Chapter Thirteen
Aiden
Waking up at four in the morning to three missed calls from the police was never going to be a good thing. Especially not when they left cryptic messages about an issue with the building my kitchen was in.
For fuck’s sake! Could the universe not give me five fucking minutes of peace?
I threw my clothes on at double speed and hurried out the door without bothering to stop for coffee or breakfast, muttering darkly under my breath as I headed for my car.
I spent the whole of the ten-minute drive hoping it was nothing more than a tripped security alarm or a break-in, but as soon as I pulled into the car park and saw two police cars, a fire engine, and a van from the local water company, I knew I was fucking toast.
“What happened?” I asked as I headed towards the small crowd by the door—mostly building security, emergency services, and a couple of people from the other businesses on my floor.
There was a foul stench in the air, and I recoiled, my heart sinking even further as I started to piece things together.
“Not really sure,” Monika, one of the owners of the fetish wear company, said. She was wearing a hoodie and joggers and still managed to look more put together than I did ninety percent of the time. “Smells like sewage, but sewage pipes don’t burst.”
“I was told something about flooding,” added Paul, who ran one of the e-commerce businesses. Something to do with computer parts. “Apparently one of the pipes burst?”
“I heard a water main,” said someone else. I didn’t know their name, but I thought they worked at the other bakery.
“Fuck!” I groaned. “Seriously?”
“Apparently.”
“Either way, I’m pretty sure our units have had three feet of water running through them,” Paul said with a sigh as he ran his hand across his shaved head. “How the fuck did this happen?”
“We’re at the bottom of a slope,” I said hollowly, trying to process what Paul had said. “And if the water got to the rolling doors… or through the external ones.”
“Maybe that’s where the sewage smell is from? If the sewage pipes also got flooded,” Monika added. She looked more annoyed than despairing, and I could understand why. Our livelihoods were at stake and there was fuck all we could do except stand here. We didn’t even know what was really going on.
Cold sweat slid down my spine, fear spiking in my chest as I stared at the mess in front of me, powerless to do anything.
Most of the time, I was a pretty chilled guy.
Not much bothered me. But being out of control like this, having no say in what happened to my business and no idea when or if I’d be able to get back to work was making my stomach turn.
I had orders to fill, contract obligations, loan payments to make, and the thinnest margins between surviving and going under.
If I couldn’t fulfil orders, I’d have to issue refunds and lock down the website. My coffee shops might find other suppliers. And I wouldn’t be able to do shit.
Yeah, I had insurance but who knew how long it would take for them to pay out?
I didn’t even know what I was going to have to replace.
If the whole place had been flooded, that could mean everything had to go and I couldn’t afford to replace stuff out of pocket.
We might not be able to get back in for weeks either!
I wanted to rage, scream, and cry, but I refused to break down in the middle of a fucking car park.
Turning away from the group, I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and bit my lip as I debated who to call first. Usually, I hated bothering people. I was a closed-off bastard and I hated relying on others. But I also knew if it was one of them, I’d be fucking pissed if they didn’t call me.
It was nearly five now, still too early for most people to be up. But I had to try.
The first person I rang was Bacon, who lived the closest. I’d known him since we were teenagers, when he’d come to my defence after some shitheads at school had tried to bully me for being trans.
Bacon had handed out a split lip, two black eyes, and a bloodied nose to the perpetrators and argued loudly with all the teachers that he was acting in defence of and upholding the school’s anti-bullying policy.
He’d been suspended for a week, but I’d turned up at his flat with some chips from the chip shop and that’d cemented our friendship.
While it was early, there was a chance he’d be awake because he spent like, two bloody hours in the gym every morning before he went to open the pub.
Bacon’s pub was not a cosy or classy one.
It was the sort of place most people would avoid unless it was their local or they’d been going there for years.
Which was a shame because it was surprisingly accepting and they did a banging pub quiz on a Wednesday. And their chips were proper lush too.
“Eggs?” Bacon’s voice was full of sleep and I winced. Clearly, it wasn’t a gym day. “What’s wrong?”
“My kitchen’s flooded. Looks like a pipe or water main burst,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. “They won’t tell us what’s going on, but everyone thinks we’ve had three feet of water through our units. Might have even flooded the sewage pipes. I think everything’s gone.”
“What the fuck? You’re fucking kidding me? Jesus Christ, Eggs.”
“Yeah. It’s… fucking wank.” I chuckled hollowly. Saying it all out loud made it so much more real. This wasn’t simply another nightmare I’d wake up from and tell myself that was what I got for drinking coffee before bed.
“Want me to come down there?”
“If you don’t mind? But if you’re still in bed… Sorry, I thought it was a gym day.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m already up. Gimme twenty minutes,” he said. I could hear him moving around, probably trying to find some clean pants to put on. “You called anyone else?”
“Not yet. I was gonna call Jonny but I’m not sure what time he gets up.”
“So I get turfed outta bed but your brother doesn’t?” he asked teasingly. “Call him. You know he’ll be pissed off if you don’t.”
