Chapter 21
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
TUESDAY
Light streaked in through the gap in Simon’s curtains in an unnecessarily bright shaft, tractor-beaming me out of unconsciousness. Birdsong wafted in through the window a thousand decibels too loud. I squinted at the world, stubbornly refusing to admit being awake.
Through the blur of my eyelashes, Simon’s colour-saturated walls thrummed deep indigo blue. In lamplight they’d seemed rich and dark, not migraine-inducingly vibrant.
Fuck me.
Oh, wait. Task already accomplished. Both physically and mentally. So, what happened next when the guy you were fake dating in order to protect from being fired turned out to be confusingly invested?
No clinging to the edge of the bed to keep an inch of space between us this time.
“Morning,” I whispered, lips right up against his ear.
Simon grunted, rolling me back into focal distance with a hand to my chest. “Still need to see your mouth move, you bastard.”
“Didn’t want to wake you.”
He fluttered an eyeroll, flicking me an uncoordinated sign that made me laugh. “Bullshit.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“I’ll get the coffee on,” I signed. “My turn.”
Simon’s pyjama pants looked absolutely nothing like anything I identified as sleepwear. And, strolling across his kitchen towards me, citrussey smelling and newly shaved, he had fuck-all else on.
Large stylised big cats – leopards maybe – prowled along the dark teal silky fabric slung sinfully low on his hips, winding their way up around his leg-day-all-day thighs and diagonally down across his groin.
Foxes sat bolt upright in between them – all narrow-eyed and suspicious, loudly judging all the blood in my body rapidly redistributing itself in a flood of wilful optimism as if everything we’d got up to last night wasn’t already enough. I swear to god my pupils dilated.
My mouth creaked open. No words came out.
Christ on a bike. I’d shred the damn things off him with my teeth if he came any closer. Which would be a crime, it really would.
“Is it giving you trouble?”
“What?”
The end of the world could have come before I remembered he even owned a coffee machine.
I squinted at the overly-complicated barista-level contraption, trying to get it to do something other than flash warning lights at me in disappointment.
The cup I’d shoved under the spout remained embarrassingly empty.
I was probably irreparably damaging the thing jabbing buttons.
“I– erm…”
Simon leaned in, pressing cool silk against my hairy thigh. My lungs seized as he tugged the lever I’d apparently been failing to line up.
“The filter gets clogged sometimes, and you have to—”
An incomprehensible caveman sound squeezed itself out of my throat.
Simon’s eyebrow hitched, brimful of wicked amusement.
His understated abs rippled as he squared to face me.
A light trail of tightly curled hairs extended down from his belly button signposting the direction of a prize that wasn’t – technically – mine.
Even if he had been up for a second go last night, and everything this morning felt easier than it had any right to be.
I swiped imaginary dribble from my stubbly chin.
“Ben?”
“Sorry. You’re... These are…” My ability to sentence disintegrated in real time. I flapped a hand at him without a hint of language in it.
“The height of chic?” Simon supplied, stepping close, arms caging me in against the worktop. “Fashion defined.”
I rediscovered my glare. “Yeah, fine. And I’m—”
“Disadvantageously turned on?” He glinted, ego fully stoked.
“Don’t think that’s a word.”
Casual as anything, he pulled the knot on the waistband of his trousers, and the skulking leopards and primly sitting foxes slid down his unfairly magnificent thighs.
“It’s a word.”
Oh, fuck me, the man knew how to be direct.
“Leave the coffee. Join me in the shower instead.”
Not one inch of me wanted to argue with that plan.
The hot water ran out some time after Simon left me to suds myself clean. I stayed under the spray until my skin rose up in sandpaper bumps and I’d cooled myself off. Apparently that was long enough for him to be fashion-magazine perfect.
“Your flatmate’s messaging you.” Simon caught my eye in the reflection of his bedroom mirror.
He adjusted his tie, smoothing the front of his waistcoat before he handed me my phone.
Thumbing down the lock screen, I winced.
Matt
Should I be calling the cops and sticking up missing posters?
“I should probably head.” I’d told Matt I’d be back last night.
“Or, you could stay?” Simon wheedled, sliding his arm round my chilly hips, pulling me against him. My resolve to be a good flatmate melted. He angled my phone, selfie-style, and clicked a shot.
“Unlock it for me?”
I hesitated, then did it anyway, pulse spiking as he thumbed a line of text. Last time someone commandeered my phone while I was partly clothed, it had been Luke asking Simon for a threesome.
