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“The Atwood,” Will clarified. “It’s probably my fave of hers.”
“Is that so.” Patrick grabbed his purchases. Will smiled back at him, and then he was finally out of excuses to stay. He held the books in the crook of his arm as he left the store and made the leisurely walk back to the hotel.
Patrick’s line of work did not often call for him to look outward, and he couldn’t quite remember the last time he had been so curious about another person. When Patrick had walked into Gilroy’s, Will had smiled like he wasn’t even surprised to see him there, like he was any other returning customer. He had made Patrick feel just for a second that he wasn’t a stranger in this town, like he already had a friend.
There was also the dusting of black hair peeking out from under the collar and sleeves of his shirt, the slight flourish of the wrist as he had typed Patrick’s request, the little details that Patrick rarely allowed himself to notice in other men. And something about those green eyes made him almost certain that he and Will had met before, but try as he might, he couldn’t put his finger on it. He must have been in the crowd at the bar that night, he decided. That was almost certainly it.
Or possibly it wasn’t that at all. It was the other thing, that glimmer of recognition he always did his best to ignore, that said: You too?
Fine, so what if he had wanted to see him again, however briefly? It had been a while. Longer than a while. He was allowed to look, as long as that was all he did, and discreetly at that. It wasn’t about Will from the charming secondhand bookstore at all, really. He could be anyone.
Although, as Patrick strolled back across the square in the shade of the cathedral, he could momentarily admit to himself that Will’s quick, bright smile alone had been worth the visit.
Chapter 11
“He is so weird,” Jordan remarked the moment Patrick had left.
“He’s just a bit awkward,” Will said, unexpectedly defensive.
“I think he’s gay,” said April, and both Will and Jordan spun to her in unison.
“Say more?”
She shrugged. “Far be it for me to speculate about other people’s private lives,” she said, “but Emma Frost is his favorite mutant.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Will said.
April shrugged again and sauntered into the back. She would often do this: volunteer to go make a round of tea or take care of some kind of admin-related task, and instead sit in the screaming cupboard for half an hour at a time, writing her fanfiction on FicFix.com. Will had read snippets. She was quite good. Her stories were evocative, well plotted, and smutty as hell. She’d amassed a considerable following. Will harbored a suspicion that April was fanfic famous.
“As if he thought we were dating,” Jordan marveled. “Wait. Unless. Do you think he was coming onto one of us? Both of us? Did he think we saw him from across the bookshop and really liked his vibe?”
“Less iced coffee for you,” Will said, sliding the remnants of Jordan’s latte off the counter and into the bin. “And I thought you weren’t into threesomes?”
“Correct.” Jordan nodded. “I do not share the spotlight.”
To be fair to Patrick, this was far from the first time somebody had assumed he and Jordan were a couple. They were physically affectionate with each other, for sure, and had been known to bicker like people who’d been married for years. But most of the time, it was a simple case of a drunk straight woman seeing two men standing next to each other in a gay bar and being overcome by the urge to make them kiss like a child playing with an Action Man and Ken.
The truth was, he and Jordan had originally met on Grindr and even gone on a date. They’d talked nonstop over G&Ts about their favorite books, films, Real Housewives cast members, and Madonna eras, ending the evening by falling into bed together, a decision made largely as a result of said G&Ts and the fact that Uber was surge-pricing at the time. The sex, from what little Will could remember, had been perfunctory at best, and when they both awoke the next morning, they had cackled like hyenas and agreed to never do it again.
The two of them had been best friends ever since, inseparable to the point of codependency, and if more than a day or two went by without one of them texting, the other immediately assumed he was dead.
“Anyway, did you hear about the latest nonsense?” Jordan asked.
“I am always here for nonsense. Proceed.”
“Well.” Jordan’s tone grew clipped, efficient: what he liked to call his Business Bitch voice. “The council are trying to limit the opening hours of the bars on Hurst Street again. Noise complaints. Turns out the people who moved into the brand-new block of flats next to the busiest gay bar in the heart of the gay quarter didn’t think that they might actually have to deal with real gay people coming and going.”
“For god’s sake,” said Will. “Don’t they try this every couple of years?”
“Yep. It’s textbook. Try and force the bars to close earlier, which means fewer people end up going, meaning they make less money, meaning they close down, and some wanker in a gray suit can snap up the empty buildings and turn them into flats or”—he wrinkled his nose—“a Joe & The Juice.”
“Perish the thought.”
“Capitalism and homophobia are cousins,” said Jordan, with the kind of finality that Will knew meant he would neither explain nor elaborate on what this actually meant.
It was worrying. Gay bars were on the brink of extinction, with old venues closing down all the time, and precious few new ones opening. Will couldn’t picture a version of Birmingham without the Village, and he didn’t like the thought of having to.
On the surface, the place was nothing special. A run-down watering hole with lights kept intentionally low so punters couldn’t see the scars. But people still flocked to the Village every weekend, and Will wasn’t alone in harboring a soft spot for the old girl. If there was one thing gay men were drawn to, it was the shabby glamour of a diva past her prime.
