Page 11 of Famous Last

When he checked his phone, his brother Garrett had just sent a message. With nothing better to do, Spencer decided to start a message dialogue.

Garrotte: How’s your week going?

Spence: Next question.

His week had been dreadful. Not only had Muriel and Clarissa dumped a shit ton of work on him, causing him to work until tenmost nights, but his landlord had sent him a letter saying he was selling the flat and would not be renewing his rental agreement. Spencer would need to find somewhere else to live by the end of February when the lease ended. Everything seemed to be falling to pieces around him.

Garrotte: You better be coming home next weekend. For Guy Fawkes. Mum’s expecting you. She’s making sure there’s extra food.

Spence: Mum’s cooking? Are you trying to scare me off?

Garrotte: Dad says they’re ordering takeaway from the new Chinese.

Spence: Maybe I will come then. I’ll text dad so he can pick me up from the station.

Garrotte: You bringing anyone?

Spence: So you can torture them and mum can poison them? I’ll pass. You?

Garrotte: Maybe. Met this v sweet babe thru work.

Spence: Cool. Try not to break up with her before Friday.

Garrotte:

He put his phone away as a couple of girls in party dresses made their way past. Besides Bev, few had made an effort. Dressed as the Queen of Hearts fromAlice in Wonderland, her colourful costume hugged her in all the right places, showcasing her impressive cleavage. At the same time, her makeup varied slightly from the film queen’s, with a dark shade of blue for her eyeshadow and a flowing hairpiece of blood-red curls.

Hers had been the best costume he had seen, no competition. Far better than his shabby, black-masked Count Dracula ensemble. But even he had made more of an effort than most of the males, which confirmed his suspicion that everyone else was straight. In the thirty minutes he had been sitting there, the only decent costumes he had seen had been a Wonder Woman, avery passable Daenerys Targaryen wearing a dragon face mask, and two black fishnet-stockinged naughty nurses. They had been the exceptions to the continuous line of mediocre wandering in search of the bathroom.

Spencer fidgeted with his phone again to check the time. Ten-forty. Another twenty minutes and he would be gone, whether Bev joined him or not. He hated Halloween. Growing up, his family hadn’t even acknowledged let alone celebrated the occasion, deferring to the hot dogs and funfairs, the bonfires and fireworks of Guy Fawkes Night. But these days having trick-or-treaters show up on the doorstep happened more often than carol singers on the lead-up to Christmas.

He took a sip of his watery wine and looked around to see if he could locate his queen, but she had been at her social butterfly best that evening. Leaning back, he thought about the week just gone.

Marshall Highlander had not responded to his text message. As promised, Bev had managed to get the man’s personal number, something Spencer had saved into his contacts. Over a week ago now, they had spoken, and Highlander had kissed him in Muriel’s rooftop garden, an event now branded forever into his memory.

After deliberating on Monday evening—refusing point-blank to send anything with Bev leaning over him—Spencer had defaulted to a simple thank you for the flowers and chocolates, a line about being too generous and signed off with his name followed by a squirrel emoji.

After that, nothing.

Then again, what did he expect? Bev had demanded an update every day at work and seemed almost more disappointed than him when he had nothing to report. Maybe because she knew Spencer too well, but on Thursday she told him that Marshall had been on assignment the whole week in one of the stans—Afghanistan or Kazakhstan or Tajikistan, and might even have been Istanbul—and would probably not be able to use his personal phone.

Spencer pushed his own phone beneath his black cape into his trouser pocket and decided he would do a quick search of the house to see if he could find Bev. If not, he would fire off a phone message and head out. As he leant forward to place his half-full plastic tumbler of wine down on the floor by his feet, someone spoke directly to him.

“Spencer?”

The voice sounded all-too-familiar. There in front of him, in open sandals, dressed in a shining gold and brown headdress, bare-chested with defined pecs and six-pack, and exposed muscular legs on full display, stood a very sexy pharaoh.

“Blake,” he choked.

Shit, shit, shit.

Spencer did his level best not to slip off the arm of the couch onto the bandaged lovers. Even before Blake had asked him out, he had found himself getting tongue-tied around the man. Something about Blake’s stony-faced confidence had initially attracted him until he’d begun to understand the difference between confidence and arrogance. In the three months they had been together, the change had been subtle but there nonetheless. Sex had been energetic for the most part, often one-sided with Blake being the only one to get off and sometimes physically rough bordering on brutal. But the feeling of having someone wanting him and turning up to his flat had drowned out all the other niggling voices, even the fact they never kissed or ventured outside the four walls of Spencer’s flat when they were together. Now, whenever he saw Blake, he had to remind himself how wretched he had felt at the end when Blake had dumped him via a direct message on Twitter.A fucking tweet. Who did that? So he did his best to avoid the man—and here hewas again at the most inopportune moment with Spencer feeling at his most vulnerable.

Where the hell was Bev when he needed her?

“Nice outfit,” said Blake, his annoyingly handsome smile slipping into place. Not wearing any face covering had been Blake’s trademark protest. “You always did rock the whole faux-vampire look. Might have worked better with contacts instead of glasses. But I love the white face paint.”

Spencer had not painted his face, his pasty complexion wholly natural and probably accentuated by the pale lamplight. Knowing Blake, he already knew that and the comment had been a lame attempt at humour.

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