Chapter 4
Chapter Four
“ O h my God,” Mia said, staring up the dark, narrow steps. It had taken her a month to come and see where he was living, and he could see her regretting her decision already. “Jack, this place is a dive.”
“It’s got great bones though,” Jack said, and kicked the wainscotting. A piece of plaster dislodged itself, crumbling over the toe of his work boot. “That…that’s not the bones. The bones are solid. That’s more like…the dandruff.”
Mia stared at him intently. “Blink twice if you’re being held here against your will.”
“It’s not that bad, I swear.” He gestured to the steps. “Watch the fourth step. It’s rotted.”
Mia was right about one thing—the house was a dive—but for some reason Jack didn’t hate living here. Okay, so maybe a good part of that reason was the guy sleeping in the room next door to his, but it was also nice to be out of Mia’s place. The problem with couch surfing was that it was exactly that—surfing—constantly skipping from surface to surface, always in motion without being able to stop and take a breath. It was having nowhere to put all his stuff, and always feeling underfoot when other people were trying to use the common areas. Nothing quite as fun as sitting outside on the footpath because Mia and Tate were having a romantic dinner in the tiny living-dining area that was also Jack’s bedroom. Then wondering later exactly what they’d got up to on the couch he was trying to sleep on. No, his own bed, even in a room with a creepy watermarked ceiling, was one hell of an improvement.
Mia made her way tentatively up the steps. “I know you almost killed Harry, but I don’t think that you need to balance the karmic scales by killing yourself by moving in here.”
He snorted as he followed her up the stairs. “Don’t let Mum hear you talk about karmic scales.”
He could hear her roll her eyes. “Fine. Atonement , whatever.”
“Hmm. That might be leaning a bit too hard into Catholic guilt. Maybe just that whole ‘love one another’ thing?”
Mia reached the top of the steps. “You can love one another without living in a total shithole, you know. Which room’s yours?”
“Last one on the left.”
Mia seemed a little less judgemental when she got to his room, and he figured that was because she’d survived the stairs which, even in the middle of the day, were dark and gloomy. Jack had scored the bedroom at the front of the house, though, and it had plenty of windows to let the light in. He knew it had been some other guy’s room not that long ago, but he wasn’t sure why Harry or Tristan hadn’t snagged it as soon as it became vacant. They were probably just too lazy to be bothered moving their stuff down the hallway. Their loss, because the room was definitely the pick of them.
“Oh…” Mia headed straight for the bay window. “Okay, this isn’t actually so horrible after all. It’s a bit sparse, though.” She turned, hands on her hips, and gazed around the room cr itically. “You could string some lights up, get some curtains and it would actually be kind of nice.”
“I don’t have lights,” Jack said. “Or curtains.”
“I’ll get you some.”
He had a sudden flashback to Mia’s room when she’d been a kid. It had looked like a fairy and a butterfly had collided in mid-flight, then exploded in pink and purple glitter all over the place. “Nah, it’s okay.”
Mia’s tastes had matured since her tween days, and these days inclined more towards whatever was hot on Instagram. There was a lot of linen and rattan in her flat, and everything was Japandi, whatever that was. Jack thought it was supposed to be a mash up of Japanese and Scandinavian, but since he couldn’t remember the last time he’d stepped into either a Daiso or an IKEA, he wasn’t exactly an expert.
“The light’s great,” she said, peering out the window towards the street, then turning back to face him. “It’s just a shame about…well, everything else.”
“It’s not so bad.”
“Jack, my shoes stuck to the hallway floor.”
“Yeah, we need a decent mop,” he said. “And a broom. Ours is on the roof. But at least I’m not sleeping on your couch anymore, cramping your style.”
Mia chewed her thumbnail and wrinkled her nose, then sat down on his bed. “Well, maybe our style could do with some cramping.”
“What?”
She sighed. “Okay, so you know how the plan was for me to graduate, and then Tate and I would travel around the world for a year or two? Living like—well, in shitholes like this, I guess?”
He let the shithole comment go and nodded.
