His phone buzzed on the counter where he’d abandoned it last night, and he smiled when he slid it open and Ezra’s name popped up, cheerfully bright in the shimmering morning.
Ezra <3: Oh my God, one of the little shits has slashed the tyres on the head’s car! Do I laugh or look mad like the rest of them?
Jesse laughed.
Me: Look mad. You look stunning when you laugh and that physics teacher has a thing for you. Don’t encourage her!
Ezra <3: Sap ;) Love you too x
His heart hiccupped, and Jesse clutched the phone like a brainless newly-wed until the toaster popped.
* * * *
The Thomas Oxley School was a dreary sort of school named after a dreary sort of man. It was a squat redbrick construction, brooding at the side of a hectic main road, scowling under a mismatched slate roof and losing at least four students a year to the traffic outside, and another ten or eleven to youth offending institutes, mental health wards, suicides and very mobile broken families. Last year, the school had made national news when one student had murdered another on school grounds. It was the kind of place that had briefly had a metal detector to stop the kids bringing in knives.
Sometimes, Jesse thought Ezra’s job was more dangerous than his.
He waited outside the chain-link fence to the car park at three-forty-five. Most of the little reprobates had dissipated, but Ezra’s car sat obliviously in the sun and baked itself happily. The headmaster’s car was made obvious by the AA van and the bloke changing every one of the ruined tyres. Jesse would feel sorry, but by Ezra’s account the head was a dick and deserved everything the kids gave him.
When Ezra finally did emerge, he looked exhausted. Jesse met him halfway, took the stack of wobbling books from him and received a weary smile.
“Bad day?”
“Don’t even,” Ezra warned, unlocking the car and popping the boot to dump his stuff. “I want to sleep for the entire break.”
“I can drive if you want,” Jesse offered.
“Would you?”
“Sure.”
Ezra tossed him the keys. Jesse spent ten minutes readjusting the mirrors, because Ezra insisted on sitting bolt-upright in the car instead of lounging like any self-respecting, comfortable driver would. By the time he put the car in gear and reversed out of the tight space, Ezra was already half-asleep.
They lived the wrong way around. Jesse lived not ten minutes’ walk from the school, while conversely, Ezra’s house was a fifteen-minute drive in good traffic, never mind the half-four build-up, and yet it sat not five hundred metres from the fire station where Jesse spent most of his working day. Really, they ought to swap—except that Jesse’s landlord would never allow cats, and, frankly, Jesse preferred the nest of his flat to Ezra’s airy, open house.
“C’mon, gorgeous, out you get,” Jesse coaxed once he’d pulled up in the driveway. Thankfully, the cats were nowhere to be seen. He wasn’t as practised at avoiding small animals as Ezra, and the tortoiseshell especially had a habit of just running under the car, even if it was moving.
Ezra lasted roughly five minutes. He dropped his backpack at the door, his tie over the living room doorknob, rejected his shoes by the coffee table and collapsed onto the sofa with a mumble that might have been a request for coffee. Jesse ignored him. By the time he’d locked the door and tidied up the abandoned clothes, Ezra had twisted half onto his side and fallen asleep.
Even twisted up in a rumpled shirt and boring trousers, he was gorgeous. Jesse touched his hair lightly, then left him to scout out the kitchen and the potential for food. He was a better cook than Ezra—which wasn’t hard—and had been stocking up his kitchen for the last three months. It had a proper wok and everything now, whereas a proper frying pan was pushing the spatial boundaries of Jesse’s kitchen.
The cat-flap rattled, and a chirping mraow sounded from somewhere around his ankles before Kitsa, Ezra’s ADHD-afflicted tortoiseshell kitten, leapt nimbly up onto the tiny kitchen table and meowed plaintively for attention.
“Hello, darling,” Jesse crooned, holding out a hand. She rubbed her whole back under it, purring. Kitsa was a small cat, and his hands were large—he could have picked her up in one without much difficulty. “Hungry?”
