He waited for her
to answer. At last he said, “I know I
haven’t had a man.” He waved down at his
body. “Who would look at me?” Without waiting for a polite contradiction,
he went on, “but I have talked and read and listened. I know so many blokes who’ve been fucked over
by bisexuals who give them the spiel about everlasting love and all that stuff
and then dump them for a girlfriend.”
Esmé was
touched. And also a little peeved
off. “Lukie bibbots, he hasn’t made any
vows, he hasn’t said he loves me, he’s behaved impeccably.” Except
for the stiffie, she added silently to herself.
“But you love
him.” It wasn’t really a question.
“Of course I
don’t.”
Luke just grinned
at her.
“Then there’s the other problem,” he said.
He stared at her
maddeningly until she was forced to say, tetchily, “What?”
“Falling in love
with a straight guy. I’ve done it often
enough. Some cute bloke. He just has to smile at nicely at you, and
you construct a whole happy-ever-after story, visions of breakfast in bed,
picnics on the beach, holidays in Paris.”
Esmé
coloured. These were exactly the sort of
things she’d been thinking.
“And then it turns
out he doesn’t even want to have sex with you.
His obsession is the girls he sees getting on the tram. The girls he lusts after in pubs. The pretties he ogles in the street. You are less than nothing to him. And you’ve invested all your time and
emotions in him. And in the end you do have
your stories. Only it’s just you on the beach at the picnic. Not you
and him. And it’s not breakfast in bed. It’s a bowl of muesli with going-off milk. By yourself in the kitchen. With last night’s washing up staring
malevolently at you from the sink.”
This made Esmé
laugh but she was saddened too, for Luke and for herself. For the world. For all the lonely people.
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