Famous Last, page 5
“Marshall Highlander? The Marshall Highlander?”
“It depends. How many Marshall Highlanders do you know—”
“Spencer!” said Bev.
“Yes, then,” said Spencer. “The Marshall Highlander. He was there at the event—”
“I know he was there. I opened the door to him. It was me who said hello to him and welcomed him in. Are you telling me he’s sending you flowers?” Right then, she did a very Beverley thing and slapped manicured fingers across her shiny lips before pulling them away and asking. “Tell me you did not try to jump his bones—”
“What? No! We chatted, that’s all. He’s just a really nice man—”
“Who is sending you roses and chocolates. That kind of gift is not a thank you for chatting, Squirrel. That’s so much more than a thank you. How could I think they were from Blake? His idea of a romantic gesture is kissing a mirror. So how did you leave things? With Marshall Highlander, the sex god, whose homosexuality is the world’s worst-kept secret. Let me guess. He’s your fairytailicious ending, isn’t he?”
Spencer put his head in his hands. Bev had coined the phrase after almost meeting Harry Styles at one of Muriel’s charity events. He and his entourage had left five minutes before Bev had arrived. For months afterwards she had stalked him on social media, convinced they would eventually end up together.
“Bev,” he said, looking back up, “please don’t blow this out of proportion. On the night in question, I said a few kind words and I’m sure this is simply Marshall’s grown-up way of saying thank you. Don’t read anything more into it, because I’m not. But you need to help me come up with a plausible story to tell our colleagues. With red roses and chocolates on display, they’re circling like sharks around chum.”
Beverly sat back and put her chin in her hand. Making up stories had always been her forte, and he could see the wheels turning.
“From your mum? An early Christmas present?”
“Why would she? It’s not even Halloween. On top of that, roses and chocolates? From my mother? Sorry, but that’s just plain icky and gross.”
“Good point. Okay, why don’t we go with my first assumption and tell people they’re from a lying, cheating, sack-of-shit, ex-boyfriend in a pathetic attempt to win you back.”
“You really don’t like him, do you? But no, that won’t float. One, because I don’t want anyone else to know about us being a thing, and two, because if he deigns to pop into the office this week, he will naturally deny everything. More importantly, the few who do know would expect to see me ramming the bouquet into the paper shredder stem by stem. And I truly want to take them home with me.”
“Good point. And on that subject, a quick word of warning. The little prick is rumoured to be gracing everyone with his presence on Saturday night—”
“Blake?” said Spencer, a shiver running through him. “At the Halloween party?”
Until then, Spencer had been pondering ways to get out of going. Now the sick and twisted part of his psyche that had kept him awake at night, imagining a sobbing Blake on his knees—naked, of course—begging to get back together with Spencer, had wormed its way into his head.
“Possibly, which most likely means he won’t turn up. And anyway, don’t worry. It’ll be Halloween so if he does show up I can legitimately Jamie Lee Curtis him if he tries anything. Now, where was I?”
“Roses and chocolates.”
“Oh yes. Path of least resistance. Let’s stick as close to the truth as possible. You were at a private party over the weekend where you were introduced to a group of guys and happened to mention where you work. Somebody must have taken a shine to you and sent the gift. But you’ve no idea who. Trust me, everyone loves a mystery like that. Of the secret admirer variety. Up until they have to slap a restraining order on the stalking bastard.”
Spencer pondered the idea for a moment. As explanations went, that was a reasonably good one and didn’t even feel like a lie.
“Great, let’s run with that. If anyone asks, say I’ve been racking my brains trying to figure out who the person might be. Now I’d better get back before Clarissa—”
“Hang on. I have a question. How do you plan on saying thank you?”
“How about a glass of bubbly after work?”
Bev stared at him for a second, before closing her eyes and shaking her head.
“Not to me, idiot. To him?”
“Oh. Oh. I hadn’t thought about that. I suppose he must have a social media page. When I get a minute free, I’ll browse and check. Leave him a note.”
