Tea, page 12
Know what? He wasn’t even one hundred percent sure what had happened.
“I didn’t mention it before,” Chris mumbled through his hands, before sighing and dropping them. “You can’t touch my chest.”
Oh.
“Ever.”
John immediately felt rather stupid. He’d just assumed—
“The minute—the minute you do, the minute anyone does, I get this awful skin-crawling dysphoria. I hate it. I absolutely hate it, and I know it makes no sense when I love you fingering me or eating me out—”
“Oh, hey, it doesn’t need to make sense—”
“—but I can’t deal with it. I’m on the waiting list for surgery to get them removed, and I can’t wait, but I can’t sleep in the binder, and I forgot. I thought because you’re gay, you’d not be interested in them, and—”
“Chris!”
The tirade stopped. Chris’s hands twitched before he wrapped his arms around his stomach, and John grimaced.
“If you don’t like me touching your chest,” he said, “then I won’t.”
Chris’s lips thinned.
“I’m not particularly interested in them,” John said. “Can I get a pass for saying something possibly really dumb?”
“Um. Okay.”
“I’ve been nervous of you taking your shirt off.”
Chris frowned. “Why?”
“Because I’m gay,” John said. “And while discovering your, uh, original features has been pretty exciting, I didn’t know that’d be the case. And I have seen women topless before, up close and personal, like—”
“You have?”
“I was working in a builder’s yard when I turned eighteen, and the lads took me to a strip joint.”
“Oh.”
“I spent most of the night texting my boyfriend at the time desperately asking what features I ought to find attractive in a girl so they wouldn’t realise I was gay.”
Chris smirked, despite the subject.
“My point is, I don’t like women. Sexually speaking. And while I—got lucky, I guess, I enjoy making love to you—”
“Urgh, John…”
“—I know I’m not interested in boobs. So, I was nervous of you…full on stripping and my libido not agreeing with the rest of my brain about how bloody gorgeous you are.”
“So…you’re okay with…not…?”
“I’m totally fine with not,” John said. “I only touched because I figured if you had sensitive nipples, you’d like it.”
“I do,” Chris admitted, “but I don’t like it.”
“Then I won’t,” John said. “I’m really not into boobs. And even if I was, I wouldn’t go touching anything you don’t like me touching.”
“You say ‘making love’ even though I don’t like it.”
John hesitated. “I—thought you were kidding. If it’s actually upsetting you, of course I—”
“It doesn’t. But babe does.”
“What?”
“I don’t like it when you call me babe. I really don’t. That’s not— I just think making love sounds stupid. But babe…you don’t call men babe.”
“I do,” John replied. “I’ve called every guy I’ve ever been with babe.”
“Well, you don’t call me babe. Not anymore.”
There was a layer of steel in Chris’s voice, and John instinctively raised his hands.
“Okay,” he said. “Noted. Just…kick me until I get out of the habit.”
Chris nodded. He still looked tense as hell, and John wasn’t sure what to do. He wanted to offer a hug, but Chris clearly wasn’t as completely comfortable being touched as John had thought.
“I’m sorry,” John repeated. “It won’t happen again. Babe, or boobs.”
That earned him a faint smile.
“This is a bit heavy for what I’d hoped would be a slow, sexy start to a morning,” John admitted. “How about I take you out for a proper greasy spoon breakfast, just the way electricians like it?”
The smile widened. “Okay. That sounds nice. Lemme get dressed.”
John ducked into the bathroom as Chris ducked out of it, and freshened up with a borrowed toothbrush and stolen deodorant in lieu of his own toiletries. Smelling like Chris was weirdly hot, but John thought hard about distinctly unsexy thoughts before stepping back into the main room.
And hesitating.
The bedroom door was ajar, but John didn’t know if he was welcome or not. Last night, he’d have just walked in, and if Chris was changing, then what a happy coincidence. Now? Now he wasn’t sure.
