A ghost of a grin warms Joss’s face. Gossamer and flickering. He nods and steps back, giving me room to get my shit together. I don’t feel like I’ve been asleep, but the quiet of my mom’s house says otherwise.
Then again, maybe they just saw Joss coming and they’re peeping through the drapes. They’ve done worse to any guy my sister has ever brought home.
You didn’t bring him home, remember? He fuckin’ said you couldn’t.
Or words to that effect. But he’s here now, right? As my friend? My roommate?
God, I want to touch him.
I settle for taking the dish he’s holding and peering beneath the aluminum foil. Sticky-toffee apple cake greets me, drenched in the caramel sauce Joss makes with Shipley cider and cinnamon. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but I could eat this shit for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
My grandma will love it too.
I tell Joss as much. He looks away, rubbing his lips, edgy and weighed down with the regret I feared. The guilt over something I don’t understand.
“Hey.” I grab his elbow and turn him back to me. “Why don’t you come inside? Can’t promise it’ll be fun, but my mom wants to meet my roommate.”
“Roommate.” Joss repeats the word like a prayer. Like he’s steeling himself for something.
We’re on a knife edge of something I can’t see. A precipice that will make or break our fledgling friendship.With benefits.
No.
We’re friends. It’s what I want most, and if it's the only way I can have Joss, it's worth the whole fuckin' world to me.
Even if he’s on the other side of that world?
Literally?
Literally. It doesn’t mean I don’t want more. It means this is enough.
I hold out my hand. “Please?”
Joss hesitates, and it hurts my heart.
Then the lingering fight in him seems to evaporate and he takes my outstretched hand. “All right, mate.”
22
JOSS
Impending doom is a whiplash-inducing emotion. For me. I can’t speak for anyone else. When I climbed the steps to Kai’s mum’s house, it hit me like a sledgehammer. Then I saw him sleeping in that fugly chair and every distorted thought left my head.
There’s something so endlessly entrancing about him that I can’t hold myself together.
He leads me inside. His family are waiting, and they’re just like him: warm, friendly, and kind to the bone.
His mum makes me miss the mother mine could never be. She’s tactile and sweet, while his nan sharks me for twenty dollars at the card table.
Kai is quiet. He sits beside me, his thigh pressed against mine by circumstance more than a deliberate action, but it’s more thrilling than I’m prepared for, and I don’t pull away. I let it happen, like I’ve done all along, because I’m a selfish arsehole.
It was already late when I showed up on Cheryl’s doorstep. It’s midnight when we leave.
I brought Kai’s spare bike and leaned it against his.
He rolls it to me, keeping his liquid gaze to himself. I can’t work out if he wants to kiss or throttle me.
Or both.
