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“Ready to spray to kill were you?” he asked. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you. You were just so engrossed in your work that I don’t think you’d have heard anyone or anything.”

“Something like that…” I muttered.

“Well, I’d rather not get sprayed. This suit was expensive.” Hywel pointed down at his suit, which did look very expensive.

“You’d look better with it off anyway,” I said without thinking. An awkward silence seemed to stretch the distance between us for a couple of seconds. I was aware of how close we were physically. I pulled the respirator down so that I wasn’t speaking to him like Bane off of Batman or something.

“Anyway…I’m off to work in the cafe. I left food for you upstairs in case you got hungry.”

“…thanks.” I could feel my cheeks warming as something uncomfortable squirmed its way up through my gut.

I was being fucking looked after in a way I had never been.

Not by my parents, or university tutors, or housemates.

Hywel was thinking of me all the fucking time. And I didn’t know how to feel exactly.

“Hywel stretched his arms upward, groaning. “Staying on the sofa isn’t any good for my back,” he declared. “I’ll be glad to be staying in a bed again.”

“You may as well stay in mine now,” I said without thinking. But how much weirder could it get?

When Hywel leaned forward to gently kiss me on the lips before pulling back with a blush on his own face, I didn’t know what to say except… “bye, then.”

“Right. Yeah. Bye.” And then as quickly as he had seemed to appear in the garage, he was gone. And I felt it like a hole in the fucking head. This was getting behind, it was stupid, it was like…like I was sixteen all over again.

I almost angrily got to work on the car again. I knew my movements were probably more dramatic than they needed to be, and that I threw some wide arcs with the burgundy canister of spray paint, but there was rarely an opportunity to get smashy as a mechanic. If I was, I’d probably lose my garage.

When I finally stood back to admire my handiwork I had to admit that I was good.

Previously smashed in doors and panels restored or replaced.

Paint carefully reapplied and scratches buffed out so you’d never know they were there.

The Aston Martin of dreams was probably in a better state than before Hywel had crashed it. I wanted him to see how good it looked.

I dusted off my hands and removed my respirator from my face. My stomach rumbled, reminding me how long I’d actually been up and doing this so I walked out of the garage and into the bitter outside air. A couple of snowflakes had finally started to settle on the ground.

Just as I turned back to go upstairs to the flat and was thinking about how I really needed to get some stairs directly between the two spaces, I heard tyres on gravel.

Alun’s distinctive red Volkswagen Beetle rumbled into the driveway and I gave him a wave, indicating at the door. It was cold, I wanted to be inside and I knew he’d follow me up.

“Two sugars?” I asked as I heard the door slam behind him. I was already spooning the sugar liberally into my cup. I needed the energy today.

“Alaw’s cut me down to one,” grumbled Alun. I put two sugars in his cup anyway.

“Life’s too short for one sugar,” I replied, thinking of Hywel and his black, sugarless coffee.

“True that. How you doing?” Alun sprawled out on the sofa like he owned the place and waited for me to bring him the cuppa. I was half tempted to tip a little bit into his lap for being such a presumptuous bastard.

“Good thanks,” I walked him over the cup of tea before heading back to the kitchen to grab my cup of tea and the foil-wrapped sandwich Hywel had left on the side.

“Making yourself sandwiches now? Never knew you were so organised,” said Alun. I felt my cheeks heat and prayed that my beard was a good enough mask to cover them up.

I sat down next to him, plonked the tea down on he table and took a bite out of the sandwich. “What you doing here anyway?” I asked.

“Just wanted to see how you were doing,” said Alun casually. I raised one eyebrow at him, saying nothing before I took another bite. “Fine,” he relented. “I wanted to talk about Hywel.”

The sandwich felt like it was going to stick in my throat as I swallowed around it. My stomach roiled. What did he know. Did it matter if he knew anything?

“What about him?” I finally asked.

“Has he spoken to you recently?”

“We’ve…seen each other around, I’m fixing up his car,” I said weakly. Why now was I struggling to tell one of my best mates what was going on?

“Oh, cool. He’s spoken to you about his plans to sell up then?”

Sell up? What, here? This place? Surely he couldn’t be talking about… “No,” I said weakly. “He hasn’t mentioned it at all.”

“Oh, shit. Sorry mate. We thought he’d spoken to everyone by now. He’s divesting his buildings in the town, either selling back to the owners or investors. Be prepared for him to talk to you about it when he comes to pick up the car.”

I sat silent for a second, seething. I could feel it rising inside me, the wave of rage that had probably been locked up since Hywel and I had started to become friends and then something more.

I had started to trust him. I had started to want him in ways that I didn’t entirely understand. I wanted him in ways I didn’t want to.

And now I knew he’d been looking at selling this place from under me this whole time.

“That…twat!” I finally shouted. I sounded a bit stupid even to my own ears but I didn’t care. I put down the cup of tea so hard that it splashed all over the coffee table. For a second, I allowed myself to think of how much that would annoy Hywel. But then I remembered I didn’t fucking care.

“Woah, woah. If you can’t afford to buy it, Alaw and I have been looking at business loans so that you could…”

“I don’t care!” I spoke over Alun, lunging over to grab the file that Hywel always left so brazenly and trustingly out on the coffee table.

I flipped through. Sure enough, there was my garage - listed next to other businesses in the town he had lordship over, all with shiny price tags and appraisals of future value.

“Never trusting that bastard again.”

“Again?” Alun asked. Ever so fucking perceptive. “What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is that men are bloody idiots,” I said. “And so am I. For believing a word he ever said.”

Or something like that , he’d said when I asked if he was just waiting to get his money back from his scummy boyfriend.

In actuality he was waiting for offers to come rolling in on all our shops.

Taking them out of the community and into the hands of landlords.

Just so he could go back to scraping by and hoping to catch a break in big old London.

Alun had stood up. “I really shouldn’t have told you all that, I don’t think. There’s no harm meant. And we’re doing our best to mitigate any impact. We can help you.”

“I don’t need your help, or anyone’s,” I said spitefully. “You’ve helped me plenty over the years. And Hywel…I thought he was helping me. I thought…”

“Oh,” said Alun. “He’s been here more than just to get his car fixed, hasn’t he?”

“Yep.” No use denying it now. Not when I’d already been confirmed as such a trusting idiot.

“Do you want me to stick around? I can help you to talk…”

“No, I’m all good. I can talk to him myself,” I said quietly.

I had a lot of tools in my garage downstairs. Tools that could cause that man a world of pain.