“What are you—?”
“Here.”
Simon had titled the photo Proof of Life. And it sat in my messages to Matt, waiting for me to hit send.
In the picture, Simon looked loved up. Fuck me, so did I. And I didn’t want to start lying to my flatmate. The whole internet might think we were together, but I needed one person in the world who’d commiserate with me about the headfuck I’d walked myself into.
If Matt thought I’d been shagging Simon without telling him for the best part of a year, he was not going to be that person.
I hit delete, and tapped out a new reply.
Ben
Don’t panic, mate. Back soon.
Simon rolled his eyes. “Would his head implode seeing you with another man?”
“Piss off. He knows I’m bi.”
“Good.” Simon nodded, handing me my t-shirt, and I realised he’d folded all my clothes into a neat pile on the chair in the corner. “Now, whatever happened to my coffee?”
“There’s this place I wanted to show you,” Simon said, leading me out the front door after coffee and toast. “We didn’t get nearly enough pictures yesterday. Wasn’t that the point of following me home?” He kept looking across at me instead of paying attention to where he was walking.
“Sounds good.” I nearly knocked myself out on three lampposts in a row trying not to break eye contact.
“Executive decision,” Simon announced once he’d stopped laughing at me. “No more talking ’til we get there. For safety purposes.”
He led us on a criss-cross path, through residential streets I’d never be able to mentally map, and at the end of a twee, cobbled cut-through, a kind of square opened out between old industrial buildings. This felt private – part of his real life, not the curated version he brought to work.
A dozen or so bric-a-brac covered trestle tables crowded out of the double-height doors of a brightly painted warehouse, hemmed with clothing racks.
Around the walled yard, handwritten arrows directed people inside for vinyl and more vintage clothes.
The table-tops bulged with magpie hoards of knick knacks in silver and glass.
Delicate multi-coloured teacups in precarious stacks jostled against stout pottery bowls.
Rolled leather belts hedgehogged up next to heaps of tangled strings of glass beads, overflowing from boxes.
I whistled low, taking in all the bits and bobs I’d never found a place for in my life.
Racks and racks of clothing stretched into the building – all outrageous brightly coloured things from another era. Not a graphic tee in sight. I wouldn’t know what to do with any of it, but Simon steered us gleefully closer.
“After something special?” I asked, breaking silence.
“Always.” He turned, pacing back a step to maintain eye contact. “But I never know until I find it.”
“We’re going to be here a while then?”
His grin furled out to meet my badly hidden awkwardness. “Good things are always worth the hunt.”
How had I known he was going to say that?
Hangers clacked together as he moved along the first row of clothing and then he was scanning the cluttered table tops with intent. I followed, hanging back, not sure what else to do. He was in his element here. Joining in should have been easy.
Then he was beckoning me over, rummaging through a box of watches with a new burst of enthusiasm.
I peered close, expecting some kind of treasure, but he pulled out a plain, beaten up, grimy thing that belonged in the bin. Half the strap had sheared off. Nothing to fuss over. I didn’t get the appeal of sifting through other people’s junk.
“Think they forgot to chuck that one out.”
Simon sighed, smoothing his thumb over the chipped glass face.
“It’s not about finding the brightest thing going, Ben. Sometimes”—he caught my eye, locking in as he weighed the thing in the hollow of his palm—“you need to hold something for a while to work out whether it’s right for you or not. Whether you really want to take it home.”
My mouth went dry. “That right?”
“Absolutely.”
My pulse thundered at his stretched out pause. Stupid, wilful optimism painted layers of meaning in where there were none. What was I doing to myself?
He held out the battered watch for me to take.
“I got Great Uncle Morris’ watch in that suitcase I told you about.
Don’t know what brand it was – nothing fancy, don’t get ideas.
But there was a certain feel to his. I loved the way the leather strap had worn so the colour faded out where he fastened it every day.
The shape of the numbers. The soft scratches in the metal because he never took it off even when he was working.
It settled into your hand with just the right weight. ”
God I liked the way he talked about things. Like every mark and dent and imperfection had value. He’d stood in the shower that morning and held me in his palm there too.
Simon’s skin had warmed the small metal case. It radiated his heat back into my hand as I took it, thrumming with the life every touch had left on it, as grounding as a sun-warmed pebble.
“Oh.”
“Authenticity’s powerful, isn’t it?” Simon beamed. “Humans are remarkable. We always know when the outside doesn’t match what’s inside.”
My gut twisted uncomfortably.