SEAMUS: It's a genuine problem. You won't try to work it out at all. You just pass it by. . .
or:
HOW TO COME OUT TO YOUR FATHER
OVER SCRAMBLED EGGS WITH TOAST
WITHOUT REALLY TRYING
July 20th, 1997: Post-Sixth Year
Don't get me wrong. I love my father, I really do. He's proud of me, I think, for going away to school and not failing out. Or relieved, anyway. Getting me out of the here and now, living in Belfast in his flat and all that. Mam stills hates it, the way I insisted on spending this summer with him instead of her. But she'll have to deal with that.
They've never officially split up, as things go, but she lives in London with her Ministry job and Da . . . Well, I'm not sure why he refused to go or if that's even what happened. Probably was, really. He's a writer, a five-night-a-week bartender, and a sometime artist, occasionally penning a surrealistic comic strip called "Leg End" for some underground Irish Nationalist newsletter called Banjaxed. Shortly: Michael St. Clair Finnigan is a bloody brilliant man and a bloody stupid one to boot. Or reckless. Or maybe I'll go so far as to call him bold, maybe.
However you put it, though, that wasn't the point.
I was watching him ink one of his more legit endeavors--an advert for a local punk rock radio station--and he suddenly asked, "You still seeing that--what's-her-name--Lavender?"
I started, having forgotten that anyone might still think I was. "I . . . No. Haven't been since I was fourteen, Da."
And he merely shrugged and went back to his drawing.
This morning, he's making coffee, two mugs: One for him, one for me.
I come in, start the scrambled eggs and toast.
"Your mother was the one who told me about her," he says suddenly. "So I didn't realize it had been so long . . ."
I didn't realize it had been so long either. So long since I'd seen my father. Seen him properly, I mean.
"She break your heart?" He's looking at my face, probably reading my expression as regret over lost love, as heartache, as a response whatever-he-thought-Lavender-had-done.
I shake my head. "No, I probably broke hers."
"And after that?"
"We didn't speak to each other much."
"No, I meant--No other girls? When I was your age--"
I shake my head again. "No, Da, I . . ."
Wait a moment, Seamus. This could provide an opportunity to receive some fatherly advice.
"Da, have you ever been with someone, right? And neither of you is interested anymore but neither of you wants to be the one to call it off? Or, at least, that's what you thought was going on, but it turns out that the other person might be about to try to . . . I don't know . . . Keep things going, I guess. Get serious."
"And you don't want that?"
"I don't think so. I didn't think we were setting out to get serious, but now Terry--God damn him--told, uh, her that I did."
He butters the toast and I serve the scrambled eggs. "Well, Seamus, you talk to her and--Well, you don't do what I did."
What my father did? What did he do? "What're you talking about, Da?"
"Well, I'm sure you notice that your mother and I aren't exactly--"
"Together anymore? Yeah, I noticed that about twelve years ago."
He sighs, runs a hand through his hair. It stands straight up when he does this, just like mine does. Makes us look right stupid when it does that, too. "Yes. Yes, I know. But don't you see? I don't want the same thing to happen here to you, Seamus. How long have you been seeing her?"
"Since I broke it off with Lavender, really. Off and on, you know."
"So you're sleeping with her."
"Jesus!"
"Don't look so offended. It only makes sense, doesn't it? I was your age once, too, you know. And a father when not too much older. That's why I--I want you to promise me, all right, Seamus? Don't get the girl pregnant. What did you say her name was?"
Well, this is awkward. For no end of reasons. Firstly, because my own father just nearly said he regretted my birth. Secondly, because, well . . . Why couldn't I think of a single girl's name? And thirdly, because . . . "Well, Da, I think that'll be frankly impossible. The pregnant bit, I mean." I don't meet his eyes. I can't.
"Sure, that's what everyone thinks, but it's not true." He sips his coffee, makes a face. He's made it too strong. Again. He hates coffee, anyway. "What's her name, then?"
I take a deep breath, turn my coffee mug around in my hands. Seamus Comhghall Michael Finnigan, this is it. "Her name--His name is Fred. Frederick Eugene Weasley."
The silence is deafening and long. Long, long, longer . . .
"Oh." He puts down his coffee. "Oh."
I nod.
"Seamus, I--" He runs his hand through his hair again. "I don't know what to say."
