As Alastair's set drew to a close, Sebastien and Jess were jostled by the crowd, which surged forward, as if trying to touch the performers who had transported them so viscerally. As bodies pressed in around them, Sebastien felt an instinctive urge to protect Jess from the onslaught. He put out his arm around her shoulders, not quite touching her but ensuring that no one could slam into her.
“Let's find somewhere quieter,” he suggested. It was so loud he had to lean close to speak into her ear, and he was careful to not let his lips graze her skin. Jess smelled wonderful, like toasted almonds and coconut shampoo. Locks of her black hair were still wet--from the shower or the drizzle earlier, he wasn’t sure--and they stuck to the back of her neck in a way he found disconcertingly alluring. He wanted to reach out and touch one, but of course, he didn’t.
Jess nodded, and Sebastien navigated them out of the crush, until they emerged into a dimly-lit alcove tucked away from the main hall. The thud of the bass was muffled here, allowing for actual conversation rather than the shouted exchanges that passed for dialogue amid the chaos. Leaning against the wall to catch his breath, Sebastien looked down at Jess. Her cheeks were red from the heat, her hair had begun to frizz, and her eyes were gleaming with frenzied excitement.
“That was really good,” she breathed. “Your roommate is very talented.”
“He’s incredible,” Alastair agreed. “And he’s more than my roommate. We’re friends from school.”
“Huh.” Jess tilted her head to one side. “He doesn’t seem the Eton type.”
Sebastien blinked in surprise. He hadn’t realised Jess knew who he was. Of course, she wouldn’t be the first girl who’d heard of him. But it wasn’t always an upside, having a famous family. People heard about his pedigreed upbringing and the fact he’d gone to Eton and assumed he couldn’t really be passionate about helping the working class. But Jess didn’t look judgemental. A coy smile was playing across her lips, and he allowed himself to relax.
“Yeah, he isn’t really,” Sebastien conceded. “Alastair went to Eton on a music scholarship. But he hated their approach to music and eventually got into rock and roll and started a band. They were quite popular, but the school administration didn’t like it. Said that it wasn’t good for the reputation of the school; not the bahviour of an Eton man. They made him shut it down. He started Union Jack once we got to uni, and he’s pretty protective of it. I think he’s always afraid that someone is going to take it away from him, like his school band was.”
“I can see why he’s so protective. There’s something about him… you listen to him and you just know, if anyone is going to make it big, it’s him.”
“Don’t let Imogen hear you say that,” Sebastien said, raising his eyebrows. “She thinks that designation should be hers.”
Jess smiled again. There was something disarming about her smile that intrigued Sebastien. It was sarcastic and sweet--teasing and genuine--at the same time, which it had no right to be. He couldn’t decide if she was being purposefully opaque, or if he was simply bad at reading people.
“You agree, though, don’t you?” She asked, her eyes wide as she stared up at him. “That Alastair is going to be a big deal?”
“Of course I do, he’s my best friend,” Sebastien said, a little more waspishly than he intended. He paused, unsure why he’d just felt a surge of annoyance. Was it possible he was jealous of Alastair? He’d never been jealous of him before--they were too different to be competitive--but there was something about the admiration in Jess’s voice that made him want to take his friend down a peg. “But it’s notoriously very difficult to ‘make it’ in the music world,” he added. “Talent guarantees nothing, despite what Imogen might think.”
“Yes, I agree with you,” Jess said thoughtfully. She leaned back against the wall as well, and her eyes smouldered as they met his. Sebastien’s stomach jolted. Jess was very pretty. It was an understated beauty, one he wasn’t used to. She didn’t wear makeup or dress provocatively. It was as if she were trying, as a journalist, to disguise her good looks so as not to throw off her subjects. But she didn’t fool Sebastien. She had dark, wild hair, like a sea nymph, and her face was sharp and intelligent-looking. Her eyes were a light blue touched with coldness; not cold enough to frighten away potential interviewees, but just cool enough to tell him this was not a woman to be fucked with.
“What about you?” she asked. “What do you want out of life?”
“Well…” Sebastien hesitated. His father had asked him this question so many times that he’d come to hate it. But when Jess asked him, it didn’t feel like a test he would inevitably fail. It felt like an opportunity to share a piece of himself with her; and to figure out what, exactly, he wanted out of life. He gave her a crooked smile. “Off the record, right?”
