Something on the Sofa with Chips

By James W Hebborn

Tyler Adams, half American half English, moves to Brighton and only knows one person in Brighton already, his best friend David, who immediately invites him to a party being hosted by two of his own friends who live in one of the few remaining complete regency townhouses in the historic Lewes Crescent. At an evening dinner party on Tyler's second weekend in town with some more of David's friends, who are soon to be married in the gay wedding of the year; escaping from the recreational drug use after the arguments of the evening when the washed out drag queen in attendance with his wife flirts one too many times with the professional football player, Tyler finds the Beckham lookalike suggesting they do more than just share a cigarette. So sets in motion a series of events which sees Tyler try to cope with dangerous dinner parties, errant neighbours and meeting the (married) love of his life to forge a romance among the style and occasional harshness of the Brighton gay scene.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James W Hebborn
• Release date: Oct 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466024168

Book preview

Chapter 1

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, pick up the ‘phone,’ Tyler muttered under his breath.

Six months after first deciding to move to Brighton, Tyler Adams found himself sitting perched on the edge of his sofa in his new living room amid a sea of labelled, cardboard boxes, clutching his mobile ‘phone to his left ear with one hand, and a lighter and a fresh cigarette in his other.

He’d just seen off the two removal men from the front door, and after shoving the small scrap of paper into his jeans’ pocket that the younger, twenty-something lad had pushed into his hand with a cheeky grin, with the hastily scribbled ‘phone number on it, he wanted to share the news of his arrival. He drew heavily on the lighted cigarette that was now dangling from his lips and inhaled deeply, relishing the taste as the smoke burned its way down into his lungs.

He’d been in his new flat exactly half an hour and had already broken his new cardinal rule that he’d made the previous day of not smoking once he’d moved into his new place. Especially as the very camp estate agent had gone to great pains to point out that the ad had specifically said no DSS, no kids and no smokers. He’d shrugged to himself as he’d lit it, thinking, ‘ah well, two out of three ain’t bad’, and grinned to himself as his call was answered.

‘Yeah?’ said the voice on the other end lazily.

‘I’m here,’ Tyler proclaimed, smiling broadly.

‘Hey!’ exclaimed the voice excitedly, ‘you made it all ok then?’

‘Yeah,’ Tyler replied, getting up from the sofa and surveying the mess around him. ‘All went pretty smoothly, surprisingly.’

‘Cool. Any cute removal boys? And when’s the house-warming?’

Tyler laughed, as he imagined David on the other end of the ‘phone already thinking of throwing a party. He had known David for just over a year. And in that time, he’d gone from being a quick shag that he’d found online one bored and drunken night, to a weekend retreat, and now to being the closest thing he had to a best friend. Although, as they’d both often mentioned during the previous year, he would have had to have been very bored indeed to be willing to travel 70 miles for a shag. ‘I guess you wore all those horny Essex boys out,’ David had said on more than one occasion, smiling mischievously. Which Tyler had never bothered to deny.

‘Trust you,’ said Tyler to his friend on the other end of the ‘phone, laughing, ‘any excuse for a party.’

‘When have you ever known me to need a reason to get drunk?’ David asked.

‘Er… never?’ Tyler asked mockingly.

‘You know me too well,’ David replied. ‘Anyway, if not a party, when can I come over and visit the new fuck pad?’

‘Carry on like that and you may be the first victim,’ Tyler replied, only half joking. Although they were friends first and foremost, it didn’t stop either one of them using the other when the need arose. And although the times weren’t as often as they once were, each still considered the other to be a good time in bed in times of need.

‘Yeah, you wish,’ was David’s reply from the other end of the ‘phone, ‘although, I guess you will need to test out the sound-proof quality of the walls at some point,’ and then laughed in that half cheeky, mischievous way that always made Tyler’s heart go a few beats quicker and his dick grow a few inches longer.

