It was on the tip of my tongue to ask why. Then I decided I didn’t care. They were here. They had food. What else mattered?
I moved aside, waving Rami in. He stepped through the door and stooped to unlace his boots while I wrestled Charlie out of his Spiderman coat.
Rami came upright clutching a bag I hadn’t noticed when I’d opened the door. “It’s not much. Just a bacon omelette and some baked mushrooms. You’ve got bread, right?”
I nodded, half convinced I was still asleep and dreaming of the hottest bloke I’d ever met showing up on my doorstep with my favourite meal of the day.
Rami ventured closer to me. He kissed Charlie’s cheek and then mine, lingering in close proximity so I could soak in his cinnamon scent. I was coming to accept that he smelt like Christmas. I didn’t know how it had taken so long for me to figure it out. “Are you even awake yet?” Rami rubbed my arm. “I was worried you might be gone already.”
“Nope. Still here.”
“I can see that.” Rami’s dark gaze drilled into me. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure?”
I scrubbed a hand over my face. “Think so. I’m just not with it yet.”
“Go sit down then. I’ll bring you a plate.”
“You’re eating too, right? I can’t handle you waiting on me.”
“Mate, I’ve never refused a second breakfast in my life.”
Rami kissed me again, then disappeared into my kitchen. I tried not to enjoy the sight of it too much and retreated to the living room with Charlie. He remembered which remote worked the TV and sought it out, pointing it at the screen like he was here all the time.Stop it. I helped him find the channel he wanted and tried not to disappear into my head.
Like magic, Rami appeared with a plate of heaven. And he’d lied. It wasn’t just an omelette and a couple of mushrooms. There were sausages too, Paddy’s festive chipolatas with nutmeg and black pepper. “You’re spoiling me,” I said absently.
“Bite me,” Rami retorted with enough edge to make me look at him. True to his word, he had a plate of his own, though it wasn’t quite as loaded as mine.
I speared a sausage on my fork and held it out to Charlie. He giggled and bit the end off.
Rami snorted. “I just spent an hour telling him not to do that.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I don’t know why I was trying to stop him. Sometimes, I think the only parenting I do is parroting the crap my parents ranted about when I was a kid. Like, I don’t give a shit if he puts his elbows on the table or holds his knife and fork back to front, but I find myself banging on about it anyway. What’s up with that?”
“He didn’t come with an instruction manual.”
“Neither did you.”
I liked that he valued our friendship enough to think he needed one.Friendship? Really?
Yes. We were friends, unless Rami decided he wanted something else. Friends who kissed a lot and did, uh, other things. Apparently I was okay with that now. Except, I wasn’t. I didn’t want to just be Rami’s friend. I wanted more.So ask him for more. He doesn’t have to live here for you to be together. Manchester isn’t a million miles away.But it wasn’t the distance that worried me. It was what it meant for Rami and Charlie. Whatever life they’d had in the city had led them to my door in the first place and their lost eyes that night haunted me in the moments I wasn’t thinking about Rami in a totally different context. Maybe they didn’t need me, but they needed Christmas Mountain, I felt it in my bones.
We finished eating and Rami took the plates to the kitchen. I heard him washing up but Charlie came and sat on me before I could get up and bully Rami away from the sink. Charlie curled up in the crook of my arm, his thumb in his mouth. He fell asleep.
At some point, so did I.
* * *
Rami
I had grand plans of taking Charlie into town to do some Christmas shopping and run some errands I’d been putting off since I’d got here. But the moment I walked into Fen’s living room to find Charlie and him both taking the world’s sweetest nap, I could do nothing but sink into an armchair and stare.
I’d always had a thing for sleeping men. The few partners I’d had who I’d cared about in some way or other had fascinated me when they’d slept beside me. I’d watched them for hours. But none had captivated me more than Fen, and adding Charlie to the mix was my own slice of Heaven.