Sebastian: The Complete Series (51 page)

“Hey, prick, I didn’t invite her, so don’t look at me like that.”

“No one invited her. It just sort of happened.” Jacob nodded to the exit. “I’ll drive. I've been in your car and I'm not getting in it again.”

Robert must have felt me tense beside him and hugged me tighter. I disliked not even being given an option. Jacob didn’t ask, he just expected everyone to march to his tune without question. “I doubt we could fit four people in it anyway. Well, not comfortably, so that's okay, right, baby?”

“Yeah, sure. I can come with you tomorrow and pick up mine. You're going to slip one of those nifty doctor badges on it so I don’t get charged for parking, right?”

“I’ll sort it out.” Robert opened the door and we all made our way to the carpark, making a stop at the security desk to explain why my car would be there and leaving my registration number.

By the time we reached Jacob’s flashy Range Rover, I’d planned out the colours for the baubles and the decorations I was going to buy, mentally listing which shops we’d need to visit.

Walking around London so much during the day had its benefits, and I’d gazed at the displays in the windows enough to remember where the pretty things were which I desired. “We need to pick up a gift for your mum by the way, and I found the perfect one. It’s in one of the stores we’re passing, so we can call in and order it. It’s one of those statues she likes. They brought a new one out.”

“Sounds perfect.” Robert settled in the front beside Jacob with me behind him in the back seat. “What do you have planned for Dominque’s gift this year?”

Jacob started the car up with a shrug. “I had something in mind, but now… I don’t know. I need to rethink it.” He went silent for a few moments until it started to get uncomfortable, and then he drove off without a word.

Huh. I reminded myself to mention that to Dominque later. “Why’d you hate Christmas?”

“Always have.” Jacob switched on the radio, a sure sign the conversation was over.

Good thing I don’t take hints and continued.

After
much
prodding, he eventually scowled at me in the mirror. “It means family and running around. I'm not one for family and not one for all this… stuff. I do it for Dominque, that's all. I’d much rather just live in a world where there was just me and him and no one else, but life isn't that easy.”

“I'm sure you'd miss your mum or other family, and your friends? You do have those, right? Family and friends? Or are you a pod person who likes to keep to himself so no one guesses you're not really from this planet?” I was going for pod person. What about you?

Jacob slid his eyes to mine as he changed gear, giving me hands down
the
best deadpan look I have ever seen. The guy pulled it off
like a boss
, and I took a mental note to steal it and use it myself, though I doubted I could keep such a blank look on my face like him.

Finally, he nodded slowly, turning his gaze back to the road ahead. “It’s true. You figured it out. I’m a pod person—whatever the fuck one of those is.”

“I knew it!! I'm so telling Dominque when we see him.”

“Please don’t. I was planning on impregnating him with my eggs later on tonight and furthering my dying species. It’s really rather important as there’s not many of us left, you see. So, you’d be doing me a huge favour by keeping quiet.”

“Fine! But only until the birth—or the eggs hatch, or whatever the fuck you guys do.” I grinned at him and got a smile back.

Jacob looked over to Robert’s smiling face. “Thank God I got the sane one.”

Snorting loudly while Robert chuckled, I gave Jacob a shove on his shoulder, then turned my attention to my phone, checking out Facebook before sending Dominque a text re: his beloved being a huge prick and hating Xmas, but that he also made me laugh.

Oh, and I told him to expect kids in the near future, possibly egg-style ones which need to be hatched…

D
ominque warmed up Jacob with a lingering kiss and whispered words which I tried hard to hear, but with Robert pulling me away, it made things difficult to be nosy. We all made a quick visit to the tree shop—not really its name, but hey, that’s what it was! I found this cute tree which I could imagine in the sitting room, and Dominque talked Jacob into getting a tall pine for their apartment. With the first job done, we all grabbed coffee to go from Starbucks and I found myself walking with Dominque, leaving Jacob and Robert to chat behind us as we strolled through the busy evening streets of the city centre.

We always got tons of looks from passers-by. Dressed up in this season’s most recent gear with our coiffed hair and throwing broad smiles at those who looked a little too long, we looked and acted very similar. We were both confident in our looks and didn’t shy away from admiring glances, instead accepting them.

Dominque pulled off the modesty card more than me. I was more, ‘Of course you're looking at me. Why wouldn’t you? I'm just
way
too pretty to not be looked upon.’ And he was more, ‘Thanks for noticing. That's awfully sweet of you. You just made my day’ sort of person.

We complimented each other in our style and temperament, and I’d found a good friend in Dominque who I trusted quite quickly. It was easy to understand why he was so popular among his friends or people in general. He had an easy nature, one which drew you in and held you captive. He treated every single person like they were the most important thing in his life, giving them his undivided attention. He made you feel special and needed, and you wanted to earn that somehow from him even more because of it.

