“You don’t have to walk me all the way to my door, you know,” Jake said as they stepped off the underground train. “I’m a big boy.”
“Maybe I want to.” Tom took Jake’s arm. “Do you live far from here?”
“Five minutes.”
And indeed it was. Jake led Tom to a low-key block of flats a few streets away from the Tube. “I’d invite you in, but the place is a tip.”
Tom smiled. “That’s okay. I just wanted to see you home all right.”
Jake leaned back on his front door. Tom felt a pull in his chest and somehow found himself caging Jake with his arms. They stared at each other for a long moment. He took in Jake’s bottomless brown eyes and the silver ring in his nose. Fuck, he was gorgeous.
Jake cleared his throat. “I know what you want.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You want to kiss me.”
Tom watched Jake unconsciously bite his lip. “Would that be bad?”
“Doubt it.”
Tom leaned down and brushed his lips over Jake’s, a barely there kiss that felt more like a whisper.
Jake let out a soft, needy sound, then pushed Tom away with a groan. “I can’t get you out of my head, but then I think of Cass, and I don’t understand how I feel. I know what you want, but I can’t, Tom. I bloody can’t.”
Cass: You don’t have to be scared of me
Jake: I’m not
Cass: So why are you giving Tom a hard time?
Jake: I’m not
Cass: Do you need anything?
Jake: Why?
Cass: Why what?
Jake: Why are you asking?
Cass: Why shouldn’t I?
Jake: Me and Tom aren’t fucking
Cass: Doesn’t mean you can’t be friends with him
Jake: I don’t understand you
Cass: You haven’t tried
Cass: What are you doing today?
Jake: Tom’s taking me to your production kitchen
Cass: Be nice to Ethel. She makes the best tea
Jake: Ethel said hello
Cass: Did you like the kitchen?
Jake: Big ovens
Cass: Size isn’t everything
Cass: Feed Tom today
Jake: Why are you telling me that?
Cass: He’s stressed
Jake: Why?
Cass: He’s about to hit his project wall
Jake: What’s that?
Cass: You’ll see
Jake: Do you work every day?
Cass: Not Mondays. Mondays are Sundays
Jake: Does Tom take sugar?
Cass: No. Weak and white
Cass: Tom wants a name for the Camden project. Any ideas?
Jake: No
Cass: Think of some. Anything cat related. He loves cats
Jake: Are you taking the piss?
Cass: Maybe
Jake: I don’t understand you
Cass: YOU HAVEN’T TRIED
“Fat Cat.”
Tom glanced up at Jake, irritated. “Excuse me?”
“For the restaurant.” Jake jumped down from the counter he’d been perched on. “But with a ‘ph,’ so it’s like ‘Phat Cat.’”
Tom shook his head. “I like that even less than Top Cat, Smack Cat, and every other feline connotation you’ve cooked up. No bloody cats.”
Jake shrugged and turned his attention to the branding designs Tom was leafing through. Jake had devised some himself, and was instantly immersed in them, but Tom couldn’t focus. It had been nearly a month since the tense meeting in Belsize Park, and for a while afterwards, Jake had been aloof, cold, even. Tom had resigned himself to Jake becoming nothing more than a regular employee, only for him to perk up in the last week or so. That morning, he’d arrived for work with a big grin on his face, and his bouncy good mood was giving Tom a headache.
“I like this one.” Tom tapped his finger on an edgy black-and-white design. “I like the fonts. Is this one of yours?”
Jake peered over Tom’s shoulder, apparently oblivious to the effect his close proximity was having on Tom. “Yeah, it’s not finished, though. I wanted to add some purple, but my laptop crashed. It can’t handle the design software Sofia sent me.”
Sofia was the interior design consultant Tom had drafted in from the company he’d used for the Stew Shack. She’d taken a shine to Jake, much to Jake’s amusement and Tom’s surprised chagrin.
“You’re just jealous because he won’t let you flirt with him,” Cass had said.
