I cut the water off and grabbed a towel from the rack on the wall. If it had been dark and I'd just walked into the room, I could have pulled the cord and been under the water before the light came on, the shower was that cramped.
Any financial straits he might be in weren't his fault, though. He'd practically jacked in his entire life for an ex and ended up in a kinda foreign country alone when the relationship had gone wrong. Now instead of splitting the expense he was left to support himself in a country he hadn't truly volunteered to live in, in the first place.
"There you are," James commented, when I appeared in the kitchen doorway wearing yesterday's clothes and a tentative smile. "Thought you'd got lost."
"In a bathroom that size? Little chance of that."
"And I bet you've used up all the hot water."
"Probably." I might have looked sheepish, but inside felt awkward.
How to play it, I didn't know.
"Coffee?"
Heaving in a deep breath, I gave it some thought. It was probably best to get going, but there was that reluctance rippling in the pit of my stomach like adrenaline gone wrong. "Yeah, why not?" I heard myself say and James nodded, murmured something approving.
But there was only so much time I could kill with one mug of (instant) coffee. We ended up by his front door, with me shrugging on a jacket that felt like regret weighing heavily on my shoulders.
"Well." And that was all he said. One word, one syllable. And I felt like I had to fill the silence.
"Guess I'll see you around." Fucking hell, Lombard; that sounds like a brush-off. "I mean..."
"I know what you mean."
We stared at each other for a few seconds as I tried to tell my feet to move, but nothing happened until the moment James broke the spell by moving. Only to reach into his pocket, though. He pulled out a piece of paper. "I meant to give you this."
"What is it?" I started to unfold it, but his hand shot out and covered mine.
"No; don't read it here. Wait till you get home."
"Ah." I nodded in understanding, and shoved the paper deep into my jeans pocket. "The fuck-it list." It'd make for interesting reading when I got home.
"Just make sure you don't forget, and put your jeans through the wash."
"I'm not that careless," I assured him. "Hey, I just thought...Will you tell me your real name now?"
"You already know it."
"Huh?"
He opened his front door, still smiling. "Goodbye, Austin."
Ugh. I hated those words. They sounded so final. Well, good. That was what I'd wanted all along. Who cared about final, right?
Once I got to the top of the flight of steps, I looked back and raised my hand in a half-hearted farewell at James, catching sight of a scratch above one of his hips. I smiled at the thought of him bearing a mark (or five) I'd put on him and thanked God he'd seen me off shirtless. Nice view.
Then I turned to descend, and the action made the fabric of my tee-shirt rub against a patch of sensitive skin on my back. Funny that. We must have marked each other.
Sure, I'd showered at James's but once I got home, I felt the need to do so again. At my place, without the need to put on clothes from the day before again. It didn't take long because I was clean in body if not in mind, but just wanted to reset the world. Showering at home was routine.
It made everything all right again.
I pulled on some shorts and a pair of jeans before taking the old clothes through to the machine in the kitchen.
Don't put your jeans through the wash just yet. Rifling through my pockets, I emptied them of loose change and that single piece of paper, wondering what the hell kind of assignment James had given me. If it involved donkeys, baboons, or llamas, I'd call him up and fucking ---
Actually, no, of course I wouldn't. No way of contacting him again.
Holding the folded piece of paper between finger and thumb nearly at eye-level, I stared at it for a full minute, noting a challenge in its every atom.
"You fucker," I muttered, and opened a kitchen drawer. I had a lighter there somewhere. It took some rummaging but I unearthed it eventually, this remnant of Sean, who'd smoked, even though I'd asked him not to.
It was his last act of rebellion against the anti-tobacco Nazis, he'd said.
Towards the end of "us," I'd put it down to him being a selfish jerk and still believed that today. God knew why I hadn't thrown the lighter out; I should have, but occasionally it came in useful for...well, something.
Like, now. I was going to burn that defiant piece of paper. Sure I was.
It deserved it. Being all distracting and making me think perhaps I should read whatever was on it. Bastard.
I flicked the lighter on and off a few times, standing by the sink in case I did something stupid like setting myself on fire. Didn't want to get burned, so it was safer to be near the faucet.
"God fucking damn it." I threw the lighter onto the countertop and unfolded the note even though I didn't really want to. Except I did.
James Alexander Gordon, just so you know.
And my heart did something funny, like drop into my stomach. Jesus.
Never trust a man with two first names, my gran had always said. What the hell she would have made of a man with three, I didn't know.
And one of those names was James. I'd guessed correctly without even trying. Without even knowing.
The bunch of numbers underneath his name made it clear: this was a list of things he wanted me to do, and there was only one item on it. Him.
"Oh man, I really don't want to do this," I whispered. I whispered, like I was scared of
