepted the clipboard and offered my signature. The delivery man took one look at the name, then glanced back at me curiously.
“Not what I would have thought you’d have looked like, Your Grace, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“I absolutely mind,” I informed him. “And it’s Mr. Parker, thanks.”
The delivery man just blinked. “Whatever you say. Where do you want her hung, then?”
“Her?” I asked.
“What is it?” called Jagger.
The man didn’t seem to care. “That wall’s bare. I’ll put it there.”
“Put what there?” I demanded as he wheeled the box around me toward one of many white walls in the flat.
“Your clock.”
With a loud snap, he opened the lid of the box with a crowbar. Jagger had come to stand next to me, and we both watched as the man unloaded a brown clock approximately the size of my briefcase, but completely covered in ornate carvings, its face bearing two gilded hands and a bloody great pendulum that gleamed the same gold.
“Doing a bit of redecorating?” Jagger looked doubtfully at the timepiece. It was a far cry from the modern decor around us.
