10
Dex was well used to seeing his mates walking through the pub door, but it was still a bit of a shock when he looked up from mixing a vodka cranberry for a purple-haired girl to see Izzy stride in with Nick in tow. He was wearing those glasses that made it both easier and harder to look at him, because they hid his pretty eyes from Dex’s view a bit, but also they just looked good on him. Dex was past denying anything.
Last Sunday had been a long fucking day for him, and a longer night. After they left the park, they’d walked back to Nick’s building in silence. Dex was fairly certain he had never been more obvious in his life. He might as well have got a plane to write WILL YOU LET ME KISS IT ALL BETTER in the sky for him. As if that would have helped anything, especially a confused kid who’d lost his dad at fifteen. And after he’d dropped Nick off, he and Jonny had stayed up way too late talking. Necessary, but Dex had felt like milk gone off the whole next day.
The bar was pretty full, but Izzy was Izzy, which meant that she managed to squeeze in between two dudes with very little effort. She had once joked that it paid to be a bigger girl, but it wasn’t that, Dex knew. Izzy would have been a whirlwind at a size negative zero. Surely she had to see how she turned everyone’s heads just by being so very, very Izzy. He’d singed off his eyebrows at the sight of her, and he didn’t even swing that way.
Dex finished ringing up the purple-haired cran vodka girl, then took two more orders and made four more drinks before he could reasonably say hello and bring Izzy and Nick their beers.
“Hey babe.” Izzy leaned up until she could land a kiss on Dex’s cheek. Nick smiled at him, looking a bit shy. Dex could relate. He waved Nick off when Nick made to put down a tenner.
“On the house, mate.” He made a mental note to remember to put some money in the till before closing out. “So what’s happening?”
“Nick here has spent the whole day writing a paper, if you can believe that, so he needs to be celebrated.”
“On a Saturday? Mate, you’re worse than me.” Dex smiled, pleasure blooming in his belly.
“It’s the nerd life,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. “It’s the first big assignment for this class. I just didn’t know what to expect.”
“Whatever, I bet it’s amazing,” Izzy said with a wave of her hand. “Oh, D, you missed this—Nick called his mum on the way over here, and I have now heard him speaking Russian. Brilliant.”
“Oh yeah, my brilliant Russian.” Nick made air quotes around brilliant. “Half the conversation was my mom correcting me.”
“Well, it’s better than mine,” Izzy laughed.
“So d’you speak it at home, then?”
“Yeah, my mom would disown us if we didn’t. She and my dad were always all about preserving our language and all of that.”
“Do you think in it?” Dex asked curiously.
Nick shook his head and propped his chin on his hand. “Not anymore. It’s weird, I actually can’t remember when that happened. But it’s mostly English now.”
“Huh.”
“Uh, mate, hello? Are you on or what?”
Dex sighed and went to an irritated guy seeking attention. Fair enough—Dex’s job wasn’t to moon over guys he was unlikely ever to get, but to make money. He went about it pretty consistently for the next while, catching glimpses of Nick and Izzy now and again as they managed to actually grab two seats at the bar. From what Dex could tell, it was largely Izzy talking and Nick listening, but both looked pretty happy about it.
When he had a moment to breathe, he sidled over to them and used the excuse of throwing glasses in the dishwasher to eavesdrop.
“It wasn’t until Nat’s uncle got us a deal on the flat that we even considered it, though, isn’t that right, Dexter?”
Dex looked up. “What’s that?”
“Us moving into a real-people place instead of halls. Nick was just telling me about some of the people on his floor. Don’t miss it, to be honest.”
“You do remember I was one of those people, right?”
“Yeah, but you’re all right, aren’t you? Shit bartender, though, where’s my next one?”
Dex grabbed her empty glass and pulled her another Stella. “Here you go, princess.”
“I don’t rate a new glass?” She raised an eyebrow. “Good thing you don’t work for tips.”
Dex flipped her off, then noticed Nick’s glass was nearly empty, too. “Another?”
Nick smiled and nodded, extending his glass. “Please.”
Dex did as asked, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye. He managed to tip the glass too forward when he noticed Nick watching him and wound up with half a pint of foam. Great. Wordlessly he tipped it out. “Here, sorry about that.”
“Yeah,” Izzy said, taking a sip. “Nobody wants too much head, am I right, boys?”
Nick visibly choked on his beer while Dex glared at her. “Must you always go for the obvious?”
“Only when it’s staring me right in the face.” She indicated Nick with a glance. Subtle she was not. Dex attempted to glare.
“Uh.” Nick wiped some foam from his mouth, which had the unfortunate side effect of pulling Dex’s attention directly to that part of his face. God, his lips were pretty. Dex had to get a hold of himself, it wasn’t that long since last he’d pulled. “I wanted to, uh, I wanted to ask, how is Jonny?”
