10 Things That Never Happened (Material World #1)

by Alexis Hall

“He’s conscious,” she tells somebody I can’t focus on, “and responsive to pain but can’t answer simple questions.” My teachers used to say that in school as well.

“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.”

I’m back to sitting on the sofa watching Pointless and trying to see if Gollum will help me come up with a good example of a British Prime Minister who doesn’t have an e in their name.

Winston churchill

“And leave Gollum out of this.” “He’s a cat. He’s not an emotionally damaged teenager whose parents are in the middle of a messy divorce.” “Cats are sensitive,” declares Jonathan with the authority of a man who’s never had a cat. He’s wrong—cats are genetically programmed to be narcissists—but I let him have it.

I turn to stare at him, not quite incredulous but near enough you can see it on sign posts. “Jonathan, are trying to say that you’re into me?” “How can I not be?” He flops forward with his elbows on his knees and his brow against his fingertips. “You’ve come into my life like a beam of very annoying sunshine. You talk so much that I miss it when you’re not. You try to fix things I didn’t even realise were broken. You have a dreadful sense of humour to which I’ve somehow become habituated. You care about people so effortlessly it makes me able to put up with them. And then you kissed me and now I…” He lets his head slip further down into his hands. “…I don’t know how I’m supposed to go the rest of my life without being kissed by you again.”