Jess laughed, perhaps even blushed, but it was too hard to tell in the dim light. “Of course.”
“So you clearly know who I am, which means you know who my father is. And my grandfather.” Both Tory MPs. Sebastien came from a long line of Conservative leaders, something his forebears never failed to remind him whenever he was home for school holidays. “Of course, they think all this activism is just a phase. You’ll grow out of it, they say, once you make some money. But they don’t understand. I want to change the world, and I’m not going to sell out the moment I make any money. If anything, it’ll just motivate me to keep fighting for those who have less.”
Sebastien wasn’t sure why he was sharing all this with Jess--a reporter, no less. He never talked about his family, in private or in public. Reporters had asked him about his family dynamics before, but he always declined to comment. He’d speak out against his father’s policies, but not his father as a person. But Jess felt like someone he could open up to. Maybe he was also trying to show off a little bit, too: to show Jess that Alastair wasn’t the only impressive one; the only one going places.
And from the gleam in her eyes, Jess looked impressed.
“So you’re going to keep working in politics?” she asked.
He nodded. “I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life. Maybe I’ll even run for Parliament someday. With Labour, of course. Can you imagine? I could run against my own dad, try to flip his seat.” He laughed, and she smiled as well. “It’s probably impossible; Ashford hasn’t gone liberal since the 1920s. But I can dream. And if it’s not running for Parliament, it’ll be something else. Maybe working for charities or in community organising. All I know is that I can’t give up. Not until others have access to what I was just given freely. That’s what pisses me off the most: I didn’t have to earn my privilege. It was just handed to me. It’s so unfair.”
Sebastien took a deep breath. He was ranting, which he knew was annoying. But Jess didn’t look annoyed. If anything, her eyes were sparkling with interest and admiration.
“I really like that,” she said quietly. “Most people with your background would take a cushy job from their dad after graduation and try to make a lot of money. But you have principles. It’s… rare.”
“I wouldn’t give this man too many compliments,” a voice said from behind them. “The last thing we need is another eejit with a bloated ego in politics.”
Sebastien and Jess turned to see Alastair walking towards them, a wide grin on his face. Imogen followed closely behind. Despite the heat and crush of the crowd, she looked unruffled.
Sebastien greeted Alastair with a one-armed hug. Alastair was hot and damp, and the smell of his sweat was ripe, but Sebastien didn’t mind. This was Alastair: tall, lanky, long-haired Alastair, pouring every ounce of his energy, heart and passion into his music. He looked euphoric, as he often did after a show, and energised by the exertion.
“You were incredible,” Sebastien said as he released his old friend. “Maybe one of your best sets yet.”
“Thanks, man, thanks.” Alastair ran a hand through his long hair, seeming to glow even more at the attention and compliment. “It was a good audience tonight. The vibes, man… the vibes were so good. And we were on fire.”
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
“You were,” Sebastien agreed, then brought a hand to Jess’s arm. The moment he touched her, he felt her shiver. “This is Jess, by the way. She’s a writer.”
From the way Jess glanced at him, he could tell that she liked being introduced this way, and he felt a rush of pride at having made her feel good about herself. She deserved to feel good about herself. She’d feel good about herself all the time, if he had any say in it.
“Hi Jess, thanks for coming,” Alastair said, shaking Jess’s hand. “I hoped you liked the music?”
“I did, very much so,” Jess said. “The sound is so interesting… more The Beatles than the Smiths. Are you influenced by punk, or by older movements?”
“I’m influenced by it all, honey,” Alastair crooned. Sebastien rolled his eyes. Alastair was being groovy right now, which is how he and Imogen described when Alastair seemed stoned but wasn’t; it was just the high of the concert making him act like an LSD-rattled hippie. Or so Sebastien hoped.
“Don’t call her honey,” Imogen objected. “It’s infantalising and sexist.”
“My bad, my bad.” Alastair held his hands wide in apology and grinned at Jess, who didn’t look offended. Her cool blue eyes were snapping between the three friends, as if trying to piece all the different undercurrents together into a coherent picture. “Why don’t I make it up to you with shots? Who wants shots?”
