After Felix - Lily Morton Page 0,80
Ivo’s wedding and talked to Felix properly, he’d have stayed, and now I have this deep-seated fear that if I finally address the Ivo issue, it still won’t make any difference, and he’ll leave. And then I’ll have nothing, because even hope will finally have fucked off and left me.
“I’m going to unpack,” I tell him. “Get changed, and we’ll go and have dinner.”
Tonight we’ll talk, I tell myself firmly. No more prevaricating. Get the job done.
Three hours later, we’ve finished a post-dinner walk, and I follow Felix back into the hotel room.
“Well done, Max,” I mutter under my breath, “Great talk.”
I never got near any of my chosen subjects, because Felix started to ask me questions, and I’d been swept up in his company. He was always interested in a wide variety of topics, but now he’s more widely read, and he’s become fanatically interested in politics. We ate on the hotel terrace, watching the sun sink into the horizon while drinking a bottle of wine and arguing passionately and amicably about the state of UK politics. I completely forgot to turn the conversation the way I wanted.
“What did you say?” Felix asks, glancing at me. He’s dressed in skinny black chinos, a white shirt, and a grey V-neck jumper with a heavy shawl-collared black cardigan slung over the top. His cheeks are flushed from the cold wind and wine. He looks beautiful.
“It was a lovely walk after dinner,” I say quickly.
He grins. “This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen, Max.”
His words hit me in my heart because Venice will always be my special place. I want to take him everywhere. To the small bars I know, the little squares that tourists don’t find. I want to climb the staircase of the Scala Contarini del Bovolo with him and show him Venice in the early morning light.
“You have a planning face on,” he informs me, taking off his cardigan and throwing it over a chair. He opens the tall doors to let in the cold night air. I miss the scents that linger in Venice during the summer months, but the chilly wind is exhilarating.
“Not at all,” I say. “You know me, Felix. I like to take life as it comes.”
“Only if it comes at one thousand miles an hour.”
“You know me so well.”
“A fact that my therapist and I continue to bewail,” he calls as he walks out onto the balcony.
I laugh. “Do you want a drink? Giulia keeps a cocktail cabinet in here.”
He pops his head around the door, his face alight with mischief. “Going to get me drunk and try to have your wicked way with me?”
I swallow hard. “It never took much alcohol before,” I say feebly and wince because I just made him sound like a tart.
He laughs and walks back into the room. “You are quite right, Max. I’m just easy.”
“You have never been easy for a second of your life,” I inform him.
His laughter is rich and bright in the high-ceilinged room, and, as always, it makes me smile. “I’m going to put some music on,” he declares as I open the cocktail cabinet and pull bottles out.
“Oh dear,” I say faintly into the depths of the cupboard. Our musical tastes will never coincide. He likes poppy stuff with lyrics that make me want to gouge my eyes out, while he declares that all of my music is “Dad Music.”
A second later, I wince at the tune. “Is this someone from One Direction?” I ask.
He grins. “I’m awarding you points for getting a band name right. I was very sad when they split up.”
“It was such a tragedy to music,” I say solemnly.
He laughs. “This is Niall Horan.”
I cock my head to one side. “You actually like this?”
“I do, Grandpa. I really do. I always liked him best.”
“Not…” I rack my brain. “Not Harry?”
He shakes his head with a wry look on his face. “No. I overindulged my taste for complicated men in my private life. My harmless crushes are reserved now for nice men.”
“So, why this song?” I ask, steering the subject to hopefully safer topics.
“I like the way he speaks French.”
I listen to the song for a few moments. “That isn’t French,” I say disgustedly. “He’s just saying he likes the sea. It’s hardly the language of poets.” I step over to him and draw him close. “I’ll speak French to you,” I say far too possessively.
He stares up at me, his eyes dark, and I realise what