Chapter Eight
Billy
“You need to register with a GP.”
Gus stood in his kitchen, a basket of clean washing tucked under one arm, pointing at me with the other. Fuck me. I’d gone to sleep next to a strapping giant of walking sex, and woken up to the mother I’d never quite had.
Or maybe I was still asleep and dreaming. It would’ve made more sense than the fuzzy memory of passing out in Gus’s bed. Or waking up wrapped around him like a limpet with zero regrets.
Zero regrets.Liar.I had a hundred regrets, not because I’d slept in Gus’s bed, with Gus, but because I couldn’t think of a single reason I’d ever get to do it again, and wasn’t that a fun realisation on a Monday morning?
Not. And I didn’t like waiting rooms. They got on my tits and awoke the fidgety beast I tried to keep in check when I was around Gus.
But he got his way, and an hour later, the lingering effect of his good drugs helped. His closeness even more, but the waiting room, man. I felt like a fucking toddler. Only Gus’s warm hand on my thigh kept me still.
I was still losing what little was left of my mind, though. Jesus. What was he trying to do to me? Kill me with kindness? Cos that’s all it was, right? Gus being the nicest guy in the world? There was no other logical explanation for the last twenty-four hours, least of all the one my brain was playing on a loop. The one where he turned to me in the crowded waiting room and kissed me for the second time in half a decade.
Gus’s phone rang. He silenced it without answering, but not fast enough that I didn’t see my brother’s name flash up on the screen.
“He’s checking up on us.”
It wasn’t a question, but Gus nodded anyway. “Probably. He stopped answering my daily updates, so I stopped sending them.”
“Updates on me?”
“On the job. Believe it or not, Luke is still Luke when you’re not here.”
I believed it. And I was stupidly relieved that Gus hadn’t sent Luke a blow-by-blow of last night. I wasn’t in the mood for my brother’s silent scrutiny. His judgement. Or the scratchy emotions that lurked behind his dead-eyed stare.
Gus’s phone buzzed and vibrated like an angry wasp. I sucked in a shuddery breath. “He’s not going to go away.”
“You wouldn’t want him to.”
“Wouldn’t I?”
“No.” Gus reclaimed his hand and answered the phone. “Morning, boss.”
Unlike the rest of the population, who shouted down phones as if Apple hadn’t spent a billion quid on microphone technology, Luke spoke too quietly for me to hear his response.
Gus rolled his eyes. “That’s because it’s finished. It got done on Friday.”
More silence.
More eye rolling. “I’m at an appointment. Then we’ve got an OAP patch to do this afternoon... I don’t know, why don’t you ask him?”
For a horrific moment, I thought Gus would pass the phone to me, but he didn’t. He chuckled, rolled his eyes a third time, then hung up and pocketed his phone.
“You lied,” I said absently, tracking a snotty-nosed set of twins as they emerged from the doctor’s office.
“Did I?”
“Yeah. You don’t have an appointment.”
“I said I was at an appointment, not that it was mine.”
“I don’t have an appointment either.”
“Not yet.”
