by Isla Gordon
She watched as Flynn breathed in and savoured the moment. She imagined he was probably just glad to have a day off work, and to be finally out of the hotel. ‘This is more than okay,’ he confirmed. ‘I just can’t wait to have a bed of my own tonight.’
‘Uh-oh.’ Turning, August and Flynn noticed the problem at the exact same time.
Chapter 21
August
From the living room August and Flynn had a perfect view into the two bedrooms. One of them had a large, solid oak, king-sized bed that appeared to be brand new. The other: as bare as a naked lady. No bed, no furniture, nothing. One bed. Two people.
‘Crap,’ said August. ‘I thought both beds were included.’
‘Me too,’ replied Flynn, and noticed a handwritten note atop the one bed. ‘Look at this.’
They both leaned over the letter, written in the beautiful penmanship of someone who hadn’t spent their lives predominantly typing to the point that five minutes with a biro caused hand-cramp. August read it aloud.
Dear Flynn and August,
Welcome to your new home, and welcome to Elizabeth Street. I hope you make many happy memories here, as I have.
I hope you can forgive the bed situation. When my previous residents moved out, my son and I took a look at the beds and decided they were too scruffy and dated. We have therefore replaced the master bed with a brand new one. Because of this, will you mind awfully purchasing a second bed for the spare room by yourselves? I wasn’t sure what size bed you would like for the second room, or frankly whether you wanted it to be a full bedroom at all, or had other plans for it. The previous tenants simply had a sofa bed in the second room, which worked quite well for their set-up.
Should you need anything, you can find me at the top of the staircase in apartment 4. Though if the thing you need involves heavy lifting or a sharper mind, you may have better luck calling upon some of your other neighbours.
Warm wishes,
Mrs W. Haverley
‘She’s so nice,’ August said, on finishing the letter. A pinprick of guilt at misleading the woman stabbed at her. But they hadn’t done anything very wrong, she was sure they would be ideal tenants, and she had no plans to move out, frankly, ever, which had been Mrs H’s only concern about singletons.
‘She is,’ Flynn agreed, and their eyes met.
‘Are we both thinking the same thing?’ asked August. ‘That we should just get married for real so this isn’t awkward?’
‘That wasn’t quite where I was, but we’re in the same area,’ he said. She’d been joking, of course, but she felt him watching her as worry etched its way across her features, and he added, ‘It’s fine though, it’s good that she’s nice, and she seems to genuinely be happy we live here. We’re still us, in holy matrimony or not.’
‘You’re right,’ August shook herself out of it, determined to let moving-in day remain magical. Because she was here! In her dream home! With no bed …
‘Right, then,’ she said. ‘I’ll see if Bel could drive me over to Ikea or something after she’s done at work so we can pick me up a flatpack bed and a mattress. In the meantime, could you give me a hand bringing my boxes up and into my room? Some of the stuff is living room/kitchen but I just shoved a lot of it in together so it’ll be easier for both of us if I can just empty it out onto the floor of my room and ignore it for a few days.’
The two of them carted all the boxes and suitcases into the flat, and Ross-Geller-Pivoted the armchair up the narrow staircase without, mercifully, scuffing the wall.
‘No,’ said Flynn, stopping her before she could take a box marked ‘bras’, that he’d lifted previously and found to be surprisingly heavy, into the second bedroom. ‘You take this bed.’
His chivalry, though appreciated, was betrayed somewhat by his own eyes, which gazed at that big, comfortable bed with the longing of someone about to eat their last slice of pizza before going on a month-long cabbage diet.
‘No way,’ she said, walking into the master bedroom with Flynn following her. ‘Your room, your bed. And no offence to those bags under your eyes, but you look like you need a good night’s sleep. Jeeeesus.’ She sat on the edge of the bed and immediately flopped backwards. ‘And you are going to get a hell of a good night’s sleep on this baby.’
Flynn sat down beside her. ‘Why don’t you just take this one? Wow, this is … ’ He too lay back on the bed, so they were side-by-side, staring at the high ceiling above them. He cleared his throat. ‘This is horrible,’ he said, clearly lying. ‘I hate this bed.’
