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him
talking about his ex on our date.”
    “It’s early days,” Sameer said, touching the back
of my hand.
    “I know. Thanks.”
    “So.” Ryan clapped his hands together. “What are
you going to wear?”
    I groaned melodramatically and thumped my head on
the table. “I don’t know.”
    “Whatever you wear, I’m sure you’ll look fine,”
Sameer said, rising from his seat.
    I quickly got to my feet and took over stacking the
plates. Washing the dishes was the least I could do in return for the food and
moral support.
    Ryan followed me into the kitchen and put the
kettle on while I filled the sink.
    “Have you even kissed him?” he asked curiously as I
swished the water in the bowl, working the soap into frothy suds.
    My toes curled as I remembered the goodnight kiss
we’d shared outside my building. It had been on the tip of my tongue to invite
Magnus inside, but when we’d parted, he’d backed straight off, with a promise
to call the next day. A promise he’d kept.
    I nodded, feeling unexpectedly shy. It wasn’t like
Ryan and I didn’t know everything about each other. Hadn’t shared everything.
Hell, I knew Sameer was circumcised, and I’d heard them shagging more than once
when Ryan and I still shared a flat. But Magnus wasn’t some trick I’d picked up
in a club, and the slow pace we were moving at made me feel strangely
protective of the little we had.
    “I’ve never seen you like this before,” Ryan said,
pausing from drying a plate to examine me.
    I gave what I hoped was a self-effacing smile. “I’m
out of practice.”
    “You’re mooning .”
    “I am not!”
    “So are!”
    “Children, don’t squabble!” Sameer called from the
next room.
    We giggled guiltily.
    “Seriously.” I sobered. “I haven’t seen anyone in,
what, two years?”
    Ryan’s lips tightened in sympathy. “Carl?”
    “Yeah.” I’d been with Carl almost six months. Long
enough to fall head-over-stupid-heels and turn a blind eye to the obvious signs
he was still sleeping around. When things finally came to a head, Ryan had
taken me to the clinic and held my hand through a humiliating series of tests.
He’d been angry, but I’d been scared. An injection had cleared up the clap in a
couple of days, but the sense of betrayal had lasted. I’d felt dirty. Used. And
unwilling to trust anyone else ever again.
    “Take it slow,” Ryan counselled. “Enjoy it. Let him
court you.”
    I raised my eyebrows. “ Court me?”
    He laughed. “Yeah, why not? We’re allowed to be
old-fashioned these days.”
    I sniggered. “If you can get married, I suppose
anything’s possible.”
    “Hey!” He snapped the tea towel at my leg.
    I softened in a heartbeat. “You know I love you.”
    “And I love you, too.” He swept me up in a hug, my
hands sticking out at weird angles behind his back to keep the soap suds off
his clothes.
    From the doorway came the sound of a long-suffering
sigh. “It’s a good thing I’m not the jealous type, isn’t it?”
    Laughing, Ryan opened his arms for his husband, and
the three of us did our best to squeeze the breath out of each other.
     
     
     

CHAPTER FIVE
    I met Magnus at the tube station on Friday evening. He
was dressed in a pair of smart jeans, a black shirt with silver threads running
through it, and a dark moleskin jacket. I wondered if the shirt was a nod to my
outfit on our last date or just a coincidence.
    “Wow.” He paused at the entrance to the street and
looked at me.
    The nerves which had been coiled in my stomach all afternoon
wriggled free and wormed their way through my limbs. “What do you think?” I
asked, turning so he could see me from the side as well. I’d taken him at his
word and dolled myself up, and was dressed in tight drainpipe jeans tucked into
a pair of heavy black boots which reached halfway up my calves. My top was baby
blue, tight around my midriff but cowl-necked, leaving my upper chest exposed. I’d
straightened my hair at the front,