Abroad: Book One (The Hellum and Neal Series in LGBTQIA+ Literature 2)

by Liz Jacobs

  When he finally came out of the bathroom, he caught sight of Izzy and Dex in the kitchen and froze, unable to look away.

  They looked so close. Intimate, really. Dex had his arms wrapped around Izzy from behind, and he was murmuring something to her Nick couldn’t hear. Izzy laughed. Then Nick watched as she leaned back and planted a quick kiss on Dex’s cheek. Nick ducked his head and quickly moved the hell away. He shouldn’t have seen that.

  More and more, he was beginning to think Dex’s instant dislike of him was Izzy-related. It twisted Nick’s stomach into knots to think it, because he had it all wrong, Dex had it all wrong, Nick wouldn’t … he wasn’t. He wasn’t interested.

  His spot by the couch was waiting for him, and as soon as he plopped down, Chloe the Pixie presented him with another bloody mary, which he took gratefully.

  “Anyway, who’s up for it?” Jonny asked.

  Nick took an ill-advised giant gulp of his drink, and it burned on the way down. Maybe he was a bit drunk. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, hoping no one had noticed.

  “What about you, Nick, are you in?”

  Nick twisted around to look at Alex, which brought on another warm flush, because Alex was just ridiculously good-looking. Staring at him was like staring at the sun. It was probably safer to look through sunglasses, dim his shine a little.

  “Uh, sorry—in for what?”

  “Oh, nineties night, there’s a thing on at a club in Shoreditch. Next weekend. You in?”

  He said weekend with an emphasis on end, and Nick got a little stuck playing it on a loop in his head. His accent sounded nice. Then the question caught up with him. Wait.

  “Oh, uh…” Say yes, said a voice in his head. It sounded like Zoyka. Say yes, they’re waiting! That sounded more like his own voice. Nick blinked. “Um, s-sure? That sounds…” Was it going to be expensive? He’d been skimping on a lot of things to make sure he didn’t run out of money before the semester’s end. A club night sounded expensive.

  Also insane.

  Him, at a club? With, like, music and people and presumably dancing? International night had been enough. No, fuck it, he wasn’t going. He wasn’t going, and he’d invent some sort of an excuse.

  “Brilliant!” Alex grinned, showing all white teeth, staring down at him.

  Nick’s heart sank. Oh God.

  +

  It wasn’t like the door was barred, but Nick felt it impolite to leave before helping with cleanup, and nobody was getting up to actually start doing it. The crowd dispersed a bit. Lance and Niall left, so did Beth, the blue-haired baby lesbian. There was enough room for Nick to curl up on one side of the couch with his feet up, which he did happily, because he’d finished that second drink. No one was asking him any questions, so he was content enough just to listen.

  Alex and Jonny were arguing about something so deeply sciencey, Nick couldn’t have followed the conversation stone-cold sober. Steph and Chloe were making plans for a library date, it sounded like. Dex and Izzy were lounging against the wall, simply listening, just like Nick. Every now and then, Dex piped up to correct something so incomprehensible to Nick, he wondered if it was even in English.

  “Nick, so you’re studying history, right?” Izzy asked, and Nick took a little bit to wake up from his food and drink coma before the anxiety set in. He nodded. “Ohh, what sort?”

  “British history, actually.”

  “Oh, cool! Is that why you came here?”

  Why did it feel so strange to admit to this to actual British people? It wasn’t like they were really going to start throwing rotten vegetables his way. Probably. “Yeah. I mean, I’ve always been really interested in it, and I read a ton of British lit when I was a kid, so it just sort of became a thing, I guess.”

  “Cool.”

  Dex was watching Nick, and Nick watched him back, unable to figure out what was behind the look. It wasn’t hostile—maybe because Izzy was currently safely next to him—but it wasn’t all open and normal like everyone else. Dex was probably judging him for being a stupid American with pretensions toward becoming a British historian. Maybe he would throw rotten vegetables at Nick if it were socially acceptable.

  Well, fuck him. Nick wasn’t good at much, but he was good at school.

  “Yeah, I guess I got it from my mom. The interest in British lit, I mean.”