Jess laughed in surprise. “Okay… I'll take a shot.”
Moments later, it seemed, Alastair had returned from the bar with a tray of whiskey shots. “To my fans and friends!” Alastair said, raising his shot glass high. “May I always have more of both.”
“To new friends,” Sebastien said, glancing at Jess. Her cheeks flushed, and she didn’t quite meet his gaze.
“To art that is transgressive and unafraid,” Imogen said, clinking her shot glass against the boys’. Jess took her shot, hesitated, then raised it high.
“To being the changemakers this decade needs,” she said.
“I’ll drink to that!” Imogen cheered, and Alastair nodded fervently. The four of them threw back the shots. The rich, brown liquor burned Sebastien’s throat on the way down. He coughed, his eyes watering. From the look on Jess’s face, she was similarly vanquished by the whiskey. Alastair, meanwhile, looked ready for another one as he slammed the shot glass back onto the tray and let out a loud, warrior-like whoop.
“Damn that’s good!” he shouted.
“Good?” Sebastien wiped the back of his mouth and stared at his friend incredulously. “Alastair, that was awful. Did you ask for the cheapest possible whiskey?”
“Oh, is it too rough for the Eton boy?” Alastair teased, clapping Sebastien on the back. “And here I thought you were a man of the people.”
Sebastien snorted. “Comrades don’t let other comrades blind themselves drinking moonshine.”
“Let’s do another,” Alastair said eagerly, but Imogen, who was still daintily sipping her shot, shook her head. “I think that’s enough for now. But I have another idea.” She looked at Jess. “Did you know Tracey Emin’s gallery is just around the corner from here? We should go!”
Jess nodded and looked excitedly at Sebastien, and, again, he felt so irresistibly pulled into her orbit that he knew he would do anything that she wanted. “Do you want to go?”
Tracey Emin’s gallery was small but elegant, with red brick walls and tall windows to let in natural light, tucked into a back street of Hackney Wick. It featured mostly abstract paintings of women, but in the final room, the centrepiece was a quilt that had been stitched together from fabrics that had been meaningful to the artist at different times in her life. Emin had even written the stories of how she’d acquired the fabrics onto some of the panels. Sebastien took his time in front of the quilt, peering closely at each panel to read the story written there. One in particular caught his attention. It had been cut from a white silk scarf embroidered with red and yellow flowers. Between these flowers, Emin had written about how she’d gone to Greece in 1987 and had an affair with a man 18 years her senior. He had a wife and four children, and at night, Emin would hear him making love to his wife. When she left, the wife was so sad to see her go that she gave her the headscarf as a parting gift.
“You saw that one?” Jess asked, coming to stand next to him as he read and reread the words.
“Yeah.” His voice caught in his throat, and he cleared it. “Do you think the wife knew that Emin was having an affair with her husband?”
“Hard to say,” Jess said, squinting down at the panel. “But I’d guess so, yeah. Wives always know.”
Sebastien frowned and put his hands in his pockets. “Why do you think she was sad to see Emin go, then? You’d think she would be glad to see the back of her.”
Jess thought for a moment before responding. Her brow was crinkled in an adorably thoughtful way that made Sebastien want to reach out and smooth it. This was probably what she looked like when she was working on an article and trying to craft the perfect sentence.
“Maybe she liked seeing her husband that way, after so many years…” Jess said slowly. “Maybe she’d forgotten he was a sexual creature, after four kids and countless years of doing the laundry and cooking for him all the other boring things married couples do. Or maybe she just liked having someone to help take care of the kids, and it didn’t matter if the help was also fucking her husband if it meant she got a break.”
There was something in Jess’s voice that made Sebastien pause and look at her more closely. Her eyes were gleaming as she surveyed the quilt, and, if he wasn’t mistaken, it was a gleam of hunger.
“You sound… envious,” he said uncertainly.
Jess laughed, and the ravenous look in her eyes disappeared. “I am, a little. Tracey Emin has really lived, you know? Having affairs in Greece, befriending the wife of her lover… No wonder she’s a great artist. I think my novel might be better if I had more experiences like that.”
