Chapter 11
“He is so weird,” Jordan remarked the moment Patrick had left.
“He’s just a bit awkward,” Will said, unexpectedly defensive.
“I think he’s gay,” said April, and both Will and Jordan spun to her in unison.
“Say more?”
She shrugged. “Far be it for me to speculate about other people’s private lives,” she said, “but Emma Frost is his favorite mutant.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Will said.
April shrugged again and sauntered into the back. She would often do this: volunteer to go make a round of tea or take care of some kind of admin-related task, and instead sit in the screaming cupboard for half an hour at a time, writing her fanfiction on FicFix.com. Will had read snippets. She was quite good. Her stories were evocative, well plotted, and smutty as hell. She’d amassed a considerable following. Will harbored a suspicion that April was fanfic famous.
“As if he thought we were dating,” Jordan marveled. “Wait. Unless. Do you think he was coming onto one of us? Both of us? Did he think we saw him from across the bookshop and really liked his vibe?”
“Less iced coffee for you,” Will said, sliding the remnants of Jordan’s latte off the counter and into the bin. “And I thought you weren’t into threesomes?”
“Correct.” Jordan nodded. “I do not share the spotlight.”
To be fair to Patrick, this was far from the first time somebody had assumed he and Jordan were a couple. They were physically affectionate with each other, for sure, and had been known to bicker like people who’d been married for years. But most of the time, it was a simple case of a drunk straight woman seeing two men standing next to each other in a gay bar and being overcome by the urge to make them kiss like a child playing with an Action Man and Ken.
The truth was, he and Jordan had originally met on Grindr and even gone on a date. They’d talked nonstop over GTs about their favorite books, films, Real Housewives cast members, and Madonna eras, ending the evening by falling into bed together, a decision made largely as a result of said GTs and the fact that Uber was surge-pricing at the time. The sex, from what little Will could remember, had been perfunctory at best, and when they both awoke the next morning, they had cackled like hyenas and agreed to never do it again.
The two of them had been best friends ever since, inseparable to the point of codependency, and if more than a day or two went by without one of them texting, the other immediately assumed he was dead.
“Anyway, did you hear about the latest nonsense?” Jordan asked.
“I am always here for nonsense. Proceed.”
“Well.” Jordan’s tone grew clipped, efficient: what he liked to call his Business Bitch voice. “The council are trying to limit the opening hours of the bars on Hurst Street again. Noise complaints. Turns out the people who moved into the brand-new block of flats next to the busiest gay bar in the heart of the gay quarter didn’t think that they might actually have to deal with real gay people coming and going.”
“For god’s sake,” said Will. “Don’t they try this every couple of years?”
“Yep. It’s textbook. Try and force the bars to close earlier, which means fewer people end up going, meaning they make less money, meaning they close down, and some wanker in a gray suit can snap up the empty buildings and turn them into flats or”—he wrinkled his nose—“a Joe The Juice.”
“Perish the thought.”
“Capitalism and homophobia are cousins,” said Jordan, with the kind of finality that Will knew meant he would neither explain nor elaborate on what this actually meant.
It was worrying. Gay bars were on the brink of extinction, with old venues closing down all the time, and precious few new ones opening. Will couldn’t picture a version of Birmingham without the Village, and he didn’t like the thought of having to.
On the surface, the place was nothing special. A run-down watering hole with lights kept intentionally low so punters couldn’t see the scars. But people still flocked to the Village every weekend, and Will wasn’t alone in harboring a soft spot for the old girl. If there was one thing gay men were drawn to, it was the shabby glamour of a diva past her prime.
“What are you going to do?” Will asked.
Jordan drummed his fingers on the countertop. “Something fabulous, I’m sure,” he said. “I just need to figure out what.”
“Let me know when you do,” said Will. “We’ll fight it together.”
“Thanks, boo.” Jordan kissed him on the cheek and headed for the exit, no doubt returning home for an outfit change before his shift at the bar. Will pottered around behind the counter for a while longer, enjoying the quiet that descended whenever Jordan vacated a room, a silence permeated only by the comforting sound of April humming in the back. He had half a mind to go back there and probe that theory of hers about their celebrity customer.
Three. This made three meetings with Patrick. (He wasn’t sure when he started thinking of Patrick Lake as just “Patrick,” like they were old chums or something, but here he was.) Could April be right? Surely not.
“Emma Frost, my foot,” he muttered, reaching to answer his vibrating phone. It took him a moment to recognize the voice on the other end: Separated from her arched brows and fake lashes, Faye Runaway sounded a little like Ozzy Osbourne.
“I might have a gig for you, babygirl,” she said. “Olivia Lyfe was supposed to do it, but she just got doxed.”
“Doxed? Sounds painful.”
“Don’t be cute, dear. Some bigoted mouth-breathers leaked all her information online. Her phone number, her private accounts. People are sending pictures of her all dolled up to her grandparents in Jamaica.”
“Shit.” Will instantly regretted his flippant tone. “That’s awful.”
“She wasn’t out to them,” Faye said. “She’s in bits. She’s even talking about giving up drag.”
“She’s upset, needs a bit of time,” Will said. “You’re not a real queen until you’ve threatened to give up drag—even I know that.”
“True. But she’s really left me in the lurch, so I think she means it, at least for now.”
“What’s the gig?”
“Drag queen story hour at the library. Saturdays at noon. I don’t know how you are with kids, but you have that bookshop job, so I reasoned there is a pretty good chance you’re at least semiliterate.”
“Tee-hee,” Will sang. “You said ‘semi.’?”
He was fairly certain he could hear Faye pinch the bridge of her nose.
“Just don’t be late,” she warned. Then, to somebody else as she hung up: “Never have kids.”