Convenient Strangers

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An Excerpt From: CONVENIENT STRANGERS

Copyright © CARA MCKENNA, 2012

All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave Publishing, Inc.

“Where are you going?”

“To get a change of clothes.” He turned in the threshold. “See how reasonable and accommodating I am, letting you keep the flat?” Was that what he was doing? Sure, why not? Small price to pay. Good riddance to these walls and all the memories they held.

“Whatever.”

Stephen sighed, utterly unamused. “‘Whatever.’ That’s just perfect. Exactly what a bloody teenager would say.” He headed for his dresser.

Ethan framed himself in the doorway, watching Stephen tossing clothes on the bed. “You’re running away and I’m the teenager?”

“No, I’m escaping. And you’re thirty-one, and still too chickenshit to tell your mum you’re fucking gay. Socially, you’re a fourteen-year-old. That’s what it feels like, trying to be with you. Like I’m holding the hand of a fourteen-year-old bloody boy, and I moved here expecting to be with a man.” He glared at Ethan over the jeans he folded.

“It’s different around here. You met me in London.”

“And I was your dirty little secret there, too.”

Ethan ignored the comment. “Being gay’s different here.”

“I grew up in Manchester. You know what it’s like, growing up there queer? You may as well walk around with a bloody crossbow target painted on your back. You may as well hand lads a brick and invite them to bash your skull in for you. There’s no worse thing you can possibly be there besides gay.”

Ethan sighed and threw his hands up. “Fine. You win. You win the worst childhood trophy, if it makes you so fucking happy.”

“I’d be happy if my boyfriend—who I moved to another hemisphere for—could find the knackers to acknowledge my existence.”

“I’ve explained about my family.”

“Fine. Not your family. How about a single mate of yours? A coworker? A fucking barista from two towns over?”

Nothing, just a wounded, martyred look that told Stephen this man he’d rearranged his entire life for didn’t get it. Not that he didn’t care, but he didn’t care enough to upend his own comfortable, cowardly existence to make a real place for Stephen in it. Fuck this. Fuck the bloody change of clothes, even. He shoved everything he’d gathered back into a drawer and slammed it shut.

He brushed past Ethan to the kitchen. Heading for the door, he grabbed his wallet from the table by the coatrack. “I’m going out. Going out alone.”

“Yeah, I caught that.”

“Single.”

“Whatever. Fine, I get it.”

“I’ll be by for my stuff tomorrow,” Stephen said, flipping the deadbolt and pulling the door open, praying there’d be a neighbor in the hall. A witness. “I’m going out,” he reiterated loudly, “and I’m going to snog the holy hell out of some gorgeous man with the balls to admit who the fuck he is.”

Ethan’s darting eyes and rigid posture said he was dying of embarrassment, but he kept his face straight, voice blasé. “Great. Good for you.”

Stephen turned, leaning in the open doorframe. “Some bloke whose closet door’s flung so wide open, the knob punched a bloody hole in the plaster, all right?”

“Have a blast.”

“Don’t think I won’t.” He yanked the door shut behind him, not quite a slam, and jammed his hands in his pockets as he stalked down the hall to the stairs. Every step felt like a sock in the gut, in the heart, but fine. Whatever.

Ten months was plenty to waste, holding someone’s hand. Ten months was too long.

He had some goddamn catching up to do.