“Want me to get you his private number? So you can send him a message?”
“You have Marshall Highlander’s private number?”
“Of course not. But Muriel’s PA, Alice, will have. Leave it with me. Meet me outside the Cork and Bottle at six-thirty. And bring those flowers and chocolates with you. You know how I love to see you squirm, dear heart.”
Chapter Four
Ten-thirty Saturday evening, Spencer sat beneath the sallow light of a standing lamp, balanced on the arm of a rickety navy or black corduroy-covered couch. Crammed against one damp wall of a room off the kitchen, the sofa provided the only remaining perching point far enough away from the noisy bodies leaping around in the living room. Depressing as the thought might be, he had to admit to having outgrown these kinds of parties offering cheap booze and a buffet of variously flavoured potato chips.
Just as well Bev had offered to buy him dinner at her favourite Italian place. When they arrived at nine-thirty, the party was well and truly in full swing. Her genuine persuasiveness—she’d wanted to meet up with someone in particular but would not say who—and her insistence that he accompany her had outweighed his concern about attending an illegal gathering. And in truth, she had been right. He had needed to get out of the house more.
After seeking out the party connection—Bev’s college friend whose brother shared a rented, detached house with five other medical students in a rundown part of town—they dumped their bottles of drink off in the kitchen. The fact that everyone wore surgical masks seemed fitting given the students’ training and the current precautions. Bev had managed to recognise eyes behind the masks of old college friends and stopped to chat. After the third time this happened, Spencer had told her he would find himself a seat, which was how he had ended up on the arm of the small sofa.
With a deep sigh, he looked around the room. If the excited eyes were anything to go by, most of those attending—probably friends of the host’s younger brother—seemed to revel in the loud noise and the crowds and the squalor. Spencer sat alone observing everything, realising he had finally stooped to the level of sad, voyeuristic wallflower.
Next to him, a pair of mummies covered from head to toe in bandages—medical students, bearing in mind the considerable amount, complexity, and skill of the bandaging—made out with wild and passionate abandon. Spencer could not even determine their gender, whether they were a pair of men or women, or one of each. At first the sight made him squirm, until he saw the funny side and realised how delightful was the whole notion of two gender-indecipherable embalmed corpses making out in the present age. What he did know was that if they decided to take things to the next level, there might be considerable passion-dampening unwrapping involved.
When he stretched a leg out to reach for the phone in his trouser pocket, somebody stepped on his foot.
“Sorry,” he said, the unnecessary apology coming from him automatically.
With a wince of pain, he tried to tuck his feet out of the way. Random drunken people—most appeared to be in their late teens and early twenties—had been staggering past all evening, some falling onto him or the swathed couple.
When he checked his phone, his brother Garrett had just sent a message. With nothing better to do, Spencer decided to start a message dialogue.
Garrotte: How’s your week going?
Spence: Next question.
His week had been dreadful. Not only had Muriel and Clarissa dumped a shit ton of work on him, causing him to work until ten most nights, but his landlord had sent him a letter saying he was selling the flat and would not be renewing his rental agreement. Spencer would need to find somewhere else to live by the end of February when the lease ended. Everything seemed to be falling to pieces around him.
Garrotte: You better be coming home next weekend. For Guy Fawkes. Mum’s expecting you. She’s making sure there’s extra food.
Spence: Mum’s cooking? Are you trying to scare me off?
Garrotte: Dad says they’re ordering takeaway from the new Chinese.
Spence:
Garrotte: You bringing anyone?
Spence: So you can torture them and mum can poison them? I’ll pass. You?
Garrotte: Maybe. Met this v sweet babe thru work.
Spence: Cool. Try not to break up with her before Friday.