So he waited until Chris came back out, doing up his belt. To John’s pleased surprise, Chris caught him on the way past and kissed his jaw.
“Sorry for freaking you out,” Chris murmured, and John smiled, daring to touch his hair lightly.
“Think it should be me making that apology.”
“Mm, not this time. You didn’t know. If you do it again, though, then you’ll have to pull out all the stops. Got it?”
“Got it.”
He ducked into the bedroom to retrieve his scattered clothes and get dressed. By the time he re-emerged, Chris had put on his shoes and was waiting with his cane. With a pang, John’s suddenly switched-on brain picked out the things he probably wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. The shadow of stubble, when every other time he’d seen him, Chris had been clean-shaven. The bulge in tight jeans that hadn’t been there last time. The stiff flatness of his chest, when now John knew full well it wasn’t by chance.
He looked more masculine than John had ever seen him, and John had the distinct impression it was due to his screw-up.
But to comment on it, John suspected, wouldn’t be a good idea.
So, instead, he put on his boots, shrugged on his jacket—and cupped Chris’s chin between finger and thumb to kiss him sharply.
“You look gorgeous,” he said simply.
Chris’s face pinked.
“Now, let’s get breakfast, and try starting today over.”
Chapter Sixteen
“SO,” JOHN SAID as the waitress cleared the empty plates, and Chris asked—of course—for another coffee, “are we okay?”
It was a slightly redundant question. Chris had brightened up after the first shot of caffeine and had flirted outrageously for the last half hour, but John’s demons demanded satisfaction, especially with what he was about to ask.
“What? Yes. Why wouldn’t we be?”
John rolled his eyes. “Because I freaked you out, and you know my history by now.”
Chris cocked his head to the side and smiled.
“Yes,” he said softly. “We’re okay.”
“Sure?”
“Yes. You didn’t know, and now you do. And you stopped when I asked you to. So we’re fine. Promise.”
John blew upwards into his hair. “Okay. So—no pressure, okay? Whatever you pick, I’m totally good with.”
“Pick?”
“Christmas is coming.”
“And will soon be over, thank fuck.”
John raised his eyebrows. “What?”
“I hate Christmas carols.”
John snorted and shook his head. “All right, Scrooge.”
“So what about Christmas?”
“I have this sort of…tradition,” John said. “And no pressure, if it’s too early for it or you’re not interested, then fine—”
“Mind telling me what it is before trying to talk me out of it?” Chris prompted.
John laughed awkwardly. “Sorry. Okay. Uh. I have a thing about the sea. Especially a rough sea, when it’s crashing about and you can see the foam on the waves.”
“Uh-huh…”
“And during the winter, you can get really good rates at holiday cottages, and I always hate the New Year party scene. I’m not out at work, and the lads always want to go out and get pissed and leer at girls, and I’m not into that. So, I always just…went away. I’d go on Boxing Day, stay a week, and come back when the parties were over. And it turned into this tradition, and I kept it up.”
“You want to go away for New Year?”
“Yeah.”
“Go…where?”
“The North Sea coast. There’s a few nice places. I usually go to Robin Hood’s Bay or Whitby, but Aljaz found these great little cottages in Flamborough—”
“And you want to take me?”
John felt a hot flush rising in his face.
“Yeah.”
“And do what? I can’t exactly watch your foam-tipped waves.”
“You can hear it though. And put your feet in it.”
“At New Year? You have to be joking.”
“I’d warm them up again.”
“Not convinced.”
“If I go to Robin Hood’s Bay,” John said hopefully, “I always rent out this tiny little cottage on the cliffs. It’s got this big hearth that you can have a real fire in, and rugs everywhere, and the bedroom is up in the eaves of the roof with a huge skylight window. So, you can hear the sea all night, crashing below the cliffs.”
Chris was chewing on his lip.
“And the bed is custom-made,” John murmured. “It’s a huge four-poster job. You could fit a rugby team in there. It’s the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept in, and I know how amazing you’d look—” He glanced about and lowered his voice. “—sprawled out in the sheets while I make love to you.”
