Rainbow Milk by Paul Mendez

Author:Paul Mendez [Mendez, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B07T4SSLK1
Publisher: Dialogue Books
Published: 2020-04-22T23:00:00+00:00

BRUCE GROVE

Chapter 1

December 25, 2002

He’d wriggled out of his T-shirt, socks and underwear during the night and kicked them down the bed. The weather had been disappointingly mild and sunny for several days, and pale yellow light leaked around the edges of the slatted blind behind him. Teased by the smell of frying bacon from downstairs, he sat against his headboard smoking a cigarette, pulling the duvet high up over one shoulder. He had been dreading Christmas. He stubbed out the cigarette, but found he couldn’t remember how the last few drags had felt, and wondered if he might not light up another straight away.

One of his housemates, Owen, a late-to-bed, early-to-rise kind of man, was also home. They hadn’t discussed spending Christmas together, but both knew neither had made other plans. Owen’s polished black boots thumped dully on the timber floors downstairs, his two daughters’ presents waiting, wrapped in blue and gold, by the front door since the night before. He had come to the house in August, and Jesse had first viewed the room in September. While Bryan, a Canadian jobbing actor with a blank smile, greeted Jesse in the hallway, Owen stood in the background smiling shyly. He was five eleven, with pale grey eyes and dark, almost black hair side-parted. He was effortlessly handsome, friendly and polite. Within ten seconds, Bryan had made the ‘Jesse Owens’ link, and Jesse decided he would take the room. They didn’t seem to mind what he did for a job, and indeed found it exciting, unlike some of the others, whose dirtier, smaller, pricier house-shares he had viewed, and who assumed Jesse would prove unreliable.

In the first month or so of living together, Jesse and Owen ran into each other casually, often in the kitchen as Jesse arranged his bowl of beans with an egg, or his pork chops and spinach, while Owen created a stir-fry or risotto. Bryan was cast in a play in Manchester, the biggest job of his career so far, so Jesse and Owen were left alone.

Owen’s smile, which Jesse never saw him without, always made him feel welcome, and they got to know each other a little, though Jesse shrunk away from him after that man.

Owen was from the Wirral, and had lived in London since graduating from Cambridge, but still spoke with a Scouse accent. He wrote poetry and taught creative writing at University College London. Jesse could tell Owen liked him, but he doubted anything could develop; Owen was eleven years older than him and led a complicated life, separated from his wife. He was a laugher and a talker, often drifting from subject to subject, keeping Jesse rapt. Both admitted to moving to Bruce Grove because the name sounded like someone they wanted to sleep with. Sometimes, Owen would get drunk while marking papers at the kitchen table. He said he needed to drink to have the confidence to talk to men, despite his looks, masculinity and intelligence. He’d catch guys on

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