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At first it was fine. Amusing, even. You were young and impetuous. You were fit and, well, frankly, I fancied you. It was a bit of a shock, to be honest. I’d never really fancied a bloke before - at least, I’d admired men, been envious of them, but I’d never found a man sexually attractive. I suffered the odd wet dream, and when we worked together on Top Gear, I had embarrassingly-mistimed erections when the script required we share a cabin or a hotel room, and the occasional urge to sit just a little bit too close to you to on the News sofa. But it was fine. I coped.
But now, as the years pass, you mature like a fine wine. I watch you grow into yourself - the lines deepen on your face, enhancing your eyes more than ever and your hair slowly become longer and - dare I say it - greyer. You become more and more beautiful by the day. Lust turns to infatuation turns to love, and I slowly, steadily fall, deeper and deeper.
The days are OK. I can keep myself busy during the day. If I’m not busy working, I can write, or I can play the piano, or go down into the garage and tinker - the Speed Triple is probably the cleanest motorcycle in West London. I can have a quiet pint in The Cross Keys, or potter around the house, talking to Fusker and immersing myself in Radio Three. Yes, the days, they’re bearable. You’re still there, in my head, but as long as I’m busy, and I can fill my brain with other things, I cope. I stay afloat.
It’s the nights that hurt. At night, it seems like all of the stuff that fills my head during the day - the facts and figures, the music, the springs and spanners - all escapes, leaving just one thing. You. Your smile and your infectious laugh. Your slim, firm body and your deep, dark brown eyes. Your lust for life. And your beautiful wife and your perfect children and your amazing house with your horses and the menagerie of pets and the fact that you would never, ever leave all that for a middle aged, scruffy, long-haired bore with a penchant for bad shirts and French wine. Yes, the nights are excruciating. I can’t sleep, I can’t cope. Thoughts of how much I love you and need you and want you make my whole body ache. They overwhelm me, and I lie there, sinking.
______
I can’t take it any more. I haven’t slept properly for weeks. I take on more and more work to try to keep busy - the books, the filming, the internet sites, the bloody Donkey Derby… The people who watch me most - my mother and my fangirls - think I am losing weight, and they’re right. One young girl came to see me at a Motorshow I compered and then described me on a messageboard as looking ‘gaunt’. My body aches, and I don’t know what is worse now - being with you and being unable to touch, or being without you and being unable to get you out of my head. I can’t even wank anymore. I touch myself and I close my eyes and picture you but I can’t come because the guilt and the thought of how disgusted you would be overwhelms me. I’m running on empty.
So forgive me if I don’t feel much like celebrating tonight. We’re at another awards ceremony - this time Top Gear is nominated for Best Factual Programme, and as usual, the three of us of there in our tuxedoes, posing for the cameras and clutching our slightly-warm beers, fake smiles hiding the nervousness that we might lose out to an inferior programme and go home empty handed. Usually I enjoy the opportunity to see you in your perfectly-fitted dinner suit, having fun, working the room, but tonight the sight of you looking so incredible, so…fuckable is like a knife, twisting into my heart. I feel like I’m being punished for my lustful thoughts - this evening you are presented to me as a feast, a table groaning with the sweetest treats. I am a starving man, but I am not allowed even one taste.
We don’t win. Sir David Attenborough’s latest set of Planet Earth beats us, and although we are told it was a very close call we are bitterly disappointed. Jeremy and I stand at the bar and get drunk. You disappear to ‘do the networking thing’ and I can’t see where you are - probably working your charm on some journalist somewhere, making a positive out of our failure.
But then I see you, out of the corner of my eye. You are talking to a very pretty woman in a red halterneck dress. She’s slim, and quite a bit shorter than you - it occurs to me that’s a rare thing - and you are standing very close to her, as though the conversation you are having is for her ears only. She’s flirting - giggling, hanging on your every word. I’m dying inside, watching some flighty blonde, a stranger, enjoying the attention from you that I crave so badly. And then you lean forward and kiss her on the cheek. I am consumed with… I don’t know what. Jealousy? Love? I feel so helpless, so empty. I get up and tell Jeremy I’m going to the gents. Instead I leave the building by the side door, shivering at the bitterly cold night, and hail a cab home.
