On Monday morning Jamie buttered the kitchen floor.

He buttered it after both flatmates had left for work. He knelt on the sports supplement to avoid greasing up his pyjamas and spread it on with kitchen paper. He edged back bit by bit until he was standing in the doorway staring at the grubby white tiles, his lips pressed tightly together.

Jamie had told them not to touch his lemon drizzle cake.

“I’ll touch what I like. You’re always touching my stuff,” Steve had said, leaning over his breakfast.  “Why aren’t my speakers working anymore?”

Ivan had pushed past him to the fridge. “I’m not going to eat something that looks like it’s been highlighted. How much colouring did you put in that thing?”

Jamie went to hit him but Ivan grabbed his arm and swung him against the sink. Steve, paused, with a spoon full of cornflakes at his mouth.

“He’s bloody nuts,” he’d said.

Jamie had waited in his bedroom until they’d gone. He knew Ruby liked yellow. She was wearing a yellow top that day at the bus stop. It’d slipped off her shoulders, showing the black straps of her bra. He’d stared at her and she’d winked at him and rolled her tongue around her lollypop.

                When the door slammed for the second time Jamie wandered into Steve’s bedroom and retrieved the IT magazine from under the bed. He held it from the spine and shook it until all the hidden pictures had slid out onto the sheets. Jamie sucked on his lips as he fingered through them. He then took a pen from Steve’s ordered desk and for the next few minutes he prodded out nipples. A few moments later he walked out of the room with the pen leaking between his fingers.

Ivan was thinking about their volatile flatmate, when Mr Petroni, his short balding boss, told him he was fired. Ivan had been half-heartedly wiping the sugar off the counter. 

“Too many breaks,” the lumpy Italian said, mopping his forehead with a dirty towel. “Lucia much better than you... She do job for five people.”

“What? You can’t just fire me for nothing!”

“Too many break,” Mr Petroni grunted. “Too much smoking.”

                Jamie fumbled in his pocket for his box of cigarettes. He took one out and shoved it in the corner of his mouth.

Mr Petroni raised his fist.

“You smoke in my cafe and I break your face!” 

Ivan snapped open his lighter and an orange flame flickered. He didn’t hear Lucia coming up behind him, but suddenly she was there, brandishing a toasted Panini wrapped in cling film.  She slapped it hard across his nose, splitting his cigarette in two.

Ivan went to grab her but she was already off snaking through the empty tables and chairs. She pressed her back to the wall on the other side, her black eyes sparkling.  

“You’re ra-bbish!” she cried. Her high, scratchy voice made Ivan’s arm hairs stand on end. “You work slower than my gra-nny!”

Mr Petroni attempted to reign in his stomach and straighten up.  Ivan looked at him with disgust.  He untied his apron and threw it across the cafe.

“Fine!” he said. “Good!”

He stormed out through the glass doors; he felt irritated they didn’t bang shut and shatter all over the floor.

He sat at the bus stop and smoked three cigarettes, one after the other. There was traffic and no sign of a bus but for once, he didn’t even care. The sun was out and he rolled up his trousers and felt the heat on his knees. He felt unpredictable. He wanted to do something crazy. A girl in tight white jeans sauntered past, her long hair as yellow as the lemon drizzle cake he suddenly had every intention of eating.

When he finally got off the bus, he found Ruby outside the flats smoking on the steps. Her bare legs were stretched out in front of her and her toes wiggled in blue plastic flip flops, each toenail a berry red.  She waved at him as he drew nearer and he felt the anger subside. This was a rare opportunity; he’d only seen Ruby fleetingly in the three months she’d lived next door. He’d mainly ogled her curvy figure from a distance. The drama of the morning had made him feel reckless though and instead of taking the steps two at a time and heading inside, he sat down beside her.

“Hello,” she said.

Her silver necklace glittered in the sun. He wanted to follow its journey down her chest but instead he looked into her blue eyes, thickly rimmed with eyeliner. 

“I’ve just been fired,” he said.

“Oh.”

“I need a drink. Do you want one?”

“It’s not even twelve o’clock.” 

Ivan shrugged.

                She giggled. “Okay.”

Steve would normally have been at the canteen by midday but instead he was sitting on his moped, considering what he was about to do. His dreams had been getting more intense and he was beginning to think he had a problem. If it’d been different women with anonymous faces then he wouldn’t have thought anything of it but he’d completely lost interest in looking at pictures of other women. The fact was he only dreamt of Ruby. He dreamt of sinking his face into her breasts and filling his nostrils with her musky smell. He wanted to taste that skin; to run his tongue over her neck and feel the small bump of her mole.

It drove him wild to see her wink at him from the bus stop as he passed by on his bike. Many times, he’d wanted to turn around and go back to her. He’d thought about the possible outcomes of such action until his head pounded.    

Steve couldn’t bare unresolved situations. He was so anxious the skin on his hands had started to peel.

He put his helmet on and assured himself that he was doing the right thing, that he wouldn’t get fired and that he needed to put an end to this debilitating speculation once and for all.