Now she definitely sounded wistful. Sebastien turned her around by the shoulders so that she was facing him. She blushed as he did so, but held his gaze.
“Tracey Emin is ten years older than you,” he said gently. “You’re going to have those kinds of experiences, too. I’m sure of it. And I am also sure that you’re going to make great art.”
She looked defiant as she raised her chin. “How do you know that? You haven’t read my writing.”
“I can tell.” Sebastien had no doubt in his mind that Jess was a good writer. He could tell from the way she spoke and thought about things that she was brilliant. “And if you need to have a torrid love affair to improve your writing, well…” His hand tightened on her shoulder, and her eyes grew a little wider. For a moment, he thought he was about to make some wild confession. Then he smiled. “...I know a lot of pervy MPs who would be more than happy to oblige.”
Her shriek of laughter startled several well-to-do patrons standing closeby and earned them a reproving stare from Imogen. “What are you two doing?” She hissed at them from across the room.
“Let’s get out of here,” Sebastien mouthed at her, as Jess clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her giggle.
“This place is too quiet anyway,” Alastair said, sidling up behind Imogen. He had his guitar strapped onto his back and looked completely out-of-place in the gallery. “Let’s get some beers and then go to the after-party at The Hen. It’s gonna be wild.”
Which is how they found themselves walking the streets of Hackney Wick, cars rushing past on the main streets--leaving trails of red and yellow behind them--as they drank their way through a 24-pack of Foster’s. Everyone was in high spirits. Alastair, of course, was still riding the high of the show, talking loudly about his next gig in Manchester; Imogen was quietly happy, laughing at Alastair’s jokes and singing along when he unstrapped his guitar and began to strum some chords; Jess talked the least, but each time she did, her acerbic wit made them all laugh, for which they were rewarded with more of her strange smiles halfway between teasing and tender. Sebastien, for his part, felt as if an electric current was sizzling through him, animating his body and mind. Every time he looked at Jess, the electric current seemed to give him a small, and not unpleasurable, shock.
When they arrived at The Hen, it was already crowded, and the music was so loud Sebastien couldn’t hear himself think. Alastair and Imogen wanted to stay, but Jess said she should catch the bus home. Sebastien offered to walk her to the bus stop.
It was quiet on the streets, and no one else was around as they came to stand under the neon sign of the bus stop.
“I’d like to read your writing,” Sebastien said, after a short silence. “If you’re comfortable sharing.”
“Let’s see,” she said, smiling slightly. “My novel certainly isn’t ready yet.”
“Well what about your article on Henderson? I could read that, maybe.”
“I suppose so.” Jess’s eye had been caught by the bus, which had just rounded the corner towards them. She held out her hand to flag it down. “But I don’t know if I want to write about Henderson anymore. He’s not very interesting. I’d rather write about… you.”
“Me?” Sebastien was taken aback, and he gaped at her.
“Well, all three of you,” Jess clarified. “There’s something about you all… this energy, like I know you’re going to change the world.” The bus was slowing down, and Sebastien’s heart rate seemed to speed up in response. He had only moments left with her. When would he see her again? They went to the same uni, yes, but tracking her down could still be difficult.
The bus pulled to a stop, and the doors creaked open. Jess gave him a last smile, then put her foot on the first step.
“Jess!” Sebastien called after her. She turned and looked at him. “It’s not just the three of us.”
“What?”
“It’s the four of us. You have that energy, too. Like you’re going to change the world.”
She laughed, shook her head, and then disappeared into the bus, the doors clanging shut behind her. Sebastien stood still, watching as the bus pulled away and then rounded the corner. He stayed like that for a long time, just staring into space, lost in thought.
At last, he roused himself. Although he was close to his bus route home, he decided to walk back to the flat. It would take a few hours, but he didn’t mind. He’d never felt so awake or alive. And the streets were empty, except for the mist coming in off the Thames. It was the perfect time to think, to imprint the memory of tonight on his mind forever. Somehow, he had a feeling he would remember it forever.
He was still feeling so good by the time he arrived home that he didn’t even mind when he found Alastair passed out drunk in the kitchen, again, his hand around a half-empty bottle of vodka; or when he had to carry him to bed and tuck him in, just as the first rays of dawn appeared above the horizon.