I intend to go home and drink so much single malt that I become unconscious, but something inside me snaps, and as I pay the cab driver and let myself into the house, I know I need to get away. I have drunk too much to drive legally, but my twisted logic tells me that if I lose my licence, I’ll lose my job and then I will be released from the need to work with you. Either that, or I’ll drive into a wall, and no-one will miss me except the cat. I fill Fusker’s bowl to the brim with tuna, then I pick up my keys - I choose the Boxster - and leave, slamming the door behind me. I get in the car, take a deep breath. And then I drive. Fast.
The roads are empty, and it is not long before I leave the metropolis and find myself beyond the M25, on country roads lined by eerily-naked trees, tinged with frost. The moon is full, illuminating the way ahead, but I can’t appreciate the beauty of it tonight. Nothing is, or will ever be, as beautiful as you are. I never had you, but I have lost you. Tears prick my eyes, and I try hard not to cry. I still have some pride, and a man does not cry. But eventually the tears filling my eyes begin to spill down my cheeks. I can barely see, and I pull over into a layby. I rest my head on the steering wheel, and there, alone in the dark, I cry, strangled sob after strangled sob and five years of buried feelings and desperate fantasies and hidden love escape out of my cold, aching body until I am utterly, utterly empty.
And then my phone rings.
I glance at the screen and my stomach flips. Richard Mobile. I wipe my eyes, as though that will help, and try to control my breathing. I answer, summoning up all of my acting abilities to sound normal. ‘Hello?’
‘James! Where the fuck are you?’
‘Erm… I’m… I don’t really… I don’t know, Rich… I’m sorry.’ And then fatigue, and alcohol, overcomes me, and I pass out.
______
When I come round, I am warm and lying down and under a soft duvet, but my head hurts too much to open my eyes, and I’m not sure I want to know where I am. And then a small hand strokes my face so softly, and my eyes snap open. I’m in your bed in your London flat, and you’re sitting on the edge of the bed beside me, holding a cup of tea. Your hair is all dishevelled and your eyes are red from lack of sleep, and you seem to still be wearing the white shirt from the dinner suit. You look at me, steadily, then blink once, twice, three times, as though trying to hold back tears. Your hand remains on my face as you slowly lean across and put the teacup on the bedside table. Your thumb strokes, gently, across the stubble on my jaw. Then you shift, slowly, so you’re lying beside me, under the covers. You rest your head on my shoulder, and slide your arm over my chest, holding me. I feel your breath on my neck as I awkwardly move my arm up over your shoulder to hold you, close to me. We lie there like that for some time, breathing in time with each other, and you feel like I thought you would - warm and beautiful and the perfect fit for me to hold. I must be dreaming, and I don’t ever want to wake up.
And then you speak, quietly. ‘James?’
‘Mmm’
‘How long?’
‘Forever, Rich.’
‘Why didn’t you ever tell me?’
‘I couldn’t. You’d hate me.’
You shuffle upwards so your face is next to mine, and our eyes meet. You’ve been crying but you look so beautiful, and the sight of you so close, so perfect, makes my heart race and my cock twitch.
‘I could never hate you’ you whisper. ‘Jeremy said you’d gone, and when I went to your house you weren’t there and I needed you and I wanted you and I came to find you and I brought you here and watched you until you woke up.’
‘How did you find me?’
‘I knew you’d drive in a straight line because it would be easier and faster. And I knew you’d drive towards the sea because you don’t like the countryside. So I drove south, and I found you.’
‘Where was I?’
‘Nearly in Brighton.’
‘Oh.’
I know I must be dreaming because you’re stroking my face and my hair and looking into my eyes and your leg is sliding over my thigh and between my legs so you’re lying half on top of me, and our lips are just a few centimetres apart. And then you close the gap and kiss me.
‘Don’t ever leave me again, James. Please?’
‘OK’ I say, shakily. I know I’m going to wake up any minute and find myself cold and alone, so I say what I have never been able to say: ‘I love you, Rich.’
‘I love you too, James.’ And then you roll on top of me and kiss me and I feel you hard against me and I forget how to think but I know this isn’t a dream, it’s just a dream come true.