Hard Tail(56)

Matt's head shot up. "Pritchard? Steve Pritchard?"

A hot, uncomfortable feeling spread across my chest. Why the hell hadn't it occurred to me the bastard might be someone he knew? "I don't know his first name-the others all call him Pit-bull," I added, more or less on the principle that blame shared is blame halved.

Then it hit me. "Wait-Steve? Your Steve?"

Matt nodded jerkily. "Class down in Totton, right?" He tried to smile. "Yeah, that's him."

I couldn't stop staring at him. Pit-bull Pritchard was Matt's boyfriend? "What the hell is his problem?" I burst out. "You know what he called me? A fucking poofter! What kind of gay bloke goes around saying that kind of thing?"

"He's … he's just not out, that's all," Matt said, and I hated to see him defending the arsehole. "Like you," he added.

My blood froze in my veins. Then it boiled. "'Pit-bull' Pritchard is nothing like me," I snapped. "He's a vicious, bullying thug. Christ, Matt, I can't believe you're with him!" I turned away, my fists clenching of their own accord, and struggled to calm myself.

By the time I'd got my breathing under control and turned back, Matt had disappeared.

Shit.

I made my way into the back room. Matt was leaning against the worktop hugging himself. He didn't even look up when I came in. I felt like the worst bastard in the entire history of bastardry. I'd just been a complete git about the man he-against all laws of common decency, not to mention credulity-apparently loved. "Matt?" I said softly. "I'm sorry."

Matt's head jerked up, and he started to say something, then stopped.

"I shouldn't have said that. It was just a, a gut reaction-Steve and I didn't exactly hit it off." I cleared my throat and wiped my hands on my jeans. "I'm sure he's, um, a lot … nicer … when you get to know him outside karate. Anyway, I'm sorry."

"No-it's all right," Matt said. "I mean-Steve just rubs people up the wrong way, sometimes." It sounded like something he'd learned by rote, as if he'd had to apologise for Steve before. 

No surprise there. "Right," I said. "Not his fault." I was lying through my teeth.

"No!" Matt agreed a bit too quickly for my liking. "It's just … how he is."

"Absolutely."

As the conversation seemed to have stuttered to a halt, I muttered something about needing to get back to work and escaped out front again.

I still couldn't believe it. Gentle, sweet, vegetarian Matt was living with Steve Pit-bull Pritchard? I'd always assumed vegetarians were what that bastard ate for breakfast. Maybe … maybe he really was different, outside the dojo?

Or maybe he wasn't. God, how much did Matt have to put up with from Pritchard's bullying ways? Whichever way I looked at it, it was pretty depressing-either Matt was with a bastard, or I'd have to accept Prick-tard had hidden depths. Neither option was particularly appealing.

***

Too fed up to bother nuking anything for tea that night, I sat on the sofa with Wolverine and ate tuna out of the tin. Having already eaten, he weighed down my legs like a furry cushion stuffed with nails and purred his approval of my dinner choice. "I just don't get it," I muttered, my mood as sour as my dinner companion's breath. "Why the hell would someone like Matt be with someone like bloody Prick-tard? He's a thug, a bully, he pretends Matt's his lodger … "

Then again, was that really so different form me claiming to have had a quiet night in when I'd in fact been experimenting with homosexuality in general, and Adam in particular, down at the Cock?

I put down the tin of tuna, having unaccountably lost my appetite. Wolverine stood, anchored himself briefly with a few well-placed claws, then hopped onto the table to finish my dinner for me.





Chapter Sixteen




When I got to the shop on Tuesday morning, it wasn't just Matt waiting for me in the doorway. There was a large rucksack, a mountain bike and a guitar collectively taking up a lot more space than he did.

"Hey, I didn't know you played guitar," I blurted out before my brain could catch up with what my eyes were telling me about his hunched-over posture and sad eyes. "Bloody hell, are you okay?"

Matt sniffed and struggled to his feet, nearly falling on his guitar in the process. "'M fine."

"No, you're not." For one thing, he was muttering worse than Adam. "Come on in and tell me what's happened. Have you and Steve had a bust-up?" It was hardly a Holmesian effort of deduction, given the luggage and the general despondency.

Matt grabbed his bike and pushed it into the shop. I picked up his guitar in one hand and his rucksack in the other and followed him in. "Matt? Come on, talk to me."