She meowed again and rubbed her face on his knuckles. He liked Kitsa. Kitsa was friendly and purred and chased laser pointers and thought butterflies were legitimate food. Apparently, she’d been an unwanted Christmas present for the neighbour’s grandson, and Ezra had taken her. The elderly lady next door couldn’t have managed Flopsy, his big lazy cat, never mind Kitsa. Privately, Jesse couldn’t imagine anyone not wanting Kitsa. Even he liked Kitsa, and he wasn’t a fan of cats.
He set down fresh food for them both before getting to work on dinner. Predictably, the moment the can opener popped the top off, Ezra’s other cat materialised, but the horribly-named Flopsy had no time for Jesse. She barely had time for Ezra. She was a seventeen-year-old Ragdoll, and thoroughly ignored the entire universe in favour of making nests in clean laundry and destroying flowers. Jesse ignored her, she ignored him and Kitsa bounced around his ankles like a hyperactive toddler once she’d decided that tuna wasn’t going to be as good as whatever he was making.
“Cats don’t get cheese,” he told her, tossing a block of Cheddar onto the counter. Spanish omelette, he decided, and Kitsa voiced her disagreement from around his left foot. “Or potato, or egg or any of it,” he said. Flopsy slouched out after decimating the tuna. If cats could belch, she would have.
He lost himself in the radio on the end of the bench, the sunlight streaming through the back door, the cat winding herself around his legs and hopefully putting her paws up on his shins every now and then, and the soothing rhythm of cooking. It was a mindless sort of activity for Jesse, even if he was paranoid about switching off the oven at the wall when he was done, or triple-checking the fire alarm and monoxide monitors before he even thought about firing up the hob. He’d seen too many gutted houses and ruined lives from his day job to be any other way.
He was warned of an imminent boyfriend when Kitsa meowed and abandoned him. A moment later, Ezra shuffled in—foggy-eyed and yawning, hair sticking straight up on one side where the mousse and the sofa had conspired against him. He looked stunning, and Jesse’s heart twitched.
“Hey.”
Jesse didn’t answer, just reeled him in by the waist and kissed him deeply, locking an arm around his hips so that even when Ezra huffed and pushed his face away, he was kept close.
“Too hungry for sex!”
Jesse laughed. “I just wanted a kiss, not a shag. Anyway, it’s almost ready.”
Ezra tucked his head into the crook of Jesse’s neck and shoulder. “I want to work,” he said, “at a school where the students don’t try to set fire to each other with Bunsen burners.”
Jesse curled his fingers around the narrow jut of hipbone and rubbed his thumb into the gap where Ezra’s shirt had worked free of his trousers. His skin was hot to the touch from sleep and spring. Ezra’s scalp pushed at the underside of his jaw—the height difference wasn’t usually great enough to allow it, given that Jesse was five-eleven and Ezra five-nine, but post-nap Ezra slouched. A lot. And Jesse kind of liked it.
“I want to work,” Ezra continued blithely, “somewhere where twenty-five doesn’t make me old. Somewhere where the kids use their pencils to draw ionic bonds, not on each other, and not badly spelled various racist, sexist and homophobic remarks.”
“Bad day?” Jesse repeated.
“Jesse, I seriously had to tell a kid why the phrase ‘buttfucking faggot’ couldn’t possibly apply to Katie Micklewood.”
“Okay, that’s…yeah.”
“He couldn’t even spell ‘fucking.’ Or ‘faggot’ for that matter. It took me a good minute to realise it was supposed to be an insult.”
“Even I’m not that thick.”
“You call yourself thick again, I’ll show you some of the mock GCSE papers from last Ja
nuary,” Ezra grumbled. “I teach a few hundred children in a week. Maybe ten of them have any brains whatsoever, and of the ten, maybe six of those brains have intellect suited to science.”
“You’re an awful teacher. You’re meant to encourage them.”
“I do, I just bitch behind their backs,” Ezra yawned and squeezed both arms around Jesse’s waist. “Omelette?”
“Spanish.”
“Mm.”
“You awake enough to come out tonight? It’s Danny’s leaving do. Crawl starts at The Bell and heads towards town from there.”
“Oh no. I’m not showing up at my mother’s tomorrow hungover, and neither are you.”
Jesse winced. He kind of wanted to. He was meeting Ezra’s family tomorrow for the very first time—Ezra’s very distant, very judgemental, very Catholic family. He was scared shitless.