‘You do not hate this bed,’ August said, turning her head to face him.
‘How do you know? How do you know my back isn’t seizing up as we speak?’
‘It’s obvious you love this bed; you’re practically snogging it.’
Flynn laughed. ‘I am not.’ He faced her. ‘But seriously, you take it. And the room.’
‘Nope. This is your room; this was part of the deal. I wouldn’t feel right going back on my word. And I don’t need some white knight to give me his coat – or room – thank you very much.’ She said it with a smile though.
‘August,’ Flynn said, and sat up, so she did the same.
‘Flynn.’
‘You don’t need to keep acting like you pushed me into this, or apologising for unexpected turns of events. I’m very much a grown up, and we’re in this together now.’
‘But it was my idea,’ she pressed.
‘And I went along with it, very willingly. It was a good idea. An idea that I would never have thought of, but that’s just because I don’t have your imagination. But we’re here, the flat is great, I’ve finally got a place to call my own and you’re finally getting to live in your dream home. So let’s enjoy it.’
‘Let’s enjoy it,’ she said, nodding. ‘Shall I open a bottle of wine?’
‘I mean, it’s ten in the morning, but if that’s what you’re into.’
‘Oh. Maybe tonight, then.’
‘You know what else we should do tonight?’ Flynn asked. His eyes flicked towards the bed, and then he slapped his forehead, as if he immediately regretted what he’d said. ‘Not that! Oh God, I’m not a sex pest, I promise!’
Sleeping with her flatmate would be a b-a-d idea: August did not want him to run a mile, which was her current MO when it came to mixing housing and boyfriends. But right now if he suggested she literally slept next to him in this heavenly cloud of a bed, August would seriously consider it. ‘What?’ she asked.
‘Have a strategy meeting.’
‘Oh,’ she crinkled her nose. ‘That sounds dull. Can’t we just agree you’ll always do the bins if I always clean the toilet?’
‘Not that kind of strategy, I think we need to figure out us, in relation to them,’ he pointed above and below, indicating that he meant their neighbours.
August nodded. ‘I see. We need to bump uglies to decide what we tell people in the building about us being married.’
Flynn looked very surprised. ‘We need to do what now?’
‘Bump uglies.’
‘Um … ’
‘You know, Flynn, bump uglies,’ she tapped the side of her temple. ‘Like, put our heads together.’
He started to chuckle. ‘I don’t think you know what bumping uglies means.’
‘Okay, don’t give me your mansplaining bull—’
‘This is not mansplaining, this is just … friend-splaining. Bumping uglies means … ’ he paused, a dryness seeming to take over his mouth. Flynn was clearly feeling awkward, and in the end mimed it with his fingers like a school boy and mouthed ‘Sex.’
‘No.’ August said firmly, shaking her head. ‘No it doesn’t.’ She stood up and walked to the door, then turned back to look at him. ‘No it doesn’t.’ Grabbing the box of ‘bras’ (dandruff shampoos) from the floor she walked them into her room, pausing briefly to say again, ‘No it doesn’t.’
August reappeared at Flynn’s bedroom door. ‘Does it?’
‘I
t does,’ he nodded.
‘Well, that explains why I didn’t get called for a second interview for an office job a while ago.’ She shuddered, remembering telling the interviewer that she and he ought to ‘bump uglies’ as soon as she joined the company in order to explore the full potential of his … upward trend. Oh God.
‘Anyway,’ August pressed on, never one to be deterred by past mistakes for long. ‘Yes, let’s have a strategy meeting over some wine tonight. No, let’s not bump uglies, no need to complicate things. Yes, you’re taking the bed, and the bedroom, because I’ve already been plotting how to decorate my space anyway. And do you want anything from Ikea?’
‘I don’t know,’ he stood up, letting any embarrassment slide away. ‘Shall we unpack and see where we are?’
