Abroad: Book One (The Hellum and Neal Series in LGBTQIA+ Literature 2) Read online

  So now he was stood like a lump in a corner, hands crossed over his chest, scowling at everyone who was busy mingling and chatting each other up, because clearly, International Night really just stood for “an opportune event for pulling each other during emotionally vulnerable times so everybody could regret their choices come morning.” At least, that’s what it was looking like to Dex. Izzy had taken this project on because of the Italian boy she’d befriended and had a fantastic fuck-fest with last year, but Dex had never had need of this event, so had never been.

  He watched a blond guy make a series of inept moves towards a long-haired Asian girl who was not looking terribly impressed with his game. It was entertaining, quickly boring. Two Americans were chatting and gesticulating with crisps and cups of soda. They were boring, too.

  He sighed, then fished out his phone. God, he had another two hours to go, at least. Maybe he could claim to have a headache. But Izzy’d see right through him.

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  Dex jumped, then glared at where she’d slunk up to him along the wall. “I feel like an idiot, you don’t even need me here.” He scowled when she grinned at him. “You just enjoy torturing me.”

  “Bollocks.” She was still grinning. His face began to betray him, and his scowl fell off. Izzy stuck a carrot in her mouth and bit it off with a loud snap. “You”—she pointed at him with the bit of it left in her hand—“are just a killjoy. Also, you need to get out more. Enough of being a recluse, I’m tired of watching your pathetic face.”

  Oh, good, the scowl was firmly back on. “I am not pathetic.”

  But Izzy was no longer even looking at him. Her gaze turned somewhere beyond Dex, and she got that face on her. The face that clearly transmitted the fact that she’d just spotted a bit of dick she’d like to climb.

  “Ooooh, dishy dish, two o’clock,” she breathed.

  Despite himself, Dex turned to where she was looking. The guy was slumped, much like Dex, against a wall, watching the action but removed. Like he was there, but not really there to be there. Dex could sympathise. What Dex couldn’t understand was why Izzy, of all people, had noticed him.

  He looked so … regular. Cute, sure, but nothing like the tall, brooding guys she loved to whip into shape. He was white. Average height. Dex was pretty sure he had several inches on him. He had a mop of rather crazy light brown curls that weren’t really trendy or anything. A hipster, at a stretch, and that wasn’t a compliment. And he was skinny, too. So very much not Izzy’s type. Nor Dex’s, for that matter.

  But … Dex watched as the guy took out his own phone, looked down at it, sighed, then folded his arms behind himself and bounced against the wall, chewing his lip. He had nice full lips, as far as Dex could tell. And there was something strangely magnetic about him. He had a pretty profile.

  And then he turned towards them, and they made eye contact, and Dex panicked and turned immediately away like the most conspicuous idiot ever.

  The guy had really beautiful eyes. The second their gazes locked Dex had felt weird and weirdly stupid, because even just one look sort of did stuff to his insides. The guy’s eyes were grey and enormous, and they seared through him like an iron poker. What sort of nonsense was he even thinking? Jesus.

  He became aware of stinging pain before he realized Izzy was slapping his arm with her hand. “Ohhh,” she breathed. “He’s not for me! Go chat him up! I bet he’s Italian and all kinds of intense.”

  Dex caught her hand in his. “We talked about this,” he muttered. “No slapping and no begging or I’m out of here.”

  “Right, sorry.” She didn’t look remotely sorry. “It’s just look how adorable, oh my God.”

  Dex refused to look. “Then you go after him.”

  “Nope, he’s a total poof, just look at him,” she said.

  Once again, Dex refused to indulge her. “You literally have no idea that’s the case. Your gaydar’s never functioned properly.”

  She gave him a withering look. “Did you not see how he looked at you?”

  “That’s not even a valid mode of enquiry, it was one tiny second.”

  “An intense tiny second.”

  He gave her a look of his own, then pushed her away. “Haven’t you got a thing to do? Go and run your little mixer.”

