Chapter 5
Lewis
When we arrived back at the shack, I was glad at least the heating worked properly.
“Okay, give me half an hour and I should have food ready,” I told him once I’d taken off my shoes and dropped the shopping bags on the kitchen counter.
“Thank you, Lewis.” Noah gave me a small smile. “Is it okay if I take a quick shower? I’m all gross from travelling.”
You want to strip naked behind a flimsy door? Bad idea, Bright.
“If you rather I helped with cooking, I can shower later, no problem,” he added, when I didn’t respond.
“No, don’t be silly. You’ll feel so much better afterwards.” I shooed him away.
“Thanks, Lewis.” He gave me a timid smile, grabbed some of his new clothes and disappeared into the bathroom.
I set water up for the spaghetti, sautéed the onions and courgettes, browned the mince, and added the tomato sauce.
In the cupboard, I found a clean tablecloth and dishes that were nicer than anything else in the entire shack.
Except for Noah.
They were a pretty bright blue colour and looked hand thrown. Together with handmade pitchers, a deeper shade of blue than the plates, and a blue candle holder, it gave an oddly mismatched, but homey feel.
He deserves that.
Noah returned a couple minutes later in a pair of black slacks and a slate grey knit jumper he’d pulled from the sales section.
It hadn’t looked like anything special in the shop, but the subtle pattern turned a bland outfit into a fashion statement.
Unlike me, who simply threw clothes together, he really had an eye for these kinds of things.
He paused in the act of towelling his hair dry, and stared at the table with the burning candle in the middle. Suddenly the idea of setting this up seemed stupid.
A candlelit dinner? What’s wrong with you, Sinclair?
“Wow, that looks so pretty, Lewis.” He tore his gaze away from the table to look at me. Tears sparkled in his warm brown eyes.
“Welcome home, Noah.”
“Oh shit.” He laughed, impatiently brushing the wetness out of his eyes. “That’s the nicest welcome I’ve ever got. Overkill, Lew.” Noah beamed over at me as more tears spilled down his freshly shaven cheeks.
“Hungry?” I asked, at a loss for what to do. Did he want me to comfort him? I’d gone a bit overboard already and wasn’t sure that touching him without an invitation was a good idea.
Yeah, no shit?
“Starving.” Noah struggled for a moment to get a grip on his emotions, hung the towel on the back of his chair, and followed my instructions when I motioned for him to take a seat.
Good boy. I grinned inwardly at myself, grabbed our plates, and then shovelled heaps of spaghetti topped with bolognese and grated parmesan cheese on them.
“It smells amazing, looks amazing, too.”
“Tuck in. Beer?” I opened the fridge and got out two of the pale ales.
“Yeah, thanks.” I flipped the tops off them, and handed him one. “Cheers.”
“Cheers. Really, thank you so much, Lewis. This was so kind of you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Yes, mention it! It’s not something I take for granted.” He hovered on the verge of saying more for another moment, then blushed, and lowered his eyes back on his plate.
It should be self-evident that his family should’ve at least cooked for him after he travelled for God knows how long and hadn’t been back for three years.
“How have you been, Lewis?” he asked me over his half empty plate.
“Uh, quite okay, yeah. A lot better since I started working for Lone Fox, but yeah. Good.”
“That’s good to hear. What’s your job at the distillery? Ollie said you two worked together, but I have no idea what you’re doing.”
“I’m a brewer at Lone Fox Distillery, or their brewery to be exact,” I told him.
“So you make beer?”
“Yeah, as you can see.” I shrugged at him and patted my stomach. It wasn’t so much a six pack, but the whole damn keg.
“Oh, stop saying that. You’re perfect,” he huffed, then blushed a more vibrant shade of bright pink. He was the cutest thing I had ever seen.
“I mean, that’s so cool. I bet Lone Fox is a great place to work.”
Still pink in the face and shivering, he pulled a cardigan from the back of another chair and bundled it tighter around himself. If I wasn’t mistaken, Noah tried to gloss over the fact that he had called me “perfect” again.
Nobody except for my mum had ever said that about me.
I’d always been on the heavier side. Roy was a beefcake, too, but it was all muscle.
I had enough blubber to keep me warm on cold winter nights.
I could probably survive out in the snow, which had begun to fall a couple of minutes ago, for a few days.
“You should come visit the estate some time. I can take you around. Might make for some cool pictures for your social media account, too.”
“I’d like that, yeah. Thank you.” He gave me one of his handsome smiles that made my stomach flutter.
“By the way, the beer you’re drinking? I made that.”
Noah huffed. “And you’re only mentioning this now?” He inspected the bottle, then giggled, sounding for a moment way younger than he was. “White Tiger, well okay, I should have figured that out. It’s great.” He took another sip. “You’re a beer artisan.”
“I’m glad you like it. It was the first recipe I made for Lone Fox, and it’s our bestseller.”
“So, where did you learn how to brew beer?”
“I got certified in Bavaria, in a small town just outside of Munich. It’s run by monks.
They have been brewing beer the exact same way for nearly a thousand years.
Then I interned with brewmasters in a few different countries: the US, Japan, Tanzania, the Netherlands, Ireland, you name it.
