He's Not My Type

Elijah has a type.

He likes older, sophisticated, mature men. Well-educated men. Men with life experience and passion for arts and social causes. Men who are established in their careers, who've sorted their lives out.

His type was Mason Meyers, the doctor he'd met shortly after starting university, and who, last Elijah heard, was still on an extended humanitarian trip to Ghana. His type was Yunis Carter, the postgrad who'd organized open-mic poetry readings at the art gallery before he moved to London last summer. And his type was Nick Davidson, the sociology lecturer with his own weekly independent radio programme, who'd been Elijah's longest relationship right up until they broke up before the Easter holidays.

Pieter knows this.

And so Elijah can't understand why he's sat here opposite Christian Marshal.

To be fair, Christian is older than him. But only by two years. And he certainly doesn't have his life figured out.

He works in the record shop where Pieter sometimes gives guitar lessons in the basement. He was in a not-so-successful pop-punk band until they split up and now he posts not-so-popular YouTube song covers. When he's not too busy pranking his housemate, his hobbies include playing footie and playing video games.

His speech is almost exaggeratedly from Doncaster. He's never been to uni. His travel experience is limited to clubbing in Amsterdam.

Elijah stays to learn all this because he's polite. But he knew as soon as he'd met him outside the pub, leaning against the brick wall with a cigarette dangling between tattooed fingers, beat-up skateboard propped beside him, that this was never going to work.