Chapter Four
Alex
Whoever said thank fuck it’s Friday had never worked in retail.
Friday was another day on the hamster wheel of my existence, and they tended to be busier since people were gearing up for the weekend. I knew I shouldn’t grumble since I was the one who’d decided to open a coffee shop, but while I loved it, it did have a habit of casually sucking out my soul.
I wouldn’t change it, though, not even on the stressful days. Fuck working nine to five in some corporate hellhole. I’d absolutely fucking hate it.
Currently, I was holed up in my tiny, cramped office that doubled as half a storeroom at the back of Novel Tea, trying to get the last of the orders in for next week. My phone flashed on the desk next to me and when I glanced down, I saw a message from Noah, my best friend in the whole world.
Noah
Hey, are you coming to the pub tonight? Spencer said you might still be working x
Fuck, was it nearly seven already? The clocks on my laptop and phone said it was and I had no idea how I’d lost track of time. I could’ve sworn it was still about four. I sighed. I really needed to start setting alarms when I worked so I didn’t get sucked in and end up here all night.
Alex
Yeah I’ll be there in a minute x
Noah
Have you eaten? X
Alex
If I said yes, would you believe me?
Noah
No. I’ll order you something.
Alex
Thanks x
Sometimes I didn’t know how I’d have made it to adulthood without Noah looking out for me.
He was the opposite of me in every way—kind, generous to a fault, sweet, funny, and more caring than anyone I’d ever known.
He also had a core of steel, which I suspected he’d developed trying to get me through school without getting kicked out.
It was also what made him such a good teacher.
You had to be a special kind of person to want to spend your days teaching teenagers science, especially when it came mixed with dangerous chemicals, but Noah was that person. If I’d had a teacher like him at school, I might have actually done the work.
I had a sneaking suspicion that Lane, one of the other guys in our group who we’d grown up with, and me were part of the reason Noah had become a teacher.
He’d never said it outright, but he’d hinted enough times that he thought kids who struggled needed patience and connection rather than condescension and writing off at the first opportunity.
Which was something I’d bitched about endlessly as a teenager.
I’d hated it when Noah had left for university.
We’d spoken virtually every day and I’d visited him in Newcastle as often as I could, but one of the happiest days of my life had been when he’d moved back.
We’d lived together ever since, or at least until last month when he’d moved in with my brother, who’d turned out to be the love of his fucking life.
I couldn’t begrudge Noah and Spencer’s relationship even if I wanted to because they were bloody perfect for each other.
Spencer brought Noah out of his shell, gave him confidence, and cherished him in a way that nobody else ever had.
And Noah managed to find my brother’s brand of ridiculous endearing, which was a feat in itself.
I loved Spencer, but he couldn’t half be a pain in the arse, especially when he got an idea in his head.
Glancing at the laptop screen again, I hit save on the spreadsheet I’d been working on and closed the lid.
I’d finish it tomorrow. Leaving the laptop on my desk, I grabbed my bag and locked the office door behind me, doing a final sweep of the coffee shop before I headed out the front door, remembering to relock it behind me.
Novel Tea wasn’t too far from our normal haunt, the Sleeping Goose, but nothing was that far in Heather Bay. The town wasn’t big, and you could easily walk from one side of it to the other in about fifteen minutes. Twenty if you were slow.
Evening had fallen, and a chilly breeze blew in from the sea reminding me that even though it was the end of March, it still wasn’t warm. All the fucking snow had finally gone, though. That had been a bloody nightmare.
It only took me a few minutes to reach the pub, which was already packed.
The Sleeping Goose was the closest thing Heather Bay had to a queer bar, but there was a crowd of old regulars who’d been coming here for years and hadn’t moved on when Colin and Soren had taken it over.
It always made me chuckle seeing that bunch of older guys, who all looked like they’d be more at home at a football match, sitting at the bar sipping their pints and talking about the latest episode of Drag Stars.
