Topped (Lick It! #3)

Chapter One

Milo

Leaving me alone with a pair of hair clippers when I was bored was one of the worst things anyone could do, because it only ever ended one way.

But since I currently lived alone, there was nobody to stop me from shaving my entire head in front of the bathroom mirror. And getting rid of my moustache too.

It wasn’t like I hated my hair, I was just bored of it. And boredom was my ultimate nemesis.

It was the reason that, nine months ago, I’d given up the vaguely stable life I’d managed to establish and moved back to my hometown of Heather Bay, on the North Yorkshire coast, to help one of my best mates open an ice cream shop.

At the time, it had just seemed like another random thing I was doing with my life, but in hindsight it had worked out really fucking well.

I loved helping Darcy and our other friend, Alfie, to run Lick It!

. And after years of pissing around, not doing all the things people wanted me to do with my life and avoiding responsibility at every turn, it felt like I’d finally found something I could stick with.

I liked talking to people, I liked nattering about the fabulous ice cream we made, I liked getting to make graphics and dick around on social media, and I liked the fact that I didn’t have someone bossing me around because I was in charge.

Well, sort of.

Darcy was the most in charge because this was his dream and it was his name on everything, and I wasn’t going to discount that.

And I was happy not to have his level of responsibility because doing accounts or making tiny but monumental decisions about the future of the business wasn’t really my forte.

I’d stick to charming our customers, online and in real life, and annoying Darcy into giving me the new ice cream flavours I wanted.

He’d already given in on the banana front, and I was sure there were other things we needed to try too.

“Hmm, not bad,” I murmured to myself as I ran my hand over my freshly shaved head, humming happily as I turned from left to right to see if I’d missed any spots.

I’d kept a guard on so I wasn’t completely bald.

But a three-millimetre cut was very different to the mullet-slash-wolf cut I’d been sporting all summer, the remnants of which were now littering my sink.

I kept humming as I cleaned everything up, because I knew if I didn’t do it now, I wouldn’t do it later. Then it would sit there for three days until I got frustrated and tried to rinse it away. And the last thing I wanted was a clogged sink.

Walking back into my bedroom, I pulled on a pair of jeans, one of the branded T-shirts Darcy had finally gotten us, and grabbed a patchwork, pullover fleece from my wardrobe that had been my uncle’s in the eighties.

It was lovingly worn and had been repaired several times by both of us, but I couldn’t bring myself to consider getting rid of it.

Not when it still had so much life left to live.

As I grabbed my boots from their spot by the front door, I realised it was also pissing it down. Again. Which meant I was going to need a hat, unless I wanted my head to freeze. Which I did not.

I knew endless rain was all part and parcel of living in England, especially in the autumn, but did it have to be so bloody miserable alongside it?

I swore, if we got horrible winter weather while Darcy and Owen, his boyfriend and our other ice cream maker, were sunning themselves in Australia for three weeks, then I was going to riot.

And by riot, I meant pelting them with endless messages about how cold, wet, and long-suffering I was.

It took me ten minutes to find a beanie, and even then it wasn’t the one I really wanted.

But by that point I’d lost patience with the idea of searching, so I pulled the one I’d retrieved on and headed out the door of my flat, keeping an ear on the floor above me as I reached for the handle of the outer door.

Darcy lived above me, and I’d gotten pretty good at tracking his movements, and his mood, by the sound of his footsteps.

Of course, now him and Owen were practically living together, I’d also gotten good at figuring out when the pair of them were going to turn up for work based on whether I could hear them fucking or not.

Everything was suspiciously quiet. Which meant they’d either left for the shop already, or they hadn’t come back from Owen’s morning swim and Darcy’s “run.” Which we all knew was code for perving on his boyfriend in a wetsuit.

God, I hadn’t gotten laid in so fucking long.

Longer than I’d admit to anyone, even Alfie and Darcy.

I’d thought that being in town during tourist season would make it easy to find people for casual hook-ups whenever I wanted them.

What I hadn’t counted on was being so goddamn exhausted that the idea of seeing anyone, even for anonymous sex, just didn’t interest me.

As much as I wanted sex, I didn’t have the emotional or physical bandwidth to make decisions or deal with people.

Maybe I’d have better luck over the winter.

Or maybe I could book a weekend away somewhere—a big city like Manchester or London—and spend two days in a haze of lust-filled decadence. That would take the edge off at least.

I put my earbuds in as I slipped out of the building, putting my playlist on and letting the random selection of music carry me away as I strode through Heather Bay, the rain pouring down around me.

The cobblestones under foot shone in the early morning gloom, puddles already forming in dips and cracks in the concrete.

There weren’t many people around, so nobody stared as I danced in the rain, although I stopped short of spinning myself around a lamp post. A few drops of water slid down the back of my neck, and I cursed, trying to pat them away and only succeeding in making them slither further under my clothes.

That would serve me right for shaving all my fucking hair off and exposing my skin.

It wasn’t far to Lick It!, and as I danced around the corner, I saw a familiar figure hurrying towards me from the other direction.

Rupert, the intriguing and adorable owner of Saltgate Sweets—the vintage sweet shop that shared a wall with Lick It!.

He had a long, royal blue wool coat on, the collar pulled up against the rain, and a yellow umbrella clutched in his gloved hands.

He was wearing a flat cap, his dark hair neatly tucked underneath it, and I could only smile because it was like he’d taken Tommy Shelby’s wardrobe and combined it with the colour palette of Peter Rabbit.

