“UC?”
“Universal Credit. It replaced income support and housing benefit a while ago.”
“I know what it is,” Benito snapped, willing his brain to catch up.
“And?” Mickey spread his hands. “Come on, mate. I know this is shit, but right now, I’m all your family have, so work with me, yeah? Then hopefully you’ll never see me again.”
Benito slid down the wall. He rested his elbows on his bent knees.
Mickey crouched in front of him. “Talk to me.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“Okay. What about your mum? Is there a medical condition that’s making her act like this? A mental health issue?”
“Fuck. Agoraphobia, maybe? I don’t know.”
Mickey sighed.
Benito waited for him to stand and walk away, taking the money and everything else with him.
Mickey sat back, crossed his legs in front of him, and pulled out his phone. He swiped the screen and started typing, a harsh frown creasing his forehead.
Benito watched, transfixed by the frown line, itching to smooth it away. The impulse was strange, but he welcomed it, bathed in it as it gave him room to breathe.
His heart slowed and his hands stopped tingling. Sensation returned to his toes and he wondered if he’d been holding his breath from the moment he’d looked up to see Mickey on the stairs in front of him.
It felt that way.
Mickey swore, still scowling at his phone. His frown deepened, and his thumb taps grew louder.
Frustration seeped from him.
In spite of himself, Benito leaned forward. “What’s the matter? Did your boss say no?”
Mickey shook his head. “I haven’t got that far yet. This is a me problem, don’t worry about it.”
“What kind of problem?”
Mickey said nothing, still tapping. Then he closed his eyes and expelled an angry whoosh of air. “I’m not good at spontaneous composition. As in, I’m shit at writing. It takes me too long to get the words out in the right order, especially if I don’t have much time to do it.”
“You’re dyslexic?”
“Yup. Like a motherfucker. Shit, sorry. I’m not supposed to swear at work.”
Benito started to smile, then reality kicked him in the dick and he changed his mind. Mickey’s work was Benito’s clusterfuck of a life, and there was nothing funny about that. “Gianna’s dyslexic. She writes all her numbers backwards.”
Mickey grunted. “Sounds familiar. I’m okay with numbers, though. And reading. It’s just when it comes to putting my own words into something legible that I lose the fucking plot—”
He stopped and shook his head. At the TMI or the swearing, Benito couldn’t tell.
Mickey went back to his phone. He finished whatever he was doing and held it out to Benito. “I need you to check it before I send it. My boss knows me well enough to look past the bad grammar and weird spelling, but I need it to be clear so he can do what I need him to do.”
“What makes you think I can write any better than you?”
“Most people can. Please? We need this to reach Isha before he checks out for the night. He usually responds to emails all weekend, but I can’t rely on that.”
Benito took the phone and scanned the email Mickey had hammered out. He was right about the weird spelling, and his text messages now made sense—as in, Benito understood why they sometimes made no sense at all. “Can I change stuff?”
“Show me?”
Benito scrambled to his knees and pointed at the screen. “This part would be clearer if it came before what you say right here.” He dragged his fingertip from the middle of the email to the top. “And these words are the wrong way round.”
Mickey nodded. “I can see that now. Can you change it for me?”
Benito made the edits and passed the phone back. Mickey frowned at it again, then hit Send.
“What happens next?” Benito asked.
“I’ll wait for him to call me back,” Mickey said. “In the meantime, we need a plan. I can’t stress that enough, man. My bosses are good people and they like me, but they can’t go in to bat for me if I don’t give them anything to work with.”
“Does that mean you’re on our side?”
Mickey rolled his eyes halfway round the world and back. “Dude. I always was.”
9
It was the longest day in the world. Mickey was shaking by the time he got home. Or perhaps he had been all along.
He shut his front door and leaned against it, closing his eyes. It was too easy to recall how Benito had pushed against him just days ago, smothering him with rough kisses and bruising hands. It was far harder to stay in those stolen moments and avoid the monumental mess his day had become.
I need a fucking beer. Mickey didn’t move, though. His feet felt glued to the floor. Shit, shit, shit. How the hell had this happened? His mind flashed to the night he’d met Benito, to the moment he’d spotted him sitting alone at the bar in Freefall, and every microsecond they’d shared since, searching for clues—for anything—that could’ve led them here. But he found nothing. Benito had been Mickey’s wildest wet dream come to life, and now he was the estranged son of Mickey’s most difficult tenant, and almost certainly up to his neck in the kind of bullshit that still gave Mickey panic attacks.
You don’t know that. He might not be a road boy.
But common sense said otherwise. Benito had offered no explanation for the pile of cash he’d showed up with or the extra phone stuffed in his pocket. A phone that three years ago, on another estate, in another city, could’ve been Mickey’s. Fuck, he could almost smell his old life—the close city air, the permanent scent of dirty money on his fingers.
The white powder blocking his nose.
His fingers trembled. His jaw. Even his eyeballs felt unstable.
Mickey shook his head to clear it, but the voice in his head wouldn’t stop. Just one line. It’ll calm you down. Come on. Even round here, you know where to get it.
Fucking hell.
Mickey pushed off the door and meandered to the kitchen on heavy legs that didn’t match the renewed riot going on in the rest of him. He opened the fridge and reached for a beer, then changed his mind and moved to the kettle instead. Alcohol wasn’t on his list of vices, but using it as a crutch was a sure-fire way to put it there.
Fuck my life.
Mickey boiled the kettle and made tea. Then he retreated to the couch to try and make sense of the notes he’d made for Rosetta De Luca’s payment plan.
It was easier than he’d feared, given that Benito had typed most of them, slouched down on the landing of Barnfield Court, his full bottom lip caught between his teeth. Mickey had left him the Universal Credit forms to fill out for his mother and advised him to get a letter from her GP, but Benito hadn’t seemed hopeful about communicating with her any better than Mickey had recently.
Such a fucking mess.
And that was without considering the fact that Mickey had fucked her son six ways from Sunday in a sex club and upstairs on his bed. Jesus fucking Christ.
Mickey’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Cravings made his head spin, but he wanted more than a line of grainy coke. He wanted to go back to the world he’d woken up to—the one where his sex life and his real life were separate and the heat blooming in his groin was a safe place to be.