“You weregoing toask?”
“I got distracted by you growling in French.”
“It put you off?”
Bhodi chuckles. “Not exactly. But I still have a giant pot of bolognese and you look hangry, so…”
I’m not anywhere close to being angry while he’s so close to me that I can smell the shampoo he used on his damp hair. But I am hungry, and Sab ate all my food.And…I like being around Bhodi. The ease. The laughter. It’s so natural to say yes. To change my socks, grab Rudy, and follow my tenant back to the annex he pays me to live in.
I step into the space that until a month ago, had been my studio for half a decade. It should smell of paper and ink. Butinstead, the rich scent of tomatoes and herbs greets me, along with the bed Bhodi sleeps on, a neat pile of clean clothes, and the mega-watt smile he turns on me from the tiny kitchen area.
It’s a two-ring hob I installed to make tea on—because I hate electric kettles. A sink, two cupboards, and a narrow length of worktop made out of the same oak that crushed my wrist. I’m impressed Bhodi’s found the space to cook something that smells this good.
I tell him so.
He laughs.
I die a little in the very best way.
“We eat spag bol at Christmas in my family. I’m working this year, but I said I’d bring some to the ward to make up for them having to translate my notes. This is a practise run.”
There’s a lot to unpick in that. I start with what disturbs me most. “You eat spaghetti at Christmas? Are you Italian?”
Bhodi peers into the simmering pot before he gifts me that laugh again. “Definitely not Italian. It’s more it’s the only thing my mum can cook that everyone likes, so…it’s what we have, for three days, until everyone goes back to work.”
“Sounds like your family are busy people.”
“Used to be. It’s only me who works shifts these days.”
“And your parents are in Australia now, right?”
“Right.” Bhodi finds plates and looks around for somewhere to put them.
There isn’t anywhere. I converted this place for work, not hot dinner dates.
Not a date.
I take the plates, balancing them on my good hand so Bhodi can dish up. “Do you miss them?”
“Who? My parents?” Bhodi adds pasta to the plates—it’snot even spaghetti, which perplexes me more—and spoons on the meat sauce. “Not really. I haven’t lived with them since I was sixteen, and we’ve never been close. They both worked a lot.”
“Is that why you left?”
“When I was sixteen? Nah, I just hated school, so I ran off to join the Navy.”
I know this part. That he served and he doesn’t smile so much when I push him on it. So I don’t. I hold the plates and try to figure out where we can sit to eat.
Rudy’s already made himself a nest in Bhodi’s clean clothes. “Sorry about that. His blanket used to be over there.”
Bhodi moves around me and collapses the sofa-bed, tucking the duvet away behind it. “You used to live in here?”
“It was my studio.”
“For real?” Bhodi glances around, clearly comparing the space to the smaller room I’m holed up in now. “Please tell me I didn’t push you out of here?”
“Ipushed me out of here—well, Sab did. There’s not a lot of money in calligraphy these days, outside of the occasional unicorn job.”
“What does a unicorn job look like?”
