Finding North (3 page)

I’ll know though, and as someone who remembers what it used to be like lying beside him, these next few hours are bound to be a beautiful and torturous hell. I think about all the nights as kids that we lay in this room, sharing the same bed, dreaming up crazy adventures that we’d have when we were adults, and my heart lurches with a sickening despair.

North was my childhood. My first love. But he’s nothing to me now. We’re nothing.

We stopped freefalling, and now we’re standing still.

In the morning, I shower, scoff down a bowl of cereal, and get dressed to the soundtrack of North’s snoring. It’s six a.m. I need to head downstairs to let in Doug, the delivery driver, and I have no intention of letting North stay here any longer. The pub doesn’t open until seven, but there’s a solid hour of work to be done before then and I’m already behind because I overslept. Despite being unable to actually see anything beneath his clothes, I may have lifted the sheets for a little spank-bank inspiration and spent too long in the shower thinking about North as I jerked my chain. I’m not proud of the latter, but I’ll get over it.

I stand by the bed, about to wake North, when he startles and sits bolt-upright. His forehead cracks against my own, and I reel back. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Ah fuck, Will!” he shouts. “What the hell were you doing, leaning over me like some kind of fucking creeper?”

“Trying to rape you in your sleep,” I deadpan, wincing and removing the heel of my hand from my forehead so I don’t look like a giant pussy. “I was trying to wake you, arsehole. What the fuck did you think I was doing?”

He frowns, and then he takes in the room around us and shoots up off the futon, giving me a wary look. “What the hell am I doing here?”

“You blacked out in the bar, dumbarse. I dragged you up the stairs.” I put some distance between us and absently flip through the contents of my wallet for something to do, because the sight of him in my bed is a temptation I could never ignore. I’ve always loved the way he looks in the morning—hair all mussed from the pillow, sleepy baby blues, and his full lips pink and swollen, as if he’s just been kissed. The hard-on filling the front of his jeans never hurt either.

But it hurts like fuck now
.

“You’re welcome, by the way.”

“You still live here?” he asks. His eyes widen as he glances around my apartment. It is kinda gross; there’s shit from one end to the other. I’m not a neat freak, and I don’t tszuj when it comes to interior design like the guys from
Queer Eye
. There are three things I’m fucking stellar at: mixing drinks, sarcasm, and fucking. Being a stereotypical gay guy? Not really my strong suit. “It’s exactly the same. I mean, aside from the renovations, and you don’t have that racing car bed anymore, but it’s …” North trails off, looking awkwardly about him.

“Still filthy? How very un-gay of me,” I say, picking up his wallet from the coffee table and lobbing it at him. He doesn’t try to catch it, and it falls to the floor with a heavy thud. I don’t need him looking around this room reminiscing; I do enough of that shit on my own. “Time to go, arsehole.”

“Can I take a piss first?”

My eyes roll down his shirt-clad torso to the morning wood straining against his zipper. I can’t help it. They roll back up and unapologetically meet his gaze. “Sure.”

He gives me a nervous glance and then clears his throat, walking toward the bathroom. “Just don’t sit on the seat,” I say. “There’s a nasty case of that homosexuality thing going around. Wouldn’t want you to catch it.”

He stops dead in his tracks and bows his head, likely pinching the bridge of his nose, though I can’t see his face from where I’m standing. North turns and looks at me, really looks at me, and for a beat I feel like a complete fucking arsehole. I don’t want to be angry after all these years. I want things to go back to the way they were.

And then I remember that this isn’t my doing. It’s his. So I shove all thoughts of what we used to be aside.

“Will,” he murmurs, but I shake my head. I can’t listen to whatever he has to say. It doesn’t matter. He lost the right to say anything more to me than “Give me another drink” or “Make it a double” when he pushed me away.

“Shut the door on your way out,” I snap, collecting my keys off the coffee table and heading downstairs.

I stand in the empty bar, knowing I need to haul arse and start setting up, and I need to forget the past. I wish there was a way to burn the memories of that man and our childhood together, from my brain because holding onto that shit doesn’t do me any fucking good. It can’t ever go back to the way it was, because we’re no longer the same people. North did that. In an instant, he ripped away everything.

A second.

A few little words.

And one fucking huge slash through the middle of my heart.

I’
ve never had a problem with the walk of shame. In order for it to be a walk of shame, you actually have to have some to begin with. My ex, Tammy, stands at my front door. No, that’s not right. She’s in my doorway, blocking my entrance from the house that I own, the house I built, and her puffy eyes burn daggers into mine. I wish I had been out all night shoving my dick in someone else.
I mean, if you’re going to be accused of it …

“Who was she?” Tammy asks, only it’s not so much a question as it is a demand, and she screams the words. Not for the first time, I thank god that I have no neighbours.