Back at the flat, Ivan couldn’t believe his luck. Ruby was curled up on his sofa with her feet under her, as if she was the resident cat that belonged there. She was fiddling with the corners of a cushion and smiling shyly at him.  He had yet to get her a drink.

“It’s very early isn’t it?” she said.

“But I’m unemployed and day drinking is to be my new occupation.”

She raised an eyebrow. 

“Oh come on, just one, to celebrate,” he said.

“Okay.”

“Beer?”

She nodded.

“Lemon drizzle cake?”

Her eyes lit up. “Yes please.”

Ivan cast a look heavenwards and muttered ‘thankyou god’ on his way to the kitchen. Things couldn’t have turned out better. He could tell she fancied him. 

Ivan strode across the tiles and his feet were instantly swept from beneath him. His arms splayed wildly as he tried and failed to stop himself slipping back. His head cracked on the edge of the counter and then he crumpled, unconscious to the floor, sliding across the length of it and crashing to a finish against the sharp corner of the dishwasher door.

On hearing the noise Ruby ran into the kitchen and screamed.

Steve had been thinking about the speed camera that had flashed him when he heard it. He looked up towards his flat door, certain the noise had come from there. He bounded up the last few stairs and his hand shook as he tried to unlock the door.

“Jamie, are you in there? Open the door!”

He felt sick. He’d had a bad feeling about Jamie from the beginning and now felt sure he was about to find out what the introverted lad was capable of. The door clicked open and he almost fell on top of Ruby, who was kneeling in the doorway of the kitchen. Her denim skirt had risen to her waist, pushing her breasts up even higher than usual.  

“Ruby?”

“He fell.”

Ivan’s arms were limp at his side and his legs were twisted. As Steve bent down he was shocked to see only the whites of his eyes showing. Ruby took her hand from under his head and lifted it to show a smear of blood.

"Let’s get him up...”

                He stepped over Ivan and as he did his feet slipped from under him, he flung out his arms, hitting Ruby in the face and falling hard on Ivan’s stomach. Ruby cried out but Ivan didn’t stir. Steve scrabbled up, holding his hands out in front of him.

“What is this? The floor is covered in...”

He sniffed his hands, his face contorted. Ruby was rubbing her eyebrow where he’d hit her.

“Come on!” she snapped.

Steve hated having his hands dirty and wasn’t happy under pressure. This was a horrible mess and his head was throbbing with questions he couldn’t bring himself to ask her. What was she doing with Ivan? What was Ivan doing at home? How could they have kept all this a secret? Why did she wink at him every time he passed if she was seeing his flatmate?

He bent down and dragged Ivan by the armpits. Ruby waited till he’d dragged him out into the corridor before she helped him by taking Ivan’s legs.

“My room’s nearer,” Steve said. He was proud of his immaculate space and he wanted her to see it.   

The door to his room was open, something he didn’t remember leaving and didn’t like. He backed into the room and alongside the bed. Steve wasn’t bright or fast but he was always tidy. His bed cover was grey striped and he made a point of smoothing down the lines. Right now, the lines were as wobbly as if they were underwater.

Ruby rested Ivan’s feet on the floor.

“You’ll muck up your duvet,” she said, and leant forward to pull it off. As she did so, thin pieces of newspaper fluttered into the air and a picture of a pouting woman with punctured nipples floated down onto Ivan’s face.

No one spoke. Ruby plucked it off and looked at it. Steve could feel his face burning. He heaved Ivan onto the bed and then knelt down to pick the other pictures off the floor. He scrunched them into a ball and stood squeezing it in his fist.

“I didn’t do that,” he said.

She frowned; her smile mocking him.

He felt trapped; unable to explain. “They aren’t mine!”

“Right...”

“Ruby, wait...”

He didn’t follow her out. He rubbed his hands through his hair and looked down at Ivan who was still unconscious.  Steve had no choice but to call an ambulance.  

They were both in casualty when Jamie arrived at the flat. He paused at the kitchen door and looked at the splatter of blood on the tiles. Then he checked Steve’s rooms and saw the duvet had been pulled back. He returned to the kitchen and removed his socks then he carefully crossed the kitchen tiles and took out the lemon drizzle cake from the fridge.

He rested it on the coffee table while he brushed his teeth in the bathroom and put on a new t-shirt. Back in the living room he picked up the cake and headed for the front door.

He rang the bell and waited outside Ruby’s door. She took a few moments to open, when she did, she looked uncertain.

“What now?”

                “I heard what happened...” he said. His voice was dry and he coughed to clear his throat.             She stared at him. “Did you rub butter over the floor?”

“Of course not.”

She nodded slowly. “Okay.”

“I brought you over a cake to apologise for them,” Jamie said. “I made it.”

“Lemon?”

“Yes. Do you like lemon?”

She shrugged.

“Well?”

He held the cake out to her. She opened the door a bit wider.  

                “Okay... just a bit then.”

She was wearing yellow again which Jamie felt was a very good sign.     

                                                                  The End