Tom didn’t want to admit how right he was. He sighed and scrubbed his hand over his face. Even with Jake’s help, the Camden project was starting to get on top of him. Christmas was fast approaching, and Cass’s free time was in short supply. He’d developed most of the menu for the new project, but he was still working on the dessert concept.
Jake put a hand on Tom’s arm. “What’s the matter?”
Tom jumped. He hadn’t shared much physical contact with Jake since their near kiss on his doorstep a few weeks ago. “Hmm?”
“You seem weird.” Jake let his hand drop. “Are you okay?”
It was an endearing switch in their usual roles, but Tom wasn’t in the mood to talk anything other than business. “You either need a crappier design program, or a better computer.” Jake stared at him, and Tom belatedly realised it had been longer than he thought since Jake had mentioned his crashing laptop. “You can borrow mine, if you want.”
“Don’t you need it?”
Jake had a point. Tom’s whole life was on his laptop, and recently he’d felt surgically attached to it. “Cass never uses his, maybe . . .”
Tom caught his mistake too late, but rather than the blank look Jake usually plastered on his face when Cass was mentioned, he shrugged. “Sounds like a plan.”
It does? Tom hadn’t seen Cass for a couple of days, both of them too swamped with work to make it back to the same bed, and it had been a while since they’d talked about Jake. With the barrier Jake had put up so impenetrable, there hadn’t seemed much point.
Frustrated, Tom shoved the brand designs into a folder, Jake’s chunky fonts at the top of the stack. “Ask him yourself, then maybe the two of you can come up with a name for this place that isn’t fucking ridiculous.”
A week later, Tom found himself in a strange state of flux. He was spending almost every day with Jake, but though Jake’s abrupt change in attitude meant Tom was growing more and more attached to his enigmatic assistant, something felt off. He didn’t want to lead two separate lives, damn it. He wanted . . . Fuck, he didn’t know what he wanted.
Tom sat across from Jake on the Tube train heading east to Shoreditch, watching a slow grin spread across his face as he typed furiously into his phone. In fact, he’d been glued to his phone for most of the day, texting with someone who made him smile like he had the world’s best secret.
I wonder what they’re talking about. Whatever it was, the distraction seemed to have eased the tics that often plagued Jake on the cramped underground trains, and Tom couldn’t help the burn of jealousy in his gut. Seeing Jake grin made his day, but fuck if he didn’t want to be the one making his eyes shine like that.
The train pulled into Shoreditch. Tom stood and, as had become his habit even when Jake had been blanking him, took Jake’s arm as they stepped off the train.
“You’re quiet again today.”
Tom glanced at Jake. “Am I?”
“Yeah. Are you worried about Camden?”
Tom waited until they’d passed through the ticket barriers to get out of the station. “What makes you say that?”
“You seem moody.”
“Moody?”
“Fly him to the moon.”
Tom couldn’t help but grin. He liked that tic. It always seemed to come out when Jake seemed happy. “I’m fine. Come on, let’s go find Ethel.”
They made their way to the industrial unit that housed Bites. Ethel came out to meet them and whisked Jake away to ply him with tea
and biscuits. Tom let him go and set to work on what proved to be a long afternoon of number crunching and product design.
It was 6 p.m. when Jake came to find him. “Are you done yet? I want to show you something.”
Tom glanced up. Jake stood in the entrance of Bites open-plan office, holding the laptop he’d borrowed from Cass. “What is it?”
“I’ve finished the branding layout. I put it through the architect software so you can see it on the finished restaurant, if you want?”
Tom nodded. Now that, he did want to see. The builders had fallen behind on the Camden site, and it was hard to envision how the project would ever be finished at all, much less what it would look like.
Jake shuffled over with Cass’s laptop. Tom opened it up, and blinked a couple of times as an image of his own face, smiling and drunk on holiday in Ibiza, filled the screen. He shot a wary glance at Jake, who shrugged.
“What? It’s not like I don’t know he’s your boyfriend.”
Fair enough. Tom clicked on the open design files and studied the mock-ups Jake had created. They were perfect. Startling, urban, and cool, all the things Tom had first imagined when he’d drifted down Camden High Street. He clicked through the pages, from the incomplete menu designs to the full layout of the unfinished restaurant. If they pulled it off, it was going to be bloody brilliant.