And he walks away. I hear the door to his studio shut, the radio turns on. Sex Pistols. His favorite. His favorite when he's in a Mood. Other than that, it's Benny Goodman and Bob Dylan. Sometimes Paul Simon, when he's had a few drinks. Then he'll turn on the record player, drop the LP onto the turntable, fumble the needle into the groove, and belt out "Papa Hobo" with the best of them.
But not now. Now it's never-mind-the-bollocks time . . . The Sex Pistols. His Something's Wrong music.
Fuck this and fuck that
Fuck it all and fuck a fucking brat
She don't wanna baby that looks like that
I don't wanna baby that looks like that
Body, I'm not an animal
Body, I'm not an abortion . . .
But he comes out a few hours later, when I've given up, begun to wish there was someone I could call, someone who wasn't Dean.
I love Dean, he's my best mate; don't get me wrong. But I wouldn't have anything to say to him. Or, rather, he wouldn't have anything to say to me. Funny, really, that your best friend is the last person you'd be able to tell this to. I could talk to Potter, I'm sure. He'd listen, if only because he wanted to repay me for his visit earlier this summer. But he's off saving the world.
Or Blaise. After our conversation in the boys' toilet a couple months ago, I've entertained this crazy, secret notion that I could tell him anything and he's the sort who would listen and never laugh. Never laugh? Fat chance of that; he's a Slytherin.
So I turn on the telly, flip from re-runs of Not the Nine O'Clock News and Dead Ringers ("Tom Baker" is calling Tom Baker) and pretend that my father behind that locked door isn't important.
But he comes out after a few hours, goes to the refridgerator, and pulls out a can of beer.
"Hello, then," I say.
"Hello, then."
I look at him. "Well?"
He turns to go.
"Da."
"Well. Seamus."
I glance at the stupid pink plastic Virgin Mary on the microwave oven. "Is it because I'm going to Hell?"
He doesn't answer. He shakes his head slightly and goes back into his studio. The punk rock radio station comes back on. It's the Ramones now, a full hour of back-to-back songs, all of which sound the same. All of which wanted to be "Blitzkrieg Bop" and didn't quite live up to that one first single.
All of which wanted to be the perfect son and didn't quite live up to those last few moments when they were really proud of you for who you were. Or who they thought you were.
It's nearly ten o'clock when he re-emerges. He gets two cans of beer, tosses one to me, and studies me silently.
I pop it open and try not to drink it too quickly. I can't remember whether or not he might think I've never tasted the stuff before.
"You ever kill anyone?" he asks suddenly.
"No! Why?"
"Ever steal anything? Rob a bank? Mug a little old lady?"
"Of course not! Jesus Christ."
"Burn down a house? Lie, cheat, or betray?"
"Not really, no. I mean, I try not to lie."
"Do you blaspheme? Dishonor your mother and father? Do your covet your neighbor's, ah, husband?"
"Not as a rule, no."
"Well, then. Why the hell do you think you're going to Hell?"
"Because . . . Well, I am sleeping with him, if you must know. And if the fact that we're both male doesn't clinch it, doesn't the premarital bit?"
He crosses the flat to sit beside me on the sofa. Thinks before answering. "How do you feel about this Fred boy?"
"I like him. He's a great person. I like talking to him and telling jokes with him, but I don't think he's it for me. I'd like to be his friend, but I don't think he was meant to be my boyfriend."
He smiles. "Well, that's more than I ever felt for Julie."
"Who the hell is Julie?"
He shrugs. "Girl I lost my virginity to. I was fifteen, she was sixteen. I was friends with her cousin, Val. We three go to a carnival together or something, and he ends up being sick all over the Ferris Wheel. So he goes home and I end up doing it with Julie on the tarpaulins under the funhouse. That's it, really. You know, I can only remember one thing about her. Just one. And it wasn't if she had a sense of humor or if she liked folk music or whether she was any good at maths."
"Oh?"
"I just remember that she had a red-flowered sundress, cut low with the top button undone, and that I was fifteen and thinking, 'Christ, she's got big tits.'"
I pretend to cover my ears. "Da! Don't traumatize me!"
He laughs. It's the laugh I love. It's his big, hearty, no-holds-barred Happy Laugh. "And Fred? Tell me about him."
"You're okay with this?"
"I'm trying to be. If this was some girl of yours, Seamus, you know I'd ask for all the details. So I've got to want to know about a boy now. Well, you're my son. Tell me."
