“Better than a dude walking around with untreated fractures. Is it easier to sleep now?”
Course it is. With my arm in a cast I’m not worried about rolling on it in the night and hurting it worse. But I don’t feel like telling him I’ve swapped my pain-fuelled insomnia for cosy daytime naps when he’s been up all night doing God’s work. So I nod, agreeing, and change the subject. “Your car is still fucked.”
Bhodi cringes, lifting a hand to rub the back of his head. “I got as far as ordering glow plugs online, but I haven’t had time to YouTube how to fit them.”
“YouTube?”
He shrugs. “Can’t be that hard.”
“It isn’t if you have the tools and know your way around a diesel engine. Does that sound like you?”
It’s so easy to grin at him.
What I get back is pure magic.
Bhodilaughs, louder than he did at Rudy, but with the same mellow resonance, and the sound wraps around me like a fucking hug. “What gave me away? My girly hands?”
I love women, and I love all kinds of men. But despite how pretty Bhodi is, there’s nothing feminine about him. He’s as tall as I am, with broader shoulders and a bit more muscle packed onto his lean biceps, and this morning, the barest hint of golden scruff shadows his jaw. “The fact that your car has been making that noise for…let me guess,months, gave you away, son.”
“It hasn’t been months…” Bhodi frowns. “Oh fuck. Maybe it has. I don’t know. My life’s been a bit…“
He gives an absent wave, but I get the picture. My life has been like that too. Some days it still is. “Well, if it helps, I can switch the glow plugs for you.” Bhodi opens his mouth, to protest, maybe, I don’t fucking know. I speak again before he gets the chance. “Call it a thank you for carting me to the fracture clinic. I lied to you when I said I had grand plans to go. I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
I want to tell him. He’s so easy to talk to that I know unloading on him would be better than therapy. But he’s tired. He’s worked all night and driven a fucked-up car on icy roads to get home to his bed. My tale of woe can wait. “I’m not going to make you stand out here and listen to that shit. Go to bed. But knock me up when those plugs arrive. I’ll be annoyed if you don’t.”
“Annoyed, eh? What does that look like?”
“Uglier than this.” I point an ink-stained finger at my mug and make myself turn away from him to slip through the gate. By the time I glance back, he’s halfway to the annex, and I want to call after him. But I can’t think of a reasonable reason to keep him from his bed any longer.
So I let him go, and I spend the rest of my day working and fixing the fence. My casted hand is a cumbersome piece of shit, but my fingershave regained enough movement to be useful, and I make the most of it while the frost holds the rain at bay.
It’s mid-afternoon when the Evri man knocks with a package for Bhodi. The annex doesn’t have its own address. The driver leaves the parcel with me, and it’s not hard to deduce it contains the glow plugs he ordered.
Fuck it. I take the box to Bhodi’s car and prepare to wrangle open the bonnet to check he’s bought the right ones, but as it happens, the Golf is unlocked, and too old and fucked to have rectified that when Bhodi went to bed.
He’sstillin bed—or, at least, on it. On his belly, that flawless back on display, his hands shoved under the pillow. He doesn’t move much when he sleeps. I know this because I’ve caught myself gazing at him a hundred fucking times today, andthat back. His skin calls to me, the curve of his spine, his broad shoulders. I want to?—
Nope.
Not finishing that sentence. He’s mytenant. Watching him sleep and thinking dirty things about him is probably illegal, and it’s definitely fucking immoral.
So I rip open the parcel addressed to him—to Bhodi fucking Jones—and do what has to be done.
It doesn’t take long. It’s getting dark by the time I’m finished, but I don’t let myself glance at the annex to see if Bhodi’s still sleeping.
I go inside and gather Rudy and a giant box of local deliveries, enough to keep me busy till well into the evening. It’s late when I get home and Bhodi is gone. But I wake the next morning to another illegible note on the doorstep, and it feels better than any no-strings sex ever has.
Six
BHODI
Tam fixed my car.
While I slept.
The first I knew about it was the Evri man’s photo of Tam’s boots, and the newly gentle purr of the Golf’s engine, but I’d been running too late to thank him in person, and I haven’t seen him since. Another pile of night shifts have seen to that, a brutal schedule I volunteered for to make nice with the new team, but by the end of my second week, I’m over it. The senior nurse can’t read my handwriting, the vending machines are shit, and I hate the green scrubs.
