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“But it takes, what, ten minutes to circle back in a buggy?” I counter.
Laurence scoffs. “Every minute counts in this business. Honestly, William, I just do what I’m told. But hey, I like the privacy of a trailer. Anyone and everyone goes in and out of my bloody dressing room, despite the sign on the door.”
There’s a noticeable twinge in my stomach when he says my name. It’s occurred a few times now. I don’t know if it’s the accent, or simply because it’s rolling from his lips. “You never call me Will…” I’ve noticed that as well.
“You never call me Laurie.”
“Touché.” I smile, tilt my head to make eye contact. “I like Laurence. It’s…sophisticated.”
His glass pauses in front of his mouth while he laughs, and says, “Nobody’s ever accused me of that before.”
Laurence drinks his whisky. I don’t realise how interesting I find that until I’m caught staring at his lips, admiring the dewiness left behind by the most recent sip. At least I think he caught me. Why else did they curl into a smile for no reason at all.
“So, I suppose you want to know why I’ve been avoiding you.” It seems we’re no longer dodging the elephant in the corner. Laurence has just invited it right on over to stomp on my face.
“Did I say something wrong?” I sound nervous. I am nervous.
I’m not looking at him now. I don’t think I could if I wanted to. I feel him shift forward in his seat, sense the heat of his gaze on my cheeks. “Not at all. I just felt like you had a…moment, shall we say, at Stan’s party. I felt like I’d upset you, maybe even offended you. I wanted to give you some time, that’s all.”
“The party—” The memory cuts me off, piercing my confusion like a bullet. “The terrace…” When our hands touched. When I froze. We froze. When I wished I could hold his hand fully, as I have tonight. When the idea of what that meant frightened the living shit out of me...
“Did I?” he asks. “Upset you?”
I swallow hard, contemplate what admitting the truth out loud really means. “No, Laurence. You didn’t upset me. I…” I what? I can’t tell him what I suspect he wants to hear. What I think I want to say. “I was surprised, that’s all. I didn’t know you were, you know, gay.”
Fuck. I fear I’ve just spoken it like a dirty word. Quiet. Hesitant. Mumbled. What must he think of me?
“You got gay from the brush of a little finger?” He follows that with a laugh which makes me feel like he’s mocking me.
My head jerks to face him, to study his reaction. “So you’re not?”
The laugh melts into a ghost of a smile. “I am. Yes. I was just messing with you. Sorry.”
“Do people know?”
“People who matter,” he says with a small shrug before setting his empty glass down on the table in front of us. “There are rumours in the media that I havnae confirmed.”
“Because you’re ashamed?”
“What?” His eyes narrow, back straightens. “Of course not. It’s my job to entertain people. I get paid for it. But if I’m not at work, my life is none of their business. Why would you think that?”
I feel my face twist into a sheepish expression. “Sorry. No, you’re right, of course.” I can’t leave it there, with Laurence thinking I’m a prude at best, homophobic at worst. “I didn’t mean that to sound like it did. I admire you, honestly. I wouldn’t be able to be so open if I was you.”
“If you were me?”
The question feels like a trick, like he knows something, sees something. “If I’d have told my dad I was gay when I was younger, well, I like to think he would’ve just broken my ribs but—”
“You like to think that?”
I nod as I answer. “It would’ve been less humiliating than putting me in a dress and parading me round the local pub.” Which is precisely what he threatened to do the night he caught me watching the first episode of Queer as Folk on Channel 4.
I’m convinced I only escaped the punishment because Becca was there. She backed my story that we’d fallen asleep watching an earlier show and had never even heard of “that queer bollocks” before. I switched “that perverted shit” off his “fucking telly” immediately, and it was never spoken of again. Not by my father. Not by Becca. I watched each subsequent episode alone with my heart in my throat, volume low, muscles tense, ears trained on the front door, while idly wondering if Becca suspected the feelings I was experiencing towards other boys. After all, I’d suggested we watch that first episode.
She never did.
Christ. I haven’t thought about that in years. That memory has been sealed away with all others of its kind for so long I was almost certain I’d erased them completely. But the lock has corroded. They’re slipping free one by one, and memories of who I almost was and who I am are becoming entangled. I’m struggling to separate them, to remember what’s important, to recognise myself.