"Do you want the cleaned-up, polite version that I'd give to grandparents and teachers? Or do you want the same lovestruck locker-room details you'd want if he were a girl?" I drain the last of my beer and toss the can aside and he does the same.
"Oh, details, please! I'm a writer, son, and an artist! Details are the stuff of my life!" He grins at me. I smile back, a bit hesitantly.
"Well, he was a Beater in Quidditch, you know."
He frowns, trying to remember what that means. For all I've tried in the on-again, off-again short times I've seen him through the years, he's never really mastered picking up the basics of the game. "They're the ones with the bats, right? So you've got to be strong."
I nod. "He's a redhead, too. Bright red, like fire. With freckles and blue eyes. He's got an identical twin named George, actually, but I can tell them apart. Potter once asked me how I could do it so easy, because he thought I barely knew them. Well, I couldn't very well say it was because Fred's the one I'm fucking, and George's the one I'm not . . . I'd cause a scandal in Gryffindor Tower! But anyway . . . You don't really want to hear about the sex, do you?"
He pauses, a slow grin creeping across his face. "Well, I saw a delightful woman named Rachel a few months ago. It didn't last, but when I made love to her, she would moan low the whole time, like an engine purring, but when she came, she'd scream. Scream like a coloratura hitting a high note. And she wore her fingernails manicured. I'm sure they weren't real, but they were long and they were sharp. She would dig them in and scrape so that my back and legs were always covered in her scratches. Her thighs were--"
"All right, all right. I get the picture."
"Aw, and here I was just getting warmed up. But shoot. I want to hear."
I take a deep breath. Jesus, Shame, you're not really going to tell your father that sort of thing, are you? You haven't told anyone that. "Fred, well, he kisses. The whole time, like he can't keep his lips off me, off my lips, off my neck. Sometimes it's nice. Sometimes I want him to knock it off. But he's one hell of a kisser, I'll grant you that. Maybe because he loves doing it, because he really means it . . . But when we're fu--making love, and he's not kissing me, he'll be watching me, those blue eyes, locked on mine. He always seems to be laughing somewhere in those eyes, at some private joke that he'd tell you if he knew how, because he wants you to be able to share in with the laughing. But he'll be looking at me and me at him, and unlike Rachel, he won't moan the whole time. Because when he's not kissing, he's talking. And asking me questions, and expecting me to come up with coherent answers, while we're fucking having sex."
Da nods. "It's like when you're at the dentist's and he's looking at your teeth and then he asks you how work has been going, and you wonder how the hell he expects you to answer when you have something in your mou--" He breaks off, looking a bit embarassed. "Wrong metaphor, perhaps?"
"Oh, no," I answer, doing my best to look wide-eyed and innocent. "There have been instances in which that was exactly the case."
He blinks. "Oh. Er."
"Sorry."
"No, I was asking for it."
"You're taking this quite well, all things considered."
"I was in my studio all day, preparing myself for this conversation. I'd better be." He smiles, that big, super-genuine, borderline-goofy smile that everyone says I inherited from him. "That and doing the next edition of 'Leg End.' I think you'll like it."
"Can I see?"
"Not until it comes out. So Fred was it so far, then? Nobody else?"
I heave a theatrical sigh. "Just about, yeah. There was this one bloke who pretty much snogged my brains out at a party, but we'd both been drinking. We're friends, though, I think. I had always found him attractive, but he shouldn't have initiated it. He has a boyfriend. A real, steady, loyal, honest-to-God boyfriend, who came back into the room in the middle of it. I'm still kicking myself over that, honestly."
Resting a fatherly hand on my shoulder, he says firmly, "Don't be. You're only human. And it was only drunken snogging. I've done it." He pauses. "Your mother's done it."
Didn't need to know that somehow. I'd never even known my mother to drink.
"You found him attractive though?"
"'Course. Looks like a girl, though, with long blue hair and makeup and all that. But he plays so cool and witty and invulnerable all the time. Part of the appeal. But I'll never have him. I don't think I'd want him, either. Even if I'd rather break it off with Fred, at least I know Fred's honest. At least we're honest with each other. Terry isn't. But he's a good person, deep inside somewhere . . ."
Da nods. "Of course he is. Otherwise he wouldn't have liked you. There's a lot going for him right there." He ruffles me hair. I'm sure it's sticking straight up now, like our hair does. Damned genetics. "Picking you out as the boy to snog at a party--not to mention to be friends with--means he's got bleeding good taste, anyway."