Chris groaned.
“What is it with you and that phrase?”
John laughed nervously, ducking his head.
“Or, we could go see a band, get chips on the way back to mine, and cuddle in a new calendar?”
Chris toyed with the coffee cup. “I like the sound of this cottage. I like the sea. We always had seaside holidays when I was a kid, and I still like walking barefoot in sand, even though it’s bloody hard work with a cane.”
“So…?”
“Every Christmas Eve, I have Christmas dinner and drinks with Luke and Gina. I know you’re panicky about meeting my family, but we have to start somewhere if this is going to become a long-term thing. I figure Luke and Gina are a good place to start. So, if you come to my Christmas Eve tradition with me, then I’ll come to your New Year one with you. Deal?”
Really? John just had to go to dinner with a lesbian he’d already seen once, and the trans guy who worked out with Chris? That was all?
And then he’d get a whole week of this man—this man—in a tiny little cottage at the seaside in return?
“Deal,” he breathed.
WHEN JOHN GOT home from work, he found himself staring at the closed fridge door.
He and Nora used it like a corkboard, a collection of magnets sticking to-do lists, building maintenance numbers, Mum and Dad’s anniversary reminder, and so on, to the white surface.
But it wasn’t Mum and Dad’s anniversary that caught John’s eye.
It was the simple brown card, bordered in white like a fancy chocolate.
Nadia Simmons.
It was just her name and a phone number, and John had never met the woman. Nora had got it for him after the police dropped the investigation, made him promise to think about it, and John had stuck it to the fridge.
He’d never thought about it until today.
Nadia Simmons was a counsellor.
John didn’t much go in for that sort of thing. Until Daniel, he’d never felt the need. He knew of people who needed counsellors, sure—Tasha with her anger management sessions, Rhodri’s missus with her anti-depressants—but John had never been one of them. Until Daniel, he’d been relatively…
Well, happy seemed a trite way to put it, but…yeah.
And then Daniel had happened. Nora told him he ought to think about it, and anyone would have battle scars left over from that fiasco, but John hadn’t bothered. He’d be fine, he told himself. Daniel had been a lying c—well, C-word, and none of it was true, and so what if John still had nightmares? He wasn’t sleeping with anyone. It was probably just the loneliness.
But the panic attack at seeing Chris’s stepmother was undeniable.
And Chris had said—
Well. John had said boyfriend. Chris had said long-term thing. They were heading in the very direction John wanted them to head…and he’d had a meltdown because Chris’s stepmother had seen him. At a farm fair. Without even knowing who he was.
“Nora!”
“What?”
“This Nadia woman…”
“Who?”
“Nadia Simmons!”
“Who?”
“Turn the bloody telly off!” he shouted, then gave up and wandered into the living room with the card. Nora scowled up at him, halfway through a marathon of one of the Real Housewives series. “Nadia Simmons. Who recommended her?”
Nora stared at the card.
“Oh my God,” she said. “Are you seriously thinking of going and seeing her?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. How’d you get her card?”
“Gavin at work,” Nora said promptly. “He was seeing her after his boyfriend died. Said she was really good, really non-judgemental.”
“So, she does…gay people, then?”
“Specialises in LGBT, I think. You could always look her up. Or I could ask Gavin.”
“S’fine,” John said absently, rubbing the card between finger and thumb.
“What’s brought this on?”
John blew out his cheeks. “So…I’m taking Chris to the coast for New Year’s. You know. My tradition thing.”
“Oh my God!”
“And he said if he came to the coast with me, I had to go to dinner with his mates on Christmas Eve. Apparently, it’s their thing.”
“So, Nadia because…”
John swallowed. “Because we went to the Whirlow Hall Farm Fair, and his stepmum was there, and I had a panic attack.”
“Oh, John.”
