“Yeah,” said Keith, not meeting Jason's eyes.
Jason looked up and found Esmé looking back at him. Like that, was it? He wondered whether Keith and Tom were still an item, and decided there was no way he was going to sleep with Keith, even if they weren't. The relationships would all get too fraught if he did. He quite liked Keith, but he wasn't yet a friend, let alone a “conquest”. And no matter how desperate he was, there was no chance in hell that he would have a scene with Tom.
He said none of this. Instead, he sipped his wine. It wasn't bad for a cleanskin. Not as smooth as the wines he'd been brought up on, a little rough and a touch too tart, but drinkable all the same.
“You're from England, right?” asked Esmé. Her accent wasn't nearly as strong as Tom's.
“Yeah.”
“How long are you out here for?”
“A few months.”
It seemed taken for granted that he didn't have a visa for longer, and that he was working illegally. And no one cared one way or the other. He wondered if they'd be so easy-going if he had a dark skin, if he'd been Muslim instead of Church of England.
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