  “Is she a historian, too?”

  “Nah, she’s a chemist.” He liked that she said too. “But she has a lot of hobbies.” They were a family of nerds.

  Later, Natali got up decisively and said, “All right, babes. This has been ace, but I’ve got to read for lecture and you all need to clear out.”

  Nick was immediately shooting up off the couch to help clean up, only a little wobbly on his feet.

  Natali loaded his arms up with plates. “I’ll be right behind you, just bung those in the sink for now.”

  Nick followed her orders, careful to step around the doorway and not suffer a repeat of the one and only time he’d bussed tables at a country club. He’d been holding a full tray of dirty dishes, about to swing through the kitchen door, when someone swung through on the other side. He hadn’t been asked back once the mess was cleared.

  He looked around the kitchen. It was small but nice, sunny. All the cabinets were white, like an Ikea showroom, and it took him way too long to find the fridge. It was covered in the same stuff the cabinets were made of. Weird.

  Natali found him with his arms half buried in soapsuds, zoning out on washing dishes.

  “Oh, bless you, you can leave those, you know,” she said, but didn’t attempt to stop him. Natali leaned a hip against the counter right next to him and watched him work, dish towel at the ready. “Dex usually does this part, so he’ll be happy.”

  Oh.

  “He and Iz have got this whole brunch thing down to a science, it’s wild,” Natali went on, inadvertently stepping right into a line of questioning Nick was feeling reckless enough to start up.

  “Have they been together long?” He handed her a plate, unable to meet her eyes.

  “What, Dex and Izzy?” Natali froze with the plate in her hand. “Oh, Christ, no.”

  Nick looked up at her, startled.

  “One of them’s way too queer for the other one,” Natali said as she dried.

  Oh. Izzy was—

  Natali rolled her eyes. “Dex, babe. Queer as a daisy.” She watched him take this in. “What? You didn’t realize?”

  Nick slowly shook his head. Maybe he was too drunk for washing dishes—he hadn’t picked that one plate back up in what felt like years. Logically, it had probably been seconds.

  “You’re adorable.” Drying dishes and smiling at him, Natali was so much less intimidating than her appearance had first suggested. Nick dared to meet her gaze. “They’re best friends is all. I mean, who knows, if Dex was straight, they’d probably be married by now.” Nick caught an edge in her voice, something raspy and sharp.

  Why was Dex acting like such a weirdo toward him, if not for Izzy? What the fuck had Nick done to deserve it?

  6

  Dex couldn’t stop thinking about Nick, and it was driving him bonkers.

  The problem was twofold. The first part was that he had been meaning to apologise to Nick at the brunch for having been a massive dickhead and had found zero opportunity to do so. He had, however, found plenty to go on being a massive dickhead. Dex was, in fact, beginning to suspect that he simply was a massive dickhead.

  Izzy was probably right. Dex seriously needed to get off with someone sooner rather than later. His own hand wasn’t cutting it these days.

  Regardless, he still owed Nick an apology.

  The second part of the problem was worse. Dex was intensely attracted to Nick, against all of his better judgment. That was the last thing Dex needed, and it was the last thing he had expected.

  Dex’s ex had been the epitome of what he found attractive. Tall, built, dark, handsome. Killer smile. Fit as all get out. Strong.
<
br />   Nick was the opposite. All but the killer smile, if Dex were honest, but even that was different. He was just so very small. Well, Dex supposed he was average height for a bloke, but he was skinny enough that he looked small. He had giant hair and uneven teeth.

  He wasn’t handsome. He was pretty. Pouty mouth, with these strange grooves in the corners that made him look impish at all times. Like he held a mystery inside him he wasn’t too keen on sharing. And then his fucking eyes. Dex had been fairly exhausted at brunch, sort of out of it, and also worrying about getting a chance to apologise to Nick. He just kept getting distracted by Nick’s ridiculous blue eyes. Maybe they were grey, he couldn’t quite tell. They were large, framed by long lashes, and the defined inner corners turned down and made him look like a fox. Another mystery.