Beside him, Jake fidgeted, and Tom realised he’d left him hanging. “These are awesome. You’re really good at this.”
“Wankers. I did web design at college for a while.”
“What happened?”
Jake slapped his neck. “What do you think?”
Tom gazed at him, for a moment transfixed by all that was Jake. He was wearing his trademark skinny jeans, a softly worn jumper that smelled like magic, and a dark woollen hat over his shaggy hair. As ever, he took Tom’s breath away.
Tom shut the laptop with a snap that made Jake jump. “It’s late, and I’m starving. Want to get some dinner?”
Jake chewed on his lip. His usual retort was a ‘thanks, but no thanks.’ “I’m pretty wired from staring at a computer all day. I’m not sure you want to sit in a restaurant with me right now.”
He buzzed out a few tics as if to emphasise his point.
“You know that doesn’t bother—” Tom stopped. Sitting in a restaurant with Jake’s muttering didn’t bother him, but perhaps it bothered Jake. “Actually, I’d rather grab a bag of chips and head home. You’re welcome to join me.”
Tom unlocked the flat. Beside him, Jake leaned against the wall, languid, nonchalant, a crumpled chip paper in one hand, his ever-present phone in the other.
“How long have you lived here?”
Tom held open the door and waved Jake inside. “A couple of years, but we don’t really live here—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. You’ve got your mansion outside of the city.”
Tom snorted and dropped his keys on the little table in the entrance hall. “Trust me, it’s not a mansion. The place was a wreck when we bought it, and most of it still is.”
“Thought you didn’t like mess?” Jake followed Tom into the living room and poured himself onto the sofa.
Tom forced himself to look away. “Yeah, well. Sometimes there aren’t enough hours in the day. You want a beer?”
“Maybe. Who’s that?”
“Hmm?” Tom followed Jake’s gaze to one of the only photographs that had made it into the Hampstead flat, a photograph Tom had forgotten was there. “That’s Cass’s Nana Dolly.”
“I feel like I’ve seen her before.”
Tom shrugged. “Not unless you were down the East End markets ten years ago. She was an institution there for decades. Didn’t retire until she hit eighty.”
Jake got up and peered closer at the photograph. “Is she still alive?”
“Yeah, but she’s in a home now.” Tom yawned and felt his jaw pop. He’d forgotten how exhausting building a restaurant from scratch was, or maybe it was Jake. The past week or so, Tom had struggled to match his energy “Do you want a beer, or not?”
“Sure. Want me to get it? You look dead on your feet.”
“I’m fine.”
Tom moved through the small flat to the tiny kitchen, pondering Jake’s sudden concern for his well-being. He retrieved two beers from the fridge—the only constant in the hardly used kitchen—and returned to the living room to find Jake cross-legged on the floor, scanning through the sparse DVD collection in the TV cabinet. “See anything you like?”
“You’re joking, right?” Jake buzzed through a few tics and held up a DVD. “The Last Samurai? Really? Tom Cruise is a dick.”
Tom sank onto the couch. “Don’t look at me. Cass likes the other bloke, the head Samurai guy. Says he has a fuck-me voice.”
Jake grunted in answer, though in agreement or not, Tom couldn’t tell. He tipped his head back and closed his eyes. Jake moved around, fiddling with this and that, and somehow it didn’t feel strange. Tom wondered if Jake was remembering the last time he’d been here, when they hadn’t made it past the bedroom door. When they’d ended up kissing and fucking, until they’d both fallen asleep.
Then Jake had woken up alone with Cass in his face.
“Are you awake?”
Tom opened his eyes. Jake was still on the floor, but he’d crawled across the rug on his knees and positioned himself between Tom’s legs. “Huh? What?”
Jake laughed, and Tom felt the vibration rumble up through his body. “You’re so out of it today, you’re making me feel sharp.”
