Fifty Million Followers [BOYXBOY]

Oxford.

Where the Hell is Scott?

I should feel so at home here. Oxford is a beautiful city, with old buildings and cobbled streets and university students on thin bicycles with papers stacked in their baskets, the smell of freshly baked bread wafting out of a corner bakery as children form a line and wearing hats and long shorts and blazers as they reach the school gates.

It perpetually feels like autumn in Oxford, probably because I'm often here when it actually is autumn. Oxford is my home and always will be, but this evening, when the air is crisp and biting the darker it is, I find myself sticking out more than I ever did.

Despite being almost 22, mum has still picked out my clothes for me because she's seen the 'ghastly' things I wear on tour and doesn't understand why I can't wear a lovely smokey grey woolen jumper. It's a bit too tight and it itches the back of my neck and it's so fucking heavy. 

I think it's punishment because I joined a boy band instead of going to university. 

I often think about what my life would have been like if I had gone to Oxford, the university that people kill to attend when it was just a twenty minute drive in the range rover from our modest country house. I mean, I say modest, but ten minutes of that twenty minute drive was winding along the road just to get to the house.  Life would have have been dull and quiet, I imagined. I mean, sure, I would have joined a few rich boys societies, had a few girlfriends before meeting my wife. My accent would have gotten stronger, and no one would have made fun of me for saying things like "Splendid." or "Jolly good!" because everybody did.

But outside that circle of privilege, the rest of the world would have looked at you like you were fucking mental - to quote Scottie.

"Darling, Oliver, please stop scratching, you're going to leave marks." Mum had said when she'd caught me again. I may have been a member of the biggest boy band in the world, but she was still my cream turtle neck wearing mother. So I stopped. 

I should feel at home, but this wasn't my home. It was actually next door.

Next door is actually a few fields away, but we still took turns to host dinner parties and ever since I joined Purple Envy, I got the joy of turning The Sargent's invitations down every year. They were kind enough, but they reminded me of the life I wanted to leave behind. I wanted to relate to everyone, to feel what they were feeling and experienced; I didn't want to live in the Oxford bubble anymore. 

Plus, mum was dreadfully persistent with matching me up with their daughter,  Gemma 'Gemmy' Sargent. 

Gemmy was lovely. I remembered having such the largest crush on her in school, a private secondary school that was classed as being in Oxford but wasn't actually nearby. We could have boarded, but our houses were under an hour away that there was just no point. She had long, black wavy hair that she'd gotten from her Korean mother who had learnt English from the other married white women at our country club. She listened to classical music and then punk rock in secret. She was a year younger than me but that didn't matter. 

When Mrs Sargent and Mrs Godfrey lovingly joked about us marrying, my cheeks would go hot and Gemmy would giggle with her friends about me until her ribs hurt. But we never spoke about it to each other, ever. 

I'd never asked her out, and this dinner party at The Sargent's would be the first time I've seen her in years. 

I'm stood in the corner holding a champagne flute and I'm down to my last gulp. Mrs Sargent's squeal had been so loud when mum had informed her that I'd be coming, and had extended the invite to the whole band. But, with Luke in rehab and Demitri visiting the Mexican side of his family across the Atlantic, Scott was my only hope. He'd told me he'd be dropping Parker off at Heathrow and then drive over here, perhaps picking up something "right posh" to wear because he owned nothing that my family would approve of.