Boyfriend Material (London Calling, #1)

by Alexis Hall

“His head is bald as an egg now and a funny shape. He looks like that chemistry teacher with the cancer.” This was news to me. But then I haven’t exactly gone out of my way to keep in contact with my old school. To be honest, I haven’t exactly gone out of my way to keep in contact with people who live on the wrong side of London. “Mr. Beezle has cancer?” “Not him. The other one.” Another thing about my mum: relationship to reality, questionable at best. “Do you mean Walter White?”

How did your date go?” “It was awful. We have nothing in common. I think I might have sexually assaulted him. But we’re going to pretend to give it a go anyway because we’re both desperate.”

“Yeahimfinewhywouldntibe?”

Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle—the hedgehog design, that’s not what I call my penis—would have nuked my chances.

I miss you. Sorry. Was that too much? I know it’s only been a few days. Maybe this is why people don’t want to go out with me. Not that you’re really going out with me anyway. I hope I didn’t sound presumptuous. I’m probably sounding really weird now. I’m assuming you’re not texting back because you’re still asleep. Not because you think I’m disgustingly clingy. If you’re awake and think I’m disgusting clingy, could you at least tell me? Right. You’re probably asleep. And now you’re going to wake up and read all this and I’m going to die of embarrassment.

But you had a boyfriend, and he made you happy for a while, and now it is over. And if we let happy things make us unhappy when they stopped, there would be no point having happy things.”

“Oi.” Priya banged the wheel. “The only person who’s allowed to fuck in my truck is me. I mean me, and whoever I’m fucking.” “Yes, we’d inferred that, darling,” remarked James Royce-Royce. “Otherwise you’d just be lying in the back seat having a massive wank.” Priya frowned into the mirror. “Thanks for that speculation into the scale of my masturbatory habits.” “Would you rather I said a tiny wank? A micro wank? A wankette?”

You’re prissy and insecure and uptight and use pretentious language because you’re afraid of making mistakes. You’re so controlling you keep your bananas on a separate hook and such a god-awful people pleaser that it borders on self-destructive. Which is weird because you’re also convinced you know what’s best for everybody—and it never occurs to you to actually ask them. You’re smug, patronising, and adhere rigidly to a set of ethics I don’t think you’ve thought through anywhere near as well as you pretend you have. And I honestly think you might have a little bit of an eating disorder. Which you should probably see someone about, by the way, whether you go out with me or not.”

“Um, there’s a tiny, angry lesbian in my bed. So it’s not really a good time.”