Page 22 of Read My Lips

Or maybe it wasn’t.

“He hasn’t had it yet.” Simon failed to move towards the door, folding his arms tight across his chest instead. Wrinkling his jacket for days. I wanted to push his shoulders down and give him a neck rub. His face changed when he wasn’t smiling.

“This is going to be distinctly unpleasant.”

“Why? You reckon eating half a cow’s compulsory?”

His jaw muscle rippled. “It looks very loud in there.”

“Good job you can switch your hearing aids off isn’t it?”

He huffed. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer conversation over breakfast.”

“If only,” I sighed, theatrically, “there was some non-verbal way of communicating we both understood.”

Simon side-eyed me. His unamused face was absolutely cracking.

“Wait. I’ve got it. Get this. They could call it…” I reached up, fingers stretched wide, making physical space to sketch the dazzling brightness of my revelation in the sky. “Sign Language.”

Simon rolled his eyes, but deep, deep down he knew I was hilarious. I could tell.

“Possimus would be oik-free and brightly lit. I could lip-read, and you wouldn’t have to spend your entire weekend working. It would be the sensible option.”

“Yeeaah.” What exactly about this evening made him think I gravitated towards the sensible option? “Nice try. BSL’s my first language, and I want a bacon stottie.”

Confusion clouded Simon’s face. “A stottie?”

“Sandwich, roll, bap. I don’t care as long as it’s bread. We’re going in.”

Shouldering the narrow door open set the bell jangling right as one of Stag-Do Alex’s mates yelled Go on my son!

Miscalculation.

An entire table-full of them started drumming their fists with a rising Ooooohhhh that went on, and on. And on.

They were everywhere. An entire sports team of stag-doers. Stagging all over the place.

For a solid, static pause, Simon pressed his lips in on themselves. Pea shoots and carrot puree here we come in five, four, three, two⁠—

One by one, he flicked the little switches on the side of his hearing aids. Off.

“This better be the best bacon stottie of your life, Ben Cooper.”

Fuck me, was he really coming in here because I wanted to?

Drawing himself up tall, he dusted the creases out of his jacket, striding right past the lot of them like he’d never even hesitated. I didn’t not check out his arse. I wasn’t that hungover.

Squaring directly in front of the mildly terrified-looking spotty kid behind the till, Simon unfurled his twinkliest smile. “Georgia.” Name badge, not acquaintance. “We’re here for food.”

Her eyes widened slightly at the tell-tale thickness of his voice, his imprecision with his vowels. “Um..?”

Predictably, her gaze drifted in my direction like she expected me to step in. I stepped back instead. As if I’d ever undercut him.

Simon upped his volume and his elocution, still bloody smiling. “You don’t need to say anything, I can’t hear you. Just listen to my order. It’s simple.”

I nudged his arm. “Bacon sandwich on white,” I signed. “Ketchup not HP, and a coffee. Cold milk. Ta very much.”

Near the back, I managed to extract a tiny table from the stag party’s sprawl. Simon’s coffee had a little swirl drawn into the milk froth. Mine was thoroughly headless. Exactly like the rest of my evening.