One
TAM
I can count on one hand the things in life that make me truly irritable. Multi-coloured Christmas lights score high. My brother bending my ear about shit I’ve already saidnoto a thousand goddamn times is top of the fucking list.
“You need a lodger.” His voice booms through the speaker, full of authority his younger self has zero right to assume. “Money and company. It’s a win-win, bro.”
Win-win? He’s out of his mind.
Scowling, I kick the roll of offending lights back into the corner of the attic where they belong and squeeze my way back to the loft hatch. “Fuck’s sake, will you give it a rest? Pour l'amour de dieu.”
For the love of god.
Or at least for the love of me.
But Sab doesn’t care about any of that—God, or annoying me enough that I jam an unlit smoke between my lips and think hard about lighting it. Helikesannoying me. To him, it’s anOlympic sport, and I know he won’t quit until he takes a medal.
He’s still talking. I block him out as I pick through another box of junk, searching for thewhitelights I came up here for. The cute warm ones I need for the Instagram post I don’t give a fuck about. Theessentialpost I have to make to keep my account visible enough to keep my actual lights on, in the house I can’t afford to live in without taking Sab’s advice.
Which is why I’ve already taken it, but he doesn’t need to know that. Not yet, anyway. Sab’s persistent. Like a fucking rash. But he’s not the most stubborn Dubois brother. That title ismineand I’m not giving it up anytime soon.
“…maybe you need to get laid.”
I tune back in to that beauty. “Tu me fais chier. Fuck off with that shit.”
Sab does not fuck off. He treats me to another twenty minutes of underlining how boring I am these days and how shit my life is, disregarding every attempt I make to tell him the opposite. That I’m fucking happy living alone and I don’t give a damn if his secondhand view of my existence tells him otherwise. By the time he’s done, I’m glad I haven’t told him my unwelcome lodger is moving in tomorrow. Let him walk into my house and find a stranger at the table we grew up around.
Except the lodger I haven’t yet met won’t be in my house. He’ll be in the annex, using the side gate as an entrance because I don’t want someone—anyone—all up in my shit. Not even Sab, who’s still aggravating me enough I hang up on him.
A text pings through a moment later and I realise he’s changed my notification tone from a nondescript beep to the opening chords of Jingle Bells set at top volume.
It’s loud enough to rattle my brain and make the dog barkfrom his spot on the couch downstairs, but I ignore him, searching for the elusive lights. They have to be up here somewhere. My whole life is crammed into this tiny space since I cleared out my studio to make room for a lodger I don’t even want. A lodger Ineedif I’m going to make next month’s mortgage payment without starving to death. A distant dream if I don’t pick up more seasonal work, which means the Instagram post I’d rather stick pins in my eyes than create is more important than ever.
If I can just find these fucking lights.
They’re not with the rest of the Christmas crap I’m not feeling festive enough to face yet. I abandon the attic in favour of the garage, which takes me past the goddamn space I gave up for a lodger I’ve only communicated with through the letting agent handling his lease.
I know his name. Probably. It’s on a letter I’ve left somewhere by the front door. But denial is a wicked thing, and I’ve spent the last few months fooling myself the less I know about the looming change in my life, the less real it is. Except, it’s really fucking real—it’s happeningtomorrow, and it’s not going anywhere until the lease runs out in six months’ time.
Six months.
The agent called it a short lease, but to me, it feels like a lifetime. Years ago, I was the kind of dude who rolled with the tides. These days, I find all the joy I need in stability and giving it up feels like the end of the world.
At least, it does while I’m scrabbling around the garage. It’s worse than the attic, and it’scold, a state of affairs that never cheers me up. Makes me wonder why I’m fighting so hard to be here when my parents spend their days chasing the sun aroundthe Med. But I was born here—Sab’shere, and however annoying he is, this is where I’ll stay.
If I survive tearing through my garage. I have scars on my body that throb in the winter, but this place is a death trap. Teetering piles of wood, scrap metal, and motorbike parts—leftovers from my old life I never got round to ditching.
You didn’t want to.
But I regret that now I spot the box of lights behind a vast stack of unfinished worktops, lurking beside a squashed Christmas tree—a plastic one that must be Sab’s, because I’d die before I had that shit in my house. I like the smell of the real ones. The piney fir scent that reminds me of my Scottish nan and the weird cannonball cake she used to make on Christmas Eve. Can’t remember eating it. Just that Sab stole it one year and lobbed it at my head, missed and broke a window.
The lights.
My brother’s face fades out, taking his laughter and leaving me with the urgency that brought me into the dusty garage in the first place. I’m unimpressed by the effort it’s going to take to reach them, but the thought of living through a day like this all over again in six months’ time, when the old tenant moves out and a new one moves in, propels me into action.
I lent my ladder to an old friend and never got it back. I go back inside for shoes—I work from home, sometimes I forget my feet are bare—and prod the dog on my way past, checking he’s alive.
Rudy rumbles a warning, but he’s the size of a bloated gerbil, so I take my chances and poke him again, standing my ground until he rolls over, showing me his belly. “You’re all fucking bark, son, ain’t ya?”
