Chapter Seventeen
Colin’s bag was on the hook by the bedroom door, which was where it lived now.
His work bag stayed by the front door with his boots, zipped and ready for Monday.
This was a holdall he’d picked up from the Primark on Barking High Road three weeks ago for twelve quid, containing the things a man needed when he was spending more nights in someone else’s house than his own, but wasn’t quite ready to call it what it was.
It held a toothbrush, deodorant, a clean vest, pants for the morning, and the reading glasses he only wore in private because vanity was, apparently, the last thing to go. The holdall had taken its place on the hook without discussion. Diwa hadn’t commented on it, and Colin hadn’t explained it.
Friday nights had developed a pattern. Colin would arrive after his last job of the week, kick his boots off by the yellow door, and find Diwa already horizontal on the sofa with something playing on the television that neither of them would really watch.
Tonight it was a documentary about avocado farming.
A drone shot was gliding over an endless green canopy somewhere in Mexico, and a narrator with a very serious voice was talking about water tables.
“So here’s the thing,” Diwa said, without lifting his head from the cushion.
“A single avocado takes something like three hundred and twenty litres of water to grow. Which is insane, right? That’s a full bathtub.
Every time you eat one, you’re basically eating a bathtub full of water.
And the cartels have got involved now, because the margins are so good.
There are actual armed guards patrolling avocado orchards in Michoacán. They call them oro verde. Green gold.”
“Mm.” Colin lowered himself onto the other end of the sofa and let his head fall back against the armrest. His lower back was singing at him from six hours of deep-cleaning a four-storey in Chelsea, and the sofa cushions were so absurdly expensive that sitting on them felt like being absorbed by a cloud.
“And the deforestation is wild. They’re clearing high-altitude pine forest for new orchards, which is destroying monarch butterfly habitat, which…
okay, that’s a whole other rabbit hole, but the point is, the global demand for avocados is literally reshaping ecosystems. And I say this as someone who eats one every single day. ”
“Fascinating,” Colin said, and closed his eyes.
The sofa shifted under him. Diwa had turned onto his side and was rearranging himself the way he always did, unable to stay still for longer than five-minute stretches.
Colin felt the approach before the contact, as a warm redistribution of weight along the cushions.
Then Diwa’s shoulder was against Colin’s thigh, his head finding the dip between Colin’s hip and the armrest, fitting himself into the available space.
“Your feet are freezing,” Diwa said, because his hand had wrapped around Colin’s ankle where his sock had ridden down.
“It’s March.”
“Your circulation is a disaster. Have you thought about compression socks? There’s actually really good evidence for graduated compression in people who stand all day. The venous return data alone…”
“If you buy me compression socks, Diwa, I will leave this house and never come back.”
“You don’t mean that.”
Colin scowled at Diwa, out of principle. But he knew he wasn’t going to leave this house tonight because of the alpha currently sprawled beside him with one warm hand spread flat against Colin’s stomach.
Diwa’s palm closed around Colin’s foot and drew it into his lap, peeling the non-compression sock off with his other hand and dropping it over the side of the sofa. He did the same with the other foot. Then he pressed both thumbs into the arch of Colin’s left foot and pushed.
Colin’s breath left him in a low moan.
The pressure was firm and slow, Diwa’s thumbs working in a long stroke from the ball of his foot down to the heel, finding the tight knot of muscle that six hours on his feet had wound into a fist. Colin’s toes curled against Diwa’s thigh.
The second pass went deeper, and another moan escaped Colin.
“You’re all knots.” Diwa’s voice had gone lower. His thumbs circled the arch, pressing into the fascia.
He let his head fall sideways against the armrest and stared at the ceiling.
The plaster was smooth and perfectly finished, without a single crack or bubble, because Diwa’s contractors had done a proper job.
Diwa’s thumbs found the space between the tendons on the top of his foot and pressed there, and Colin’s eyes closed.
He’d spent his adult life on his feet hauling mop buckets and vacuum cleaners up flights of stairs that never seemed to end. His feet had carried him through every one of those years without complaint, and he’d never once had anybody to put their hands on them afterwards like this.
Diwa switched to the right foot, and the first press of his thumbs into the arch pulled a sigh out of Colin.
His shoulders dropped. The ache in his lower back loosened as though the tension had been running a circuit from his spine down through his calves and into the soles of his feet, and Diwa had found the off switch.
Then his mobile buzzed against his hip and drew him out of it.
Colin opened one eye. The screen was lit up with Stephen’s name, and the small photo beside it, Stephen at twenty-two, squinting into the sun at Southend, ice cream in hand, glowed up at him from the cushion.
He thumbed the answer icon and brought his mobile up to his ear. “Evening, love.”
“Daddy! I’m not interrupting, am I? I just wanted to check in before the weekend. Ryland’s taken the car to his mum’s tomorrow so I can’t pop round, but I thought we could do Sunday lunch if you’re free? I was thinking that Italian place on the Broadway. The one with the garlic bread you like.”
“Sunday’s good.”
Diwa had not stopped his massaging. If anything, Diwa’s thumbs had slowed down, deepening the pressure with deliberate focus.
“Brilliant. Oh, and I spoke to Lysander today. He’s got a new tattoo, daddy, but don’t worry, it’s just a small one. It’s a little drawing of Geoffrey on his forearm. He sent a photo and it’s actually quite sweet, it’s got these little — hang on, I’ll send it to you.”
Diwa’s thumb now traced a long slow line from Colin’s heel to the ball of his foot, pressing into the arch with a pressure that sent heat up the inside of Colin’s calf. Colin bit down on the inside of his cheek.
