The Beginning (Starting Over)

by Matthew J. Metzger

  It was already starting to feel like home.

  He’d started work on Wednesday. Chris had taken up an apprenticeship in the kitchens of Tom’s St Ives hotel and was working on an application to the local police force. And Gabriel would be donning a suit and tie next month when a woman at Suze’s office went on maternity leave. The work had been found, and the budgets shuffled until they were back in the black. Life was starting to settle once more.

  But more than that, the bungalows felt like theirs.

  Chris had already planted some cherry trees by the gate and started turning the earth for a vegetable garden on his side of the drive. Aled had spent the morning laying borders so Gabriel could resurrect his love of flowers from their little garden in Newmillardam. The curtains were up in the windows, the rugs were down on the bedroom floor and the first post had arrived through the door that very morning.

  They lived here now.

  Sure, Aled was still trying to remember which neighbours were Sam and Jean, and which were Ted and Mary, but he’d get there. Said neighbours had yet to figure out what kind of weird the three blokes up the lane were, but they’d get there too. Bin day seemed to be optional. The council still hadn’t cottoned on that they existed, despite several phone calls.

  But the weirdest part was driving. He set up the sat nav as he got in the car, still totally at sea when it came to where anywhere was in Cornwall just yet. He hadn’t even quite memorised the route to Suze’s house—not that he was dumb enough to tell her that. And Chris had snidely asked more than once if he knew how to close a gate.

  Speaking of gates…

  He hopped back out to shut the gate behind him, and by the time he shut the driver’s door, his phone had vibrated in his pocket. He paused to swipe it open, and smirked.

  Chris: Hey ;) Guess who hasn’t changed his passcode?

  It was followed by a selfie of Gabriel, looking windswept and thoroughly fuckable, flashing a peace sign by the sea. Clifftops, going by the distance.

  Chris: We’re just turning around to head for the pub. See you there! Xxx

  Me: What have you stopped for? Tired already?

  Chris: We’re at Shagging-On-Sea, obviously!!

  Chris: Oops, caught.

  Aled waited, grinning. And sure enough, eventually—

  Chris: I’m coming to the pub. Just threw Gabriel off a cliff.

  Me: You’re not supposed to put that sort of thing in text messages.

  Me: Police’ll find it.

  Me: Now we’re both busted.

  Chris: Shit, yeah. Fine. I’ll go fetch him and dust him off.

  Me: Good idea. See you soon.

  He tossed the phone back on the passenger seat, checked the sat nav once more and set off.

  The Cornish countryside was basking under a hot sun, and he drove with the windows down. Farm traffic and tourists competed on the narrow excuse for a main road, and Aled cruised along behind an overloaded people carrier without a care in the world, drumming his fingers absently on the steering wheel in time to a tune on the radio. He didn’t even like R’n’B.

  The pub was just off the so-called main road, visible but protected by a large hedge. Aled snagged the last parking spot and, as he had no texts, headed into the blissfully quiet bar for some shelter. The biggest downside to Cornwall so far was the heat compared to West Yorkshire. He was going to need to up his game with the sun cream.

  With Chris and Gabriel a few miles out yet, Aled took advantage and had a quick cider, crisp and cold from the cellar. He headed out to claim a shady spot and wait, keeping an eye on his phone so he knew to either down the cider or toss it into the nearest plant before Gabriel arrived. But thankfully, they were in no rush either. Tom and Suze arrived with Euan and the as-yet-unnamed baby bump first, and a second round of drinks came in before two bikes shot past the hedgerows and the squeak of brakes sounded on the corner.

  “Here they come,” Aled said, and hastily dumped the empty cider glass on a nearby picnic bench.

  They arrived dusty from the dry summer, Gabriel stooping for a quick kiss and Aled turning his face aside only just in time.

  “Cider,” he said by way of explanation, and got to his feet. “Let me.”

  “Deal. My legs are killing me.”

  Food orders flew. Aled was sent back off to the pub with a menu, a list and a bundle of cash. By the time he came back, his shady spot had been claimed by the equally fair Chris, and a sun patch left for him opposite Gabriel and next to a squalling Euan. The baby was fussed and passed around while his father ran off into the pub to reheat some paste, and Aled revelled in the noisy, messy, crowded chaos.

  There, holding a screaming infant he couldn’t stand, it struck home.

  Home.

  He was home.

