Page 40 of Housesitter

It took a second for Shepherd to smile. When he did, it flashed across his face with easy, dismissive charm.

“What you see is what you get,” he said. “And you already knew what I wanted.”

Shepherd was right. When he lied, it did sound like the truth. Kel couldn’t swear he’d have even realized if it wasn’t for the way the smoke licked at the back of his teeth. He swallowed the spiced heat of it and left that for later.

“So what now?” he asked.

Shepherd pushed himself upright. He held up the list he’d been working his way down.

“I get to deal with this,” he said. “And traditionally, you look for a way to welch on your deal.”

Kel blinked and then laughed.

“I get everything I ever wanted, and I get to look this hot forever?” he said. “Why in God’s name would I want out of that deal?”

OK. Kel braced his forearm against the tree and rested his sweaty forehead on it. He’d put the projectile vomiting at the sound of the G-word down as one drawback.

“Here.” Shepherd offered him a bottle of water.

He hovered at Kel’s elbow, rubbing his back with a warm, heavy hand. Kel somehow resisted the urge to respond to being vulnerable by being a jackass. He just took the bottle, swilled the liquid around his mouth, and spat the taste of puke out of his mouth. He swallowed, his tongue and teeth cold, and wiped his nose on his knuckles.

“I did not eat that,” he said, trying not to look at the chunks of stuff that had splattered over the twisted roots of the tree. “I don’t care how drunk I was, I did not eat wax made from rotting hobo ass.”

Shepherd snorted out a laugh and stepped back as Kel straightened up. “Try not to think about it,” he said. “It helps.”

“How quickly?” Kel asked. He grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled it up to wipe his face. The sweat that smeared over it was greasy and smelled like high tide. As he dragged the wet fabric down his throat, he realized that Shepherd hadn’t answered. Kel looked over at him and caught Shepherd, lower lip caught between his teeth, with his harvest-sky blue eyes focused on Kel’s chest. How shallow exactly did it make Kel that the helpless admiration made him feel better? Rather than work that out, he yanked his shirt down. “My eyes are up here.”

“I know,” Shepherd said. He shook himself and refocused, winding back until he could pick up the thread of the conversation. “And not quickly enough, but there’s some dried ginger in the cupboard that might help.”

That didn’t sound likely. Kel still gestured for Shepherd to lead the way back into the house.

“I’ll try anything once,” he said.

It turned out it did help. Kel took a bite of the sticky, crystallised root that Shepherd had fished out of a jar. There was a pot of tea on the table, but he didn’t want to wait. The ginger dissolved on his tongue and warmed the bile that sloshed around queasily in his gut. He wasn’t sure if it did anything about the nausea directly, or if it just helped that his mouth didn’t taste like skunk ass anymore.

“I stand by what I said.” Kel leaned on the back of a chair, elbows locked and shoulders shifted back. “There’s other curse words, and nobody will miss me at church.”

Shepherd shrugged as he recapped the jar. He had to give it a thump with the heel of his hand to get the lever latch to work. Once it was, he turned and stretched up to slide it back onto the shelf. Kel chewed on the ginger as he appreciated the play of Shepherd’s arm muscles as his sleeve slid back.

“It’s not the only drawback,” Shepherd said.

“OK,” Kel said. “Let’s hear ‘em, but you’d better have something better than ‘sometimes pukes’.”

There was a low grinding creak from under the floorboards and a glass jar full of dry white bits shot off the shelf. Shepherd jumped back, and it just missed him, shattering on the ground at his feet. The shreds of whatever had been in the jar floated up into the air, sticking to Shepherd’s legs and shoes.

“Hey!” Shepherd snapped as he looked around. “That’s unnecessary. He asked me.”

A door slammed somewhere. It shouldn’t have been able to sound petty, but it did.

Shepherd used the side of his foot to scrape the broken bits of jar up.

“That’s the first drawback,” he said. “You and the house have to co-exist.”

“It seems to like me well enough,” Kel said.

“That’s new relationship energy,” Shepherd said. He made a long arm to grab the HOA list off the table to run his eye down the list as he talked. “Wait until the HOA says you need to paint the trim Shrimpboat Pink and the house doesn’t like the idea. It’s like having a roommate with veto power and a bad temper.”

“I live with my grandmother,” Kel said. “And not like I’m going to be around that much—”