  Dex rubbed his eyes and refocused on his computer. The last thing he wanted to do was uncover anybody’s mysteries. He was too busy uncovering the mysteries of how he was going to get all of this work into one bloody school year whilst working and presumably eating and sleeping and possibly seeing his friends every now and then. Maybe even seeing his family more than once in a blue moon.

  He was also going to the club and getting off with the first boy he saw, even if he was a pretentious Shoreditch hipster with a topknot. Hipsters gave hand jobs, too.

  He shut his laptop decisively. It was time to go to the Arms, anyway.

  He pulled on his requisite uniform of white T-shirt and black trousers, checked himself out in the bathroom—skin looked clear, for once—and set off.

  On the way, he calculated how many shifts at the pub he could possibly pick up to cover the rent and have some play money leftover. Nat’s uncle gave them a sizable break on the rent, but Dex had just had to splurge on a new laptop after his old one bit it spectacularly, and he was still feeling the effects of the hole burnt into his bank account.

  He would probably be all right, but you could never be too careful. Mum had wanted to pay for it when he’d mentioned it, but Dex just felt sort of weird about accepting their money with Albert still in school and needing all the sorts of crap fourteen-year-olds needed. In the end, they went half and half, but it was still sort of more than Dex could afford. God bless Mum, though.

  The problem with Nick, too, was what a socially awkward dude he was. Dex couldn’t have been the only one to see it. The only time Nick looked remotely comfortable was with a drink in him. That boded well, Dex thought, rolling his eyes.

  He shook his head. No thoughts of boys who weren’t going to help him get off. He had work to do.

  +

  He was absolutely bored out of his mind the first hour and completely slammed the rest of the shift, especially since Nicola had had to leave him on his own and go home to vomit through a stomach bug. Once the post-work crowd filtered in, they never stopped, even on a fucking Wednesday. But it kept him from worrying about too many things at once.

  After he’d served a rumpled-looking young guy in a sagging business suit, Dex looked up and saw Jonny sidle up to the bar.

  “Hey, man!” Dex was already pulling out a pint glass and tipping it under the Stella spout. “Thought you were going to be out with Niall and Lance?”

  Jonny rolled his eyes and dropped a tenner on the bar. “Ended up bailing on me. Something about Niall needing Lance’s help with a project. Anyway, Steph’s meeting me here now.”

  “That’s a better end of the deal.” Dex slid over Jonny’s drink before grabbing the tenner. Jonny was giving him a look. “Sorry.”

  “Look, I know they’re a bit Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, but they’re mates, you know? They mean well. Like, Lance is actually really sweet if you bother to get to know him.”

  Dex sighed and ran a hand over his locs. “Shit. I know. I’m sorry. Have I been a massive dickhead to everyone the last few months?”

  Jonny, to give him all the credit in the world, did not laugh at him outright. “Define massive and last few months?”

  Oh God. Dex put his head on his arms and groaned. “That bad?”

  “C’mon, mate, up, you’re working.” Jonny patted Dex’s locs.

  Dex lifted his head with a sigh. “Really, how bad?”

  “I mean, you’ve not exactly been yourself, but I’ve been chucking it up to evil Michael’s doings.”

  “He wasn’t evil,” Dex said automatically. “Maybe he was.”

  “Talk about a massive dickhead.” Jonny cocked a meaningful eyebrow, then relaxed. “Look, you’ve been grumpy as fuck, and is it hard to be around? Sometimes. But you’ve never exactly been Mr. Sunshine, and it’s not like you’ve been tearing into everyone or being, like, mean. You’ve just been, dunno. Less patient or something.”

  “I think I need to put an end to my ascetic sexless existence,” Dex said. “I mean, Izzy’s right.”

  “Nah, man. I mean, Izzy is not all wrong, but I think what you actually need is to get your heart sorted.”

  Jonny was such good people, Dex thought. Sometimes he’d forget Jonny was older than the rest of them, but every now and then those extra years of wisdom would show themselves and make Dex feel strangely comforted. “Think it’s my heart that’s the problem?”

  “I do. He stomped all over it, and you’ve not done much to get over that fact. Now’s the time, man.”