“You are sharp.” Tom sat up and scrubbed his face, aware of how close Jake was. “You’ve just got used to people treating you like you’re thick.”
Jake tensed, and Tom realised he’d spoken his mind without measuring his words.
“Sorry—”
“Don’t be. I know you’re right.”
Jake sat back on his heels. For some reason, the new distance between them felt like a punch to his gut. He leaned forwards, chasing it down. “How are you getting on with the work you’re doing? Enjoying it?”
Jake shrugged. “Some of it, but I don’t know how you handle your inbox.”
“I don’t,” Tom said dryly. “It’s still there when I get up the next day. You can only do what you can do.”
“Yeah, but you do loads.” Jake drank some of his beer. “I never know what to write back.”
“Bollocks. You’re better at it than I am.” Tom mirrored Jake’s action and took a long pull on his beer. “But I think answering emails is a waste of your skills.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Tom put his beer bottle down and put his hands on his knees to stop himself reaching for Jake. He’d spent weeks resisting the desire to touch him, he wasn’t going to falter now. “I have a bunch of websites that need updating and rebuilding. Fancy it?”
Jake stared at him. “I haven’t built a website in years.”
“So? You’re working for free at the moment, remember? If you balls it up, I’ll be no worse off than before.”
“What if I don’t?”
Tom grinned. “Then you’ll get paid what I would’ve paid the designer on my books.”
“What about the Camden project? Don’t you need me there?”
“I do, but we’re waiting for the builders at the moment. Unless you want to plumb in the bogs, there’s not much you can do for the next week or so.”
Jake still seemed unsure. Tom gave in to temptation and took his hand. “You could start with Pink’s website. It’s pretty small and basic.”
“Like the restaurant, eh?”
Tom smiled. Pink’s was a tiny fish café, ten tables, no set menu. They cooked and sold whatever fish Nero bought from the market every morning. “You’re learning. I’ve got a spec folder, and I know you understand all this coding crap better than I do. I’m sure you could make it more functional.”
“Like, so they could upload their menu every morning? Do they have a Twitter? Or a Facebook page? The
y could put it on there too.”
“Exactly. Think you can make that happen for me?”
A tic rippled through Jake. “Wankers. I could try.”
Tom sat back and closed his eyes, satisfied. Regardless of his attraction to Jake, the website at Pink’s really did need a total overhaul, and he didn’t have time to sort it out. If Jake was hiding the skills Tom suspected he was, this was the perfect solution.
“Why do you care?”
“What’s that?” Tom opened a lazy eye.
Jake took his hand again. “Why do you care what I do? Look at all this.” He gestured around the tiny flat. “You have your business, your property . . . Cass. You have everything. What am I to you?”
Tom considered Jake through heavy, half-lidded eyes. He’d expected Cass to ask what Jake was to him before Jake ever did, but though he’d thought about it, he still didn’t have an answer he could verbalise. He sat up again and cupped Jake’s chin with his hand. In the dimly lit room, Jake’s eyes gleamed like a wolf’s. Tom let himself be drawn in so they were inches apart, then he kissed Jake, once, twice, until Jake whimpered and pulled away. “This,” Tom said. “This is what we are.”
The first time they’d fucked had been measured and sweet, and a far cry from the scene Tom had pictured when he’d first realised his attraction to Jake. His imagination had proved nothing on reality, but even as Tom pushed Jake down on the rug, uncertainty crept over him. The sensation was unfamiliar, and Tom wasn’t sure he liked it. He and Cass knew each other well. Their sex life was passionate, charged, and the one thing Tom had never, ever doubted.
Jake tapped Tom’s temple. “You think too hard.”
Tom hummed and kissed the tips of Jake’s fingers, sucking one into his mouth. He waited for Jake’s eyes to roll before he pulled off and searched out Jake’s lips.
Jake’s gasp of surprise was light, and laced with an innocence that made Tom want to hold him close and never let go, but there was nothing sweet about the way Tom kissed him. Tom held Jake’s face tight in his hand, rough and needy. It had been three months since they’d last truly touched, and the long weeks of pent-up discord were about to explode.
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