Page 21 of Full Service

“Cuppa?” he asked. I did the only sensible and masculine thing, which was grunt. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

I looked around. As I’d come to expect from Hywel, he had cleaned up from the night before. The vodka bottle was nowhere to be seen, poker chips were neatly piled up next to the TV and the floor had been mopped. If I hadn’t been there, feeling that mouth get to work I would never have known that…

I had to stop thinking about last night. Erase it from my mind.

“So, fun night last night,” said Hywel.

Fuck. Why?“Yeah, I guess.”

“No need to go all quiet and brooding now. I know what you like.” Hywel’s eyes glittered as he handed me the cup of tea.

“Yes, you do,” I muttered. “Look, about last night…”

“Never happening again? Yes, I know.” Hywel was still smiling as he sipped his tea.

“Look, I’m not saying that I didn’t…” I was flustered, and I had no idea why. I wasn’t one to apologise for not wanting to have sex with someone again. But that was the problem. I was apologising for not doing it again even though I wanted to.

“I know, it was good for me too. But you don’t like me. You just about tolerate my presence and I just about tolerate you, so throwing fucking into the equation is bound to cause problems. No need to apologise,” said Hywel.

“I don’t dislike you,” I said. Surprisingly, it came from a place of honesty. I had no idea when the feeling in me had shifted, but I’d let at least a bit of the dislike go.

“Likewise. But neither are we friends, and that’s fine by me.” Hywel swilled out his mug in the sink. “I’m working from the flat today so I’ll bring you a sandwich down later.”

Hywel went to sit down on the sofa and pulled out his laptop and a big folder. I watched him type as I sipped at the cup of tea, and wondered why him saying we weren’t friends had made my heart twinge a little bit.

I toasted some bread, snaffled it down quickly and went downstairs to work. To bury myself in my work more accurately, and not to think about what had happened. Or why I felt the way I did about what had happened.

It was a few hours later when like clockwork Hywel knocked on the metal shutter and ducked under it. I was working on his car by buffing out the minor scratches and hammering out the dents that I could — though the parts still hadn’t come in by my own design, there was little else to work on. I had no high end clients in and the regular customers; the bread and butter of my business, were not coming in as Christmas was a rare time to buy a car. No sales at Christmas meant no yearly MOTs coming in either.

“Come in,” I called. But he was already standing over me with a bowl of soup and a plate full of bread.

“Cold,” he said. “So I thought this might warm you up.”

“Thanks…” I muttered. I still didn’t know where his head was at with all of this — was he being extra domestic now? Or had all the domesticity led to last night’s action? Was he lying when he said he didn’t want to do it all again? Was I?

“Just take the soup and eat it,” said Hywel. “Stop overthinking things. I didn’t think you had enough cells in that brain to overthink things.”

I snorted. His barbed comments didn’t sound as sincere as mine once had been to him. They sounded…like he was being funny with a friend. And I didn’t know how I felt about that.

I took the plate and bowl gently, like they might explode if I didn’t handle them with care. I took care not to brush his fingers with my own, much as I wanted…no, didn’t want, no…Fuck. Could life get any more confusing?

Another knock at the shutter answered that question. “Hello?” called a familiar voice.

I looked to Hywel first, and he was looking at me. He looked panicked though I had no idea why. I, meanwhile, was panicking for very legitimate reasons.

“Hello? Mac? Are you in here?” came the familiar female voice again.

“Here, Mam.” I waved from where we sat at the back of the workshop. She walked toward us and I flicked an extra light on overhead so that she could see us properly without her eyes adjusting.

She was wearing a nice wool cardigan and she’d cut her hair since the last time I saw her a month or so before. When she spotted Hywel and I her eyes widened in shock.

“Well, there’s a face I haven’t seen in a while. How are you, lovely boy?” She walked forward and pulled Hywel into a hug. His eyes bugged out at me from her shoulder.

She released him and looked at me. “So, things going well?”

“Very.”

“Good.”

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