“You’re kicking me out.”
“I’m not kicking you out. I’m trying to make sure you’re well rested.”
“You are literally standing at the door of your own house trying to get me to leave because of VOCs. VOCs, Diwa. You once ate a breakfast burrito you found under the seat of my car. You don’t care about VOCs.”
5:52.
“Look,” Diwa said, “I just think you’d be more comfortable at a hotel. I’ll book you the Connaught. My treat. They do a breakfast that’ll change your life, Ez, the pastry chef trained at —”
“Who’s coming over?” Ezra picked up his wine glass again. He took a slow, deliberate sip, watching Diwa over the rim. “You’ve checked that clock five times in the last six minutes, and you’re sweating through your T-shirt.” He settled deeper into the armchair, crossing his ankle back over his knee. “So I’m going to finish this very nice Barolo, and you’re going to tell me about yourthing. Is it that Spanish model again? Because Diwa…you should know better than that.”
5:54.
Diwa looked at the clock and calculated exactly how many minutes he had left before Colin Huxley knocked on the door and his two worlds collided in the worst possible way.
The knock came just as he was about to resort to begging Ezra to leave.
Diwa’s whole body went rigid. Ezra clocked it instantly, and a grin spread across his face. Their eyes met for a single held moment, and then Ezra was out of the armchair and moving for the hallway with the speed of someone who was not, in fact, all that tired from his eleven-hour first class flight.
“Ez!Don’t!”
Ezra got to the yellow door three strides ahead of him and pulled it open.
Colin stood on the step in his work jacket, bag over one shoulder, his blue eyes flicking from Ezra’s face to Diwa’s over Ezra’s shoulder.
Ezra looked at Colin. He took in the jacket, and the work bag, then he glanced past Colin down the street, as though expecting the rest of a crew. He turned back to Diwa with his eyebrows raised.
“Oh, hey, man. Come on in.” Ezra stepped aside and threw a look at Diwa over his shoulder. “Bit of a weird time for you to have the cleaner in, D.”
The sentence landed in the hallway like a bag of cement dropped from a great height.
Diwa wanted to die, and he wanted to punch Ezra in the mouth hard enough to rearrange the smile he’d been wearing since he’d opened that door. He wanted to wrap Colin up, to press his face into the top of his head, and make it very, very clear to everyone in the postcode that this man was not the cleaner, was not the odd-jobs man who came round on Thursdays, but the person Diwa had spent the past month falling for so hard that he’d thought of little else.
He went for Colin.
Colin’s shoulder came up as Diwa reached him. The flinch was barely there, a reflex so old it preceded thought, but Diwa caught it. He slowed himself. He brought one arm around Colin’s shoulder and drew him closer.
Colin didn’t pull away. His blue eyes held Diwa’s steadily, and that was enough. Diwa kissed him. Soft, closed-mouthed, one hand finding the side of Colin’s neck where his pulse sat warm under soft skin. Colin’s mouth gave against his, and the fingers that had been gripping the strap of his work bag loosened.
Diwa pulled back just far enough to get his hand on Colin’s shoulder, turned him towards the hallway, and said, “Colin, thisis someone I vaguely know from work. He’s American, so please excuse him.”
Colin’s spine straightened as he drew himself up to his full height, which wasn’t much, but he used every inch of it, and he extended his hand towards Ezra. “Nice to meet you.”
The colour had left Ezra’s face so fast that Diwa briefly wondered if he was suffering from a stroke. His gaze flicked to Diwa’s hand lying possessively on Colin’s shoulder, and the full horror of what he’d just said swept across his features in real time. To his credit, he recovered in under three seconds, his smile arriving warm and genuine as he took Colin’s hand in both of his and pumped it twice, with great enthusiasm.
“Ezra Holberg. Huge pleasure!”
Diwa got his palm onto the small of Colin’s back and steered him over the threshold before Ezra could make things worse. The yellow door closed behind them, and Diwa kept his hand where it was as they moved down the hallway, fingers spread against the worn cotton of Colin’s jacket.
“How was your day? You look tired. Sit down, sit down.” He was guiding Colin towards the kitchen, talking over his own sentences before they’d finished landing. “We should order in. Have you eaten? Don’t tell me you’ve eaten, because I haven’t sorted anything yet and I want to feed you. What do you want? Burgers? Thai? We could do both!”
“What about fish and chips?”
“Fish and chips,” Diwa repeated. “Yes. Fish and chips! Brilliant. I’ll get us fish and chips.” He had his mobile out before Colin could change his mind, thumbing through Deliveroo. “Cod? Haddock? They’ve got a battered halloumi option if you want to go healthy.”
Colin’s lip curled at the mention of halloumi. “Cod.”
“Cod. Two cod, two chips, mushy peas. Done.” He tapped the order through, and was about to finalise it when Ezra appearedin the kitchen doorway, leaning against the frame with his hands in his pockets.
