Page 90 of Dream a Little Dream

Chapter nineteen

Hole in Your Heart

“I’m gonna ask her to the Halloween party at the student union. Dress as a sexy witch with a mask, so she doesn’t know it’s me, then make my move.” Mel tipped out of Aaron’s window, tapping her DMs together as she knelt side by side with him on his bed, vaping into the cool air.

“What if she’s not into the sexy witch thing?” Aaron blew out a lungful of vapour to cloud the small window.

Campus was getting chillier. Eerier. Or maybe it was all the goings on recently. But whatever it was, it had made accommodation switch on the heating which Aaron couldn’t control, hence him practically bending over double out of the window to get some air. Well, there was that and there was the need to exhale his vapour.

“Who isn’t into the sexy witch thing?”

“Er…me.” He took another drag of his menthol-flavoured vape, relieved he had a back facing room and not a campus-facing one where someone could see the two of them dangling out the window. He’d already dismantled the smoke alarm when he’d moved in for such endeavours. The no vape rule had pissedhim off in the half-way house, too. One day, he’d have his own place, and he’d be able to smoke in bed.

Post coitally, hopefully.

“Men can be witches, too.” Mel bumped his shoulder with hers.

“Ha, yeah, but really not into the whole Halloween thing.”

“FuckingloveHalloween, mate.”

Aaron slanted farther out of the window to exhale, the smoke twisting into the woodland beyond. Where Rahul’s last resting place was. Where the bloke had met his brutal end. Didn’t seem fair that it was just beyond his own room. Aaron would forever know there was a graveyard past his window. Yet, more strangely, he couldn’t help viewing it as the place where Dr Kenneth Lyons had rammed him against a tree and kissed life back into him. It was a place of both life and death.

“What is it? Too scary for ya?” Mel teased, then made a ghostlywoo.

“Piss off.” Aaron elbowed her playfully. “There are far scarier things than dickheads in costume.”

His parents, mostly. And they didn’t even wear masks.

He didn’t say that, though. As much as he liked Mel and had confided in her about him being from care, there was always a limit to any friendship he made.

Apart from Dr Kenneth Lyons, it would seem.

But Kenny was different. He wasn’t a friend. And Aaron was slowly but surely becoming Kenny’s dirty little secret. And he wasn’t even ashamed to admit how he liked it.

Morethan liked it.

Kenny was like the slow wearing off of a nicotine fix, a craving Aaron couldn’t replace with artificial substandard imitations.

The gurgle from Mel’s vaping broke Aaron’s lusting. “Sorry. Guess that was kinda insensitive, considering…” She gesturedvaguely to the wall, the one separating Aaron’s room from what used to be Rahul’s.

Aaron took another long pull of his vape. Artificial substandard. He could use a proper smoke.

“They said when they’re gonna replace him?” Mel nodded to the empty wall.

Aaron dropped from the windowsill to sit on the edge of the bed, vape dead, juice gone. He knew better than to ask Mel for a top up. She’d already given him enough, more than just nicotine. She was the only person who made sure he ate sometimes. Checked if he was still breathing.

Well, her and Kenny.

“I suspect they’ll find someone soon enough.” Aaron grabbed a textbook from the pile on the floor and settled back against the wall, thumbing through it half-heartedly. “Doubt they want to lose out on double bubble rent.”

Mel looked appalled. “Surely they’re not keeping his rent? That’s… cold.”

“That’s corporate.” Aaron yawned, rubbing his forehead, the exhaustion of the last few days catching up.

He didn’t have the mental energy to focus on their research methods textbook. Hell, he couldn’t even understand his own behaviour, let alone analyse someone else’s. Last night, wrapped up in Kenny’s arms, under luxury cotton sheets from John Lewis, he hadn’t slept, not really. He’d felt too much. And he wasn’t used to feeling. He’d forgotten how draining it was.

“Right.” Aaron flipped through the pages aimlessly. “What can we get away with?”

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