“What’s the deal with Misery Guts and Christmas?” I asked quietly, or not too quietly, because I honestly didn’t care if Jacob heard me.

Dominque smiled around the rim of his coffee cup as we walked, easing his way around the pavement and the herd of oncoming people like a ballerina performing some sort of graceful dance while I tripped up over my own feet. “He enjoys the day. It’s just the run up he hates. To be honest, we’d not been living together very long last year and we went away, so this is the first time I’ve seen his full on strop. I think it’s to do with his dad. He lost him a long time ago and this was his favourite time of the year. I don’t think things have been the same for him since.”

“Yeah.” I drifted off, thinking about where I would be next Halloween and wondering if I’d be thinking about having fun, or if I'd be thinking about what happened emotionally to me this year. “I don’t think I can celebrate Halloween ever again.”

Dominque linked his arm through mine and pressed a kiss to my cheek. “Next year will be the hardest. Maybe you could go for a vacation or something. Just you two.”

“Maybe. I just feel wherever I go, I take this with me. I can't run from it.”

“It's not running. It’s just a change of scenery and you'll be in a very different place next year compared to now. The trial will be over and you’ll have a fresh look on life.”

“You're so positive it’s sickening.”

“Thank you.” Dominque grinned at me. “Oh, look.” He pointed at a beautifully decorated tree in a shop window. “Isn’t that the burnt orange colour you wanted?”

“Yes!” I jumped to the window, pressing my nose up against the glass. “That’s it. Robert!” I spun around, grabbing his coat and hoisting him to my side. “That's the colour. We
need
to go in here and grab
tons
of stuff.”

Robert looked unconvinced about the colour, but I shoved him closer to the door.

“Your mum’s gift is in here too.”

Jacob sighed. “We’ll be in the restaurant… by the bar.” He took hold of Dominque’s hand. “I’ll book a table for an hour. Don’t be late.”

“We won't.” Robert waved at them both as they strode off.

An hour later, and we were just leaving the store, laden down with bags. I was perfectly fine with being late. I was
awesome
at being late. It was my natural state, so I was used to it, as was anyone close to me. Robert on the other hand wasn’t used to being late, well, he was becoming
sort of
used to it where I was concerned, but he was rushing me through the streets of London and herding me past all the shiny window displays so we could make our dinner date with Jacob.

“We’ll only be a few minutes late, Robert. Chill out. It’s busy out here.”

“I just want to get somewhere warm and not as crowded, and then have something to eat with a nice glass of red wine.” He spun me around and I found myself entering a building. Our restaurant, I presumed. A posh one. I sighed inside. It wasn’t one we’d been to before.

“It’s one where I meet Jacob at a lot for lunch.”

“We could have gone somewhere
we
wanted to go.”

“I know, but…” He pushed open another door, the heat hitting us like a brick wall. “I like it here. I think you will too.”

We were shown to our table by a poncy bloke in a suit, and I slunk down in the chair next to Dominque while Robert apologised for being late.

Jacob handed him a glass of rich looking burgundy wine which he took a deep drink of before handing his coat to yet another poncy bloke.

When Robert saw I'd settled, he kissed me, and then headed off to wash his hands. Which is a polite way for posh people to say they need to take a pee.

Jacob’s eyes found mine as soon as he’d left. “You're sulking.” He dragged his gaze to the five or so bags I'd arranged beside my legs, and then looked back to me. “You're incredibly spoilt and taking advantage of Robert’s good nature.”

“Jacob.” Dominque shook his head, but all he got in response was a cold look.

“I don’t take advantage of him in any way at all.” I huffed, pouring myself a glass of wine, which I would hate. It was warm and stuck to the side of the glass.

“When was the last time you went somewhere he chose? You do realise this is his favourite restaurant, one he would visit almost once a week before you moved in? He hasn’t been here since, and that's all down to you and your preference for a more… fitting scene.”

“I'd go with him—I am with him!” I looked around, giving my best fake startled look, eyes open wide, mouth gaping. “I mean, what do you call this, huh?”

“I call this a childish strop, and trust me, I've seen better. You're playing the martyr.”

“The only reason I don’t want to be here is because of you.”

“You invited me.” Jacob took a sip of his wine, still glaring into my eyes.

“Only to piss you off.”

He smirked deliberately slowly. “Oh no, you wanted me here.” He leaned in, smiling more. “You enjoy pushing my buttons, confusing me.”

“Don’t pretend you know anything about me.”

“I only know what you show me, and that’s quite a lot.”

