57. Max

The yoghurt, salted last night and left to leak through a muslin for the past twenty-four hours, is now labneh, rich and delicious and adorned with lemon zest and crushed pistachios and torn mint leaves.

The aubergine, charred to within an inch of its life over the industrial-grade hob in this fancy kitchen until it was a pulpy, smoky mess, is now shot through with tahini and crushed garlic to form the most delectable moutabel.

The tabbouleh is prepped and heavy with fragrant herbs. I'd forgotten how conducive the dicing of endless vegetables is to a quiet mind.

The excellent Lebanese red is aerating in its decanter. The tiny roast potatoes are crisp and thyme-encrusted. The fish won't need more than five minutes under the grill to render it tender and flaking.

Everything looks to be in order as I glance around the kitchen. Which is good, because I want this evening to be perfect. I've been at home since five, taste-testing and tweaking garnishes and faffing endlessly. So when the intercom finally sounds, it's a rush of relief and a burst of adrenalin all at once.

‘Send him up,' I tell the doorman, and then he's knocking, and I'm walking—striding—to the door, and he's here.

And he's flawless, even with the violet shadows that sully the fine skin under his eyes and hint at the toll I may have taken on him. Even then, he's faultless.

There's no obvious way to greet someone like him when your last encounter was like ours was. I mean to approach him like I would a skittish, traumatised rescue puppy. No sudden movements. Don't invade his personal space. Show him he's safe with you.

Easier said than done, given my past form with him.

‘Good to see you, mate,' is what I go with, accepting the bottle of champagne he's brought and resisting the urge to touch him.

Mate.

So laughably inadequate.

I lead the way through to the main living area, trying not to look at him. Trying not to take my fill of those eyes and that hair and his fucking ramrod straight posture and the easy, athletic way he moves his body.

‘Bloody hell,' he says, stopping and staring at my flat. ‘This is insane.'

‘Yeah,' I agree. ‘Perk of the new job.'

‘Did you just move in?'

‘Few weeks ago. It's bland as fuck—I'm well aware.'

‘But the views are incredible.' He stands and takes in the vista of Hyde Park on a hazy summer's evening, and I stand behind him and take him in.

He's all the view I need, and I'm nervous as hell.

‘So, Darcy's coming later, is she?' he asks, hands in pockets as he turns away from the view, reluctantly, it seems. I'll take him out to the terrace for our aperitifs.

I'll do anything he wants.

‘She is. She wants to give us some time to chat first.' She wants me to have some time to sink my claws in and, ideally, for you to locate your backbone. ‘Beer? Champagne?'

‘Beer, please,' he says, following me at a safe distance to the bank of sleek black cabinets housing the fridge, freezer, and any number of cupboards.

I grab a couple of bottles of Peroni from the fridge and, having cracked them open, hand him one. We clink. ‘Shall we go outside?' I suggest.

He's already chugging his beer down. I stand and gape helplessly at the fine, fine sight of his head cast back, throat working, of the slender, stubbled column expanding and contracting as it does. At the way his upper lip purses around the mouth of the bottle while his lower lip cradles it.

His jeans are faded. His polo shirt may be the kind of white that's worthy of a detergent ad, but I love that he hasn't shaved for me. It's a realer, rawer Dex than the buttoned-up version he presents to the world.

He lowers his beer and bows his head. ‘Wait.'

I wait.

When he looks up at me, it's through downcast lashes, and while I know he's not doing it to be coquettish, I wish he fucking wouldn't do it at all.

‘I wanted to say, up front that'—he rubs at one of the purple-hued shadows under his eyes and sighs—‘I've come here in the spirit of, I don't know, trying. The past couple of times, I've been on the back foot a bit.'

He raises his head and looks me in the eye properly, and I see an unspoken accusation there.

Fair enough.

I nod to show him I understand.

‘Anyway, I assumed tonight was a chance for us all to… talk it out, but then Darcy said she'd leave us to it for a bit, and so…' He clears his throat. ‘What I mean is, this is… a date, right? I haven't misunderstood?'

I stay very, very still, not really sure how much of a flight risk he is tonight. ‘I'd like it to be a date,' I say carefully. ‘Very much so. But I'm just glad you're here. And if you'd rather it was a chance to clear the air instead of anything more, that's fine, too.'