“And then, when we get back, we’d get engaged, and by that stage Mum and Dad would have figured out how to look past the tattoos and the piercings? Because they like Tate—they like him a lot thanks to Harry—but I think they still have this idea that some clean-cut boy is going to pop up out of nowhere in the next few years, and suddenly I’ll come to my senses and realise that what I really want is, I don’t know, someone who wears an ironed shirt every day but can’t sexually satisfy a woman?”
“Mia, Jesus.” He winced. “But yeah, I get your point.”
She chewed her thumbnail again. “Well, we fucked over that plan. Literally.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’m pregnant,” she said. “And I blame you, at least partly.”
“Pretty sure I had nothing to do with it, and also please don’t say things like that. Ever .”
“I mean, there you were, cramping our style, and me and Tate, well. Remember eight weeks back when Tate took me out for dinner after I’d been sick with that chest infection?”
Jack nodded, wary.
Mia exhaled heavily. “Well, it had been at least a week, and the walls at home are thin, so after dinner we ended up parking and having a quickie in the car.” She caught his horrified look. “Stop judging me. It’s normal to have a healthy sex drive! Anyway, antibiotics really fuck with the pill. Which I knew, so Tate was also gloved up. But it turns out that’s not one hundred percent either, especially when you’re working in limited space in the back of a Barina. Tate’s tall, you know? Angles were awkward. And there was obviously some sort of…slippage, and, well, here we are.”
“Holy shit.” Jack sat down next to her. “Um, do I say congratulations?”
She gave him a slightly watery smile. “Yeah, it’s congratulations. We weren’t planning it, but we’re happy. We talked about our options, but we decided that, why not? We’re it for each other, and if we have to chuck the baby in a papoose while we go backpacking, we’ll do that. This is a bump in the road, not a crash.”
Jack put an arm around her and pulled her into a hug. “Congratulations.”
Holy shit . His little sister was pregnant. He was going to be an uncle . And Mum and Dad were?—
“Mum and Dad are going to lose their shit,” he said softly. “Have you told them yet?”
“No,” she said. “And I’m not going to.”
“I think they’ll notice when you pop out an entire new human being.”
She elbowed him and snorted. “Yeah, and they can deal with that after the wedding.”
“The wedding? You’re getting married ?”
“We were always going to. Just not right now.” She wrinkled her nose. “This is a slight detour, that’s all. The destination’s still the same.”
“Why do you keep talking in traffic metaphors?”
“Because life is a journey , you fuckhead. Catch up!”
“You’re a bit stressed out right now, aren’t you?”
She made a sound halfway between a giggle and a whimper. “Little bit, yeah.”
“So how soon is this wedding?”
“Six weeks, hopefully. If the church is free.”
He winced. “Saint John’s?”
“Of course. We’ll do it in the morning, after the Sunday service. Dad’ll like that. The congregation is family and all that bullshit.”
“Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “For the record, I think you’re insane. Not for the baby thing, but for the wedding thing. You know you could just go to the courthouse and get it done, right? But I get why you want it at Saint John’s. And if you guys need anything—I don’t know, what the fuck do you need for a wedding anyway? Well, whatever it is, if you need it and you think I can help out, you only have to ask. Okay?”
Mia leaned into him. “Thanks, Jack.”
She didn’t stay long after that. Jack was still smiling when she left and the news he was going to be an uncle sank in. He turned around to find Harry looking at him from his bedroom doorway, one eyebrow cocked.
“What are you grinning at?”
Jack knew he should keep Mia's news secret, but he trusted Harry. That, and he had to tell someone or he was going to burst. “I’m going to be an uncle!”
“Mia’s pregnant?” Harry’s jaw dropped. “I’m assuming she’s happy about it?”
“Oh yeah, totally happy. They’re getting married.”
Harry’s face split into a broad grin. “That’s great! I’m so happy for her. And for you, too, Uncle Jack.”
Hearing it out loud just made Jack smile harder. “Oh, wow. What a trip!”
“Shotgun wedding?” Harry asked.
“Is a secret shotgun wedding a thing?” Jack asked. “Because they’re not telling my parents, so I don’t know who’s supposed to be wielding the shotguns in that scenario.”
“Maybe Mia and Tate are pointing them at each other,” Harry suggested. “Secret shotgun standoff wedding?” He tilted his head. “I presume your parents can count though, right?”