  “Tosser,” she laughed, then finally, finally, whirled away. He loved her, but she could be exhausting.

  Dex tried not to indulge himself. He took out his phone, checked his messages. Just one, from Mum, asking him how he was doing. Then, before he knew it, he was looking back at the guy with the hair and the eyes.

  Dex had never really gone for tiny white dudes before.

  The guy was still stood against the wall, not talking to anyone, which was weird, since this was meant to be a socialisation ritual. He was wearing skinnies, black Chucks, and a soft-looking blue shirt, the sleeves rolled up. Izzy could eat him up and spit him out, and he’d probably thank her for it. Dex was not into boys who looked like a stiff breeze could knock them over.

  But he was also not looking away.

  Shit. Right.

  This was stupid. Dex looked back down at his phone, sent off a quick reply to Mum, then flipped over to Izzy’s number, texted her to fuck off and that he’d see her at home, luv u bye, then slunk off.

  +

  He was flipping between ITV and Channel 4 while drinking orange squash in just his pants when Izzy got home. Jonny had fallen asleep on the sofa earlier and after some time of poking Dex’s thigh with his toes had gone up to bed. Thursday night as usual.

  “Dickhead,” she greeted, throwing her keys in the bowl under the mirror and her hat off to somewhere on the floor where it landed with a soft whoosh. “You’re on my list,” she threw over her shoulder on her way to the kitchen.

  “I’m on it every other week!” he reminded her, then decided to settle on an 8 out of 10 Cats repeat against his better judgement.

  Once she was back in the living room with her Corona, Izzy slithered her way into her usual spot between Dex and the sofa arm, which was obnoxious as always, because her elbows poked him in the side and also accidentally knocked the remote out of his hands.

  “What are we watching?”

  “Jimmy Carr’s stupid face.” Dex shifted to give her more room as she laid her head on his shoulder, squishing his dreads in the process.

  “Goody. Where’s Jonny?”

  “Fell asleep on me.”

  “Ha. Where’s Nat?”

  “With Alex.”

  “The tosser.”

  “Yes.” He petted her ginger curls. “But International Night runs itself.”

  “It so does not,” she grumbled, then grabbed the remote back and flipped over to BBC Two. BBC at War, the guide told them. “Ohhh, yay.”

  Dex switched the channel immediately. “Fuck off, I was here first. Anyway, how did it go?”

  “What?”

  “The mixer.” He shifted.

  “Oh, that.” He felt her shrug against his shoulder. “Ran itself.”

  He gave her his best side-eye as she giggled.

  “It was a resounding success,” she finally pronounced.

  “So, dull and pointless.”

  “Not totally dull and pointless.” She paused. Dex took another sip of his squash. “Some French boy got off with an American in the corner. That was kind of fun.”

  “What, did everyone watch?”

  “I was keeping an eye on the situation,” she said haughtily. “She was way too pretty for him, anyway. Texan, I think.”

  “Howdy, cowboy,” Dex said, with what he believed to be a pretty good twang, but Izzy made a disgusted noise at it.

  “Your American accent is atrocious and embarrassing, please stop trying.”

  “Your face is atrocious and embarrassing.”

  “Shut the fuck up.” She settled more firmly against him, nudging him in the spleen. “Who’s on, anyway?”

  Dex squinted at the telly. “Well, that�
��s Mel Gied-whatever over there, I think.”

  “My once and future wife,” Izzy said dreamily, and then promptly fell asleep on his shoulder.

  What he enjoyed about living with these arseholes was that nobody actually minded it when he drank squash half-dressed on the shared sofa. And he didn’t mind that they were arseholes.

  +

  Term began not with a bang but with a whimper, as far as Dex was concerned. Year three modules were no joke, and now came the time Dex had been vaguely dreading: research project. He had waffled between doing that or the investigative project, had gone back and forth on it with his advisor and with Alex, who had largely listened to him and then told him to go with his gut. He wound up deciding that he was more into doing his own lab work and experimenting than going over someone else’s research and thus tying himself firmly to the unknown.

