Dante braced himself for a lecture, but it never came. Rami glanced over Dante’s shoulder, nodded to someone, and left after reminding Dante to keep his court-ordered appointment the following week.
Dick. Dante’s lungs collapsed in a slow sigh of relief. He slumped forwards again, clutching the envelope as if it contained dynamite. He studied the handwriting hard enough to give himself a migraine.Maybe Luis doesn’t write the same anymore. People change.But they didn’t. That’s what he’d told Sid on his first day, and he’d meant it.Believedit, like it was fucking gospel.
A body rounded the back of Dante’s chair, knocking him slightly.
Dante dropped the envelope and jolted upright again.
“Easy,” Sid murmured. “It’s only me, and trust me, I’m not worth the excitement today.”
He set two plates of food on the table and lowered himself awkwardly into his seat, moving with far more difficulty than he had that morning, his sunny face twisted into a pained grimace.
Dante tried not to stare, but it was hard. Sid was nice to look at even when he was suffering.
It didn’t seem to matter that Sid caught him in the act.
“You can ask me, you know,” he said. “Unless you’ve heard it already from someone else.”
Dante glanced between him and the heaping plates of pasta twists and broccoli Sid had dumped on the table. “Ask you what?”
“What’s wrong with me. I keep bracing myself for it and it never comes. It’s a fucking flux, and I don’t like it.”
“You want me to ask you?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know.”
“What if I don’t care what’s wrong with you?”
“Then stop fucking staring.” Sid grinned a little. “I feel your eyes on me sometimes.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. That’s not what I meant. I just—fuck, I don’t know. Let me eat, then maybe I can explain myself better.”
Dante nodded and pulled his own plate towards him for something to do while Sid fell on his food. It was bizarre to him that Sid felt the need to explain himself when it was Dante who had made things weird between them on that very first night.
You let the devil show.
And Sid hadn’t blinked.
Dante wasn’t sure how he felt about that either. Or about the fact that they hadn’t seen each other outside of working hours since. Sid seemed to disappear every evening when he finally downed tools, and Dante spent his nights alone, staring at the ceiling.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Sid said suddenly, breaking the quiet. “Youneed to eat before we can talk. It’s not healthy to play with your food.”
Dante had stirred the food on his plate into a big green mess. He started to push it away, but Sid’s playful glare stopped him.
He ate the pasta, steering around the biggest green bits.
Sid nudged his knee under the table. “It’s good for you.”
“All right, all right.” Dante cleared his plate and, as had become his habit as the days had flown by, checked Sid wasn’t still hungry before he sat back in his seat. “You don’t have to tell me anything. I’m not going to ask because it ain’t my business, and I’m not going to hear it from anyone else because you’re the only mofo who talks to me.”
“Benjamin talks to you.”
“About work. Not your personal shit.”
“Where are you from?”
“Lambeth.”