Garrotte:
He put his phone away as a couple of girls in party dresses made their way past. Besides Bev, few had made an effort. Dressed as the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, her colourful costume hugged her in all the right places, showcasing her impressive cleavage. At the same time, her makeup varied slightly from the film queen’s, with a dark shade of blue for her eyeshadow and a flowing hairpiece of blood-red curls.
Hers had been the best costume he had seen, no competition. Far better than his shabby, black-masked Count Dracula ensemble. But even he had made more of an effort than most of the males, which confirmed his suspicion that everyone else was straight. In the thirty minutes he had been sitting there, the only decent costumes he had seen had been a Wonder Woman, a very passable Daenerys Targaryen wearing a dragon face mask, and two black fishnet-stockinged naughty nurses. They had been the exceptions to the continuous line of mediocre wandering in search of the bathroom.
Spencer fidgeted with his phone again to check the time. Ten-forty. Another twenty minutes and he would be gone, whether Bev joined him or not. He hated Halloween. Growing up, his family hadn’t even acknowledged let alone celebrated the occasion, deferring to the hot dogs and funfairs, the bonfires and fireworks of Guy Fawkes Night. But these days having trick-or-treaters show up on the doorstep happened more often than carol singers on the lead-up to Christmas.
He took a sip of his watery wine and looked around to see if he could locate his queen, but she had been at her social butterfly best that evening. Leaning back, he thought about the week just gone.
Marshall Highlander had not responded to his text message. As promised, Bev had managed to get the man’s personal number, something Spencer had saved into his contacts. Over a week ago now, they had spoken, and Highlander had kissed him in Muriel’s rooftop garden, an event now branded forever into his memory.
After deliberating on Monday evening—refusing point-blank to send anything with Bev leaning over him—Spencer had defaulted to a simple thank you for the flowers and chocolates, a line about being too generous and signed off with his name followed by a squirrel emoji.
After that, nothing.
Then again, what did he expect? Bev had demanded an update every day at work and seemed almost more disappointed than him when he had nothing to report. Maybe because she knew Spencer too well, but on Thursday she told him that Marshall had been on assignment the whole week in one of the stans—Afghanistan or Kazakhstan or Tajikistan, and might even have been Istanbul—and would probably not be able to use his personal phone.
Spencer pushed his own phone beneath his black cape into his trouser pocket and decided he would do a quick search of the house to see if he could find Bev. If not, he would fire off a phone message and head out. As he leant forward to place his half-full plastic tumbler of wine down on the floor by his feet, someone spoke directly to him.
“Spencer?”
The voice sounded all-too-familiar. There in front of him, in open sandals, dressed in a shining gold and brown headdress, bare-chested with defined pecs and six-pack, and exposed muscular legs on full display, stood a very sexy pharaoh.
“Blake,” he choked.
Shit, shit, shit.
Spencer did his level best not to slip off the arm of the couch onto the bandaged lovers. Even before Blake had asked him out, he had found himself getting tongue-tied around the man. Something about Blake’s stony-faced confidence had initially attracted him until he’d begun to understand the difference between confidence and arrogance. In the three months they had been together, the change had been subtle but there nonetheless. Sex had been energetic for the most part, often one-sided with Blake being the only one to get off and sometimes physically rough bordering on brutal. But the feeling of having someone wanting him and turning up to his flat had drowned out all the other niggling voices, even the fact they never kissed or ventured outside the four walls of Spencer’s flat when they were together. Now, whenever he saw Blake, he had to remind himself how wretched he had felt at the end when Blake had dumped him via a direct message on Twitter. A fucking tweet. Who did that? So he did his best to avoid the man—and here he was again at the most inopportune moment with Spencer feeling at his most vulnerable.
Where the hell was Bev when he needed her?
“Nice outfit,” said Blake, his annoyingly handsome smile slipping into place. Not wearing any face covering had been Blake’s trademark protest. “You always did rock the whole faux-vampire look. Might have worked better with contacts instead of glasses. But I love the white face paint.”
