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“I’m not going to sue you,” I tell him, half-wishing that just once Jonathan Forest’s primary concern wasn’t what his lawyer would say. “But if I’m going to stay and we’re going to do all this…”
Thewe’remakes him shudder a bit. But he doesn’t complain.
“…then,” I finish, “you need to start being about ten percent less of a dick.”
Now he starts complaining. “I’m not a—”
“You forgot your housekeeper’s name. You keep ordering me around. You”—I’m this close to sayingthreatened to sack the entire Sheffield branchbut I cut myself off just in time—“you basically told your own mam you were cancelling Christmas.”
I expect him to keep arguing but he doesn’t. Instead, he just crumples a tiny bit more and says, “I’m aware that I’m not a very likeable person.”
“You know, that’s a problem you can fix.”
“I’m not sure it is.” With Jonathan frowning at me over it, a kitchen table’s never felt so long and so short at the same time. “I’m not the sort of man other people warm to.”
“Have you ever tried?”
“No, I’ve been deliberately alienating everyone I know since I was six.”
He doesn’t make jokes very often and I’m only half sure this is one. “So, what? You’ve just decided not to bother?”
“I decided not to waste my time trying to please people I have nothing in common with.”
I blink at him. “Like who?”
“Anyone.” He shrugs impatiently. “At school, I was a gay boy from Sheffield surrounded by straight Londoners. At university,I was a steelworker’s son surrounded by the children of doctors, lawyers, and—in one particularly unusual case—rock stars.”
To be fair, that did sound like it sucked. “Was there not, like, a student LGBTQ group you could join or something?”
“There was. But they were mostly artists or activists, and I was neither.”
“That where you met the rock star’s kid?”
“Among others. None of them really got me.” There’s no self-pity there. He just says it like it’s a fact. Then he gets this distant look on his face—almost as if he’s forgotten I’m around—and I swear his voice gets just a little more Sheffield. “I remember talking to this English Literature student—right back in my first year—and he asked why I was studying Business Management, and I told him it was because I wanted to study something I could use to make money when my course was finished and he looked at me with suchabsolutecontempt. He didn’t even say anything exceptoh. Then he went off on a tangent about Keats.”
I’m pretty sure it’s the longest I’ve ever heard Jonathan Forest speak. It’s certainly the longest I’ve heard him speak without telling anyone he’s going to fire them. He’s finished the sandwich now and he dusts the crumbs off into the bin and puts the plate in the dishwasher before finishing the anecdote. I stay quiet to see if he’ll carry on talking.
To my surprise, he does. “What struck me, even then, was that he couldn’timaginewhy financial security was something I’d have to consider.” He leans back with his hips against the counter, only half paying attention to me. “And that was what most of my university experience was like. Trying not to waste my tuition fees while all the time my classmates were looking down at me from their spot justslightlyfurther up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.”
“That’s rough,” I tell him, because it is. “But you know not everybody is like that?”
“Maybe.” He’s lost in thought now, and I wonder if I’ve took it too far.
“What happened to the English student?” I ask. It seems like a good way to keep the conversation going.
Jonathan shrugs again. “Married a YouTuber in the end. I went to his wedding.”
“Why?”
“You mean, why did he marry a YouTuber or why did I go to his wedding?”
“I suppose…both?”
“Well”—Jonathan gets that snarky expression that’s the closest he comes to playful—“the YouTuber was young and hot. And, as for the wedding, it was a complicated social group. Turning up was the easiest way to show I didn’t care.”
I cast him a quizzical kind of glance. “You clearly cared enough to want to show you didn’t.”
His mouth thins. “Quite.”