‘Well, maybe you can come over later if you’re not doing anything,’ Tyler said, sticking one hand down the front of jeans to push it back down again, and then satisfied that it was going to behave itself, propped the ‘phone between his left shoulder and his ear, while squatting down in order to pull one of the boxes closer to him so he could retrieve a bottle of Absolut from the box at his feet. ‘I’ve got a bottle here that I’m just about to stick in the freezer so if you fancy it later just let me know.’

‘Sure babe,’ David replied. ‘Listen, I’ve got to go into town soon anyway. Have to go by Jonathan and Richard’s and then I’m supposed to be meeting Tim for a drinkie and a chat.’

Tyler rolled his eyes and groaned as he walked the half dozen paces through the living room to the kitchen in the corner, rounded the front counter and opened the freezer door to stick the vodka bottle inside. ‘I thought you weren’t going to see him anymore,’ he said matter of factly.

David and Tim had been seeing each other a few months previously for exactly nine days. From David’s point of view it was nothing more than a week and a half of sex. Tim, however, thought they were heading for the registry office, until he caught David on his knees in front of someone else in a club one night.

‘Yeah, well, he’s been texting me for ages trying to get me to meet up with him and I keep putting him off, but he sent me another one yesterday and asked if I could meet him for a drink as there was something he wanted to talk to me about. Fuck knows what it’s all about but I didn’t have anything better to do, so said yes. Besides, he is still very horny.’

‘Well, just don’t get carried away,’ Tyler replied.

‘I won’t,’ David responded lightly.

‘Yeah, well, anyway… if you’re free afterwards then come over. I may have the place a bit straighter by then in any case.’

‘Not too straight I hope,’ David said putting on an effeminate slant to his voice, ‘we do want it to be a little bit gay after all darling.’

‘Oh, piss off,’ Tyler replied laughing. ‘What you going round Johnnie and Dick’s for?’ Tyler grimaced to himself as he said their names. He’d been introduced to them about six months before at one of their parties. Although party was probably the wrong word to use to describe what really amounted to a free-for-all orgy. They lived in one of the few remaining complete houses on Lewes Crescent. Five floors of classical Regency architecture, with all mod-cons and a Spanish house-boy to boot! In between throwing sex parties for the local pretty boys, as Jonathan described them, he was a successful interior designer to the local celebrity circuit and Richard, his boyfriend 20 years his junior, his house-husband. Hence, the money to own the house they lived in, and to have it decorated in opulent fashion.

David had recently splashed out ten thousand pounds on a new state of the art kitchen to go into his marina apartment, designed by Jonathan, and he’d managed to sweet-talk him into letting him pay in instalments. Rumours that the sweet-talking amounted to a blow-job during one of their weekend parties were vigorously denied by David. But not by Jonathan; much to David’s annoyance.

‘Just have to take the last kitchen payment round that’s all. Then I’ll be off into town to meet Tim,’ David continued.

‘Okay hon, well have a good afternoon and I’ll see you later maybe.’

‘Yep. See ya later babes!’

Tyler flipped his ‘phone shut and tossed it onto the bed, where he’d wandered to while he was talking. He was quite lucky in that there wasn’t actually that much unpacking to do. He’d collected the keys to the new flat a few days before and so had spent the last few days gradually moving stuff down in the car he’d hired from his old place in Essex. What was left, which consisted mostly of his clothes, kitchen stuff, laptop, massage table for his business, and the dozen or so boxes of assorted crap had come in that morning along with the bed, sofa, dining table and five chairs, and a few other odds and ends.

It felt warm and stuffy in the bedroom so he moved across the room to open the window to let some fresh air in, along with the city noises from the street three floors below. He stood looking from the window for a few minutes, feeling very pleased with himself that he’d managed to find such a perfect flat at a rent he could afford. Located in the middle of Brighton’s North Laine district on Regent Street, it was a five minute walk into the heart of St James’s Street and all the local gay bars. Or a fifteen minute drunken stagger at three o’clock in the morning he estimated.

