10 Things That Never Happened (Material World #1)

by Alexis Hall

It probably says good things about modern Britain—or maybe just about modern Liverpool—that when I was growing up, I got way less shit for being gay than I got for being named after a hobbit. And while I’m glad my classmates weren’t homophobic, the hobbit thing did hack me off a bit, especially because the hobbit I was named after wasn’t even one of the weird ones.

She pinches my ear, and I flinch. “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.

“Me?” It’s almost funny to hear Jonathan trying to pretend he gives a shit while also trying to wriggle out of actually helping. “Surely there’s somebody more suitable?” For once I agree with him—a live alligator would be more suitable than Jonathan Forest—

he does seem like a man who lives entirely on caffeine and citrus fruit.

Turns out, going to a supermarket is like wiping your arse. You mostly do it alone so you assume everyone does it the same way you do, but there’s actually a surprising amount of variation.

“I’m very sorry, Gollum. I’m sure you’re a very good cat even if you’re riddled with toxoplasmosis.”

Somehow I missed the day in school where they taught you what to do when you were living in your boss’s house faking amnesia and his whole family showed up and decided you were his secret boyfriend but didn’t feel comfortable admitting it to them. In the end I figure it’s best not to argue.

And then he scoops up Gollum, who nestles against his shoulder like a smug ugly baby who’s decided to abandon the person who brought it home from the baby shelter, and they both storm off into the office.

But my third thought is burglars. And it’s probably not burglars. In fact, it’s almost certainly not burglars. But there’s this little voice in my head saying it’s burglars that won’t shut up. So I shake Gollum off my foot, slip out of bed, drag on a T-shirt and some pants and try to grab something heavy.

I take a bite of my sandwich and I feel a bit weird that Jonathan Forest made it. Not bad weird, just weird weird. Because he’s about as domestic as a timber wolf, and I’d say about as nurturing but I reckon wolves take care of each other and shit.

What can I say? I like my men like I like my employment prospects: rough and hairy.

“She thinks you’re the kind of person who would be a serial killer. That suggests to me you might have a bit of an image problem.” “Serial killers can be extremely charismatic.” I don’t think she thought he was that sort of serial killer. More the “oh, I should’ve known” sort of serial killer. But I’m not sure I want to be sitting here at midnight discussing the finer points of mass murder.

“And she gatecrashed Kayla’s thirtieth,” Wendy goes on, “threw up on the cake, kicked the dog, and stole Johnny’s car.” “Now now”—even Nanny Barb can’t quite field all of these at once—“she brought the car back eventually.” “Only after she was arrested,” Del points out. “Yes but—” “For drink driving.” “She had—” “In Majorca.”

He’s wrong—cats are genetically programmed to be narcissists—but I let him have it. Because for some unfathomable reason the one living being in the entire world Jonathan Forest has chosen to be emotionally open with is a cat with a face that looks like other cats use it as a scratching post.

“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.”

He’s become more than my dickhead boss. He’s become my dickhead boss whose baggage I’ve seen, whose family I know, whose laugh I’ve heard. And I’m not sure I want to go my whole life without kissing him again either.

So I kiss him again. I kiss him the way he’s maybe scared to be kissed and the way I think he deserves to be kissed. I kiss him softly, then deeply, letting it flow between us, natural like, all heat and hope and tenderness, as if he’s the best thing that’s happened to me in a long while.

“I don’t want it if I can’t have it with you.”

“Like Mariah Carey at Christmas, all I want is you.”

Like I know we’ve shagged and that changes things, but I didn’t think my cock was the Ghost of Christmas Past.