“But…I—”
“I know, I know. You’re not gay. Calm down.”
“Iamcalm!” I was suddenly very uncalm. Goodness, was that what Alistair had really thought? Was that how I’d seemed when I was with Matt? I sensed him looking out of the window and trying not to smile behind his hand.
“Of course, I wouldn’t be ashamed if I were gay, Matt. But people know me here and it’s just that—”
“They all think you’re a divorced, one hundred percent, heterosexual man,” Matt interrupted. He gave me a quick smile. “I get it. Don’t worry, I’m not going to out you as bisexual in the middle of the waiting room.”
His fingers danced lightly along my arm, and for a moment I caught a glimpse of the wicked boy I’d known. “I’ll sit a modest distance apart from you, Alex, and I promise I won’t camp it up. Not too much, anyhow.”
Barbara, a delightful woman who used to work in the operating theatres, manned outpatients’ reception. Bournemouth Hospital was its own small world, the sort of workplace where you had to gossip with extreme caution; the subject could easily be that person’s daughter or son, or ex. Which meant that although Barbara greeted me like a long-lost friend, she was also cataloguing every detail of the striking man at my side so she could report back to the coffee room later. She batted her eyelashes at him as if she were twenty, not sixty. Matt reciprocated with a charming, dimpled smile that had my own knees weakening, let alone Barbara’s. Her hands flew over the keyboard.
“Mr Leeson needs an X-ray before his appointment.” She stared at her screen then pressed a couple more keys. The printer at her elbow spat out a slip of paper, which she handed to Matt, holding it against his palm a little longer than strictly necessary. “The wait today is shocking, my darling. Don’t tell anybody, but I’ll squeeze you in next, seeing as you’re with Dr Valentine.”
“Oh, we’re not—”
Matt smoothly cut me off. “Thank you so much, Barbara. Alex is such a very busy man; honestly, he’s such a sweetie bringing me here today.” That hand fluttered onto my arm again, the bugger. “He has so many demands on his time, what with being an important consultant and all.”
So much for not camping it up—he was giving it the full bloody Kenneth Williams treatment. But yes, I was being oversensitive, and Matt knew it. Which is why he put an extra wiggle in his walk and almost crawled into my lap in the waiting room even though there was plenty of room for us to have spread out a little.
I needed to get over myself. So what if I was out and about during the day with another man? Even if that man was too damned pretty for his own good. And too god-damned graceful. So what if people talked? They might assume we were brothers-in-law. Or neighbours. People like Barbara knew I’d been married and had a son, not thatthatnecessarily confirmed someone’s sexuality. Plenty of homosexuals had trodden thatunsatisfactory route.
And why should I care anyhow, if they assumed we were together? We’d entered the twenty-first century, and I was single. Liking men and women wasn’t a crime, even for dull, forty-something men dressed in very conservative outfits. If the bag of nerves with his hospital phobia jiggling his knee felt more relaxed cuddling up to me, then so be it, and hang the gossip in the theatre coffee room tomorrow.
“You’re overthinking.” Matt gave me a nudge.
I felt my face colouring. “At least it’s making you less anxious.”
“You know, I used to be envious of men like you,” he continued. His eyes roamed the busy waiting room. “The way you walk, the stuff you talk about so easily, like rugby and cars. How you look. How you dress.”
“I don’t get you. What do you mean?”
“I’m talking about gay shame. I grew up full of it, and yet you’ve probably never even heard of it.”
“No, not really,” I admitted.
“Acting and speaking like me,” he continued, “I couldn’t hide that I was gay. I tried when we were younger, obviously. I had to. I’d have regularly had the shit kicked out of me otherwise.”
An image of him in his pitiful state a few months ago flitted into my head. Some prejudices still lingered, even in the twenty-first century.
“It doesn’t bother me at all now that I can’t conceal it. I don’t even try. But men like you have always been able to hide in plain sight, haven’t you?”
A young guy on crutches sat down carefully opposite, and reached for his phone. From his athletic build, I guessed the leg plaster resulted from a sporting injury. Matt leaned a little closer.
“Men like you can eye up fit young blokes, like him, and no one is any the wiser.”
I felt my face turn scarlet and Matt laughed.
“Whereas I get beaten up if I’m caught looking for too long.”
I stared at him in horror. “Is that what happened?”
He nodded and ran a hand across his jaw as if remembering. “Yeah. But I’m not envious anymore. I haven’t been for years. Because at least I know who I am. And what I am.”
Matt’s name was called before I could process his words any further, and I watched him as he trailed after the nurse. God, he had a sexy rear view. Sexy everything, to be honest. Did he look gay, whatever that supposedly looked like? If a stereotype existed, then yes, probably, with his delicate features and pale, slender form. The only thing I knew for sure was that I fancied him rotten, more than I’d fancied anyone else ever in my entire life. And his gender had nothing to do with it.
After a half hour wait, during which I fiddled restlessly with my phone and my head shot up every time the swing doors opened, Matt sauntered back into the waiting room with a bunch of information sheets in his hand, which he thrust at me. All traces of nerves gone.