“Very much so. I guess Mia’s just trying to postpone the baby shitstorm until after the wedding. A spur-of-the-moment wedding will be slightly easier to sell to them than a shotgun wedding. My parents are sort of…” He hesitated. “Old-fashioned. You’d probably remember that.”
Harry winced. “Kind of? But, to be fair, I didn’t let them get too many words in before I did the tablecloth trick and then tipped a glass of water into your dad’s lap.”
Jack felt a stab of guilt at where that had all ended up. “I am so?—”
Harry held up his hand. “Stop apologising. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s Mia’s since she hired me. Is that victim blaming? No, I think I’m the victim still.” He grinned, his cheeks dimpling. “Anyway, you’re going to be an uncle! That’s awesome!” He stepped forward and held up his hand for a high five.
“Right?” Jack slapped their palms together lightly in mid-air.
Harry beamed at him. “This is such a good recommendation for Bad Boyfriends. I should add it to the cards— Happy customer weds man of her dreams. Do you think Mia will invite me to the wedding, since I was sort of responsible for this?”
Jack snorted. “Oh, I’m sure my parents would be so happy to see you again!”
Harry threw back his head and laughed. “They would, wouldn’t they? And your grandparents!”
“You were all they talked about for weeks.”
Harry’s eyes shone, and he tugged his fingers through his hair. Jack wanted to do the same. “It’s so weird to think there are people out there who legit hate me. And they’re decent people too!” His grin grew. “But Mia and Tate are happy, right?”
Jack nodded.
“Worth it then,” Harry said. “And a baby ! That’s awesome. I love babies!”
Jack gave him a moment to backtrack or to clarify, but he didn’t. Just stood there grinning and looking way more adorable than Jack needed to realise right now. “I don’t really have much to do with them.”
“They’re great,” Harry said. “Just, like every day they’re learning something new, you know? First it’s like, ‘Hey, look, I’ve got toes!’ and before you know it they can tell you what sounds all the animals make. I mean, I can hardly remember something I learned in a lecture last week, but babies? Every single day their world expands so much, and they get so much new information to take onboard, and they just roll with it. They’re incredible.”
Oh, shit, Harry was seriously cute like this. We don’t crush on the straight roommate , Jack reminded himself .
It was just that he was finding that particular rule harder and harder to follow.
Jack’s living situation had improved since moving into the house in Dickson Street, but he couldn’t say he was sleeping that much better. That was mostly because of a serious case of blue balls. Listening to Tristan and his latest hook-up go at it like rabbits every night wasn’t exactly relaxing. And ‘rabbits’ wasn’t an exaggeration. The guy was the Energizer Bunny, but a lot less child friendly. Jack was pretty sure there were still batteries involved, though.
Harry, though… In the weeks since Jack had moved in, he still hadn’t figured out if Harry was seeing anyone and, if he wasn’t, if he wanted to be. It was the dumbest fucking idea in the world to hook up with a housemate, and Jack knew that—it’d only end badly—and despite his blue balls it had been easy enough to ignore what his dick wanted up until now, but then tonight had happened. Tonight, and the crafting incident.
Jack was in the kitchen, in the middle of a text message exchange with his mum. She still wasn’t happy she’d heard from Mia that he’d moved out instead of from him, and insisted on texting him every evening now with a barrage of questions, just in case she missed anything important. He couldn’t wait until Mia dropped the news about the wedding, because he knew all Mum’s attention would be on Mia from that second on, and he would at least be able to try to make a toasted sandwich in peace. He buttered his bread between answering texts, hoping he was hitting whatever apologetic tone she needed him to hit so that she didn’t get annoyed enough to call him, when he heard some very familiar theme music coming from the living room. Familiar in that it was wired into the parts of his brain that stored all his childhood memories and the nostalgia for them. The last time he’d heard it must have been twenty years ago, but the memories came flooding back.
Was…was someone watching Play School ?
He ignored his phone and hurried down the hallway. When he poked his head around the living room doorway, he found Harry sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV, a bunch of paper plates, poster paints, cotton balls and glue spread out around him. He was watching the Play School presenters avidly.
“What are you doing?” Jack asked.
