Almost, but not quite.
“What?” I shrugged. “It will. We’ll be down a third of the rent each month and that’ll leave us less money for…”
Gemma lifted her eyebrows and I lowered the hand that held the beer bottle to my mouth.
“…food. And beer.” My voice got quieter. “And…stuff. Look, anyway, these are valid concerns. I hate to be the only pragmatic one here, but bills have to be paid.”
“Oh, you’ll get by,” Gemma said, her voice just a shade away from an outright snort or
“Pfft”.
“How would you know? You don’t even live here.”
“I spend enough time here to—”
“Yeah, ain’t that the truth?” I muttered.
“Kit.” This time there was enough steel in Gary’s voice to make me think again.
“Sorry.” I rolled my shoulders slowly, more to shrug off the guilt from being such a bad-tempered bastard than work out any stiffness or kink. I liked Gemma, but the bottom line was, she didn’t contribute to the Blackman-Lacey-Taylor household beyond whatever favours she privately showed Gary, and even if she did give me the glad-eye, her womanly wiles wouldn’t have worked on me.
Actually, pretty soon it looked like being the Blackman–Lacey–Who-the-fuck-ever household.
Not that that was an entirely unfeasible idea…
“Hey, listen…” I murmured, turning my back and draining the bottle. First stop, the bin to bury the dead soldier. Second stop, the fridge, to get a refill before— “What the fuck?” I let the fridge door swing open and looked over my shoulder at Gary, Gemma and Ben.
“What?” Ben sat up straight. “Something wrong?”
“That was the last fucking bottle you gave me.” When I’d walked into the kitchen, he’d had it opened and ready. A peace offering before war broke out.
“Um…yeah…?”
“There’s no fucking beer left.”
“Ah. Yeah, I…”
“You polished off the last of it?”
“Technically you did. I had the penultimate—”
“Mother fucker. You’re welcome to move out now, you beer-stealing bastard.”
“Kit. Your language is a bit…” Gary began, then swallowed nervously when I shot him a glance.
“Fruity?” I suggested, daring him to say that about the only gay guy in the room. “Not in front of the lady, am I right?”
“Her?” His laughter, though forced, went some way towards lightening the atmosphere. “Don’t make me… Anyway. You were saying…?”
“I was?” Frowning, I looked back at the fridge and kicked it shut. “Fucker. Right, yeah. If the littlest hobo over here’s moving on, we better do something about it.”
“A moving-out party?” Gemma grinned, defining the word ‘perky’. If I’d been a boobs man—as opposed to favouring pecs—I would have grabbed myself an eyeful.
“Fuck no.” I shook my head. “I’m gonna put an ad in the paper to see if we can’t find someone to replace him.”
“At least let my grave go cold, why don’t you?” Ben slapped a hand on the edge of the table, perhaps in anger. Perhaps because he was pissed off I wasn’t begging him to stay. I didn’t do that with ex-boyfriends—anymore—I sure as hell wasn’t doing it with ex-housemates.
“I’m sorry, dude—but, you know, gotta be pragmatic about these things.”
“There’s that word again,” Gary muttered.
“It’s true. If Ben’s hitting the road, we need to cover our asses.” I fucking wished. It’d been so long, if I got laid again any time this millennium I’d need a flashlight and an Ordnance Survey map to find my own prostate. “I mean, look out for ourselves. Right?”
“Excuse me? Excuse me, hello? Am I invisible or something? Am I not even here?” Ben drummed his fingers rapidly on the tabletop and raised his eyebrows in a ‘go on, I’m waiting’ expression.
“Pretty soon you won’t be so I’m not sure it makes much difference.”
Gemma groaned and buried her face in her hands, resting both elbows on the table. Her ponytail bobbed or swung or whatever it was ponytails did when women shook their heads while groaning through their fingers. “You know…” Her fingertips dragged at her skin as she lifted her head again, and she looked like she was trying to pull whatever annoyed her out of her own face.
Funny. I had that effect on a lot of people.
“It’s true. Ben hasn’t gone. Yet,” she added pointedly. Giving me that look again.
“Stop glaring at me.”
“I’m not glaring—”
“Yes, you are.”
“I’m not! Am I? Am I glaring?” Gemma’s voice rose about seventeen octaves and if it got any higher, only dogs would have been able to hear her. Maybe not such a bad thing if it gave me peace and quiet.
“Yeah, you were glaring,” Gary said. “You were a bit. But…” He shrugged. “Kit was being a twat-monkey again, so…”
“Hey, fuck you, pal.” I scowled, no longer sure if this was all ‘ha ha, very funny, friends insulting friends’ or something a bit more sincere.
“Sorry. Not really your area of expertise, is it?” he threw back. “You’re an arsehole. Put it that way.”
“How am I the arsehole? He’s the one who—”
“Christopher Blackman.” Gemma made herself sound like someone’s grandmother when she called me that. Sure, it was my name, but I still didn’t like to hear it. “Ben is moving out to be with his girlfriend. Yes, he’s breaking the lease, but you will manage.”
“Yeah, by getting someone more reliable to—”
“You. Will. Manage. Have you no romance in your soul?”
Gary snorted. “Him? Romance?”
This time it was me who glared. Trouble was, I couldn’t contradict him. Romance had died off around about the same time my sex life had packed its bags and left town on the Queen Street express.
“Nah, you’d be hard pushed to find a soul, let alone any romance there,” he added and I raised my middle finger, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, or doing a pretty good impression of its sleep-deprived, crack addict cousin with homicidal tendencies.
“When were you planning on dropping us in—I mean, moving out?” I asked, catching Gemma’s eye but ignoring the warning therein. Kind of. I’d amended my wording but the enquiry was the same.
Ben shrugged. “Within a couple of weeks.”
“Great.” I looked skyward, wondering if we could hold the damp patch on the kitchen ceiling quite literally over the landlord’s head.