“Yeah, I know.” I really hoped Jonny wouldn’t skip training to drive down here. It wasn’t like he could do anything and there was no point all of us lingering in the car park.
“Alright, I’ll be with you in a bit. You had any breakfast?”
“No.”
“I’ll grab us a Maccies on the way.”
“Cheers,” I said, my stomach giving an interested rumble. The idea of a sausage and egg McMuffin and some hash browns did sound pretty good right about now.
Once Bacon had hung up and I’d checked to see if there was any more news on what’d happened and when we’d be allowed in, I called Jonny. I wasn’t expecting him to answer, but he did. “Aiden? Everything okay?”
“Er, not really,” I said as I glanced at the building. “We’ve had a pipe or water main burst where my kitchen is. The whole place is flooded. There might even be sewage.”
“You’re shitting me?”
“Wouldn’t be calling you this early if I was.”
“Yeah… right, okay… I can be in the car in ten minutes, and it’s, what, just over an hour?
I’ll be there by seven,” he said. In the background I could hear another voice murmuring.
Devon. Somehow I’d forgotten he’d be there.
Jonny said something to him, voice muffled, and I guessed he’d put his phone against his chest so I couldn’t hear him.
I didn’t know why. We didn’t exactly need secrecy.
“Okay, I’m going to come to you. Devon will go to training,” Jonny said firmly as he came back on the line.
“You don’t need to do that,” I said. “Bacon’s coming and you can’t exactly do much. We’re not even allowed in at the moment.”
“Don’t care, I’m coming anyway. You’re my brother and that’s what family does.”
I wanted to tell him our family didn’t, but that would be a dick move.
Jonny and I had worked really hard to get closer over the last few years, and I appreciated how much he cared.
We’d fought a lot growing up, mostly because we’d been close in age and similar enough that we grated on each other for simply existing.
It hadn’t helped that, at times, I’d been frustrated by the fact he got to do things I couldn’t, simply because my body didn’t fit the requirements.
But Jonny hadn’t ever held that against me, and the first thing he’d done when he’d gotten a professional contract at eighteen was get me into a private clinic for the official diagnosis I’d need to start T and then start paying for my prescriptions.
Which he still did. He’d helped with the ridiculous amount of paperwork, paid for my name change, my top surgery, and my hysterectomy—everything and anything I’d wanted.
No questions. No obligations. Just because he was my brother and he loved me.
He’d even come down to stay for a few days after each surgery, despite the fact he was a shit nurse and I was a worse patient and we ended up at each other’s throats after twenty-four hours.
It was why my middle name was John. A fact I still hadn’t told him because I was allergic to big emotional moments.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll see you in a bit. Drive safe, yeah? Don’t rush.”
“I won’t. See you soon.”
He hung up and I was left staring at the screen with a strange feeling gnawing at my stomach.
Without really thinking, I opened WhatsApp, where my group chat with Hunter and Bailey lingered at the top.
Bailey had named it Sex Squad one morning over the summer while they’d been in Ibiza, and none of us had changed it.
I reread the messages from the previous night, a smile pulling at the corner of my mouth and nudging away my anxiety as I looked at the picture Hunter had sent of the two of them on the sofa, grinning brightly at me with sparkling eyes.
Bailey was still slightly pink from the summer and I understood why Hunter had been so persistent about him wearing sun cream.
Hunter’s rapid messages, where he’d poured out his heart and frustrations, were in another chat, but their consequences were smiling up at me from the screen.
I hadn’t expected him to confide in me about his eating disorder, and I was oddly touched by the gesture, especially as it didn’t sound like many people knew.
He’d been more concerned about Bailey, though, worry bleeding through his words as they poured across the screen, desperately hoping I could help him.
Help both of them.
They were so close and yet so far apart, their feelings a monstrous sinkhole they refused to acknowledge. And their clear care for each other tugged at the soft, gooey spot in my heart that I mostly refused to acknowledge. How could I not want to help them?
Especially if it kept me in their lives for a little bit longer.
My fingers tapped the screen, writing and deleting various things over and over.
I didn’t want to worry them, but there was no way they weren’t going to find out from Devon what’d happened when they rocked up to training and Jonny was missing.
And since Devon knew what the three of us were doing, there was a good chance he’d talk to them about it.
After last night they deserved better than hearing it second-hand.
Aiden
How’re you both doing this morning? I woke up to the news my kitchen has flooded with water and possibly sewage. I’m fine just fucking pissed. Jonny’s coming down so you don’t need to worry.
I chewed my lip, trying to think of a way to lighten the mood because I didn’t need anyone else worrying about it.
The fire crew was milling around their truck—hopefully getting ready to get the fucking water out of my bloody kitchen. I grinned and lifted my phone to snap a picture of them, dropping it in the chat.
Aiden
On the plus side there might be hot firefighters
I slid my phone back into my pocket, knowing they wouldn’t be up for a while.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bacon’s battered white van pulling into the car park, the bassline of his music making the already shitty suspension vibrate. He saw me, waved, and pointed to the seat beside him.
The beautiful bastard had brought me a Maccies breakfast as promised.
Thank fuck for small mercies. And hash browns.