Dex sagged down onto the bar. He had to tread carefully here. “He’s all right, I guess.” He grabbed a towel and wiped away the mess he’d made with Nick’s beer. “Went home, got back yesterday. His dad’s not bad. The surgery went well. So he’ll make it.”
“Good.” Nick sounded … normal. Good.
Dex smiled at him despite himself. “Yeah. It is.”
“What about his mom?”
Izzy made a noise of disgust. “She’s a cunt, that’s what she is.”
“Iz.”
“What, am I wrong? No, I am not.”
Dex caught Nick watching them like he couldn’t figure out where the trouble was.
“She’s still refusing to talk to him,” Izzy went on, turning to Nick. “He missed all his lectures, has so much shit to make up, and she couldn’t even be bothered to speak to him like a human being.”
“That really sucks.”
“It fucking does,” Izzy said viciously. “Anyway, he got to stay with his cousin, who’s pretty cool. She drove him to and from the hospital, that kind of thing.”
“He doesn’t have any siblings?”
“Only child. So, you know. Guess they took it extra hard when he came out.”
“Whatever. He’s still their kid.”
“That he is,” Dex agreed. “Anyway, guess he’s with Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee tonight—sorry, that’s what I call Niall and Lance,” he added. “I shouldn’t. I know. They’re just sort of idiots.”
“Well, Niall’s not a complete idiot,” Izzy laughed. “Anyway, Lance has got his heart in the right place. He’s just a bit much.”
“Is he the Marxist?” Nick asked, and Dex burst out laughing.
“If only, man—he thinks he gets it, but he really doesn’t.” Even as Dex said it, he felt guilty. Jonny actually did appear to like the guy, which had to say something about Lance, right?
Nick cracked a sardonic smile. “No, probably not.”
“Does it—sorry, this is probably a stupid question, but did he offend you?” Izzy asked. “I mean, I know Russia’s not been Communist in a while, but—”
Dex leaned in closer. It was odd, having a real-life person who could have an actual, like, informed opinion on this right there in front of them. He wished Lance were here to listen. It was tedious hearing him spew his revolutionary bullshit from his middle-class white boy mouth.
“I mean,” Nick said. “I don’t know that I can be offended. It’s a bit simplistic, I guess. My parents lived through Communism. I didn’t.”
“What was it like, d’you know?”
“Well … My mom used to talk about the food shortages, or like … sometimes there wouldn’t be toilet paper available. Like. In the town where they lived.”
“What, are you serious?” Izzy’s eyes widened. “Sorry, that was well rude, wasn’t it?”
Nick laughed and shook his head. “It’s pretty crazy even to me at this point. But yeah, like … I guess relatives would come visiting from another city and bring toilet paper with them. Or if there was a meat shortage, we’d bring it from our city. That kind of stuff.”
“But it wasn’t like that when you were growing up?” Dex asked, quickly scanning the bar for patrons. Bah. “Wait, hang on, I wanna hear this—” He trailed off, taking orders from five separate people, mixing cocktails, pulling pints, all the while straining to hear what Nick and Izzy were talking about. He was curious. He’d never been anywhere apart from, like, France and Portugal for hols with his parents and Al. Russia always felt so forbidding to him, so mysterious. Brutal, in some ways. When he looked at Nick, the word brutal seemed the farthest thing from his mind.
+
Izzy twisted in her seat to make sure Nick was out of earshot as he went to the loos. “Right. You are into this boy!”
Dex quickly scrolled through the ways he could dispute this but found none. Eurgh. “I hate that you know me so well.”
Izzy gave him a look that could only be described as pitying. “Babe. You’re not being very subtle.”
Oh God. “How not subtle?”
“Weeeeell. You’ve done a full-on one-eighty on him, for one. You also get this look on your face, like…” She pulled a face that was presumably a close imitation of Dex’s besotted expression. It was excruciating.
“No, God, Iz, please tell me you’re exaggerating. D’you think he knows?”
Izzy laughed. “No, babe, you’re totally safe. If anything, he’d be the last person to figure out you fancy him.”
Dex beseeched her with a look to be honest.
“I swear to God!” She raised her hands. “Seriously, can you see Nick, of all people, sitting there, thinking, golly-gee-whiz, I think that gorgeous, confident Dexter quite fancies me?”
When put like that, she had a point. “All right. Fine. But oh God, I have got to get past this. It’s insane. It won’t go anywhere.”
“Whatever. Anyway, you working till close tonight?”
“You know how it is. Bills, bills, bills.”
“That a yes?”
He took an order, began pulling yet another pint. “Yes, Isabel.”
“All right, Christ, don’t bite me head off. I think we should—” She twisted around, looked in the direction of the loos, then turned back towards him, leaning in. “We should take Nick back to ours after this, if he’s up for it. What’d you think?”
Dex shrugged, taking the Stella guy’s money. “If you think he’d be into it, I suppose?”
He was saved from having to listen to her by a pink-haired girl who sidled up to the other end of the bar. He went to do his job.