‘Good idea. And Flynn?’ August picked up another box, and Flynn leaned against his doorframe to listen to her. She took in his form for a moment, assessing his kind face, his tall physique, his dark hair and his at-home posture. ‘Thank you for moving in with me. I think we’re going to get along just fine.’
He appeared to take her in for a moment too, so she flashed him a sunny smile which he returned. ‘Thank you for convincing me. I think we’ll have a lot of fun.’
Chapter 22
Flynn
Three hours later, August walked through the door of the apartment and lobbed a tube of tin foil at Flynn. He caught it reflexively with one hand, and then realised it was a tightly wrapped baguette sandwich.
He looked from her to her closed bedroom door. ‘What’s this? I thought you were in your room!’
‘This is lunch, because I know all the best places to eat around here and you know nothing.’
‘Thank you, I think.’
August pulled two cans of Fanta from her handbag and cracked them open, sitting down at the round table in the centre of the living room and beckoning Flynn to join her. ‘I didn’t know what you like, apart from pizza, so I asked for yours to be cheese, pepperoni and peppers. Is that okay?’
‘It sounds delicious.’
‘I would have asked you first but you seemed deeply invested in organising your shirts by colour, so I thought I’d better leave you to it.’
Flynn took a seat and a long, grateful gulp of Fanta. ‘How else would I organise my shirts?’
August mulled on this for a minute. ‘I don’t know. I guess I never organise mine, so I don’t know all the wonderful ways it could be done.’
‘How’s your unpacking going?’ he asked.
‘Well, firstly, thank you for the chest of drawers that we took out of your room. I now have some of my clothes and all my underwear put away. I also nicked a side-table that was under the window in here for my bedside table, so now my book and two used tea mugs have somewhere to live. And then I wanted to make sure our Wi-Fi was all up and running, so I watched two episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine.’
‘Good progress,’ Flynn nodded, and reached for his phone to open the notes app. ‘All right, let’s make a shopping list. What do we already have?’
August looked at the living room. ‘We have a sofa, my armchair, a TV and this table with four chairs. We did have a small table by the window, but that’s now in my room. And it’s very small. More a stool.’
‘We don’t need loads of tables in the living room. Might we want a coffee table though?’
August pondered this. ‘Not with any great rush. A coffee table’s always the kind of thing you can just find, anyway.’
‘It is?’
‘It is if you’re happy with an old pallet with a blanket draped over it,’ she said with a shrug.
Flynn smiled. That sounded good to him. ‘So nothing else for in here for now?’
‘Pictures would be nice,’ August replied. ‘Although the view is pretty picturesque in itself.’
‘What would you like pictures of?’
She thought about this and then joked, ‘Of our honeymoon?’
‘And where do you think we would have gone on our honeymoon?’
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, the strategy meeting is tonight. But maybe New York?’
‘How about Japan? I have a lot of photos of that?’
‘But none of them have me in.’
‘If the criterion is that you – and I – are both in them we’ll have to have honeymooned in Bath,’ Flynn pointed out.
August looked to be thinking through the logistics of photoshopping herself into his travel pictures, before saying, ‘This isn’t important right now. If we come across a great picture, we can always claim we bought it on our honeymoon, even if it doesn’t show a destination. What does your bedroom need?’
Craning his head back to look through his door, Flynn said, ‘Not much. The wardrobe is built-in, there are curtains, the bed, a bedside table … I feel terrible, you know,’ he turned back to her with a bashful smile.
‘Don’t,’ she said, firmly. ‘I’m fine with it, it was always the deal. All right, my room. So I have a built-in wardrobe in there too, plus curtains. I think storage is basically fine – you might not believe this, but I did actually have a clear-out before I moved in. So I need bed, mattress … I brought a lamp with me but … do you need a lamp?’
‘I could take a lamp,’ Flynn agreed, noting it in his phone. ‘Hey, do you want us to get some bolts for our doors?’
August paused. ‘I’m not sure we’d be allowed to add such things, to be honest. But thanks for the suggestion, it’s noted that you’re a gentleman.’ She stood and performed an elaborate curtsy.