“So anyway,” Stephen was saying, “I told him it was nice, because what else are you going to say? It’s on there now, isn’t it? And at least it’s not someone’s name. If he’d come home with someone’s name on him I’d have had words.”
“Mm.” Colin’s contribution to this conversation was getting thinner by the second.
“Are you all right, daddy? You sound a bit distant.”
“I’m fine, love. Just tired. I’ve had a long day.”
Diwa looked up at him. His dark eyes caught the light from the television, and the corner of his mouth curled upward. Without breaking eye contact, he lifted Colin’s foot, turned his head, and pressed his mouth to the arch.
The kiss was soft and warm and landed on the exact spot where Diwa’s thumbs had been working, and Colin’s exclamation had to be converted very quickly into a cough.
“Daddy?”
“I’m fine.”
Diwa’s lips curved against the sole of Colin’s foot. His eyes hadn’t left Colin’s face. “You like that, do you?” he murmured, his voice low, but not inaudible. Not for hypervigilant Stephen.
Stephen’s voice went sharp. “Is someone with you?”
“No.”
“I heard a voice.”
“That’s the telly, love.”
“That wasn’t the telly.”
Colin looked over at Diwa, who was still holding his foot against his mouth, watching him over the arch of it with his dimples fully deployed. Colin narrowed his eyes at him, which accomplished nothing.
“It’s a mate from work, Stevie. He’s just popped round.”
“A mate from work.”
“That’s right.”
“At nine o’clock. On a Friday night.”
“People visit at nine on a Friday, Stephen.”
“You don’t! You’re in bed by half nine! You watch the news and then you’re out like a light. That’s been your Friday routine since I was twelve years old. Who is this person?”
“He’s a — I told you, love, he’s a work friend. He had me round to do some jobs at his place, and we got talking, and now I pop around his place sometimes.”
“This is the American alpha, isn’t it? The Notting Hill one.”
Diwa, who could apparently hear every word coming through the phone at this distance, produced his full dimpled grin and gave Colin’s foot another kiss, this one on the side of his ankle.
“Stephen —”
“It is, isn’t it? It’s the light bulb man.”
“I’m going to hang up now, love.”
“You’re not hanging up. Daddy, you’re at his house, aren’t you? You’re at his house on a Friday night!”
“Good night, Stephen.”
“I want to meet him, and so will Ryland. What’s his full name?”
Colin knew that the second he gave a name to Stephen it would be passed on to Ryland, who had all sorts of access to databases, and knew how to do hack-y, complex computer things. “I love you, Stephen. Go to bed now.”
He pressed the red button and let the mobile drop onto the cushion beside his head. The drone had moved on to a processing plant, showing thousands of avocados rolling along a conveyor belt while a woman in a hairnet sorted them by size.
“He seems lovely,” Diwa said.
“He’s a nightmare. He gets it from his father.”
“His omega father who shows up at people’s houses and falls asleep on their sofa and drools on them?”
“That’s the one.”
Diwa set Colin’s foot down carefully on his thigh and shifted his weight, moving up along the sofa until they were side by side. His arm went around Colin’s shoulders, easy and practiced now, and Colin let himself be drawn in until his cheek pressed into the dip of Diwa’s collarbone where it fit.
“He wants to meet you,” Colin said, into the cotton of Diwa’s shirt.
“I gathered.”
“Ryland will interrogate you. In the nicest, most relentless way possible.”
“Who’s Ryland?”
“Stephen’s alpha. He’s a good lad. Bit intense. He filled my freezer with soup when I was in hospital and worked out my macro targets on a spreadsheet.”
“I already like him,” Diwa said. “I’m going to ask him to give me access to that spreadsheet.”
Colin tipped his face up. Diwa’s chin was resting on the top of his head, and from this angle Colin could see the underside of his jaw, and the shadow of stubble coming through.
“I want to meet them, Colin.” Diwa’s hand came up to the back of Colin’s head, fingers threading through his hair in a slow scratch that made Colin’s scalp tingle. “Whenever you’re ready. No rush.”
“I know.”
The narrator had moved on to grafting techniques, a close-up of someone’s weathered hands binding a cutting to rootstock with wraps of tape. Diwa’s fingers kept working through his hair, slow and rhythmic, and Colin closed his eyes and let the tension of the week run out of him.
Diwa’s heartbeat was steady under his ear, and Colin was, against every reasonable expectation of his life, happy.
“Diwa.”
“Mm?”
“Come to Sunday lunch with me?”
Colin could feel the exact moment the words landed, because Diwa’s breathing changed. There was a single caught beat, then a silence that preceded either a very sweet comment or a very stupid one. Given that this was Diwa, it would probably be both.
“Yeah?” Diwa’s voice came out carefully casual. “Sunday lunch. With your kid?”
“And Ryland. There’s an Italian place on the Broadway in Barking that we’ve been going to for years. The garlic bread’s good. The wine’s not.”
“I’m going to Google the restaurant. I want to look at the menu so I can have intelligent opinions about the specials. What time are we going? I should get a haircut. Can I get a haircut before Sunday? There’s a place in Marylebone that does walk-ins, but their Sunday hours are —”
“Diwa. This place has paper tablecloths, so match your expectations with that bit of info. All you need to do is make sure you wear some sort of shirt. You don’t need to bring a Barolo.”
“All right,” he said. “I’ll make sure to wear a shirt.”
He lay back down, and Colin’s head rested against his chest again.
They stayed like that while the avocado documentary ran its credits over footage of an orchard at sunset.
Diwa’s fingers returned to Colin’s hair, but his thumb was tapping a rhythm against Colin’s scalp which he recognised as a self-soothing gesture of the alpha’s.
He’d bring the Barolo. Colin knew this with the same certainty with which he knew the bus timetable.