Page 63 of Vigilante Twink and the Cop

I look at the key in his palm. Then I look at him. Then I look at the key again, because it’s easier to look at the key than at his face right now, and I reach out and take it.

It’s warm from his pocket.

I stand there holding it and I don’t say anything, because there is nothing to say that the key isn’t already saying. It says I’ve made my choice. It says I’m not holding anything back from you anymore. It says this is where you come home to, if you want. It says I’m sorry it took me this long to get here, and it says I’m here now.

Something happens to my eyes that I’m not going to examine too closely. I blink. I look at the key. I blink again.

“Come in,” I say, which is not my flat, and we both know it, and he smiles at me in the doorway of his own home and steps inside.

He doesn’t take his coat off. He stands in the middle of the living room and looks at me with the settled thing still in his face and he says, “Get your jacket. We’re going out.”

“Out,” I repeat.

“To dinner. Somewhere decent. I want to take you somewhere decent.”

I look at him for a moment. “Is it safe?”

“We’re going somewhere nobody knows us.” He says it simply, like it’s already decided, like he’s been thinking about it on the drive home. “Far enough out that we’re just two people having dinner.”

I feel something in my chest uncurl that has been wound tight for longer than I can accurately measure.

“Okay,” I say.

I hurry to the bedroom and open my bag and stare at what’s in it with the specific panic of a person who packed for an indefinite stay at a man’s flat following a stalker incident and did not, at any point during that packing, think they would be going to a restaurant.

I have the Acne Studios shirt, the deep navy one with the good collar, which was technically packed as a contingency and is now earning its place. I could pair it with the dark slim trousers I also brought as a contingency because I always bring contingencies.

I grab both and quickly throw them on. I snap the top button, check the fall of it in Lennox’s bathroom mirror. The shirt is doing what the shirt always does, which is make everything else look intentional.

My hair, however, is staging some kind of protest.

I’ve had this hair my entire life, and right now the front section is refusing to go in any direction that makes sense, while the back has decided to do something that I did not request and cannot explain. I find a travel-size Ouai texturising spray in the bottom of my washbag and apply it with the focused desperation of a man who knows he has three minutes.

I check myself in the mirror again. The mirror is small and slightly foggy at the corners, and does not show me at my best. At least, I hope that’s what’s going on with my reflection.

I tilt my head. Try the other angle. Put my hands through my hair one more time and it does exactly the same thing it was doing before.

Fine. The hair gods have spoken. This will have to do. I am accepting it with what I hope is grace and suspect is defeat.

I go back to the living room.

Lennox looks up from his phone. He takes in the shirt, the trousers, whatever my hair is currently doing, and something moves in his expression that isn’t quite a smile but is warmer than one.

“Ready?” he says.

“My hair,” I say.

He stands up. “It looks good.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “I thought you were against lying.”

“I’m not lying.” He picks up his coat from the hook by the door. “Come on.”

He takes me somewhere in Richmond I’ve never been.

The door is dark wood with a small brass handle, and when it opens, it lets out warmth and the smell of something with butter in it and the low particular hum of a room full of people having quiet conversations they don’t want overheard. A man in his fifties, silver-haired, wearing a very good dark suit, steps forward to meet us.

“Bonsoir.” He looks at us both with the kind of professional warmth that manages to feel personal. “Do you have a reservation?”