HOW TO COME OUT TO YOUR FATHER
OVER SCRAMBLED EGGS WITH TOAST
WITHOUT REALLY TRYING
July 20th, 1997: Post-Sixth Year
Don't get me wrong. I love my father, I really do. He's proud of me, I think, for going away to school and not failing out. Or relieved, anyway. Getting me out of the here and now, living in Belfast in his flat and all that. Mam stills hates it, the way I insisted on spending this summer with him instead of her. But she'll have to deal with that.
They've never officially split up, as things go, but she lives in London with her Ministry job and Da . . . Well, I'm not sure why he refused to go or if that's even what happened. Probably was, really. He's a writer, a five-night-a-week bartender, and a sometime artist, occasionally penning a surrealistic comic strip called "Leg End" for some underground Irish Nationalist newsletter called Banjaxed. Shortly: Michael St. Clair Finnigan is a bloody brilliant man and a bloody stupid one to boot. Or reckless. Or maybe I'll go so far as to call him bold, maybe.
However you put it, though, that wasn't the point.
I was watching him ink one of his more legit endeavors--an advert for a local punk rock radio station--and he suddenly asked, "You still seeing that--what's-her-name--Lavender?"
I started, having forgotten that anyone might still think I was. "I . . . No. Haven't been since I was fourteen, Da."
And he merely shrugged and went back to his drawing.
This morning, he's making coffee, two mugs: One for him, one for me.
I come in, start the scrambled eggs and toast.
"Your mother was the one who told me about her," he says suddenly. "So I didn't realize it had been so long . . ."
I didn't realize it had been so long either. So long since I'd seen my father. Seen him properly, I mean.
"She break your heart?" He's looking at my face, probably reading my expression as regret over lost love, as heartache, as a response whatever-he-thought-Lavender-had-done.
I shake my head. "No, I probably broke hers."
"And after that?"
"We didn't speak to each other much."
"No, I meant--No other girls? When I was your age--"
I shake my head again. "No, Da, I . . ."
Wait a moment, Seamus. This could provide an opportunity to receive some fatherly advice.
"Da, have you ever been with someone, right? And neither of you is interested anymore but neither of you wants to be the one to call it off? Or, at least, that's what you thought was going on, but it turns out that the other person might be about to try to . . . I don't know . . . Keep things going, I guess. Get serious."
"And you don't want that?"
"I don't think so. I didn't think we were setting out to get serious, but now Terry--God damn him--told, uh, her that I did."
He butters the toast and I serve the scrambled eggs. "Well, Seamus, you talk to her and--Well, you don't do what I did."
What my father did? What did he do? "What're you talking about, Da?"
"Well, I'm sure you notice that your mother and I aren't exactly--"
"Together anymore? Yeah, I noticed that about twelve years ago."
He sighs, runs a hand through his hair. It stands straight up when he does this, just like mine does. Makes us look right stupid when it does that, too. "Yes. Yes, I know. But don't you see? I don't want the same thing to happen here to you, Seamus. How long have you been seeing her?"
"Since I broke it off with Lavender, really. Off and on, you know."
"So you're sleeping with her."
"Jesus!"
"Don't look so offended. It only makes sense, doesn't it? I was your age once, too, you know. And a father when not too much older. That's why I--I want you to promise me, all right, Seamus? Don't get the girl pregnant. What did you say her name was?"
Well, this is awkward. For no end of reasons. Firstly, because my own father just nearly said he regretted my birth. Secondly, because, well . . . Why couldn't I think of a single girl's name? And thirdly, because . . . "Well, Da, I think that'll be frankly impossible. The pregnant bit, I mean." I don't meet his eyes. I can't.
"Sure, that's what everyone thinks, but it's not true." He sips his coffee, makes a face. He's made it too strong. Again. He hates coffee, anyway. "What's her name, then?"
I take a deep breath, turn my coffee mug around in my hands. Seamus Comhghall Michael Finnigan, this is it. "Her name--His name is Fred. Frederick Eugene Weasley."
The silence is deafening and long. Long, long, longer . . .
"Oh." He puts down his coffee. "Oh."
I nod.
"Seamus, I--" He runs his hand through his hair again. "I don't know what to say."