The job before LFD was at a brewery in Manchester. ”
“Wow, that’s—”
“Probably super boring for you, sorry.”
“No, I was going to say ‘impressive.’” He smiled kindly at me over his plate. “That’s seriously cool. I had no idea you lived in so many countries. Which one was your favourite?”
“I really loved Bavaria. With the mountains and lakes, it’s like something out of a fairy tale, but every country had its own kind of beauty.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
“They all have their downsides, though, right? Like you told me about Bali earlier?”
He nodded, indicating that his mouth was too full to speak.
“It’s sad to see places you love from that perspective,” Noah said when he’d swallowed the spaghetti. “You don’t really notice when you’re just visiting, but stay longer and you’ll get to know them.”
“Is that what happened with you and Bali?” I pushed my empty plate a few inches towards the centre of the table, placed my beer in the cleared space in front of me, and leaned back in my chair.
“Yes, that’s what happened with me and Bali,” Noah admitted, then he got up and heaped a second helping onto his plate.
“I used to live in Thailand, and visited a couple of times, for a month or two, and I loved it. It’s not too far away and it was just different.
People seemed to be happy, the atmosphere was laid back.
Then I decided to move there. That was,” he hesitated, “about six years ago.”
“And you didn’t like it?”
“Oh, at first I did. I still do love the people, the food, the culture, surfing, and the fresh produce year round.” He sat back down, took a bite and chewed slowly. “But there are things I don’t like at all, too. But I think that happens wherever you live, right?”
“I suppose,” I hedged. It didn’t sound as if he was happy. Looking around the shack, I thought I had a good idea why staying wasn’t an option. “Does that have anything to do with your financial problems?” I asked bluntly, second-guessing myself when I saw Noah blanch.
“I really don’t want to talk about it, but I guess you’re not going to stop bugging me, are you?”
“Probably not.” I grinned, shrugging my shoulders in a ‘can’t help myself’ sort of way.
“Well.” He heaved a deep sigh. “The thing is, they’re two things really that are connected with each other. I split up with my boyfriend a month ago. I had to pay for my travel and foot the bills all by myself, which depleted my funds. And my reach has been horrible since the break-up.”
“Fewer accounts engage with yours?” I asked.
“Yep. Less reach means less income, so I haven’t been able to build up my rainy day fund again. I’m not exactly broke, but I need to increase my income quickly.”
“How do you plan on doing that?” I finished my beer. “Want another one?”
“Yes, please. Well, I need content. I don’t know how closely you’ve been following my account, but I, ugh.” He huffed, blushing and curling in on himself.
I got up to grab us two more IPAs, opened them, and handed Noah one. He clinked the bottom of his bottle to mine and we drank. I did not tell him that I was one of his frequent followers.
“I’m not exactly proud of it, but it worked and it paid the bills.
I realised at some point that people like aesthetic pictures of young men in almost no clothes.
” Noah choked on the words, and I did too.
“I found out by accident. My ex-boyfriend and I took a picture of us on the beach for our six-month anniversary. We were in swimming trunks. That thing went viral.”
He slid his fingers through the mess on his head. “I didn’t realise, I swear. But when I read the comments it dawned on me.”
“What did?”
“All the comments were from thirsty people objectifying us. We began to post more. The two of us in bed, barely covered by the sheets, on the couch, you name it. And we made a shit ton of money. People tipped us through JustTheTip, they bought things off our wish lists, and the more of this particular content we posted, the more money came in.”
He cringed visibly and jumped up to pace around the room.
Everything in me longed to help him calm down.
“Since we broke up, he’s been doing it on his own. There’s nothing wrong with it, like, I’m not judging, yeah? Or I would judge myself as well. But I started blogging to write about my travels. I have no idea what else to do, though. And I’m pretty skint, Lew.” He messed up his hair some more.
“What do you need to make that kind of content again?”
“A hot guy to show off.” He laughed derisively.
Fuck. I’d seen it coming but still gaped at him.
“Yeah, as if anyone would be interested in some pathetic loser like me. Living in a shack, and not even being able to buy a pair of winter boots.”
“What would that entail? ‘A hot guy to show off’? Showing off how?”
I was racking my brains for someone I might know who could help Noah out.
“Just pictures. No videos or anything. I’m not really in the mood to add to my ….” His voice trailed off.
“Okay, I’ll—” I began.
“Oh my God, Lewis, are you for real? You’d do that? For me?” He sounded close to tears.
“Uh.” What? Me?
“That—I don’t know what to say, Lew. Seriously, not even in my wildest dreams would I have expected you to offer to do something like that. For me. That’s—” He sniffed. “I, I really do appreciate this so much, Lewis.”
He hurried over and flung his arms around my neck. There was nothing I could do but pat his back as he sobbed into my shirt.
“So sorry,” he sniffed again, as he straightened up and wiped his face on the sleeves of his cardigan. “It’s just been a lot. And then coming here to this, and you? It’s—” He hiccuped slightly. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” I muttered. I wasn’t going to correct him and say I’d been trying to think of someone else to pose as his boyfriend. This could be exactly the chance I’d been waiting for.