“I’m a good actor.”

“Not as good as you’d like to think.”

“So, I want you here? Why?”

“You like to vent on me in a way you can't with others.”

“If I
vented
on you, you'd know about it.”

“You're far too manipulative for that and we both know that's the truth.” Jacob took a moment to just stare at me. “You could at least attempt to step further into his life.”

“Erm, hello! I left my
whole life
behind to be with him. I changed who I am. I went through hell and back to be beside him. Isn’t that enough?”

“Martyr. I was right. You know, if you continue to throw these back at him forever, it will wear pretty thin very quickly. And don’t say you're still adjusting. Yes, you are, but that’s not all that’s going on.”

“You fucking prick!” I hissed quietly over the table to him. “How dare you throw all this mumbo jumbo at me. If you knew half of what I was going through, you’d feel like the arsehole you're acting like right now. Adjust? Oh yeah, I'm adjusting. And the move here is just a teeny tiny bit of it. I may hesitate stepping into his world, but it’s not for me, it’s for him.

“You two had it easy when you got together. You didn’t have everyone looking at you, judging you, standing there with those one hundred unspoken questions hanging on their lips. I won't ever be able to forget what I did, not that I'm honestly embarrassed by it, because I'm not, but what does bother me is how everyone thinks I
should
be. I’ll always be the whore he paid to fuck, the whore he fell in love with. I’ll always be the man who his ex raped. How I'm judged, people judge him on those same things. I’d rather stay out of it and help him than be up front and centre helping people gossip about him.”

Jacob sat back, seemingly happy with what I'd said rather than being pissed off like I’d hoped. “That’s not what he needs, you know?”

Falling back in my chair, I let Dominque comfort me with soothing strokes on my shoulder. “I know. I just feel I know better.”

“Not everyone will continue to judge you once they get to know you, but I won't lie and say your attitude will make it easy. Who you are, how you act, it throws people off, even me.”

“I don’t give two fucks what people think. Especially you.”

Jacob laughed loudly, leaning on the table and folding his arms as he stared happily into my eyes. “Sebastian, you care so much. The last speech you gave showed that. The fact you continue to talk to me and invite me out shows how much you need to show me you care.”

I huffed loudly before I took a long drink of wine. “Okay, I don’t care what people think about me. About Robert… yeah, I care a lot. You're his best friend. Who doesn’t want their partner’s friends to like them? Everything I do impacts on him in some way, and the last thing I want is to destroy his career or his reputation. I know even if I left it wouldn’t make anything better, but being beside him, being on show… I don’t know.”

“If you need my approval, then I'm willingly handing it to you.” Jacob topped up my glass with sly smirk. “Though I doubt you like the words
approval
and
me
being used together by me.”

I didn’t like it, but I stayed quiet.

“I’ve always encouraged Robert to be with you, even before we met. Why? Because he loves you. He always has. No matter what I, or other people, think is beside the point. It’s what makes the two of you happy that counts. That being said, if you wish to make a good impression and be a little more… socially polite, let’s say, then I’m sure Dominque would be happy to school you in the fine art of social etiquette.”

Sliding my eyes to Dominque, I found him nodding. “It would be fun,” he said with a glint of apprehension.

“You sure?”

“No… but it could be fun if you allowed it to be.”

I groaned a little, but I knew there was no one better equipped to teach me how to act and talk in the sort of social events I would need to attend with Robert. “Okay, then I'd like to learn how to be less me-like for certain moments.”

Robert appeared, sitting down with a quick glance around the table. “Everything okay?”

“It’s fine,” both me and Jacob said simultaneously.

Robert narrowed his eyes at us both. “Okay. Shall we order?”

To help the evening go faster, I may have drunk a little too much fine wine. Luckily, posh people got paralytic too, and it turned out I wasn’t the one who caused a fuss in the place that night at all. It was some bloke lording it up with his too-young-for-him girlfriend.

I was able to watch from a distance, chuckling with Dominque as he was escorted out of the building. By the time the meal was over, I was merry, let’s say, as was everyone else, apart from Jacob, who had one glass and then stuck to water as he was driving.

I wanted to see him drunk. It was my aim in life to see him falling over and singing some old Scottish tune. Dominque promised to invite us over when Jacob’s brother next turned up so I could see it, because unbelievably, the stoic bastard did have another setting, one where he could relax and be human, not some pod person.

By the time Jacob had dropped us off, I had tears streaming down my face and Dominque had to dive out of the car at our house or he’d wet himself from laughing too hard. My memory of Jacob and Robert during the journey home is hazy, but as nothing springs to mind about them shouting at us, I'm going with the fact they were
totally
happy about our childish behaviour.