  And as they settled—baby pacified, drinks flowing, food arriving—the feeling didn’t subside. Gabriel’s feet were between Aled’s under the bench while he cosied up to Chris for a kiss, stealing food off his plate while Chris was suitably distracted. Euan was enthusiastically spreading his own food all over his face while Tom attempted to feed him in a dignified manner, and Suze sat back with her lemonade and laughed at the futility of the attempt, one hand resting on her prominent baby bump. Aled batted a wasp away from his ear and smiled, even as the sun singed his ears and a burst of pain said the little bastard had stung him.

  It was a long way from Yorkshire and ex-wives, scattered ashes and thankless jobs.

  His job was never going to change the world. Mum and Dad and Nan weren’t coming back. The household budget might never really recover. There’d be more sleepless nights and anxiety-induced safewords.

  But in the blazing sun, the bench populated by every living person that he loved, Aled couldn’t see the cloud on his silver linings. He was heading for forty, and he’d started his life over again in a lonely midlife crisis—yet here he was.

  Sitting in the midst of his happy ending, with a whole new 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 pro
perly 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.

  But Jesse still needed to reach out and touch him, just to make sure. Somehow.

  The little blue car was lonely on the three-in-the-morning road, and Jesse propped the door of his flat to creep down the communal stairs and open the main door. Ezra had gotten sort-of dressed, in jeans and an open check shirt, feet shoved into his trainers without socks, and his hair was wild and fluffy, in gleeful disarray, as he locked the car and wrapped himself around Jesse in a tight, warm hug.

  Jesse clung back until something creaked, and pressed the side of his face against that wild hair.

  “You’re all right, sweetheart,” Ezra murmured.

  Jesse squeezed again until Ezra’s grip on the nape of his neck tightened in warning, then he let go and dragged Ezra up the silent stairs by the hand. Concrete stairs. They wouldn’t collapse in a fire until the whole building came down.

  He didn’t say a word until he’d pressed the requested tea into Ezra’s hands, locked the door again and bundled them both back to the messy bed. Ezra was equally silent, taking a couple of mouthfuls before abandoning the tea, stripping to his underwear and crawling into the mess to mould himself into Jesse’s arms.

  “There you go,” he murmured lowly, kissing Jesse’s encroaching stubble and stroking a hand gently through his hair. “Feel better now?”

  “Mm,” Jesse pressed his nose into Ezra’s neck, tangling their legs together. He could feel a strong pulse in Ezra’s jugular. He could feel the rough skin of the bumpy scar on Ezra’s shoulder under his fingertips. He could feel the fuzzy mess of Ezra’s hair, usually styled and stiff in that messy-but-it’s-on-purpose-so-it’s-okay manner, now just loose and wild. He could feel him. “Thank you.”

  “Thank me again tomorrow afternoon when I’m grumpy and exhausted after two hours of the Year Nines.”

  “Okay,” Jesse agreed, sliding his arms completely around Ezra’s back until he enveloped him. They didn’t often sleep cuddled together—or even together at all, between Ezra’s eight-to-four and Jesse’s shifts—but he needed this. He needed it.

  “Mind if I go to sleep?”

  “No,” Jesse squirmed until Ezra got the hint and tucked his head under his chin. His hair tickled. Jesse kissed the top of his head and wished he had the easy grace with language that Ezra did. Wished he could express himself properly. Wished he could talk as easily as he hugged. But all that came out was, “I just needed to touch you.”

  Ezra said nothing to that, simply shifting until he was comfortable, one arm over Jesse’s ribs and the other tucked over his own waist in a casual sort of drop. Ezra was long—long limbs, long neck, all willowy lines and bendy joints, and he settled like water into the bulkier, stiffer contours of Jesse’s body.

  But he fit, and he fit perfectly, and Jesse wrapped him up and held him, breathing in the smell of store-brand shampoo and cheap aftershave until the last traces of the nightmare-induced fear washed away.

  It was still a long time before he slept.

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  About the Author

  Matthew J. Metzger is an asexual, transgender British author juggling books, an office job and a love of travel with the human need for sleep once in a while. He writes both adult and young adult books focusing on LGBT+ characters and their relationships, particularly those from the less salubrious areas in which he was dragged up over the years.

  On the very rare occasions that Matt isn’t writing, he can usually be found at the gym, halfway up a mountain or collecting new tattoos. (And yes, he does have book ink...)

  Matthew loves to hear from readers. You can find his contact information, website details and author profile page at https://www.pride-publishing.com

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