‘All right, well, if you change your mind that’s totally fine, I can fit them. I want you to, you know, know you’re safe.’ He felt himself blushing, but she just smiled, and moved on past him.
Poking her head through the door, she called, ‘Bathroom seems fine, nothing we need there.’
‘Wait, I could do with a couple of towels.’
‘Let’s also get a couple of bath mats.’
‘How about we also get one of those “his and hers” toothbrush stands?’
August raised her eyebrows at Flynn. ‘Okay.’
‘Okay.’
She moved onto the kitchen. ‘I brought a big load of pots and pans and utensils and I’m happy for us to both use them if you like, at least until we figure out what we’re short of?’
‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’ asked Flynn.
‘Of course, though … ’ August paused. ‘You know what I always imagined about living here?’
‘Having the place to yourself?’ Flynn joked.
‘Well, yes. But drinking coffee while I looked out across my kingdom of Bath! Do you drink coffee?’
He nodded. ‘Probably too much.’
‘Would you like to split the cost of one those coffee machines, not a pricey one, just one that makes filtered coffee in a jug and you can pour it pretending you work in an American diner?’
‘Yes, I’d love one of those,’ enthused Flynn, adding it to his list.
They took a few moments to check there was nothing they were missing, and added hangers, a clothes horse, some coasters.
‘What do you want to do about grocery shopping?’ Flynn asked. It had been a really long time since he’d had a flatmate; he’d forgotten how much there was to think about.
August thought for a moment and said, ‘Maybe we buy our own things but have a kitty for essentials like milk, dishwasher tablets, etc.?’
‘That sounds fair. But let’s trial it for a bit and adjust it if need be. I have a feeling I eat a lot more than you, and I’ll be swindling you on the essentials.’
‘We’ll see about that. We could also add into the essentials a few things like pasta, and then sometimes cook meals together?’ August looked at Flynn with hope.
He was happy with this. He didn’t want to overstep the mark with his flatmate, but one of the things he missed about living with Yui was both of them coming home after a day at the office and being able to let their thoughts pour out over a tasty meal, so tha
t by the time they were done their minds were free from thinking about work. Since living in the hotel, he’d felt as though he couldn’t ever turn his brain off.
‘All right, let me just text my friend Bel,’ August said. ‘And we’ll see about a man with a van to take us to Ikea. Or at least a woman and her VW Polo.’
August’s friends Steve and Bel were both pretty adamant a flat pack bed would never fit in the back of their car, and neither of them was free to help that day anyway. So instead Flynn found a van hire company where you could book two-hour slots, and they did a mad dash from Bath to Bristol Ikea. They zoomed around the store like they were on The Crystal Maze, before arriving back at the house and unloading, both of them sweating by then.
By the time they’d put the bed together, the sun was dipping, and August and Flynn were ready for something to eat again.
They called for takeout pizza, and Flynn popped out to a nearby store to pick up a couple of drinks, and when the food arrived, the two of them collapsed on the sofa and the armchair, their feet propped on leftover boxes and empty packaging.
‘I can’t believe we have to work tomorrow,’ August commented. ‘We should have done this on a Friday so we had the weekend to recover.’
Flynn groaned. ‘You’re so right.’
‘Do you think you’ll be extra busy tomorrow because you took today off?’
‘Yeah, I think so. It seems really full-on there. I’m not sure if it’s because they downscaled so I’m actually doing the job of more than one person, or I’m just slow because I’m new, but yeah, it seems very busy. Today has actually been a tonic, just doing something different! What’s your work like?’ he asked, realising he knew about her voice acting, but not a lot about her day-to-day job.
August sighed into her wine. ‘It’s fine. No, it’s good, they’re really good to me there. I’m temping, but I’ve been with the same company since moving to Bath, it’s the press office of a historical holidays company. The work is interesting – because I’ve been there a while they give me proper, in-depth tasks so I’m not photocopying all day or anything, and they’re really flexible regarding time off if I need to go off and record or go for an audition or anything.’