Only You by Jerry Cole (the top 100 crime novels of all time TXT) 📕

could get away with it. But he had clearly misjudged his boyfriend to the point where he thought it would be all right to rack lines at two in the afternoon.

“What are you doing?” Bradley had asked gingerly, careful not to set Sherman off.

“Oh — nothing!” Sherman had tried to hide the cocaine by wiping it off the table and onto the floor. It was hundreds of dollars washed away like it was nothing. “Nothing at all – hey. Why aren’t you in your room prac —”

“Seriously?” Bradley had stood his ground. He crossed his arms, he fixed Sherman with a no-nonsense glare. He had looked the other way every single time Sherman was caught red-handed like this. He wouldn’t do that anymore. “It’s two in the afternoon, Sherman. This is – it’s fucked. And gross. And to be honest, it’s a little —”

“My work fired me.” Sherman collapsed on the ground in a heap and from there... well, it was kind of hard to stay mad at him.

It took another thirty minutes to get more out of Sherman, but ultimately Bradley didn’t need to. Those first four words spoken contained all the information he needed. Sherman’s work was going under. They needed to save money. The best way to save money was to fire the higher-ups, the ones that made a little too much. Sherman was at the top of that list and seeing as he was the one that pushed the Single’s Tour and organized the purchase of the recent cruise ships, his head was the first one on the block.

“It’s not fair!” Sherman wailed from the floor.

“I know,” Bradley had assured him.

“After all I’ve done for them!” he had continued miserably.

“It’s sucks. It fucking... I’m sorry.” Bradley held him and rubbed his back.

“What am I going to do now?” he had finished with a snotty nose and red, swollen cheeks from crying.

“We’ll figure something out.”

Panicking wasn’t an option. It helped too that Sherman had been paid a sort of ‘covid bonus’ when he was first ordered home for lockdown. It had been an obscene amount of money meant to assure him that things weren’t going off the rails. Now it looked as if it was just a way to keep him quiet.

That was well over a month ago now and they still hadn’t ‘figured things out.’ The opposite was true in fact, as a result of this constant period of stasis, Sherman had become close to unbearable. Bradley tried to remind himself it wasn’t his fault, that it was lockdown, that when it was over Sherman would get himself back on his feet, that this was only temporary. But it was hard. So fucking hard!

And sadly enough, inevitably enough, it all came to a head an hour before dinner when Bradley was in the kitchen, making spaghetti for the two men to eat later. It was a simple meal, because Bradley wasn’t in the mood for extravagance. He was tired. He was hungry. He just wanted to cook, eat, relax and go to bed. And then Sherman waltzed into the kitchen.

“Oh, goodie!” he beamed at the site of the red pasta sauce on the stove top. “Pasta again. I cannot wait!” His eyes were a little too wide, his smile a little too large and his leg vibrated uncontrollably on the spot.

“Yep.” That was all Bradley was going to offer. He concentrated on the salad he was making; just a standard Greek salad with olives, onion, tomato, feta and balsamic vinegar.

“We had pasta last night,” he moaned playfully as he saddled up across from where Bradley was cooking. He leaned on the kitchen counter and bat his eyelashes at Bradley. “And last Wednesday – oh! You know what we should have?”

Bradley slammed his fists on the table. “What? What should we have?!” he snapped.

Sherman retreated his head back and blinked his surprise. “Well, someone is in a mood.”

“Well, someone is putting me in a mood.”

“Is that someone me?” Sherman tried for cute. He fluttered his eyelashes, smiled gaily and seemed to be doing everything he could to be playful. But it wasn’t enough, and it hadn’t been enough for long time.

“Sherman,” Bradley sighed. “Can you... go do some more lines or whatever the fuck it is you do all day? I’m trying to make us dinner here.” There was a pause, and then, “Some of us actually have purpose at the moment.”

Sherman stopped smiling. He stopped looking playful. He stopped flirting. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means that while you spend all day putting money you can’t afford up your nose and fucking around, I’m actually working and —”

“You’re acting for free.”

“For now!” Bradley exploded. “When lockdown is over, I’ll have a job – and don’t say that I don’t know that for sure. Because I do! If not this one, then the next. Or the next. My time will come, which is why I lock myself in that room every day. Better than doing what you are and wasting my life.”

“Wasting my life?” Sherman sneered. “I got fired —”

“So what?!” Bradley was angry now and there was little that was going to calm him down. Tension had been building for a long while. Really, it was about time it all came out. “People get fired. Few get fired with as big a settlement package as you did.”

“And that makes it better?!”

“Obviously!” Bradley continued hotly. “You’ll find a new job – fuck, when this is over with, you’ll probably be offered one with more money. That’s how it is for you people.”

“Us people?”

“But I have to work for it. Every fucking day I do. And it doesn’t help that you’re either in here shoving white powder up your nose, or you’re complaining about the food I cook every day, or you’re... you’re... you’re...”