The Third Date (Starting Over)

by Matthew J. Metzger

  But today, it seemed, Aled was going to let him readjust in peace.

  It flew by. The hours rolled past like they hadn’t since he’d stopped taking the good stuff in hospital, and before he knew it, it was time to go. His regulars shuffled out. Someone else’s regulars shuffled in. The post-office rush hour filled up the carpark. Mumsy Fords with butterfly stickers and baby seats gave way to company Audis and gleaming BMWs from the business parks. At the end of his shift, he clocked off, got a goodbye hug from Sophie and walked out of the door.

  And tomorrow he would come back and do it all again.

  He didn’t have a new bike yet, and in any case he didn’t feel up to cycling again, but he’d expected Aled’s car. Instead, Chris was lounging against the wall of the bike shed, waiting. He offered a hug. Gabriel stole a kiss, throwing caution to the wind. They walked up to the main road to wait for the bus, and Chris bitched about someone’s dog on his morning run. They sat on the top deck, watching ominous clouds on the horizon, and paused in town for a coffee in the warm shelter of a Costa while the heavens opened. When it cleared, they made for their second bus and watched the town bleed away as they headed for Newmillerdam. Gabriel got a little motion sickness brewing in his throat and stomach, but nothing happened. Chris waited without a word at the bus stop round the corner from their house for Gabriel’s nausea to settle. They walked back in step, and Chris started dinner while Gabriel put the laundry out on the line. By the time the risotto was ready to serve, Aled’s car was grumbling to a halt on the driveway. Gabriel kissed him at the door and pushed him into a seat before climbing into his lap for a longer, deeper, hungrier sort of hello.

  “Good day?” Aled asked with a grin.

  Good?

  Gabriel beamed. No, it had been better than good. It had been the best day since before he’d known what a bus could do to the human body.

  “Yep.”

  “Work go well?”

  “Yep.”

  “Good.”

  Gabriel laughed, squirming as his neck was bitten and arousal flickered into life.

  “Oi. Food,” Chris said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Shurrup.”

  Gabriel was shooed to his seat, but he didn’t care. Chris had warmed some crusty rolls, and called Gabriel disgusting for making a risotto sandwich. He didn’t care about that, either. Aled held court for a while about whatever moron had designed the A61, they skirted carefully around some political story that Gabriel had missed but Chris and Aled clearly had opposing views on, and—God, this was life. After so long in hospital and struggling to do silly, simple things like walk down the stairs or take a shower, Gabriel couldn’t keep the grin off his face. He was back at work. The evening sun was burning their kitchen a deep rosy pink. Home-cooked food. Chris’ feet between his own on the tiles, but Aled’s bite stinging in his neck. He was going to have sex later. He could feel it in the air.

  He had his life back.

  Despite Aled’s teeth-delivered promise, Gabriel was in no rush. They lingered over dessert—even Chris dug into a bowl of ice cream for once—then migrated as one to the living room and a horror movie that, surprisingly, had Aled on edge and Chris snickering at the dated effects. Gabriel just sat in the middle, Chris’ hand locked between his thighs and Aled’s arm around his waist, a thumb dangerously hooked into the waistband of his briefs.

  “I’m going for a shower,” Gabriel said when the credits rolled, and Aled gave him another bite.

  “Come back down here after.”

  “In which case, I’m going to bed,” Chris said.

  Goodnight kisses were exchanged at the top of the stairs. Gabriel showered alone and marvelled at being able to do so. The only shadow of his long illness was the non-slip mat in the bottom of the cubicle and the wide-open door for someone to rescue him at a moment’s notice.

  Tipping his head back under the spray, Gabriel smiled.

  He was better.

  Maybe he’d never be absolutely right again. Cycling would have to wait and see. The motion sickness was persistent. He still swayed like a drunk at the tops of stairs or the edge of pavements, but he hadn’t fallen or even stumbled in weeks. While the crippling migraines had healed along with the original bleed and the skull fracture, he’d been left with frequent dull headaches that beat against the same spot. Maybe they would never really go away.