Spencer had not painted his face, his pasty complexion wholly natural and probably accentuated by the pale lamplight. Knowing Blake, he already knew that and the comment had been a lame attempt at humour.
“Thanks, I think. Yours is very impressive. Egyptian nobility meets Magic Mike. Looks like someone’s been working out. Is that mascara?”
Each of Blake’s eyes had been outlined in thick black makeup culminating with an upward flourish at each side. The whole effect made his naturally intense gaze—a lot like his mother’s—feel positively denuding. Unusual for Blake, whose sense of fun had remained hidden when they were together. Spencer noted that Blake’s humour had not perished entirely, from the slight smirk lifting one side of his mouth.
“Been to a Halloween dinner before this. But one has to make the effort for a party, doesn’t one?”
“Shame they didn’t state that in the invitation. Who do you know here? The host?”
“No, I was invited by a friend of a friend. Nobody you would know.”
And there it was, the real Blake surfacing, as snobbishly class conscious and dismissive as ever. No doubt if there were any other single gay men at the party with flawless skin, a beautiful bone structure and breeding, also looking for a one-night stand, they would have scoped out this perfect male specimen by now. Blake epitomised a particular Instagram genus of hard-bodied flawless looks and utter superficiality. Spencer had lost count of the number of times he had bailed Blake out at work, completely rewriting his jumbled mess to make the article shine. Blake might look like a demigod, but he couldn’t write for shit.
“Are you here to escort these two back home?” asked Spencer, pointing at the two mummies who appeared to have fallen asleep, tangled together. “The embalmed escapees from Giza?”
Blake’s smile faltered and his eyebrows knotted slightly. Another obvious tell on their incompatibility had been Blake’s rudimentary humour, not to mention his irritation whenever Spencer and Bev had got together and laughed all night about one topical reference or another. Maybe he should have read the signs better.
“Pharaoh,” said Spencer, pointing to Blake, before indicating the slumbering duo. “Mummies. Get it?”
Breaking down jokes for Blake had long ago become a tiresome process.
“Ah. Yes. Funny,” said Blake, clearly not amused. “Are you here with anybody?”
For a second, Spencer wondered why Blake wanted to know, and considered making something up. But then what was the point? Blake always did have a way of seeing straight through him.
“I came with Beverley, but she’s disappeared on me. Don’t suppose you’ve seen her? We’re going to share a cab home and, to be honest, I’m about ready to go.”
“Salvatore? What is she dressed as tonight? Let me guess. Something from Cats? Rebel Williams, perhaps?”
Spencer was almost impressed.
“It’s Wilson. Rebel Wilson. And Salva—Beverley—is dressed as the Queen of Hearts.”
“Of course she is. No, I haven’t seen her. Do you need a lift home?”
The question caught Spencer off guard, and his mind started to reel. In his heart of hearts, Spencer knew Blake wouldn’t want anything more substantial than a shag if he did take him home. But would that be enough for Spencer? Could he separate his already dented heart from the physical act? He already knew the answer.
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“Don’t be daft, Spence. It’s a bugger of a journey, Ilford to Morden,” said Blake, until his eyes betrayed his uncertainty. Spencer doubted Blake had ever ridden public transport. “Isn’t it? Besides, surely you’re not chancing the Tube this time of night, are you? And an Uber’s going to cost you an arm and a leg.”
“I’ll figure something out. And anyway, I thought you didn’t drive. Or did your mother let you have her driver for the evening?”
“Ambika drove us here.”
Right then, as though waiting for a cue, an astonishingly good-looking South Asian girl appeared. Dressed as a cowgirl complete with an authentic-looking suede skirt and thigh-length boots, she wore an impressive Stetson and had a red bandana tied around her face. Ambika’s long dark hair spilt down from beneath the hat and out across the shoulders of her gingham shirt. Similar to Blake, she wore no mask.
She leant forward and offered her impeccably manicured hand in greeting. Spencer was welcomed by a firm handshake and a genuine smile.