And he walks away. I hear the door to his studio shut, the radio turns on. Sex Pistols. His favorite. His favorite when he's in a Mood. Other than that, it's Benny Goodman and Bob Dylan. Sometimes Paul Simon, when he's had a few drinks. Then he'll turn on the record player, drop the LP onto the turntable, fumble the needle into the groove, and belt out "Papa Hobo" with the best of them.
But not now. Now it's never-mind-the-bollocks time . . . The Sex Pistols. His Something's Wrong music.
Fuck this and fuck that
Fuck it all and fuck a fucking brat
She don't wanna baby that looks like that
I don't wanna baby that looks like that
Body, I'm not an animal
Body, I'm not an abortion . . .
But he comes out a few hours later, when I've given up, begun to wish there was someone I could call, someone who wasn't Dean.
I love Dean, he's my best mate; don't get me wrong. But I wouldn't have anything to say to him. Or, rather, he wouldn't have anything to say to me. Funny, really, that your best friend is the last person you'd be able to tell this to. I could talk to Potter, I'm sure. He'd listen, if only because he wanted to repay me for his visit earlier this summer. But he's off saving the world.
Or Blaise. After our conversation in the boys' toilet a couple months ago, I've entertained this crazy, secret notion that I could tell him anything and he's the sort who would listen and never laugh. Never laugh? Fat chance of that; he's a Slytherin.
So I turn on the telly, flip from re-runs of Not the Nine O'Clock News and Dead Ringers ("Tom Baker" is calling Tom Baker) and pretend that my father behind that locked door isn't important.
But he comes out after a few hours, goes to the refridgerator, and pulls out a can of beer.
"Hello, then," I say.
"Hello, then."
I look at him. "Well?"
He turns to go.
"Da."
"Well. Seamus."
I glance at the stupid pink plastic Virgin Mary on the microwave oven. "Is it because I'm going to Hell?"
He doesn't answer. He shakes his head slightly and goes back into his studio. The punk rock radio station comes back on. It's the Ramones now, a full hour of back-to-back songs, all of which sound the same. All of which wanted to be "Blitzkrieg Bop" and didn't quite live up to that one first single.
All of which wanted to be the perfect son and didn't quite live up to those last few moments when they were really proud of you for who you were. Or who they thought you were.
It's nearly ten o'clock when he re-emerges. He gets two cans of beer, tosses one to me, and studies me silently.
I pop it open and try not to drink it too quickly. I can't remember whether or not he might think I've never tasted the stuff before.
"You ever kill anyone?" he asks suddenly.
"No! Why?"
"Ever steal anything? Rob a bank? Mug a little old lady?"
"Of course not! Jesus Christ."
"Burn down a house? Lie, cheat, or betray?"
"Not really, no. I mean, I try not to lie."
"Do you blaspheme? Dishonor your mother and father? Do your covet your neighbor's, ah, husband?"
"Not as a rule, no."
"Well, then. Why the hell do you think you're going to Hell?"
"Because . . . Well, I am sleeping with him, if you must know. And if the fact that we're both male doesn't clinch it, doesn't the premarital bit?"
He crosses the flat to sit beside me on the sofa. Thinks before answering. "How do you feel about this Fred boy?"
"I like him. He's a great person. I like talking to him and telling jokes with him, but I don't think he's it for me. I'd like to be his friend, but I don't think he was meant to be my boyfriend."
He smiles. "Well, that's more than I ever felt for Julie."
"Who the hell is Julie?"
He shrugs. "Girl I lost my virginity to. I was fifteen, she was sixteen. I was friends with her cousin, Val. We three go to a carnival together or something, and he ends up being sick all over the Ferris Wheel. So he goes home and I end up doing it with Julie on the tarpaulins under the funhouse. That's it, really. You know, I can only remember one thing about her. Just one. And it wasn't if she had a sense of humor or if she liked folk music or whether she was any good at maths."
"Oh?"
"I just remember that she had a red-flowered sundress, cut low with the top button undone, and that I was fifteen and thinking, 'Christ, she's got big tits.'"
I pretend to cover my ears. "Da! Don't traumatize me!"
He laughs. It's the laugh I love. It's his big, hearty, no-holds-barred Happy Laugh. "And Fred? Tell me about him."
"You're okay with this?"
"I'm trying to be. If this was some girl of yours, Seamus, you know I'd ask for all the details. So I've got to want to know about a boy now. Well, you're my son. Tell me."