  But he could shower without clinging to another person. He could roll over in bed without freaking out. He could get the bus without being sick. He was back at work, the structure restored to his days and the money trickling back into his bank account.

  He had his life back.

  He could live with the motion sickness.

  Because everything else was finally going right.

  He went back downstairs naked. He had sex on the living room rug. He went to bed with bite marks all over his inner thighs.

  And in the morning, when the sun rose, he got up to go to work, and started his life all over again.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  It was raining, but Kevin’s front door opened as Aled pulled up outside.

  “Have fun,” he said as Gabriel eased himself out of the back. “Ring if you need picking up today.”

  “Will do!”

  He waited while Chris relocated to the front passenger seat, then waved to Kevin and pulled back out.

  “Lunch?”

  “Sure,” Chris said, then surprised him. “Call it our third date.”

  “Our third date?”

  “Yeah. Where you figure out if this is carrying on or we’re calling it a day.”

  Aled raised his eyebrows, but didn’t answer. He knew that something would need discussing now Gabriel was back at work and had no more need for a live-in nurse, but he hadn’t expected Chris to come to him about it. He’d expected Gabriel to make the call, and for Aled to just hear about it all afterwards.

  They didn’t speak further as Aled headed back towards Wakefield, pulling off the A650 to a nice pub he knew. Chris could hang his diet for an hour. Pies were God’s gift to food, and Aled wasn’t going to be having a serious, potentially life-altering discussion over something inedible and flavourless like salad or hummus.

  “Pie and a pint?” he asked as he pulled up into the little car park, and Chris grimaced.

  “If I must.”

  “Yeah. You must.”

  “Fine.”

  The conversation was paused until they had at least their drinks and a secluded spot in one corner of the pub. It was reasonably busy—some kind of quiz gearing up on the other side of the building—so there was enough background noise to mask what they were talking about, but not so much they’d need to shout.

  Perfect.

  So Aled took full advantage and said, “You and I both know Gabriel wants you to stay.”

  Chris paused, lager halfway to his mouth. Then he set it down and nodded.

  “So are you?”

  Aled didn’t like beating around the bush. Chris, however, seemed to specialise in going around entire forests before getting to the point.

  “I’ve been asking myself the same question.”

  Case in point.

  “You ask yourself a lot,” Aled said. “Do you ever just answer?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Like when?”

  “Like asking Gabriel out in the first place,” Chris said.

  Aled would give him that.

  “But this is more complicated,” Chris continued, and motioned between them. “This—we’re not—you know.”

  “No,” Aled agreed. “But I like you. We get on. We can make good friends, given the time and less stress.”

  And Aled tried to stay out of Gabriel’s other relationships, but Chris’ presence over the past couple of months…

  It didn’t quite feel like this was just Gabriel’s relationship anymore. Aled wanted to know Chris’ decision for himself, too. He wanted to know if he’d have a new friend in the area, or another pe
rson down south to visit now and then.

  “I’m not interested, sexually or romantically,” he said, and grinned as a little tension leaked out of Chris’ shoulders. “You’re not my type, and I can’t see that changing. But I like you. I consider you a friend after all of this. And I’m not entirely asking about what your plans are just for Gabriel’s sake.”

  Chris nodded, then bent his head to his lager. Aled gave him a minute to compose an answer. If he thought he dithered about taking chances sometimes, then Chris was a maestro.

  “Here’s the thing,” Chris said eventually. “I like—being with you. Both of you. You’re a nice guy and…well, obviously I like Gabriel. Not having to—to make plans to see him, getting to see him all the time, it’s—”

  He nodded. Trailed off. Started up again after another long drag on the edge of the glass.

  “I’ll miss you both when I go.”

  Aled worked his jaw.

  “When you go.”

  Chris waved at the pub, shaking his head.

  “This isn’t me.”

  He didn’t elaborate. For the first time, Aled wasn’t entirely sure he needed him to. He knew what home felt like. And he knew how out of place it was to find it gone.

