“I know, mate. That’s why I offered to do it in the first place. I’d just forgotten why it had to be today. Will you get me some apricot croissants?”
“They’re on the list. Anything else?”
“Just the usual. Mia knows what I like. When are you back?”
“Friday. Unless you need help with work. Let me know, yeah?”
“Will do.” I ended the call, half a mind on the fact that I’d have to leave Billy for a few hours, and the other on the French goodies I’d have in my cupboard by next weekend. I was still getting used to Mia playing the role our mother had for years with her monthly trips across the Channel. Before she’d come back, I’d settled for ordering beers online, but it had never felt the same. Now it was a weird mix of nostalgia, grief, and warmth, and I never knew quite what to do with it.
Billy nudged his way into my personal space. He wrapped his arms around me and nuzzled my neck. He didn’t speak, but he didn’t have to. His lips at my neck were enough to distract me from just about anything.
Billy
Gus left me in bed and went out to quote the roofing job. I hung around for a while, hoping he wouldn’t be long, but when he didn’t reappear after two episodes of Storage Hunters, I got up in search of more food.
Downstairs, I found his phone where he’d left it after he’d spoken to Luke. It was flashing with a low battery and a bunch of missed calls. I fished his charger from the drawer and plugged it in, then I fed Grey his cheeky afternoon snack and rummaged in the fridge for something I could butcher for dinner. Maybe I’d cook breakfast again. The mushroom apocalypse from this morning had gone down well when we’d finally got round to eating it.
Unbidden, images of him lifting me onto the kitchen counter so he could swallow my dick filled my head, and what had come next, from our stumble up the stairs, to Gus throwing me down on the bed. He was a legit fucking sex god, and I’d decided that lying on my stomach, with him curved around me from behind, was my favourite thing ever. It was hard to remember what I’d ever been so scared of.
Flushing, I opened the fridge to cool myself down. There was a packet of mince at the back. I retrieved it and googled how to make spaghetti bolognaise. The recipe was close enough to the shepherd’s pie I’d fudged a few weeks ago to convince me I wouldn’t fuck it up too much.
I put the radio on and picked my way through the instructions on my phone. Chopping onions made my eyes sting like a bitch, so I was kind of relieved when Gus still didn’t come home. I didn’t fancy him finding me weeping over a saucepan. He’d seen me in worse enough states as it was—passed out on his bathroom floor, surrounded by coppers, splayed out on his bed with my—
Goddamn, you’re obsessed.
I couldn’t deny it. Gus had occupied my every thought for weeks now, but sleeping with him in every sense of the words had solidified my fascination with him and how he made me feel. Fascination? That’s what you’re calling it?
Apparently so. With the imprint of his goodbye kiss still tingling on my lips, I didn’t have the brainpower to define it as something that made more sense.
I made the meat sauce to the simmering stage, stuck it on the back ring of the stove, and wandered off. Gus’s house was pretty boring without him, and I’d learned my lesson about messing with his records, so I retreated upstairs, changed his bedsheets, and gathered our discarded clothes from the floor.
With that done, I lay on my bed and wished I was in his, with him. It kept me occupied for a good while, until the smell of singed tomatoes roused me.
Cursing, I rolled off the bed and dashed downstairs. The meat sauce had caught on the bottom of the pan, but it didn’t look done. The onions I’d hacked to pieces were still crunchy, and the mushrooms looked like I’d dug them up from someone’s grave. Dammit. I swiped at my phone to check the instructions, but the battery was dead.
Of course it was. Not even Gus’s magic dick could change the fact that I was a walking, talking calamity.
Still grumbling, I plugged my phone into the charger and took Gus’s back to the kitchen. His code was his mother’s birthday, and he’d given it to me so I could use the measuring app when he misplaced the tape—something he did approximately twelve times a day, more if he got his lunch late. I tapped it in, and a flurry of notifications popped up. Messages, missed calls, and...four Grindr DMs, all from the same person.
I dropped the phone like I’d been burned.
Changed my mind.
Picked it up.
Dropped it again.
Grindr. Shit. For all the time I’d spent fretting over how I compared to the hordes of dudes I’d imagined Gus fucking, it hadn’t occurred to me for a single second that he was still on it. Moron. Why wouldn’t he be? You only started fucking, like, six hours ago, and before that you were just some crazy person who sleepwalked into his bed.
The teeny tiny rational side of me knew there was far more to what Gus and I shared than my panicked summary, but my rational side had always been quiet.
Too quiet.
I reclaimed Gus’s phone and tapped in the code. I hadn’t been on Grindr in years, since my last attempt at living my best queer life had scared me off. The message notifications had disappeared, and the inbox was in a different place to where I remembered. To get there, I had to navigate a sea of headless torsos, and with every second that passed, the pressure
