was anything else worth stealing there. Only my porn, I guessed, but I didn’t feel like lugging a carton of muscle mags over to Andrew’s, so I hid them under my dirty clothes.
I rolled the futon up to discourage people from fucking on it and stuck a sign saying, ‘STAY THE FUCK OUT’ on my door, then pushed my way through the press of bodies and down the stairs.
The party had spilled out onto the footpath, too, and down the street, so I worked my way through the crowd and up the street to somewhere that Andrew would be able to see me.
Exactly how good an idea this had been became obvious when, just as the Morris rattled to a halt beside the kerb, a panda car came down the street and pulled up where the crowd had spilled out onto the street.
Andrew was grinning as he leaned across and unlocked the passenger door.
I tossed my pack onto the back seat, put my laptop down more carefully, and climbed into the car.
“Hey, babe,” he said, and I leaned across and kissed him.
“Thanks for this, they’re being the housemates from hell at the moment,” I said.
He kissed me again. “I’m not going to complain, not if I get to sleep with you tonight.”
I had to admit, it was a benefit that had occurred to me, too, so I just grinned back at him.
He didn’t the start the car again; instead he took hold of my hand, looking serious all of a sudden. “You don’t have to say yes, but how about going back and getting the rest of your stuff?”
I could see by the streetlight that his hand was stained with paint or something. “You want me to move in with you?”
I asked. “Seriously?”
He nodded. “You’ve been at my place the past five nights.
I know you planned on being at your place to study, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to work. I think, if we set some boundaries, especially with Henry, you’ll get more study done at my place.”
I squeezed his hand, and he lifted my hand up and kissed my knuckles. “This is going to sound horribly needy and desperate and just plain embarrassing, but I was really missing you this evening, and was not looking forward to sleeping without you.”
I hugged him and said, “If you think I’m not going to drive you crazy, I’d love to move in with you.”
The police had dispersed some of the hordes of party-goers, which made emptying my room into the back of the Morris easier. I left Andrew lugging boxes down the stairs and went and found Jeff number one. He was in the kitchen, hanging onto some girl while she was sick in the sink, and I tapped his shoulder.
“Yeah,” he said, and I was glad the police had confiscated the stereo and the noise had dropped enough that I could hear him clearly.
“I’m moving out,” I said, and I took the money I’d just borrowed from Andrew out of my pocket.
“What?” he said.
“Here’s a month’s rent,” I said. “I’m leaving my futon behind, too, the household can have it.”
Heidi came over and said, “You’re leaving, Matthew?” She took the money out of Jeff’s hand and put it in her own pocket. “Because of tonight? The party?”
I shook my head. “No, because Andrew just asked me to move in with him.”
She hugged me tightly.
I didn’t really own much, not without the futon, and Andrew had got most of it in the car before I’d extricated myself from Heidi’s clutches.
He met me on the stairs, his arms full of the sheets of revision notes and anatomy sketches that had covered my walls.
“I don’t really need to take them,” I said. “Your place is too lovely to clutter up with sheets of scribble.”
He shrugged, crinkling the papers, and said, “You, of all people, must know that I’m casual about what happens to my walls. If I can paint on them, you can cover them in revision notes.”
Henry was sprawled on the couch, watching something on the TV that involved a lot of gunfire, when we arrived, and he barely glanced up when I said, “Hello.”
About five minutes later, when I walked into the house, trailing an armful of my clothes, he appeared in the doorway to the lounge room. “You moving in?” he asked me, looking at the bulging pack in my arms.
“Yep,” I said, and he nodded and went back to sprawling on the couch.
“Cool,” he said, picking up the remote control.
I carried the stuff in my arms up to Andrew’s room and added it to the mound on the bedroom floor. “That’s the last of it,” I said to Andrew, and I sat down on the bed, unbearably tired all of a sudden.
Chapter Forty Three
When I woke up on Saturday morning, the other side of the bed was empty, but there was a reassuring mound of junk at the foot of the bed. Matthew had definitely moved in.
I pulled a robe on and wandered downstairs. Henry was still in bed, but the lights were on and the coffee percolator had been started. I poured myself a mug and headed back upstairs.
Matthew was in the study, a strip of fabric tied around his head to hold his hair back, textbook propped beside his laptop on the desk, chewing his lip in thought.
“Hey, babe,” he said when he looked up. “Chronic occlusive disease?”
“Pump them full of pentoxifylline,” I said without thinking.
“Want some more coffee?”
He shook his head and went back to peering alternately at his text, and his laptop screen. I left him to it.
Henry and I spent the day walking the Roman wall through London, detouring down side streets, finishing up with a raid on HMV on Oxford St. on the way home.
I left Henry slouched on the couch, alternately lamenting the amount of exercise he’d been conned into taking and gloating over his new DVDs, and went upstairs.
Matthew was exactly where I’d left him. The only way I could tell he’d moved at all was that there were two empty plates beside his elbow on the desk, and that he wasn’t in his bathrobe anymore.
He pushed himself back from the desk and took his headphones off when I opened the door, and stretched luxuriously. “What’s the time?” he asked, and I thought that he looked damn hot in a ‘Hello Kitty’ T-shirt and a pair of my sweat pants.
“After three,” I said. “Did you wake up feeling particularly gay this morning?” I asked, gesturing at his T- shirt.
He chuckled and wriggled his eyebrows at me. “Probably, considering where I woke up. My sister gave me this T-shirt as part of some kind of campaign to appall our mum, so I’m quite fond of it. If it’s three, then I can stop; I’ve done eight hours, and I don’t think I can look at another page of signs and symptoms without screaming.”
He stood up and stretched from side to side, with alarming crunching noises from his vertebrae, then wrapped his arms around my neck and kissed me.
When we surfaced again, he said, “So what domestic goodness do you have planned for the rest of the day?”
“Hmm,” I said. “Laundry. Food shopping for the week.
Goofing around with Henry. What about you?”
“Laundry, too,” he said, pouting. “Did you know that every single item of clothing I own, apart from this T- shirt, is dirty?”
I slid my hands under the sweats he was wearing, at the back, and found bare skin. “Oh, I approve,” I murmured. “If all of your clothing being dirty explains why you haven’t been wearing shorts, I don’t think you should do any laundry.”
“Not having any boxers is one thing,” Matthew said, and I had a really good grope while he was hugging me. “But, having no clean shirts or trousers for clinical is something completely different. Now, let go of my arse so I can go and load the washing machine.”
I let go of him and said, “So, you planning on telling your mom you’ve moved in with me?”
He pushed past me and disappeared into the bedroom, reappearing a moment later with arms full of clothes.
