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“Uh huh?”
Harry ran a finger down her bare arm. “I just got a text from Gazza. Since you work at a vet, do you think you could get some ketamine for us? I've always wanted to try it, but that shit’s hard to get hold of.” He waited a beat, watching her parents’ expressions carefully, then added, “You’ve used it, right?”
Tracy’s mum’s face twisted in righteous indignation—bingo—then there was the screech of chair legs on tile and she was towering over him, quivering with barely suppressed rage. “How dare you! My daughter is not a thief—or a drug user!”
Harry closed his eyes against the all-too-familiar sensation of cold liquid hitting his face and running into his ears and down his front as she threw her beer over him.
Tracy squealed and stood as well. “Harry! How could you be so—so—awful!” She might be a vet student, but she obviously nursed a dramatic streak as well, because her breath hitched and her face twisted, and even though he knew she was faking, Harry would have sworn she was about to cry. “Get out!” she shouted, and shoved at him where he still sat dripping beer onto the restaurant floor.
Harry stumbled to his feet. “But babe,” he said plaintively, extending his hands palms-up. “I’ve ordered dessert!”
“Out.” Geoff’s voice was little more than a snarl, and Harry didn’t need to be told twice. He scrambled for the exit.
Once outside, he allowed himself a satisfied smile. He was cold and wet, and his shirt clung unpleasantly, but at least whoever Tracy brought home next—in this case, her older brother’s school friend—would be welcomed with open arms, which was the entire point of the evening
He walked around the corner from the restaurant before ordering an Uber—because fuck catching the train in a wet shirt—and his phone pinged while he waited. He opened it, expecting it to be from Tracy checking in, but it was from Jack, and Harry’s heart beat a little faster when he read it.
You back soon? New season of Lucifer just dropped on Netflix.
Harry texted back Hell yes! then wondered why the invitation felt more like a date than the one he’d just been on.
Harry stank like a brewery, and he was pretty sure he wasn’t getting five stars from his Uber driver, but frankly he thought he’d been lucky that Tracy’s mum had only flung her beer in his face and not actually glassed him. Wearing the occasional beverage was an occupational hazard.
“What happened?” Jack asked, flinging the front door open before Harry could even get his key out of his pocket.
“My date’s mum beered me,” Harry said. “And not in that fun way where you go ‘Beer me!’ and someone hands you a beer.” He tugged his soaked shirt away from his chest, grimacing at the wet sound it made. “This way was a lot less nice. But hey, that’s the price of success, I guess.”
Jack’s eyebrows rose. “You call this a success?”
Harry pushed his damp hair back off his face and shuddered when the movement caused cold, wet fabric to drag against his stomach. “I mean, yeah. Tracy dumped me and her parents hate me. That’s the entire gig.”
“I guess.” Jack sounded dubious, but Harry ignored it. As far as he was concerned, he was doing a public service and he was getting paid for it. Win-win.
Jack stepped aside so that Harry could get in the door and he sighed, grateful to be out of the cool evening breeze. “I’m gonna shower,” he said, heading straight for the bathroom. He peeled out of his wet clothes and showered until the tiny hot water tank was empty, the lack of bathroom mildew still a novelty. Then he threw on an old pair of boardies and a singlet and wandered out to the living room.
Jack was waiting on the couch wearing the singlet and boxers he usually slept in, and he held out a beer. “Figured you’d sooner drink one than wear one,” he said with a grin.
Harry laughed and took it gratefully, settling in next to Jack on the couch. Jack flicked the TV on, the screen filling with images of impossibly pretty people who took part in far-fetched plotlines.
Jack sighed audibly every time Tom Ellis appeared shirtless, then blushed and threw a bottlecap at Harry’s head when he caught him rolling his eyes. “Shut up,” he grumbled. “He’s hot.”
Harry shrugged. He couldn’t see the appeal. Except, no. That wasn’t quite right. He could objectively appreciate that he was looking at a well-proportioned physique. It just didn’t do anything for him personally.
What was doing things to him personally was the way Jack’s boxers had hiked up one thigh where Jack was resting one foot on the couch in an unintentionally obscene sprawl. As much as he tried to concentrate on the screen, Harry found his gaze drawn again and again to the stretch of lean muscle and pale skin with a dusting of fine golden hair. Harry had the weirdest urge to run a finger over the skin, just to see if it felt as good as it looked, and to see what Jack would do—whether he’d pull away or move closer.
And once he’d started looking at Jack’s exposed skin, he couldn’t seem to stop. Jack’s hands, with their permanent grease smudges on the knuckles, were endlessly fascinating, as was that tempting little dip above his collarbone, and the ink that snaked down over his shoulder. Harry wasn’t sure what was going on, but he was torn between a desire to run his hands over Jack’s skin and the urge to throw a blanket over him and remove temptation.
Not that Jack was temptation. Jack was his roommate. Harry was just overtired, and mistaking friendship for attraction or something like it. Right?
Finally, Harry couldn’t take the jumble of emotions anymore. “I’m gonna head to bed,” he said, and it was amazing how normal his voice sounded. “See you tomorrow.”
“Night,” Jack said, and flapped a hand casually at Harry. A broad, slightly grimy hand, with thick fingers and short buffed nails, that would feel so good against his skin?—
Harry felt his cheeks heat at the idea of it and bolted up the stairs before Jack noticed.
It wasn’t unusual for Harry to feel a little bit wired after a date. It was stressful, putting on an act, and that wasn’t even including the added adrenaline rush of constantly being aware he might get punched in the face. So sometimes it took him a while to wind down afterwards. Except tonight, as he lay in his bed and stared at the ceiling, it wasn’t his date and her horrified family his thoughts kept skipping back to—it was Jack, with his tan arms, his pale back and the lines of ink that traced his skin.
He liked Jack. He liked him a lot, but that didn’t mean he should suddenly be thinking of his tats, or the way the tendons in his wrist corded when he handed Harry a cup of tea in the mornings, or how sometimes the track pants he slept in were loose enough that they looked like the only thing stopping them from slipping right off his trim hips was the power of positive thinking. He liked Jack, but he liked lots of people. He liked Tris, most of the time, and Ambrose, and Liam, and Muriel, who he shared a few classes with, and whose name wasn’t really Muriel, but Mireille. He’d been calling her Muriel since their first year at uni because of a running joke he couldn’t even remember now. The point was, Harry liked a lot of people and a lot of people liked him, but that didn’t usually lead to him thinking about their bodies, and what they looked like naked, and what they might feel like if he touched them.