"Do you want the cleaned-up, polite version that I'd give to grandparents and teachers? Or do you want the same lovestruck locker-room details you'd want if he were a girl?" I drain the last of my beer and toss the can aside and he does the same.
"Oh, details, please! I'm a writer, son, and an artist! Details are the stuff of my life!" He grins at me. I smile back, a bit hesitantly.
"Well, he was a Beater in Quidditch, you know."
He frowns, trying to remember what that means. For all I've tried in the on-again, off-again short times I've seen him through the years, he's never really mastered picking up the basics of the game. "They're the ones with the bats, right? So you've got to be strong."
I nod. "He's a redhead, too. Bright red, like fire. With freckles and blue eyes. He's got an identical twin named George, actually, but I can tell them apart. Potter once asked me how I could do it so easy, because he thought I barely knew them. Well, I couldn't very well say it was because Fred's the one I'm fucking, and George's the one I'm not . . . I'd cause a scandal in Gryffindor Tower! But anyway . . . You don't really want to hear about the sex, do you?"
He pauses, a slow grin creeping across his face. "Well, I saw a delightful woman named Rachel a few months ago. It didn't last, but when I made love to her, she would moan low the whole time, like an engine purring, but when she came, she'd scream. Scream like a coloratura hitting a high note. And she wore her fingernails manicured. I'm sure they weren't real, but they were long and they were sharp. She would dig them in and scrape so that my back and legs were always covered in her scratches. Her thighs were--"
"All right, all right. I get the picture."
"Aw, and here I was just getting warmed up. But shoot. I want to hear."
I take a deep breath. Jesus, Shame, you're not really going to tell your father that sort of thing, are you? You haven't told anyone that. "Fred, well, he kisses. The whole time, like he can't keep his lips off me, off my lips, off my neck. Sometimes it's nice. Sometimes I want him to knock it off. But he's one hell of a kisser, I'll grant you that. Maybe because he loves doing it, because he really means it . . . But when we're fu--making love, and he's not kissing me, he'll be watching me, those blue eyes, locked on mine. He always seems to be laughing somewhere in those eyes, at some private joke that he'd tell you if he knew how, because he wants you to be able to share in with the laughing. But he'll be looking at me and me at him, and unlike Rachel, he won't moan the whole time. Because when he's not kissing, he's talking. And asking me questions, and expecting me to come up with coherent answers, while we're fucking having sex."
Da nods. "It's like when you're at the dentist's and he's looking at your teeth and then he asks you how work has been going, and you wonder how the hell he expects you to answer when you have something in your mou--" He breaks off, looking a bit embarassed. "Wrong metaphor, perhaps?"
"Oh, no," I answer, doing my best to look wide-eyed and innocent. "There have been instances in which that was exactly the case."
He blinks. "Oh. Er."
"Sorry."
"No, I was asking for it."
"You're taking this quite well, all things considered."
"I was in my studio all day, preparing myself for this conversation. I'd better be." He smiles, that big, super-genuine, borderline-goofy smile that everyone says I inherited from him. "That and doing the next edition of 'Leg End.' I think you'll like it."
"Can I see?"
"Not until it comes out. So Fred was it so far, then? Nobody else?"
I heave a theatrical sigh. "Just about, yeah. There was this one bloke who pretty much snogged my brains out at a party, but we'd both been drinking. We're friends, though, I think. I had always found him attractive, but he shouldn't have initiated it. He has a boyfriend. A real, steady, loyal, honest-to-God boyfriend, who came back into the room in the middle of it. I'm still kicking myself over that, honestly."
Resting a fatherly hand on my shoulder, he says firmly, "Don't be. You're only human. And it was only drunken snogging. I've done it." He pauses. "Your mother's done it."
Didn't need to know that somehow. I'd never even known my mother to drink.
"You found him attractive though?"
"'Course. Looks like a girl, though, with long blue hair and makeup and all that. But he plays so cool and witty and invulnerable all the time. Part of the appeal. But I'll never have him. I don't think I'd want him, either. Even if I'd rather break it off with Fred, at least I know Fred's honest. At least we're honest with each other. Terry isn't. But he's a good person, deep inside somewhere . . ."
Da nods. "Of course he is. Otherwise he wouldn't have liked you. There's a lot going for him right there." He ruffles me hair. I'm sure it's sticking straight up now, like our hair does. Damned genetics. "Picking you out as the boy to snog at a party--not to mention to be friends with--means he's got bleeding good taste, anyway."