Harry jolted and twisted around. A pink flush rose on his cheeks. “Oh, hey. Just, um, stuff for my next prac. I’m making a lion mask. I don’t have any orange or yellow though, so I think my lion’s gonna be blue.”
Jack had to fight a sudden urge to kiss the end of Harry’s nose, because he looked fucking adorable. Adorable? Adorkable? Jack wasn’t sure. Whichever it was, all he knew was that the way Harry looked right now, cotton balls in hand, glasses slightly askew and cheeks pink, he was more than just mildly attractive. He was also clearly embarrassed, so Jack did the only thing he could think of. He plopped down next to him, folding his own legs underneath himself, and picked up a paper plate. “I never got to make a mask when I was a kid. I was banned from scissors in preschool.”
Harry’s eyebrows shot up. “How? I mean, they’re safety scissors.”
Jack bit his lip. “They still cut hair, though.”
Harry gasped. “You didn’t! Yours, or someone else’s?”
“Ginny McWhirter. She pushed me over at playlunch, and those pigtails were a perfect target.”
Harry laughed, his eyes bright, and Jack wondered how he’d ever thought this guy was an arsehole, even for a split second. He was suddenly curious about Harry’s date tomorrow with whoever it was this week, and how it would all play out. He could barely imagine Harry acting like a dick, while at the same time he knew he must have been able to do it brilliantly—his parents and grandparents had been talking about Mia’s horrible boyfriend for weeks. Hell, they’d probably be talking about him for the rest of their lives.
“—or both?”
“What?” Jack had missed whatever Harry was saying.
“Did you cut off one or both?” Harry asked, grinning.
“Oh! Um, only one. I cut it right at the laccy while we were having quiet time and her head was on the desk. I was a vengeful little shit as a child, apparently.”
Harry laughed again. “Oh, that’s awful. And I thought you were a decent person. Did you get sent home with a naughty note?”
Jack grimaced, the memory still fresh. “They called my parents. Afterwards, Dad gave me a lecture about turning the other cheek and told me Jesus was disappointed in me, and they took all my Hot Wheels off me for a month.”
Harry hissed between his teeth. “Harsh. Probably justified, though.” He picked up a paper plate and waggled it. “I’ll be sure to check my class for potential scissor-wielding maniacs before I let them make these, then.” He picked up a pair of scissors and held them out. “Wanna help? Recapture your lost youth?” His eyes danced with mischief.
Jack took the scissors, grinning. “Hell, yeah. Who doesn’t wanna be a blue lion?”
Harry turned his attention back to the screen where the presenter was cutting out eyeholes, and, tongue peeking out of the corner of his mouth, started to follow the instructions. Jack did the same. They spent the next half hour perfecting their technique while they shared the toasted sandwiches Jack had made.It was the oddest Friday night Jack had spent in a while, but also possibly the nicest.
At the end of it they’d managed to make several almost-presentable masks—well, presentable by preschool standards, which were admittedly low—and Harry somehow had blue paint on his cheek. Jack couldn’t resist leaning in and dragging his thumb across it, wiping it away. Harry’s eyes widened, and his lips parted as though he’d just discovered something startling, but he didn’t pull away from Jack’s touch.
God, Jack wanted to kiss him. He wanted to kiss him so badly. But he wasn’t that guy, wasn’t someone who kissed first and asked later. Harry hadn’t given any indication he was interested, and Jack sure as hell wasn’t going to ask and possibly jeopardize his new living situation. So he just drew his hand back, held up his painty thumb and said, “You looked like you were auditioning for Braveheart .”
Harry swallowed, a strange look flitting across his face, before he extended a pair of scissors skyward and said in a thick brogue, “Aye! They can take our safety scissors, but they’ll never take our freedom !”
It took Jack a second to translate through the accent, but then he couldn’t help but cackle, and whatever had been brewing between them dissolved in the face of Harry's pleased grin.
Still, the moment had stayed with Jack long after they’d cleaned up and gone to bed. And now, lying in bed and listening to Tristan rattle the headboard, he had to admit to himself that he was far more attracted to Harry than he’d previously thought. And apparently, the attraction only went one way.
Well, shit.