He didn’t seem to have spotted me, which was good. If he had, he might have diverted down some alleyway or turned around and walked away. And I didn’t want that to happen.

We hadn’t gotten off on the best terms back in the spring… mostly because I thought he was an uptight, finickety wanker who was more interested in being right than being neighbourly. And I was terrible at pushing people’s buttons when they annoyed me, because half the time I thought it was funny.

Alfie was probably right when he’d said I was being a dickhead.

If Darcy had been less stressed about the whole opening a new business thing, there was a good chance he’d have marched me straight into Rupert’s shop and made me apologise. But as he’d had a laundry list of his own issues to deal with, I’d been left to my own devices.

Which again, in hindsight, hadn’t been a good thing.

Luckily the local seagull population had turned out to be much harder to train than I’d anticipated.

“Sorry,” Rupert said as he tried to duck around me, catching me slightly with his shoulder as he attempted to stop his umbrella from smacking me in the face. “I didn’t see—Oh, it’s you.”

“Morning Rupert,” I said with the most winning smile I possessed. More recently I had been trying to mend fences between us, but not necessarily for the most altruistic reasons.

Rupert fascinated me in more ways than I could count, and his bristling determination to keep me at arm’s length, no matter how charming I was, was like dangling an ostrich-egg sized diamond in front of a jewel thief.

Plus, if Darcy came back from Australia and realised he was in for a repeat of this summer—where Rupert and I spend months pettily lashing out at each other—then he might finally snap.

And I wasn’t about to put one of my longest friendships to the test simply because I liked being an annoying wanker.

“Good morning.” He stared at me for a long moment, a frown appearing between his eyebrows as he scrutinised me.

There were a few spots of rain on the front of his glasses, but I could still see his dark eyes behind them.

Like deep pools you could get lost in. “You shaved your moustache off. That’s why I didn’t recognise you. ”

“Yeah, I was bored. Time for a change.” I grinned and tugged the edge of my beanie up. “Did my hair too.”

“All of it?”

“Yeah. Unless I missed a spot.” I pulled my hat off and ran my hand over my head, triple-checking in case I really had missed a bit. I couldn’t feel anything amiss though.

“Oh… that’s… quite a dramatic change,” Rupert said. He didn’t look startled or horrified. More like he was taking it all in and processing. “It looks nice.”

“Yeah? You think so?”

“It’s different but, yes, I think it suits you.”

“Thanks.” I tugged my hat back on, because my head was getting very cold and wet. That was going to take some getting used to. Maybe I’d made a mistake. But it wasn’t like I could do anything about it. I’d simply have to wait for it to grow back.

“What do your friends think?”

“Dunno yet. I literally just did it this morning. So if you hear screaming through the walls, you can assume they hate it.”

Rupert’s lip twitched into a small smile and delight ignited in my chest. I didn’t know if I’d ever seen him smile. Not that I could remember anyway… and I’d remember something like that. “Wouldn’t that be a little dramatic?”

“Darcy’s middle name is dramatic,” I said with a chuckle. “I love him, but he can be overdramatic as fuck. Especially when he’s stressed. But hey, we’ve all got friends like that. It’s why we love them.”

“I suppose,” Rupert said. There was a sudden stiffness to his posture, and I wondered what the hell I’d said wrong. Did he think I’d meant he was overdramatic? Or was that something he’d been accused of in the past? I mean, if this was his reaction then maybe they weren’t far wrong.

“Excuse me,” Rupert continued, taking a step around me. “I really need to get to work.”

“Yeah, all right.” I watched him for a second, my head still spinning.

It was like Rupert had pulled the floor out from under my feet and I wasn’t sure why.

I mean, I knew I could be a dickhead. But I didn’t think I had been that time.

“By the way,” I added, before he disappeared down the small road beside Lick It!

which led to the small area we shared for deliveries and the bins.

“I meant to ask, are you closing this winter?”

“No. I may do reduced hours, but I’ll still be open. Why?”

“Oh, er, we’re closing up for a few months over the winter. From the end of October. Just in case you worry about not seeing us around. Wouldn’t want you to worry about me.” I grinned at him and tried a wink.

I’d never seen a man look so unimpressed.

I wasn’t sure whether to be offended, hurt, or amused.

“That’s good to know,” he said. Then his lip twitched again. “It will definitely be a lot quieter. And I won’t miss the seagulls.”

“Hey! You love them really,” I said, rushing after him. Water splashed down the side of my boots, and I pulled a face as it soaked into my socks.

“I do not! They’re pests and you know it.”

“Good thing my plan to train them didn’t work out then.”

“Thank heavens for small mercies,” Rupert said with a wry smile as we rounded the corner, the rain still pouring down on us.

He paused for a second, twisting the shaft of his umbrella in his hand. “If you do need anything over the winter, obviously, I can always check in on things for you.”

“Cheers. I mean, I’ll still pop down. And Alfie will be around too. We’re not gonna totally abandon the place for three months.”

“Oh, yes. That makes sense.” Another pause. “Well, goodbye then. I mean, er, see you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow,” I said as he walked towards the back door of the shop, pulling his keys out of his pocket.

Huh. He’d never said that before.

It was practically an invitation.

I knew where I was going to be in the morning.

Smiling to myself, I headed into Lick It!, realising a split second too late that the back door was already open. And Alfie was sitting at his desk, staring at me with horrified eyes as I pulled my hat off.

“Jesus Christ, Milo, what happened to you?!”

Well, fuck.