Only Vicente could squeeze his shoulder like that and not make it feel patronising.
“What?” Alex laughed. “I’m not invested.”
“I know that, man. I just… you’re still a catch, that’s all.”
“Still?” Alex turned his shoulders, reaching up to stroke his fingertips against the uneven hairs of Vicente’s struggling beard. He’d never known a man to be quite so hairy below the neck, only to have his face denied. In the few short months they’d dated, Alex had found it endearing. He closed his eyes, letting his touch slip down Vicente’s throat to the trimmed hairs of his chest.
“I’m not growing it out.”
Alex laughed. “That’s not what I was—”
“Liar. You absolutely were thinking that.”
Alex shifted his weight again, resting his cheek against Vicente’s body, the scent of tobacco, vermouth, and the curious citrus soap he’d used as long as Alex had known him, all too familiar. “We’re not wasting our time, are we?”
Vicente shrugged, giving Alex’s hand a squeeze. “I don’t regret what we’re doing, if that’s what you mean.”
He eased himself off Vicente’s lap and kissed his cheek. “I should go.”
“Are you sure, man? The couch is yours if you want it.”
Alex smiled, rehearsing the lie in his head. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
CHAPTER TWO
If spending the night with Vicente and Joanna held one distinct advantage, it was access to a private bathroom. Alex tapped his foot as he tried to go over the revisions he’d made to the script two days prior, but Joanna might as well have recited them in Basque for all the sense they made to him.
It had been pushing six in the morning by the time he’d stripped off his clothes and tumbled into his single bed, and even then, sleep had evaded him until eight. Whether this was the nascent sunlight, the noise from the street, or the image of Jago haunting his thoughts—probably all three—didn’t much matter. He’d be late for an eleven o’clock shift if he didn’t move his ass, and while it wouldn’t be the first time he’d gone in smelling like punk rock, vermouth, and Vicente, he was sure it wouldn’t endear him to Victoria.
He crossed the hall and hammered on the bathroom door again.
“Just a minute.”
“You said that ten minutes ago.”
Hearing the shower at last, Alex returned to his room in search of breakfast. He knew complaining was gauche for a boy who’d grown up in the country with no running water or electricity, but hadn’t Madrid promised him better for thefortune it cost him to stay here? Joanna had sworn Barcelona was worse, but Alex wasn’t convinced.
Taking a piece of bread from its box on his side table, he smeared a spoonful of tomato on it and took a bite. He gagged, gulping it down quickly like a pelican before lifting the jar to his nose, recoiling at the sight of mould growing in the jar. Well, fucking great. He could already hear his mother’s lecture to buy his tomatoes fresh each day, as if she was going to give him the money to pay for them. He wondered how many more free meals he could charm out of Victoria before she refused.
Hearing the bathroom door open, he grabbed his towel, narrowly missing a collision with the bald-headed fellow from Zaragoza. Alex had tried to avoid him ever since he’d made a drunken pass at Alex at Black and White. He’d used up most of the hot water, but it didn’t much bother Alex in the summer heat. He stuck out his tongue, as if he could wash the bitter taste of rotten tomato from it along with the smell of the night’s entertainment. The smell of Vicente. He lifted his hands to his face. No, that wasn’t Vicente. Vicente’s smell, he knew all too well. Joanna? No, it was a masculine scent, but not one he recognised… at first. He allowed the water to sloosh down his back until a knock at the bathroom door startled him.
“Just a minute,” he called.
Now his tired mind was playing tricks, convincing him that his hands smelled like Jago.
***
“Good morning, Senor Vargas.”
“Good morning, Lucia,” Alex said, again hoping his shirt wouldn’t crumple in his knapsack as he descended the last of the stairs to the building’s sparse entryway. “Having a good day?”
Lucia, who kept an eagle-eyed watch over their boarding house, barely looked up from her copy ofEl Pais. “Is it? These Basque hardliners complain louder every day. Something terrible will come of it if the government doesn’t let them go, I promise you.”
Alex grimaced, keeping his expression neutral as possible, even though she wasn’t looking at him. This wasn’t a topic he’d raised with Joanna, and he certainly wasn’t about to get into it with a seventy-six-year-old widow.
“But…” She looked up from her paper, folding it neatly as she stood. “It is not all bad. The Americans are returningGuernica.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful.” Alex decided against pointing out that the Americans had been returningGuernicaat least three or four times before in the year he’d called this place home. But Lucia had been just as excited each time over the painting’s return, and he hadn’t the heart to dim her fire. “I’d love to chat, but Victoria hates it when I’m late.”