“I know that face,” Ezra murmured. “Don’t be so scared.”
“I can’t help it. And you can’t tell me they’re going to like me.”
He’d managed to keep putting it off. Christmas was too soon, and they were too new. He’d been working on Ezra’s birthday so couldn’t make it all the way out to Norfolk with him. The drugs had made him too loopy right after the accident at work.
But eventually he’d run out of excuses, and Ezra had started to get that pinched look on his face. Like he wasn’t believing them anymore. Like he was wondering if Jesse wasn’t serious about them.
So when his grandmother’s birthday had rolled around, and Ezra had mentioned that he visited every year, and it would be nice if Jesse could come too—
Jesse had agreed.
And he’d been shitting himself ever since.
“You’re going to have to meet them at some point,” Ezra said. “And it’ll be fine. Grace won’t like you, but Mum will come around once she really sees you, and Nana’s a loopy old bat anyway, so nobody listens to her.”
Jesse wasn’t listening either. It wasn’t that he wanted Ezra’s family to like him—there was no chance of that anyway. He was a dropout who’d had about ten shelf-stacking jobs before joining the fire service, had no education worth shit, and was a man. They weren’t going to like him. But he didn’t want Ezra to be…put off. To change his mind once his mother was all disapproving and shit. Because it was his mum, and she called him every Sunday evening to talk, and even if Ezra was about as Catholic as Jesse was Hindu, he still loved her.
Ever since he’d proposed visiting them and introducing Jesse, way back in February, Jesse had been…
Scared.
“Come out?” he tried again. “I’m going. And we don’t have to drink a lot, but you have to admit it’s been ages since we went out properly. I want to see you in your tight jeans and your tipsy face.”
“You could see that here,” Ezra grumbled, but finally unpeeled himself and rummaged for plates. “Fine. Okay. But not long. I’m tired, and we’ll have to start out early, and—”
“Relax.” Jesse ran a long hand down Ezra’s spine, feeling the languid ripple of him. “It’ll be fine.”
It had to be, right?
Chapter Two
“I fucking hate London.”
“Hanging?”
“Yes.”
God, was Jesse ever hanging. His head was pounding, his eyes were screwed up even behind the sunglasses, and who had decided it had to be unreasonably hot this Easter? It was never hot at Easter. They usually got right through until August before the temperature even approached warm, but oh no, the one day he’d been hungover in months, and it had to be a scorcher.
“Do you believe in God?”
“Not anymore,” Ezra said.
“Did you believe he was an arsehole even when you did believe in him?”
“Not usually,” Ezra said, changing gears as he finally, finally left the M25 for less horrifically congested roads. “But read the Old Testament sometime. He’s pretty much canonically an arsehole.”
Jesse groaned. “I want to die.”
“That’s what you get for getting slaughtered even though you said, three times, you’d stop at two pints.”
Jesse winced. Ezra huffed, then seemed to soften.
“We’ll go to the hotel first and I’ll medicate your hangover away before going to Mum’s. How about that?”
“Marry me.”
Ezra snorted. If he were in less pain, Jesse would have been enjoying the view. Ezra’s little Peugeot was old and knackered. He was saving up for a new car rather than waste money attempting to fix the old one, so the air conditioning had bust a long time ago. Judging by the lack of electric windows, a couple of centuries ago. Which meant they had the windows wound down, the grimy North London air was toying lightly with Ezra’s hair, there was a burst of freckles beginning to pop into life along his forearms and he was wearing a sleeveless shirt.
Well, maybe Jesse was enjoying the view. But he’d be enjoying it more if not for the hangover.
“I couldn’t help it,” he whined. “Mac’s doctor said he’d fully recover from his burns—it’s worth celebrating!”
“I get it, you hose-monkeys are all party animals.”
“Can we just stay at the hotel and say we got there unacceptably late and meet your family tomorrow instead?”
“No.”
Jesse scowled and closed his eyes. Worth a shot. He didn’t want to meet Ezra’s family—he was terrified of meeting Ezra’s family. Meeting them hungover—well, that wasn’t going to be a great first impression, was it?