“Alex!” I heard my name as soon as I stepped inside and knew where it was coming from.
Since there were so many of us, we always claimed the same corner of the pub so we could push at least three tables together.
I had a feeling that Anders, who was Soren’s brother, had managed to get the space reserved for us every week.
I turned to see Theo, our bouncing blond femme boy, waving at me. “There you are,” he said as I approached. “We were wondering if we should send out a search party!”
“I was just working,” I said as I slid into the last seat. It was on one end, next to Noah and opposite Theo and his roommate-slash-best-friend-slash-unofficial-boyfriend, Laurie. “I lost track of time.”
“You work too much,” Noah said, giving me a soft, welcoming smile.
“And you don’t?”
“I’m a teacher. It’s part of the job description.”
“I run a business, so it’s part of mine too.”
“You all work too hard,” Theo said. “You all need to take more time off and do fun things!”
“You’re not counting yourself among the work-too-hard crowd?
” Laurie asked with a raised eyebrow. He had a point.
Theo did at least three different things for money, including working as a mortician in the funeral home Laurie ran, streaming on Twitch, and filming amateur porn for his MyFans page, and I knew all of those things took a lot of time and effort.
“Of course not,” Theo said with a shrug. “I have one job and two hobbies that I am very lucky to monetise.”
“That’s just a fancy way of saying three jobs,” I said.
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Noah, tell Alex he’s wrong,” Theo said, giving my best friend his prettiest pout.
“Sorry, Theo, but he’s not. You might not view them as jobs, but they are, especially with the amount of work you put into them.”
Theo’s pout turned sulky and he looked at Laurie for backup, but Laurie just smiled. “I told you,” he said. “You just didn’t believe me.”
“Well, at least I don’t work as hard as Will,” Theo said, deftly switching the subject so he didn’t have to admit he was wrong. “Has anyone heard from him lately?”
We were well into lambing season, which meant Will, our resident shepherd, barely left his farm. Instead, he spent every waking hour tending to his sheep and doing whatever was needed to ensure as many ewes as possible birthed healthy lambs.
This year he had the added complication of having a new boyfriend around, although by all reports Jamie had thrown himself into helping, something none of us had predicted when we’d met the posh London party boy.
But if he was willing to stick around for lambing and actually help, then maybe there was more to him than we’d imagined. Lane was pretty convinced Jamie was here to stay, but I’d believe it when I saw it.
In my experience, very few men stuck around when things got tough. Not when it was easier to leave.
“I went up there last weekend,” Noah said. “I didn’t get to see him for long since they’d had a busy night, but he seemed to be in good spirits. I think Jamie’s really helping him.”
“I thought that too,” Laurie said. “I popped up there on Wednesday and took them some food. I only got to see Will because Jamie was in the barn with the lambs, but Will seemed less tired than usual. No, that’s not right… he still looked exhausted, but he didn’t seem so weighed down by it.”
“That’s what I thought,” Noah said with a nod. “He’s still knackered but he’s got someone he trusts to lean on, and that helps. I know Will’s got Higgs too, but it’s different when it’s a partner.”
“Aww, that’s so sweet,” Theo said. “Do you think Jamie will stay then? Do you think he and Will are going to fall in love and live happily ever after?”
“Hold your horses,” I said. “Will barely knows Jamie. I wouldn’t exactly say they’re ready to sail off into the fucking sunset.”
“I don’t know,” Noah said. “He’s been here since the end of January, and he’s stuck around for lambing. I don’t think he’d have done that if he didn’t care about Will. He could have just gone back to London.”
“He still might,” I said pointedly. I didn’t know why this conversation was grating on me, but the whole idea that Jamie would just give up everything for Will at the drop of a hat was rubbing me the wrong way.
Noah looked at me, a little frown between his eyebrows. “He might, but I don’t think he will.”
I wasn’t going to argue. If I did, I’d have to explain why I thought that, and then I’d have to start revealing things I’d never shared with anyone. Not even Noah.