  “So what now?” he asked.

  Chris shrugged.

  “Do we go back?” Aled asked. “You go back to Bristol and snatching a visit every few months when you or he can get out of work?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Neither of you want to. I don’t want you to.”

  “I know,” Chris said.

  “So stay.”

  He’d never thought he’d ask. Hell, when Gabriel had moved in, Aled had wanted nothing less than one of his other men in the house. But somehow…

  Now it would feel empty without Chris’ bike in the corner, without the health food in the fridge, without the snick of the door closing behind him as he went for his morning runs. Three in the living room watching the TV instead of two. The thrill of snatched sex in the bathroom, pretending at an affair while the oblivious boyfriend puttered about in the next room. Being ganged up on, or getting to gang up on Gabriel.

  Pies and pints.

  Aled had missed simple company over pies and pints.

  “I can’t,” Chris said, shaking his head. “I feel like a fish out of water up here. Being with the two of you is great, and I want to keep that. But it’s like a foreign country to me. I never wanted to live up north, and this hasn’t changed that. I’m itching to go home.”

  Aled chewed on the corner of his lip.

  “How about you change, for once?”

  Aled blinked, brought up short.

  “Sorry?”

  “I know your story,” Chris said. “Gabriel moved into the bedroom you shared with your ex-wife. Gabriel dumped a guy for you—”

  Aled’s temper flared. “That was—”

  “I know it was a good thing, but it was still for you in the beginning,” Chris said. “He lives with you so he naturally does a lot of things because they fit with you. But—I’m down south. And so are your family. Your sister and her nephew.”

  Aled drew back, frowning.

  “I want you and Gabriel nearby,” Chris said. “But I’m a southerner. So is he, technically speaking. And so is your family. You’re the only thing anchoring anyone to the north, mate.”

  Footsteps on worn carpet. Steaming pies on hot plates banged down between. Aled answered questions about condiments through numb lips, then narrowed his eyes into a frown as the waiter retreated once more.

  “You think we should move south?” he asked.

  Chris raised his glass. “Just think about it, yeah?”

  Aled had never considered it before. Kevin was here. Their jobs were here. When Suze had married and left, Nan and Gabriel’s granddad had been here.

  But now—

  “Maybe it’s time to start again,” Chris suggested.

  Maybe—after nearly five years—it was time to go back to the beginning.

  Want to see more from this author? Here’s a taster for you to enjoy!

  Enough

  Matthew J. Metzger

  Excerpt

  He could smell the fire.

  He was blind. His eyes streamed. The curling wallpaper crackled and hissed. His skin was burning. The air in his lungs seared him from the inside out. And there was nowhere to go—no escape from the heat, no escape from the orange towers and acrid black smoke, no air.

  “Ezra!”

  The smoke wrapped itself around his teeth and tongue like a grotesque mockery of a kiss, and there was no reply but the roar of hot air and climbing fire. The house was burning. The house was burning!

  “Ezra! Ez!”

  A scream. A piercing scream, like nothing he’d ever heard, but before he could move, the wooden boards crumbled to ash and he was falling, tearing through the shreds of stairs into the inferno, and—

  Jesse hit the carpet with a thump and jarred himself awake.

  The flat was quiet. The streetlight touched the other side of the curtains with a faint orange light. There was no smoke, no fire, no sound. Nothing.

  Jesse dragged himself back onto the bed. The sheets were impossibly tangled and his tank top stuck to him with sweat. His wrist ached in its brace where he’d bumped it, but the panic hadn’t quite eased its grip on his heart or his lungs, and he fumbled for his phone, ignoring the pain.

  Thank God for speed dial.

  The clock on the side said two-fifty-eight, and the phone rang six times before the line coughed and crackled and a sleepy voice, tinged in the early hours with the fading edges of a Welsh accent, mumbled a vague sort of question.

  “Ez?”

  There was a rustle of sheets. “Jesse?”

  “Oh, God,” Jesse breathed. The air escaped in a rush, loud and hard. His lungs shook with the effort. “Shit. I just— I needed to check—”

  “Jess? What’s happened, sweetheart?”