“I didn’t fuck anyone, Tam. I drank too much. I was too wasted to drive, so I walked and fell asleep on the beach.”

“Don’t lie to me. Don’t you dare lie to me, North. You were with Jenny, weren’t you?” she says, driving her fingers into her strawberry blonde hair. The little black negligee rides up her thighs, and I try not to look like a complete arsehole for checking her out while she’s having another one of her dramatic little episodes, especially since she already has the wrong idea. When I’d let her move in after she lost her apartment I explained that this wasn’t a thing. I was just helping her out and when she got back on her feet, she’d find another place to live. I thought that had been crystal fucking clear, but obviously, like all men, I don’t know shit when it comes to women.

“Oh god, that’s the reason you broke up with me.”

Fuck. Here we go
. I thought in order to break up with someone you had to be dating them first. She knew what this was from the very beginning.

I need her shit like a goddamn hole in the head. My brain is pounding like an anvil was dropped on my skull, and Tam wants to talk about my previous one-night stands? I should just tell her I spent the night with a man and be done with it. At least it might shut her up for a bit, and I could finally get some peace and quiet.

“I know what you did with her last year when we broke up,” she continues. Or maybe she just never stopped talking, and I zoned out.
Wouldn’t be the first time
. “The whole town was talking about it. She told Susan down at Curls ’n’ Things that the two of you got wasted last Christmas Eve and that Santa wasn’t the only one coming that night.”

I smile, because I have very fond memories of that Christmas. Me and Jenny didn’t just make the naughty list that year—we burned that mother fucker to ash. I always had a thing for good girls.

Tam screams her frustration, and I realise a little too late that now is not the time for reminiscing. Jesus Christ. She and I weren’t even a thing then, and even if we were we’d never been serious. At least, that’s what I thought.

She’s a sweet woman when she’s not PMSing, which seems to be every other fucking day, but she wants things I can’t give her: stability, a family, love. I don’t know how to give anyone those things. I’m not worth any of those things, so how can I give them to another?

I rub my temples and move past her into the cool of the house. I head straight for the junk drawer and pull out some painkillers. Pouring myself a glass of water, I down them in one go.

“You look like hell, North,” Tam says quietly.

“I feel like it too, so I’m gonna go take a shower, and then I’m going to bed. You can either come if you want, and maybe we can work off a little of that tension of yours, or not—I don’t really give a shit.”

Tam’s lips flatten and her eyes bore into mine in indignation. I turn away, at the end of my rope with her fucking head games. I shouldn’t have offered to fuck her. That was stupid, but fuck, I need to bury myself inside something and forget all about whose house I woke up in this morning and just how familiar that room was.

When I get out of the shower I only half-dry myself, ’cause it’s hot already and I can’t be fucked even going through the motions. I leave the towel on the floor and head into my room. Tam’s stretched out on the bed in front of me. Her little black nightie is gone and her bare pussy is already pink and swollen with arousal.

I walk towards the bed. “Spread your legs, darlin’.”

She plants her feet on the mattress and opens her thighs for me. I palm her pussy. Tam moans. Spreading her lips apart with my thumb and index finger, I smile when I feel how ready she is. This is exactly what I need—to bury myself in some hot, wet snatch.

To forget.

I
avoid the bar like the plague for two days straight, but by the third day I can’t stay away any longer. As I walk in, I’m greeted with the usual suspects: guys from work, barflies I’ve known since I was a boy, and Daddy dearest. I’ve barely set a foot inside before he starts flinging insults in my direction—shit about Tam, and how he hasn’t seen me outside of work because I’m under her thumb, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

Dad’s a mean old bastard. He always has been, and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t want to beat that fucker’s head in for something or other, but I usually let it slide because I’m used to his bullshit. Not today though.

Today, I’m done. “How many drinks you had, Dad?”

He glares at me, though I know calling attention to his alcoholism isn’t exactly an insult to him. “Not enough.”

“Guess not. It’s past six and you’re not trying to slam your fists into my head, so on a scale of one to fifty, we’re probably only at twenty-three,” I say. “I’ll go grab a beer and come back when you’ve liquored up some more.”

“Oh, cry me a fucking river, kid.” He leans on the cherrywood table. There’s no apology or remorse in his stare. There’s nothing behind his eyes. Nothing at all. This man is dead inside, rotten right to the core, and for the longest time I couldn’t see it. I wanted to be just like him—strong, brave, a man’s man. But he isn’t any of that. Just an angry old drunk who never gave a rat’s arse about anyone but himself. I walk away, but Dad says, “Christ, you’re a whiney bitch. You sound like your mother.”