  Of course, he would be lucky if he got out of the lab to eat and sleep and piss.

  “Why am I doing this?” he asked, trudging next to Alex to his second lecture of the day.

  “Because the world needs your brain,” Alex said in the tone of a wearied man who’d said these things before. He then threw his cigarette on the ground, stomped it out, picked it up, and proceeded to chuck it into the nearest bin. One fluid movement. “Also, we’re all idiots, why does anyone do anything?”

  “You should’ve done a philosophy course, man.”

  Alex had been Dex’s first friend at uni, back when he was just a young innocent queer nerd who wanted to study molecules and shag half of London all in one go. Alex had also been Dex’s first uni crush, being tall, dark, and everything handsome, but his unfortunate and staunch heterosexuality had taken care of that diversion pretty fast.

  “But then who would cure cancer?” Alex grinned and ran up the hall steps. “C’mon, lover, membrane proteins await.”

  Dex threw him the two-finger salute and trotted in after him, but secretly he felt a sort of bubbling anticipation in his belly. He fucking loved this shit.

  Later, he was getting ready for a truly wild night of bedroom, laptop, research, and lager when Natali knocked, didn’t wait for an answer, and slunk in.

  “What the bloody hell are you doing?” she asked, gasping and looking at him with wide eyes.

  Dex raised an eyebrow. “Please don’t tell me that in year three you still don’t know what revising looks like.”

  She gave him an eyebrow of her own and swept her fringe off her face. This hairstyle was new. Izzy’s doing, of course. It looked pretty awesome—longer on top, drooping over one eye, buzzed on the sides and back. If Dex knew Nat, it would be dyed green in a day or two. She never could settle into her natural dark brown. “It’s the first day of classes, you wanker.” She grabbed his wallet from the dresser and shoved it into her own back pocket easy as you like. “But it’s the first night of our last year at uni, and we are going down to the pub to mourn-slash-celebrate.” She tucked her fingers into her pockets and stared him down.

  He wasn’t sure why he was pretending that he didn’t want to go out. Obviously he did. He could probably ignore that scratching of guilt for not immediately deciding on a research topic for a night, right?

  “Fine.” He closed his laptop.

  “Good.” She grinned, her cheeks dimpled in that Natali way. She slipped his wallet back out and chucked it at him. “Let’s go.”

  He bumped her shoulder on the way out the door a bit more firmly than usual, she retaliated even harder, and then they both nearly tripped while Jonny watched them impassively from the bottom of the stairs, swinging his key ring around. “Ready, are you?”

  Natali picked herself up and threw an arm around Dex. “Steph, Alex, and Izzy are meeting us there. Oh!” She turned to Dex. “Iz says she’s got a special surprise for you! What d’you think that’s all about?”

  Dex stopped in his tracks and looked at her. “A surprise? For me?”

  Natali nodded, looking curious.

  “Oh, bollocks,” was all Dex could say.

  3

  Nick had managed to find a pillow and a comforter—well, a duvet, with a cover—and even a set of sheets. He was pretty proud. He’d been spectacularly out of it that first day. But he had walked into a store and trudged up and down the aisles until he found bedding, and even managed not to fuck up the pin-and-chip thing at checkout.

  And now he had a bed he could actually sleep in, a brand-spanking-new student ID, a set of classes to attend, and it was all very confusing, but he was okay with that.

  Because he was in London.

  Now that it had been three days and he was no longer a zombie dragging a giant suitcase behind him with a dead arm, he could appreciate that fact. The city wasn’t exactly what he’d been expecting, he supposed. Maybe he just hadn’t found the parts of it that would meet his expectations. Then again, if your expectations were more or less created by watching British romantic comedies with your mother and sister, he supposed those would be difficult to live up to. No Colin Firth, for one. The streets seemed both narrower than he’d expected and wider in scope. It was more pedestrian and more wondrous than he could ever have predicted.