“I mean, she didn’t even know who I was, and it was just a coincidence, but I freaked. That’s…that’s how I ended up telling Chris about Daniel.”
She patted the sofa, tucking her feet under to make room. When John sat next to her, he was promptly hugged.
“You think I should go?”
“Yes,” she said. “I think if there’s nothing to do but wait it out and relax and you’ll be fine, then she’ll tell you in a couple of sessions, and you can stop going again. Or she might help you with some of the damage, and you can stop worrying so much.”
John didn’t even bother denying that he was worrying.
“You know, though, if you go off to the coast for New Year, Nan’s going to have kittens that she didn’t know about this guy.”
“Nora…”
“I don’t even know him!”
“By sheer luck,” he said.
“By sheer not wanting to see my baby brother in the buff,” she sniped, hugging her six-foot-eight ‘baby brother’ tightly. “Can I meet him, at least? Just me? Maybe come out with me and Raj sometime?”
“I don’t know.”
“I promise not to breathe a word to the others,” she said. “Please? I want to meet this supermodel that’s swept you off your feet.”
John bit his lip. He wanted to. God, he did. He wanted to show Chris off to them, show them he’d not only gotten over Daniel but caught someone completely and utterly perfect instead. But once he introduced Chris to his family, then he’d have to meet Chris’s, wouldn’t he? It would set a clock ticking, almost. That was how that sort of thing worked.
“Okay,” he caved. “But just you. And—not long. Just…I don’t know…he comes over, and you go out? Nice and quick?”
“Well, not that quick…”
“Noz.”
Her hated nickname stopped her short.
“I’m scared,” John whispered. “I’m scared his family are going to take one look at me and see the thug Daniel lied about. I’m—I can’t really explain it, but with Chris— God, with Chris it would be even easier to run with that lie. And I’m scared that’s what they’ll see, who they’ll see, and they’ll immediately start trying to prise me and Chris apart.”
Her face softened. She touched his arm gently.
“If he meets all of you,” John said, “then it’s only a matter of time before I have to meet his folks, or I’m giving them ammunition to use against me, aren’t I? And I need—I need more time.”
Nora bit her lip.
“I just need until after New Year,” John breathed. “Just—let me keep him until then. And then after New Year, after—after a whole week, me and him, and maybe me getting a session or two lined up with this Nadia woman…maybe then they won’t be able to persuade him I’m dangerous.”
She squeezed his wrist tightly.
“John.”
He glanced at her face.
“If he doesn’t already know that,” she said, “then he’s not the one you’re looking for.”
Chapter Seventeen
WHEN JOHN AGREED to Christmas Eve dinner, he’d forgotten a crucial point.
It was about a week away.
The run-up to Christmas was busy, as far as work was concerned. Fuses were being blown left, right, and centre as decorations overloaded circuits; idiots fell off ladders hanging lights and brought half the wiring down after them; and—John’s personal favourite—an overenthusiastic four-year-old, gift-hunting, managed to topple a wardrobe onto a rotten floor and bring a bedroom tumbling right through into the flat below.
(The four-year-old was fine. The flat was condemned.)
So, as it was, he didn’t even see Chris until Christmas Eve itself. By which time, the stupidity of what he’d agreed to had sunk in.
The tradition apparently moved bars every year, and always insisted on nothing Christmassy about it. This year, Gina had picked a Mexican restaurant on London Road, and Chris called telling John to meet them there.
“Luke and I are coming from the gym,” he said. “So, if you arrive at about six, that’d be perfect.”
So, at ten to, John was sitting in his car, parked around the corner, and sweating bullets.
He’d checked out the restaurant online, and it was a casual joint, so he had no idea how to dress. He’d passed muster with Gina at the farm, but Luke had never seen him. Would Luke be okay with tattooed muscle everywhere, or would it make him uncomfortable? Even wary? Was he the protective sort of friend, or would he leave Chris to make his own mistakes and to hell with what his new boyfriend looked like? John knew his strengths—love and laughter. Not looks.