‘Perfect,’ David had said when Tyler had described it to him, ‘you can pick up some cute young thing in the pub, take him back to yours and fuck him silly, then toss him out and still have time to go back to the pub for another round!’

Tyler had laughed at the idea. It was so typical of David to come out with something like that. ‘Always thinking with your cock you are,’ Tyler had said smirking, ‘or in your case, should that be your arse?’

To which David had replied, ‘of course!’, and grinned from ear to ear.

Tyler smiled to himself as he thought of the conversation. Then turning from the window walked back through the bedroom to take a tour of his new home. The main bedroom was a good size with the one fairly large window overlooking the road outside and built-in wardrobes along the opposite wall.

From the bedroom, he walked out into the hallway where the bathroom was immediately on his right. Turning left, he walked past the smaller second bedroom, where he would set up his massage table, and went through into the living room. This was the room he was most pleased with. Large and with room-width floor to ceiling windows at one end which let in a huge amount of light, it would always ensure that this room was bright even on a gloomy winter’s day. Which wouldn’t be the case today though, he thought to himself, as it was the middle of September and was still quite warm. The living room and kitchen were one open plan room, the kitchen area being off from the main room on the opposite side to the windows, a counter top with the fridge, freezer and dishwasher underneath acting as the room divider, and had all the usual fixtures and fittings, along with a dark granite counter top, which he loved.

Tyler smiled to himself, probably for the twentieth time that day at having found such a good place to call his own in this town. Looking at his watch and seeing it was almost three o’clock, he decided that the first task at hand was to try out the new bathroom and take a shower. Although he’d paid the two removal guys the best part of £150, he’d also been giving them a hand in getting his stuff from the lift to his front door, and so had been lugging boxes backwards and forwards for the past hour or so and in the warmth of the late summer day had got quite hot and sticky.

Walking back into the bedroom and kicking his trainers off, he quickly pulled his shirt off over his head and the jeans down and off, throwing them onto the bed. His underwear went the same way and he padded naked through to the bathroom.

Leaning around the glass screen of the shower enclosure, he turned the tap and let the water flow. While waiting a few seconds for the water to heat, he surveyed himself in the full length mirror on the wall. He was a few months away from his 32nd birthday, but was pleased that people still thought he looked at least five years younger than he actually was. At five feet, 11 inches, he hadn’t quite made it to the magical six feet that he’d aspired to as a growing teenager. Nevertheless, hours spent at the gym each week since the beginning of the year had created the body he’d always wanted at last.

Nicely muscled in all the right places but not too overdone, as he liked to say. He hated some of the muscle marys down at the gym who had pumped their way to looking like rejects from a Mr Universe contest. It had always looked too false and plastic for his taste. He much preferred a nice well-proportioned, toned and defined build which is what he had been striving for and was glad to say had finally achieved after much hard work. His gaze travelled down the rest of his body, from his nice round pecs, across his perfectly flat stomach and down to his crotch where he briefly surveyed his dick. About five inches long when soft, and quite thick, it was nothing to be ashamed of in the gym changing rooms and showers, and thinking to himself, something to be quite proud of when hard. He’d certainly never had any complaints anyway. In fact, quite the opposite.

He turned from the mirror as it started to mist from the steam coming from the shower and jumped in. He stood under the water for a few minutes, just letting it cascade down across his body as he thought, for the first time since moving in, that he was finally at home.

Chapter 2

A few hours later, after having showered and pulled on an old pair of ripped jeans and a T-shirt, Tyler finally finished emptying the contents of the last of the boxes that had been lying around the flat. The contents of the wardrobe were neatly arranged, kitchen cupboards and drawers stocked with utensils, cooking pans and glassware, bathroom filled with the hoard of necessary toiletries, and laptop hooked up, which was now sitting on the small dining table, iTunes up on the screen, streaming music to the Bluetooth speakers that were currently sitting on top of the kitchen counter.