  “The time for what?” Steph had managed to belly up to the bar without either of them noticing, which said very little for Dex’s bartending abilities.

  “For Dex to fix his heart,” Jonny said, while Dex gave the pub a panicked glance. The rush had stopped just before Jonny got there, but still.

  He served a few pints to guys who looked like this maybe should have been last call and kept half an eye on them as he returned to Jonny and Steph, Steph’s lager at the ready.

  “You definitely need to get off with someone,” Steph told him as she grabbed the glass. “I mean, Jonny’s right, too. But, like. Return to the joy of meaningless sex for a while. Or something. If nothing else, it’ll take the edge off.”

  Dex laughed. The Joy of Meaningless Sex could have been the title of a book about his first year at uni, when he’d thrown himself headfirst into the freedom of being away from home and surrounded by all the best that gay London had to offer. And then he’d met Michael—the tosser—and fell head over fucking heels in love. Michael had been brilliant. Beautiful, bright. As far as Dex was concerned, the sun rose and set with him, but apparently Michael rose and set with more than just Dex. In fact, he turned out to have risen and set with quite a few boys on the side, which Dex would probably have been fine with had he known.

  It was the sharp betrayal that had fucked him up so hard. He managed to ace his end-of-year exams out of sheer determination to prove to himself that Michael had mattered just as little to Dex as Dex had to him.

  When he’d come out the other side of the year, Dex had found himself facing a long, joyless summer of working and holing up in his room with Corona and Netflix. It was actually so pathetic, he’d got thoroughly sick of himself by the end.

  “Maybe,” he told Steph.

  “Shake up the old routine, I say,” she replied.

  “Said the girl who makes spreadsheets of her day just to be sure she doesn’t forget to eat her two eggs and a coffee for breakfast.”

  “I am impervious to your remarks.” She smiled at them both. “My life is as spontaneous as I need it to be.”

  “Okay, babe.” Jonny patted her shoulder. “You do you.”

  Dex knew it was impossible to take Jonny’s teasing in a negative way. He was like sunshine personified. No wonder he and Steph had clicked from the start. Now she flipped Jonny off with a grin and then fixed Dex with a bit of an unexpected glare. “All I will say is, you have to make more of an effort with people.” Her glare became more significant. “Be nice. You can be nice and get your heart sorted out.”

  “Fine. I will be nice. I will be nice all of the time. I will, in fact,” he continued as he polished the glasses under the bar, “b
e so nice that you will think I’ve been replaced by a pod person, and you will miss this grumpy fucking face and wonder, where did it all go wrong? Oh, that’s right, that one night at the pub, when we collectively decided that Dex needed a personality transplant and learned the dangers of wishing for things we may someday get.”

  “Wow,” Steph said. “You done, Dexter?”

  Dex sagged down. “Yes.”

  “Good. Pour us another, Jonny here’s low.”

  Dex dutifully poured them another.

  +

  Dex was neck deep in Molecular Basis of Diseases reading when his phone went off, Mum’s picture lighting up. Crap. He shut his laptop and let his phone go to voice mail. He asked the girl sat a few feet away to please watch his stuff, if she would be so kind. She nodded at him in the vague manner of someone deep in a revising coma, and Dex just had to trust her, despite her looking a bit like the girl from The Ring.

  The library had a glassed-in corridor in between wings where people congregated to share woes, have snacks, and guzzle coffee away from the glare of the librarians. Dex stood facing the outside world through the dimmed glass as he dialed Mum’s number. It went straight to voice mail as she presumably left him a rambling message. He waited, then tried again.

  “Hiya Poppet,” she greeted. “Did you listen to my message?”

  “No, Mum,” Dex said patiently. “You just left it. What’s up?”

  “Oh, you know,” she said in a tone of voice Dex knew very well hid something that was probably not going to be good. He felt his stomach clenching up. “Just wanted to say hi to my eldest, didn’t I? How’s uni?”

  Dex watched the cars careening below. Standing in this corridor made him feel like he was in Star Trek—the futuristic glass situated high above the ground. London looked nothing like the future, though.