14th November 2009
He wasn’t ready to face the rest just yet.
The rest being the flat. Yazid hadn’t seen Ali since their argument—or rather, Tony’s text and Ali’s nuclear explosion—so Yazid had resorted to the one and only thing he really, strongly remembered from before the car accident. A tic inherited from his mother—and what worked for her anger worked for Yazid’s anxiety.
Cleaning.
He’d scrubbed the flat from top to bottom. The bathroom gleamed like it hadn’t since he’d moved in. The dingy wallpaper was a shade lighter. The carpets had actual pile instead of matted down…whatever. Even that weird smell in the airing cupboard had been scrubbed out.
Which meant—now he’d cleaned the place to within an inch of its life—it was time to start fixing s**t. Like the light bulb he’d never b