Only, if it wasn't a date, I wouldn't have strained the yoghurt for twenty-four hours or risked setting the smoke alarm off by charring aubergine over a naked flame. I would have ordered in from my excellent local Persian restaurant, you twitchy, perfect thing.

‘Okay then,' he says, which is the least helpful response ever, because what the fuck does okay then mean? Okay then, you can go ahead and fuck me now we're on the same page, or okay then, it's a relief to know my options are wide open.

But, because I'm me and because someone leaving the tiniest chink of possibility is akin to them throwing the door fully open, I take the pitiful advantage and press it home.

‘Have you thought about how you'd like this evening to go?' I enquire. I take a step towards him, putting my beer bottle to my mouth.

He scoffs. ‘Do you honestly think I've thought about anything else all week except how I'd like this evening to go?'

Who is this forthright guy with his clear, tired eyes and his unforced admissions? What's happened to the slippery little fibber from Monday who couldn't admit a single truth until I clamped a persuasive hand to his dick?

‘Is that a fact?' I murmur.

‘I'm so tied up in knots I can barely remember a single thing I've done at work this week.'

The realisation of what he's said hits him at the same time as my laughter.

I take another step forward. ‘That's very disappointing to hear.'

‘I didn't mean that.' To his credit, he doesn't back away as I close the space between us. ‘Obviously, that's the only thing I remember from this week.'

‘Which brings me back to my question: how would you like this evening to pan out?'

I stop a couple of steps away from him.

I have no intention of blindsiding him this time.

Everything has to come from him.

I won't have him blaming me for muddying his brain.

‘Fuck,' he whispers. He sets down his beer bottle with a trembling hand, its base clattering a little on the marble.

‘Dex.'

His eyes are wild and huge and troubled and ravenous. It's just me and him in the middle of my kitchen in broad daylight. No shower. No locked office door. No Darcy.

‘I haven't worked out what I ought to want,' he stammers. ‘I have no fucking clue, in fact.' He falters, and I wait. ‘But I know what I do want.'

I'd call that progress. ‘Go on.'

‘The other day, after you'd left.' He takes a hurried gulp of his beer and sets the bottle down again, licking his lips. ‘I couldn't stop thinking about how your hair had got messed up when you… And I wished I'd had the guts to rake it back into place for you.' He lowers his voice to almost a whisper. ‘And I wished I'd had the guts to ask you to kiss me, too, because it was all I could think about afterwards.'

Something tightens in my chest, a physical memento of how painful it was to keep my emotional distance that day. Having taken something so intimate from him, it felt prudent to stay dispassionate. Stern, almost. He may not be aware of this, but he needed, in that office, to be able to fall apart and know that I had my shit together.

The way he's looking at me, though.

It's as though he might die if I touch him, but he'll definitely die if I don't. He's a droplet of water trembling on a wind-teased leaf, so contained, so impossibly pure and undefiled, yet so fragile. So vulnerable.

It seems to me he's no less conflicted than he's been any other time I've seen him, but there's a courage there, a sort of moral fortitude that's determined to seek out the answers he owes himself rather than defaulting to well-trodden lies and endless prevarication.

I'm the cause of all these troubles—of that I have no doubt—and I want so very much not to be. I want to be a channel for them. I want him to unstitch this toxic cloak of godawful religious bullshit and false virtue and throw it to the ground and let me see him. Let me really, truly see him.

Even more than I want to shove him face-down and fuck him into the limestone floor, I want him to lay every last trouble at my feet and let me take them from him, because God knows, I won't let them weigh me down for a second. Sins lie as weightless as feather-down on me.

I'm a selfish man. I take and I push, without thought or remorse, but he makes me want to be selfless, because in this moment I neither want to take nor push him.

I simply want to free him.

I want him soaring and shameless and unleashed.

It works best for him, it seems, when I tell him exactly what to do. He may not know he likes it, but it's what he needs. It removes all the doubt, all the responsibility.

It absolves him.

I gaze at his mouth, at the slick of moisture the beer has left on his bottom lip, at the faintest arc its bottle has impressed above his Cupid's bow, and I marvel that he's met me in the middle of his own accord. Confessed aloud the kinds of desires he would rather have died than admitted to before now.

‘Well, you'd better get over here, then,' is all I say.