“The fat in the milk smooths out the alcohol. There’s a whole science behind it. I’ll send you both an article.”
Colin set his fork down. “My nan used to give us warm milk with a drop of whisky in when we couldn’t sleep.”
“See?” Diwa said. “Colin’s grandmother agrees with me.”
Ezra let out a bark of laughter and nearly choked on his haddock. He thumped his own chest, recovered, and pointed at Colin. “I like him. Diwa. I like him very much.”
“Thank you, Ezra.” Colin made a quiet, satisfied sound in the back of his throat.
Ezra told two more stories over the last of the chips. The most relevant one to Colin was about Diwa’s most recent relationship, an omega called Mariel who’d come down with the flu three months in.
“She texts him saying she feels awful,” Ezra said. “Normal person response would be: bring soup, sit on the sofa, watch something bad on Netflix together. Diwa’s response: he has a portable air purifier delivered to her apartment within the hour. Then a pulse oximeter. Then a grocery delivery with a note that says ‘zinc lozenges in the bag, take one every two hours, studies show earlier supplementation correlates with reduced symptomduration.’ She’s lying in bed with a temperature of thirty-nine and this man is citing her medical factoids through text.”
“The zinc thing is real,” Diwa said.
“She broke up with him the next week. He called me at two in the morning asking what he’d done wrong, because he’d tried, and his response time on every single one of her messages had been under four minutes.”
Colin had finished his food. “Four minutes,” he said. “That’s your approved text response benchmark, is it?” Diwa opened his mouth to respond, but Colin talked over him. “You reply to my texts in about twelve seconds.”
Diwa’s neck went red from the collar up, and he became suddenly very interested in the arrangement of the chip on his plate.
Ezra’s gaze moved between the two of them. His chewing slowed. He set his fork down quietly on the edge of his plate, then pushed back from the counter and stretched, his spine cracking. “Right. I’m about to fall asleep on this stool.” He looked at Diwa. “Guest room?”
“Second door on the right. Linens are in the wardrobe.”
“The Cromarty room.” Ezra slid off his stool and collected his carry-on from the hallway, the wheels clicking on the floorboards as he dragged it past them. He paused in the kitchen doorway and looked back at Colin.
“It was good to meet you, Colin.”
“You too, Ezra.”
Ezra pointed at Diwa. “We’re going to call Adhya together first thing in the morning.”
“All right, all right, Ez!”
The kitchen went quiet with Ezra’s departure. Diwa stood at the sink with his back to Colin, rinsing the grease off the plates.
“Colin.”
“Mm.”
“What Ezra said at the door? The cleaner thing.” Diwa set the plate down in the rack and dried his hands on the tea towel, turning round. “That was shit. I should’ve said something straightaway. I should’ve corrected him before you’d even got through the door, and I didn’t, and I’m sorry.”
Colin was still on his stool, his eyes on the middle distance past Diwa’s shoulder. His face had settled into the flat composure that Diwa had learned, over the past month, could mean a dozen different things.
“I’ve had worse thrown at me,” Colin said.
“That doesn’t make it all right. And especially not here in my house.”
“No.” Colin shrugged. “I’m used to people not seeing me, Diwa. I preferred it that way. Until you…”
Diwa crossed the kitchen. He came round the island and stood beside Colin’s stool, close enough that his hip touched the edge of his seat. He didn’t try to touch Colin. He just stood there, letting his presence do the work. “Stay tonight,” Diwa said. “Not on the sofa, obviously. We’ll stay in my room where there’s a proper bed, proper pillows. I’ve got a spare toothbrush still in the packet.”
“I haven’t got anything with me.”
“I’ll lend you a T-shirt to sleep in. I don’t care. I just want you in my house tonight. These days I only sleep really well when you’re here with me.”
Colin didn’t answer. He leaned into Diwa’s side and let himself stay.
