Can't Stand the Heat - Louisa Edwards [10]
Adam cursed under his breath at the dizzying array of kitchen implements cluttering his cupboards. More than half of his kitchen stuff had migrated, slowly but surely, over to the Market kitchen, and what was left at home base had abandoned any semblance of order.
With a bit of luck, he managed to close his fingers around the French press fairly quickly. Some boiling water, a little finely ground espresso, and Adam was carrying mugs of coffee strong enough to hold a spoon up vertically into the other room. Grant snatched one mug out of Adam’s hands and Frankie took the other, setting it down on the coffee table to cool.
“Wasn’t so bad, last night,” Frankie disagreed, lighting up a Dunhill in flagrant disregard for Adam’s no-smoking-in-the-apartment policy. Frankie took a deep drag and squinted up from his boneless sprawl on the living room floor. “Until our boy here lost his head over some magazine bint.”
Frankie happened to be lounging just below the crown jewel of Adam’s poster collection, a pressed-tin sign for the Clash’s 16 Tons tour. Sallow, angry faces of punk rock icons, from Siouxsie and the Banshees to the Sex Pistols, glared out from Adam’s walls. It probably wasn’t a sign of perfect social adjustment that the sight always relaxed him. Johnny Rotten’s snarling visage was never meant to put anyone at ease, and yet Adam found himself already starting to unwind. Which didn’t mean he was ready to absolve Frankie of any responsibility for last night’s clusterfuck.
Adam looked from the group of skinny British punks on his wall to the one currently taking up space on his floor.
“You started it,” Adam accused, pointing a finger and not caring how fourth-grade it made him look. “You got the guests all smashed and kept the food in the kitchen. What the hell were you thinking?”
“Oi,” said Frankie, around an aggrieved puff on his cigarette. “Was thinking you’d be nervous, and a half-in-the-bag audience would be better than a bunch of sharp bastards waiting to cut you to ribbons.”
Adam deflated slightly. He should’ve considered the Frankie version of logic. Of course it all came down to, in the end, what it always came down to: Frankie had his back. No messing around, no exceptions. It was hard to keep a good mad going in the face of that.
“But listen, guys,” Adam beseeched them, flopping down next to his best friend. He took a sip of coffee and leaned his back against the sagging chenille sofa he’d been dragging around since college. “We have to get better at communicating. Fuckups like this’ll kill us once the joint opens for real.”
The guests had finally gone home around midnight, partied out and stuffed full of Adam’s food. The French lady and the redheaded heckler had left early, presumably to rub their hands and cackle while they plotted Adam’s downfall.
He couldn’t believe he’d lost his cool like that. One snarky restaurant critic got in his face, and he went all macho and chest-thumpy on her. Daring her to spend a day in his kitchen! If she’d refused, what would his follow-up have been—I double dog dare you?
Only she didn’t refuse. She fucking well jumped on it. And now he had to come up with a way to back out. No way was he welcoming a critic into his kitchen.
He knocked his head against the hard wooden arm of the sofa, then deliberately did it again. Before he could whack himself a third time, Frankie reached over and cupped the back of his head, cushioning the blow.
“Here, now,” he said, cigarette hanging from his lips. “No need for that.”
“Yeah,” Grant said, squatting in front