We get up at eleven thirty, in the end, so I don’t know if I should call it breakfast or lunch, but we eat pancakes, and drink lots of coffee, and then Lily wants to go for a walk, because it’s a nice afternoon. My clothes are still a bit damp from last night, but Lily puts them in the drier, while I wait, just wearing her dressing gown. And then when they’re only a bit damp still, I put them on and we go out. We walk along the river, and we don’t talk that much, but Lily keeps resting her head onto my shoulder, and looking at me and smiling. And it’s almost too much for me to cope with.
I’m almost pleased to get back to my own apartment, and my own space, where I can make sense of everything that’s happened. I’ve got a girlfriend. Lily is my girlfriend.
Well, she’s sort of my girlfriend.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Over the next week I go around there twice, and both times I don’t come back until the next day. If you know what I mean. And I still can’t believe it’s happening, not to me. It’s odd though. On the one hand it’s kind of easy, everything feels natural and fun, but on the other hand, it’s a bit – I don’t know – difficult to relax. At least when we’re not – you know. Sometimes then it’s like we don’t quite know what to say to each other, which is odd when you think about it. But it’s not a big thing. Then the third time I go around though it’s different. I can tell right away.
When I come in, I expect her to stand there looking at me in the way that she does, or maybe even to actually kiss me, and I definitely want to kiss her, but when I try to do so she backs away. And right away a fear hits me, like a physical blow to my guts, that somehow it’s over, already.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she shakes her head. Her hair shimmies in both directions at once. “Come in.” She stands back so I can put my bike inside, and I do so, but I feel awful now. Sick. I’ve spent the whole day thinking about her. About what we’re going to do, and now it’s not happening, and I don’t know why. I don’t know what to say.
“Are you sure nothing’s wrong?”
“Of course I’m sure!” she sounds normal – no, she sounds like she’s trying to sound normal, but actually she’s stressed. But then she mouths to me. “Eric’s here!” And I understand. But before I can respond his voice calls out from the kitchen.
“Is that the young mariner Billy?”
So then the evening goes very differently to how I expected it. And I think differently to how Lily expected it too. We stay downstairs for a start, Eric’s brought ingredients to cook, but he leaves Lily to cook them, and he and me sit at the table, drinking wine that he pulled out of the chiller. He didn’t bother asking.
“So Billy,” he says, when he’s poured three large glasses. “Tell me all about your triumphant success last weekend. At the sailing thing.”
“How did you hear about that?” Lily interrupts from across the room.
“I have my sources. Outside of you, I mean.” He turns to me. “Yacht club website. There was a report of the race.”
I look at Lily, and she frowns at this, but goes back to cutting slices of cucumber.
“You know, I went out on the family yacht once.” Eric shudders at me. “I was violently seasick, the whole time we were out there. Literally I was either hanging off the side, or throwing up onto Lily’s mother. I don’t think she’s ever quite forgiven me.”
“Mom’s OK,” Lily sweeps up to the table and deposits a bowl of potato chips between us. As she leaves she lets her hand just touch my shoulder as it pulls away. It’s so subtle I’m not even sure it happened. “It’s Dad who has the problem. He struggles a little bit with the idea of me having a gay friend anyway.”
“Lillian!” Eric sounds shocked, though he’s just pretending. “I haven’t come out to Billy yet. He’s innocent of these things.”
Eric pretends I didn’t hear this and goes on. “So? Billy? Tell me all about it.”
So I explain, about how there were these three races, and we ended up winning on the last leg of the last one, and the whole time Eric sips white wine and selects potato chips, one after the other and carefully crunches them in his mouth.
“Mmmm. Quite the hero. And was there a celebration?”
“We had a meal,” I say. “In the yacht club.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Supper.” Lily interrupts again. She puts a serving platter of pasta on the table, then goes back and adds a salad, and no one says anything, except asking to pass the plates around, and top up the wine.
“James is a very good sailor, did you know that Billy?” Eric asks me, a few minutes later, when we’re all eating. “He was a regular out on the family yacht. Both yachts I think, doesn’t he sail with your uncle sometimes, Lily?”
She gives him a look, then goes back to her food.
“Do you think Billy is likely to go out with you again? Another ride?”
“Oh Eric, just come out and ask it will you?”
Lily’s voice is suddenly angry, and it’s followed by silence.
“Ask what?”
“Whatever it is that’s on your mind.”
Eric swallows what’s in his mouth, and looks a little bit hurt for real this time. “I’m merely curious of the status of two of my friends.”
Lily looks at me, then back at Eric.
“Are you?” Eric goes on, his eyes on her only but his eyebrows moving right up his forehead. “Did you?”
She gives the slightest shrug,
