The same, butdifferent, and I feel heavy as I trudge inside to find Rudy and figure out what the fuck I’m doing with my life today. I have so much work to do. It’s my busiest week of the year and I have so many deadlines I’ve forgotten them all. But my head—and my heart—is still with Bhodi, and it’s hard to think about Christmas poems and whimsical greetings cards. Only the fact that the more I get done now, the more time I’ll have for him later drives me upstairs without thinking about the breakfast Sab left for us.
I take a shower and realise my whole body aches. For once, it’s a sweet pain, but it makes me miss Bhodi more, and at my desk, I find myself scanning the horizon for him instead of putting ink to paper.
He’s goneages. Long enough for worry to form a tight cage around my heart, binding my muscles enough that I start tomake mistakes. I’m drowning in a sea of scrap paper by the time his blond head finally appears at the end of the road.
I abandon my desk as if the ink and parchment on it aren’t what saved me six years ago. I burn down the stairs and charge out of the house. Sans boots, of course, but I don’t feel the damp ground, or the puddle I stomp through. I feel nothing but angst until I lurch onto the pavement in front of Bhodi, forcing him to skid to a stop.
“Where the fuck did you run to?” I blurt before he can react. “The North fucking Pole?”
Bhodi pushes his hair back, face flushed like it was last night, his eyes bright with endorphins and exertion. “Huh?”
“You’ve been gone ages.”
“Have I?”
“Yeah.” I reach for him and pull him into my arms. “I thought you were gone forever.”
Bhodi frowns.
I realise I’ve lapsed into French, but repeating myself feels like madness, so I kiss him instead. “I missed you.”
He’s still confused. As if he doesn’t see a reality where that can possibly be true, and I hate the bloke that came before me a little bit more, even though I believe Bhodi when he says his ex did nothing bad. Merde, I hate everyone that’s ever so much as breathed wrong around Bhodi.
I hatemyselffor not meeting him ten years ago.
“Do you have a fetish for wet feet?”
I have a fetish for him. And how he makes me feel. But that sounds weird, even in my head, so I grab his hand and hustle him into my house, keeping my wayward thoughts to myself. “Sab made us breakfast.”
“Us?” Bhodi hovers by the counter.
I open the oven and face the dried-up meal Sab made a thousand hours ago. Kick it shut again. “He saw us together last night.”
Bhodi’s bewilderment deepens. Then his eyes widen. “Oh shit. The blinds. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. I installed them. If anyone should remember to close them, it’s me.”
“How much did he see?”
“Enough to think we needed a hundred croissants to recover, but they’re a bit fucked now. You want bacon?”
Bhodi stares, and I can’t work out if he’s just gassed from his run or genuinely surprised that he’s been on my mind, and Sab’s, since I left him at dawn.
I give him a minute, ditch another pair of ruined socks, and open the fridge. It says a lot about Sab’s current mental state that I still have food. Lots of it. I drag out the works and chuck it all in pans.
I’m chopping mushrooms when Bhodi comes up behind me. “I need a shower.”
“Okay.”
“I won’t be long.”
He isn’t, but it still feels like a fucking lifetime has passed by the time he comes back.
I slide him a breakfast plate, and this time he doesn’t look at it, or me, like he’s scared we’re not real.
“Thanks.”
“How far did you run?”