Luckily, I didn’t have to say anything because Colin arrived carrying a steaming plate laden with a large pie, a heaping pile of thick-cut chips, some crisp-looking green veg, and a little jug of gravy. He set it down in front of me and grinned. “Apparently, you haven’t had dinner yet.”
“I haven’t,” I said. “Cheers, this looks great.” As soon as he walked away, I turned to Noah. “Noah, what’s this?”
“Your dinner,” he said cheerily. “You need to eat. And I mean actual food, not just instant noodles when you get home.”
“I thought you were just going to get me some chips.”
“I did. And a pie. It’s steak and ale, by the way. Eat your veg too. You don’t get enough.”
I sighed. That was another fight I wasn’t going to pick, or win.
Ever since he’d moved out, Noah had been acting more and more like a concerned parent.
It was like he thought I couldn’t look after myself.
Either that or he felt guilty for leaving me on my own, especially since I now had to cover the rent on our two-bedroom flat by myself.
He’d tried to offer me the money for his half every month until the lease ended, but I’d refused.
I only had another few months to get through, and then I’d be able to downsize to something much smaller and cheaper.
As long as I could find somewhere. So many of the flats and houses in Heather Bay were being bought up to turn into Airbnbs or holidays lets, and that meant a lot of the locals were being pushed out of town as the amount of available housing went down and the rent for the places left skyrocketed at an alarming rate.
Fucking landlords.
If all else failed, I’d have to stay where I was and look into getting a roommate. I hated the idea of living with someone other than Noah, but I couldn’t afford to be picky. Not if I didn’t want to be homeless.
Although if that happened, I was pretty sure Noah and Spencer would move me into their spare room without a second thought.
And if they didn’t, Lane and Oliver would offer me a room instead.
Which would be nice of them, but living with a sickeningly sweet, completely and utterly head-over-heels couple made me want to claw my own eyes out.
But again, I wouldn’t be able to afford to be picky.
“I ordered some chips for the table too,” Noah added and I noticed Spencer eyeing up my chips from Noah’s other side. “So there wouldn’t be any arguments.”
“You’re definitely a teacher,” I said teasingly, spearing one of my chips on my fork and dipping it in gravy. “You can see these problems coming a fucking mile away.”
“Alex…” Spencer said.
“No. You can’t have one of mine while you wait,” I said.
“But—”
“Fuck off. You can wait for the rest of them.”
“I just want one,” Spencer said, leaning on the table and looking around Noah, attempting to give me his best puppy eyes. “Please.”
“No. Wait for your own fucking chips.” The more he asked, the less likely I was to give him one just on fucking principle.
“You’re so mean,” he said. “First you’re mean to Henry Lu. Then you’re mean to your own brother.”
I sighed. Now he’d fucking done it.
“What the fuck?” Theo screeched. “You met Henry Lu? When did this happen? And why didn’t you tell me?”
“He came into Novel Tea a couple of times during the week,” Spencer said cheerily. “He had Jude Kane with him too, and Gemma Lee and Tamsin Chu. They’ve just started filming at the castle. Henry tried to flirt with Alex, and Alex was pretty mean about it.”
“You turned him down?” Theo asked, rounding on me with disbelief. “What the hell possessed you to turn him down? He’s Henry Lu! I would literally kill someone to go out with him. Did you see his coming out post during Pride last year? It was so fucking cute I wanted to die!”
“Great,” I said as I started to dig into my pie, hoping that if I started eating, they’d leave me alone. I couldn’t answer their questions if my mouth was full. “You can come down to Novel Tea and serve him instead. Then I don’t have to deal with him.”
I didn’t want Henry’s attention. As far as I was concerned, he could leave and never come back.
Even if he was the handsomest man I’d ever met and every time he looked at me, I got butterflies in my stomach.
I didn’t want another relationship, or even a one-night stand. I just wanted to be left alone.
I couldn’t get hurt that way.