“They’re not going to eat you alive, Jess,” Ezra said softly, and Jesse sighed.
“I just—I want them to think I’m good enough for you.”
“Good luck with that,” Ezra said briskly. “Anything short of Jesus himself is not going to be good enough for Nana. Or Grace,” he added, and grimaced. “Urgh. I hope she cancelled.”
“Not helping.”
Ezra shrugged. “Telling the truth, babe,” he said easily. “But they’re not going to have a good old-fashioned gay-bashing. They’ll be all stiffly polite, and you’ll love Nana anyway because she’s absolutely insane, and Mum’ll come around in her own time. They won’t like you—trust me, you’ll be keeping me gay or some other such crap—but once they’ve actually met you, they’ll work out that you’re a nice guy and not Satan in tight jeans.”
Jesse bit his lip. “So if I were someone else, any other guy—?”
“No boyfriend would ever be enough,” Ezra said, and took advantage of a straight stretch in the road to briefly reach over and squeeze Jesse’s hand. “You’re enough for me. That’s all that counts.”
Except it wasn’t. Jesse knew better. People cared about what their families thought of their other halves. If Ezra’s family hated him, Ezra would eventually listen. Then he’d break up with him, and Jesse knew it was insane to think it only eight months in, but he needed Ezra.
“Hey.”
He glanced over the top of his shades at Ezra’s summons. There was a smile playing at the edges of that stupidly kissable mouth.
“Love you.”
Jesse bit his lip, then leaned over and kissed Ezra’s cheek.
He couldn’t fuck this up.
* * * *
Technically speaking, Ezra was Welsh. He’d lost most of his accent to some mix of Norfolk, London and the south coast, but Jesse had noticed early on that if he was drunk or tired, that lilting Welsh began to creep back in.
So he’d asked. And the tricky bastard had promptly said he was born just north of Abertawe, and laughed himself sick when it had taken Jesse two months to realise he was referring to Swansea.
He’d been raised near Cardiff for most of his childhood, as far as Jesse knew. He didn’t speak Welsh, and he never claimed to actually be Welsh, but Jesse liked the faint lilt to his voice, and he had mental images of Ezra on some wild mountainside in watery Welsh sun. They would have to take a holiday to Wales over the summer.
‘Mum’s Welsh,’ Ezra had said, the one and only time
they’d discussed it. ‘Swansea. Dad was from Bristol.’
He’d refused to say anything else once Jesse had teased him with a poor West Country accent, and so Jesse found himself outside a small converted farmhouse just outside of Norwich with very little idea about the people who lived there.
They’d arrived in the late afternoon. Ezra had booked a room in a small bar-restaurant-hotel hybrid thing in the centre of Norwich rather than stay with his family, and he had indulged Jesse’s pounding headache by going there first and letting him take a kip in the darkened room. By the time he’d been woken—with a welcome kiss and a glass of orange juice Ezra had pilfered from the bar downstairs—he’d felt a little more able to manage this.
That was, until Ezra’s Peugeot crunched over the gravel driveway of the converted farmhouse, and Jesse caught sight of a crucifix nailed to the gatepost.
“Seriously?” he asked, pointing at it.
“Seriously,” Ezra said, and laughed, waving out of the open window. “Nana!”
The front door was open in deference to the sun and the heat, and a green garden chair had been placed by the step. A tiny, wizened old woman, who must have been eighty if she was a day, squinted at them before a toothless smile creased her already very creased face and she began to slowly and painfully haul herself up, leaning on a walking stick that must have been as heavy as she was.
“You’re late!” she scolded as Ezra hauled on the handbrake and bounced out of the car to hug her. He was almost a foot taller than she was, and her fiercely white perm seemed to glow against his dark top. “And you’ve grown. Come here. Let Nana see you.”
He had to stoop to let her cup his face. Jesse took the keys out of the car and locked it up, shifting nervously on his feet. Ezra had said Nana was crazy, but he obviously loved her to bits. What if Nana didn’t like him?
“Too thin,” Nana said, and slapped his cheek. “Your wife is not feeding you! Divorce her. Immediately. Mildred at church has a very nice granddaughter, she’s your age—”
Enough Page 2