  It was weird, the things he found fascinating. Like how the windows opened outward instead of up and down like in Ann Arbor. The stores carried brands he’d never seen before, and the milk was packaged differently from home. He’d had to figure out his food situation, so he’d walked into the nearest Tesco and probably looked like a complete idiot, just staring at all the stuff that was new to him. It wasn’t as if he’d never seen butter before. But it came in tubs here, and some of it was actually Irish, and he had grinned as he grabbed it. Then he’d gone searching for anything else he might reasonably be able to cook for himself, which largely consisted of eggs (which weren’t in the refrigerator section, he noted), cheese, bread, and various cold cuts.

  It was a loose definition of “cook.”

  He’d spent a while perusing the juice section, attempting to figure out what the hell Ribena could be, and then he’d bought out half of the chocolate section and all the Earl Grey he could carry.

  Then he’d gone back to the dorm and investigated the kitchen situation, at which point he’d realized he would need, like, cooking implements.

  He’d even figured out his phone solution, and now had access to data and voice that wouldn’t cost him an arm and a leg. His mom called once every day, as she woke up.

  Now he sat on the bed and dialed Zoya’s number.

  “Bratishka, wazzzuuuuuuuup!”

  God, she was embarrassing.

  It was sort of easier for them to speak in English nowadays, even though she had been older than him when they left. Whenever Mom caught them at it, she’d give them her most disappointed look over the rim of her glasses and they’d immediately switch, but she wasn’t here, so after Nick’s initial “privet,” they went straight to English.

  “Have you acquired life necessities yet?” Her familiar accent set him at ease. He could hear other voices in the background. She was always surrounded by people. It had been like that back in Moscow, and it was the same now in Ann Arbor. Nick had never understood her ability to simply walk into any social situation and stay afloat.

  Even when they’d started American school, she’d been fine. It was Nick who’d fallen apart.

  “I have everything a growing boy might need,” he told her. “I even bought a frying pan.”

  “You have no idea how to cook. Like, literally, you’ve never cooked a single thing in your life.”

  “Hey, I can learn. I learn things.” He thought about it. “I’ve made you eggs before.”

  “Mmm-hmm, ’kay. Well, just don’t starve. Have you had fish and chips yet? What about haddock? Trifle? Scones? Oooh, a nice spotted dick?”

  She was on a roll of amusing herself, so Nick let her tire herself out, then said, “I bought Irish butter, does that count?”

  “Why is Irish butter so adorable?”

  “It is, right?” Nick laughe
d, feeling weirdly light.

  She giggled, then went quiet for a bit. “Hey, uh, I wasn’t sure if I should tell you, but I ran into Lenka yesterday.”

  “Oh.” Nick looked down. His left sock was getting a hole straight through the big toe.

  “Yeah, she actually stopped to talk to me. Said … to say hi.” A clearing of a throat. “To you.”

  Nick shrugged, then realized she wouldn’t see him. “Thanks.”

  “Yeah. Maybe she thought it was safe now you’re out of the country.” She sounded tentative, like she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to make jokes yet or not.

  Nick kept picking at his sock.

  “Sorry, I just thought maybe you should know,” she rushed on. “Eto nichego?”

  “Nichego, Zoykin.”

  “You know,” she said after a while, the voices in the background receding. “You never really said what happened there … I mean, one minute everything seems fine, and then I get back from California and you’ve broken up…”

  “I…” He sighed. Words refused to get past his throat. “Can we not … right now?”

  She huffed out a breath, but he knew it wasn’t really annoyance. “Fine. It’s all right. I’ll get it out of you eventually.”

  “That’s fine. Eventually’s fine.” It wasn’t. She would never get it out of him.

  “Good.”

  “Fine.”

  “Shut the hell up.” She laughed, sounding just a tad too forced. “Anyway, sorry. What else you got for me? Meet any cool people yet?”

  Nick sucked in his lower lip as he thought. “Sort of … a couple. I dunno.”

  “You don’t know what, if they’re people?”

  “Shut up. No, just … I went to this international night, I guess, for those who are, you know…”