Page 85 of Kicks

This time Eddie sat up, cross-legged on the bed. “Surely he wants to see her?”

“He’s more interested in cash at the moment. He’s come for what’s owed to him.”

“Fucking bastard. Didn’t he sign everything over to your mum?”

The stress of the week seized him. The tears rolled down his cheeks. Immediately, Eddie was beside him. He wrapped his arms around Billy.

“Hey now,” he soothed. “Why didn’t you tell me before? I hate that you’ve been dealing with this on your own.”

Billy shouldn’t have shut Eddie out. They were supposed to be an item. Although after four years of managing two people’s lives, sharing the load was a mountain he had yet to climb.

“I don’t know,” Billy replied. “You’ve been stressed about work. I didn’t want to bother you. I know my life is dull in comparison to you and your mates.”

Eddie held onto him tightly. “Work is work. This is real. Bother me, for fuck’s sake. As if you’re dull. You have ex-convicts banging on your door. Now out with it.”

“To cut a long and depressing story short, he reckons he has grounds to contest Mum’s will.”

“Tell him to fuck off.”

Billy sighed. “It’s not as easy as that. I spoke to a lawyer mate from uni. He could have a case.”

They lay in silence for a while. Hearing himself utter those words somehow made everything so much more real. His heart was almost beating out of his chest. Fuck Brian for coming at this time, when everything else was up in the air.

“Sell up,” Eddie said, eventually. “Fuck it. Pay him off and bank the rest. You’re getting back into your architecture. It’s not worth it, Billy.”

Billy extracted himself from Eddie’s arms and looked at him.

“I can’t afford it,” he explained. “Plus, I’ll be left with a fuckton of sex toys to flog. How am I supposed to do that?”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s no way I can give Brian his supposed share and pay the Pleasure Seekers bill. It will leave me, Harry and Crystal with nothing. More like debt, to be honest.”

Eddie rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Listen,” he said. “I haven’t signed the contract. It’s still in my work bag.”

Billy couldn’t understand what had made Eddie so reluctant. “Why?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Eddie replied.

“Doesn’t matter? Of course it matters.”

“What I’m saying is, I can throw it away and that’s it.”

“You’ll lose the job.”

Eddie shrugged. “Maybe I never deserved it in the first place.”

“Eddie, you’re confusing me. Are you saying you’d walk away from this deal for me?”

Now Eddie shed a tear. “Not for you. For me,” he said.

“You’re going to have to make some sense.”

Billy had a terrible sense of foreboding. Whatever was chipping away at Eddie evidently had something to do with Billy, otherwise he wouldn’t be clamming up like this. He had to know.

Eddie swallowed hard. “I pulled a fast one.”

Whatever Billy had been expecting him to say, it wasn’t that.