Taking the filter jug from the fridge he filled the small tank on the coffee machine with water, pushed the button on the front and then gathered up the pile of flattened boxes from the corner of the room to take them downstairs to the communal recycling bins, while the water heated.

Taking the lift down to the ground floor, he made his way to the front of the building and went outside to the bin area, to throw the cardboard inside the appropriately labelled bin. He was re-entering the lift back inside the foyer and about to stab the button to take him back up to the third floor when a call of ‘hold on!’ made his hand pause in mid-air. He looked up to see a man rounding the corner in the passageway and coming towards him. From his almost balding head, with what hair remaining being white-grey and his lined features, Tyler judged him to be in his late sixties, about the same height as himself and walking with a silver tipped, black cane in his left hand, which tapped a rhythm on the marble tiled floor as he walked hurriedly towards the open doors of the lift.

He stepped into the lift and breathlessly said, ‘oh, thank you my dear. It’s so tiresome to have to wait for the lift. Much better to have it waiting for you, don’t you think?’

Tyler smiled, more to himself at being called dear by this old man, than anything else. Although, when he looked into the man’s eyes to reply, he could almost see the proverbial twinkle behind them. ‘Happy to oblige,’ Tyler replied.

‘Oh, if only,’ the man said, this time smiling outwardly back at Tyler and blatantly looking down and then back up his body. Then seeing the startled look that momentarily made an appearance on Tyler’s face, continued hastily, ‘don’t mind me, dear. I’m just a silly old queen who doesn’t know what he’s saying half the time.’ And leaning closer towards Tyler as he spoke, continued in a half-whisper, ‘it’s the pills, you know.’

‘Really?’ Tyler replied, having regained his composure and smiling good naturedly in return.

‘Oh yes. Damn doctors. They say it’s to stop me having anymore funny turns. But they do tend to make me say whatever’s on my mind, you know. Has gotten me into trouble more than once, I can tell you.’

‘Ah,’ Tyler said, not quite sure what to say next, but thinking to himself, why do I always attract the nutters? And then suddenly remembering, said, ‘Erm.. What floor are you?’

‘Two please, my dear,’ the man replied. ‘I was wondering if you were ever going to get round to it.’

‘Sorry,’ Tyler muttered as he pushed the appropriate button, and then punched number three after that for his floor.

‘Don’t be, don’t be. Personally, I wouldn’t have minded staying in here all day with you, if it wasn’t for the fact that I need to pee like your Mamma’s fanny!’

‘Interesting saying,’ Tyler replied, trying not to laugh.

‘Bona fide saying that is,’ the man responded lightly, ‘look it up! Who are you, anyway? Not seen you before. You visiting?’

‘Just moved in,’ Tyler said.

‘Ah, that explains it then,’ the man replied, and then continued, ‘I’m Edward. Not Ed, or Eddie, by the way… Edward. Lovely to meet you, my dear. Do pop by if you need anything.’ And again, there was that mischievous twinkle.

‘Er… thanks,’ Tyler replied, as the lift came to a stop and the door slide aside; the disembodied lift voice announcing, Second floor. Please mind the doors.’

Edward, standing at Tyler’s side, moved to pass through the open door, muttering under his breath, ‘miserable cow.’ And then without waiting for a reply, said much louder as he turned down the carpeted corridor, waving over his shoulder, ‘I bet she takes it up the arse,’ and was then gone from sight as the lift doors slid shut again, leaving Tyler to stare for a moment and then bust into laughter.

Chapter 3

Having re-entered his flat he made straight for the kitchen, still smiling to himself after his encounter with his new neighbour. The water in the coffee machine was ready by now, of course, so he pressed the button to start the machine gurgling it’s water through into the mug that was sitting underneath.

As he did so, he noticed his mobile, that he’d left sitting on the counter top, was showing a missed call, with accompanying voicemail. He tapped the appropriate buttons