Page 2 of Love You Like That (Excess All Areas 4)

“I do. Keep safe, yeah?”

He stood in place until he heard the front door slam, then he stretched his hands over his head, before reaching them down to the floor. Sex followed by a solid sleep always made him feel better. The shitty morning farewells, not so much.

His bedroom door burst open, and Jase danced in. “Mornin’. Are you packed?”

“Are you ever going to knock?”

“I heard the door slam. Knew lover boy had left. Saw the weeping, pitiful look on his face as he trudged down the stairs.”

“A. Not lover boy. B. He was not weeping. C. Knock on the fucking door so you don’t catch me doing something neither of us would want you to see.” He untied the black silk currently wrapped around his bedposts. Two. One for each of Ollie’s wrists. He tossed them into the laundry pile. He’d save cleaning up the sex toys and putting the lube away until Jase had gone.

Jase shrugged. “I’ve heard most of it. The walls in this place are as thin as Liverpool F.C.’s defence.”

Alex laughed at the analogy, not that he cared as much for football as his cousins and brother did. “Yeah well, hearing and seeing are two different things. It would be solved if you persuaded Cerys to move in with you.”

The house was technically rented by Alex, but Jase had moved in several years ago. In hindsight, he’d never asked. Just showed up one day with his shit in boxes and asked if he could stay. He’d never moved out. But when they’d been broke, him working as a barista and Jase working behind a bar, it had helped them make rent and pay bills.

Now, they had more cash than they needed.

“She doesn’t want to bail on Zoe. I’m hoping now Zoe’s got this new job, Cerys won’t feel so bad moving out.”

Zoe, Cerys’s best friend and former college roommate, had been lost of late, unsure what to do with her career after she’d walked away from the one thing she’d always wanted to do. “Zoe got a new job?”

“Yeah. She stopped working as a temp and now has some virtual assistant gig.”

“Doing what?”

“Not entirely sure. But last night she was working on some graphics for a romance author. Like, her and Cerys were looking at stock photography images of half-naked men. Apparently, they were looking for a dude with tatts who could pass as a billionaire. And then she was putting all these perky slogans from the book over the top. Shit like, ‘she was his, and when he’d finished fucking her, she’d realise it.’”

“That sounds a bit rapey.”

Jase nodded. “Then there was one about how she didn’t want him but needed his money to pay down college debt.”

“She couldn’t just get a job like the rest of us?”

“Something to do with a sick mom, and medical bills. I don’t know. Apparently, it’s a trope.”

“A trope?”

“Don’t ask. I did and it’s half an hour of my life I’ll never get back.”

“Were you guys able to persuade her to join us on tour last night?”

Jase shook his head. “Cerys tried one last time because she’s hoping it will get Zoe excited to play again.”

Cerys and Zoe had attended the Royal Northern College of Music together. Cerys, a pianist turned talented music producer, and Zoe, an exceptional percussionist who had dropped out in her final year as her hearing had deteriorated. “Fair enough. I need to shower. Feel like making us breakfast?”

“I’m on it.”

While conditioning his blond curls so they didn’t end up a complete frizz ball, he thought about Zoe. Going deaf right near the end of her music degree was about as tough as it got. But Zoe was strong. She appeared to have navigated it with grace. And if she was angry, she didn’t show it.

Instead, she just got the fuck on with it.

When Zoe and Cerys were both over, they watched TV shows with the subtitles on, and he and Jase were learning sign language. He enjoyed the expressiveness of it, even though it was tough to learn.

But a part of him wondered whether Cerys’s attempts at pulling Zoe back to what had once been her passion was challenging someone to live their best life or just plain cruel. He loved Cerys in a sisterly way, but he wasn’t sure where the line was between being there for a friend, and stepping into an ableist saviour role, no matter how well intentioned it was.

Fuck knows people tried it on with him all the time.

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