  The soft roll of his vowels, the accent entirely muted when he was properly awake, was as comforting as a hug, and Jesse coughed out, “Nightmare,” before thinking twice. Ezra was okay. He was okay. It was all okay.

  “Oh, sweetheart,” Ezra murmured, low and crooning. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “I need—can I come over? I know it’s late and I know you have work in the morning, but—I just—I need—”

  “No,” Ezra interrupted, and Jesse’s stomach twisted violently.

  “Please, Ez, I—”

  “Hey, hey, hey.” Ezra cut him off. “Hey, stop, calm down, sweetheart. I meant you can’t come here. You don’t sound okay, not to me, and I don’t want you to go out like this, so I’ll come to you, all right?”

  Jesse exhaled, the twist easing. “Okay.”

  “You okay if I hang up, or do you want me to put the phone on speaker?”

  “Can—speaker,” Jesse swallowed against the nausea. He was still shaking, he realised faintly. “I just—I couldn’t find you, Ez. The house was burning and I couldn’t find you, and I—I need to hear you. You don’t have to talk to me, but I need to hear you.”

  “Okay.” The phone crackled again and clunked, and suddenly Ezra’s voice was loud and echoing. Soothing. The Welsh hint was fading, and Jesse could suddenly hear him dressing, but he was there. “Was it my house or the one last week?”

  “Yours,” Jesse said. “I was on the stairs, and they gave way, and I woke up. I couldn’t find you.”

  “If my house was on fire, I would probably be in the kitchen having caused it,” Ezra said, and yawned loudly. “Make yourself useful, sweetheart, and make up a brew for me? I’ve not slept long.”

  Jesse knew better than to apologise. He shrugged out of his sweat-soaked pyjamas and pulled on a pair of jogging bottoms before taking the phone through the narrow hall into the kitchen. The kitchen window overlooked the main road. A police car trailed idly by on the prowl. Phone to his ear, he listened to Ezra swear sleepily at his cupboard,
and the soft sounds of those narrow feet padding downstairs.

  “Sweetheart?”

  “Mm?” Jesse listened to the front door and the heavy sound of the key.

  “I’m going to hang up while I drive. You all right for ten minutes until I get there?”

  “Yeah,” Jesse croaked. His heart had come down out of the rafters, and he could breathe. The streetlights didn’t look threatening anymore. He just felt…shaky. Sick and shaky and scared. “Yeah, Ez, I’ll be fine.”

  “Okay. Love you.”

  The dial tone was immediate. Jesse dropped the phone to the counter and switched on the kettle, staring out of the window and waiting, arms folded against the chill. It wasn’t the first nightmare, and it wouldn’t be the last. He usually managed one a week without fail, and the injury hadn’t helped matters. But they didn’t usually involve Ezra in burning buildings. They didn’t usually involve losing him.

  And Jesse couldn’t stomach the thought of losing him.

  Which was a bit scary in itself. They’d only met eight months ago. At a gay bar, of all places—the one place where he went to meet sex partners, not partner partners. Jesse had thought the freckled blond with the dark eyes was pretty in the neon lights and had bought him a drink, talked him into a dance, bought him another. Kissed him at the back of the dance floor—and had promptly found himself alone, but with a phone number in his back pocket.

  He’d wanted sex. That was all he’d been after. Sex with a pretty guy. But then they’d gone on a date and he’d met Ezra properly, and he was lost. Ezra wasn’t just a handsome face and nice legs. Ezra was the world. He was Jesse’s world, and it had only been eight months, but Jesse still knew that this was it, for him. Ezra was it. There would never be anyone else like him.

  So he stood in a tense vigil at the window, waiting for the faithful little Peugeot 207 to creep around the corner. Waiting for Ezra to come, because there was emotional shock and there was sense, and the two weren’t in line right now. He knew Ezra was okay. He knew it. He’d answered the phone. He’d been sleepy and understanding and sworn at his cupboard. He was fine.