Always Eli by Charlie Novak
Chapter One
Eli
“What the actual fuck?You’ve got to be kidding me!” I stared at the two digits at the top of my banking app that represented the minuscule amount of money I apparently had to survive on until the end of the month. Below that, in the most wonderfully fuck-you manner ever invented, was the very large negative number that told me my credit card was maxed out.
Well, that was just bollocks.
So much for that backup plan.
I tapped on my current account, scrolling through the outgoing transactions to check I hadn’t actually been robbed. I had, but only by myself. And my drag career. God, why was everything so fucking expensive? It wasn’t as if I regularly bought thousand-pound lace front wigs for crying out loud. The last one I’d bought had been twenty quid off eBay, and I’d spent an entire weekend trying to make it look less like some shit a cat had dragged backwards through a hedge. Half my drag costumes came from charity shops and careful internet shopping, and I relied on two pairs of shoes—one pair which I regularly spray-painted so I could have different colours—to get by.
The make-up was the expensive thing, but that was because I’d discovered my skin was sensitive as fuck, and attempting to use whatever cheap plasterboard foundation I could find in Primark or Superdrug inevitably resulted in horrible breakouts, and I was too old and fuckless to be dealing with a spot the size of Piers Morgan’s ego on my chin. My skin seemed to think it deserved to be treated like a queen without giving a fuck that our budget was no higher than that of a bargain basement trash goblin.
Whoever said being a drag queen was glamorous was a filthy fucking liar.
I sighed, muttering darkly under my breath as I squinted at my phone, trying to figure out how I could magic up money for food for the next two weeks that wasn’t the cheap-as-fuck Pot Noodle equivalent from Aldi.
“Everything okay, babe?” The warm arms of my best friend and roommate, Orlando, encircled my neck as he leant over the back of the sofa and pressed a soft kiss to my cheek. “You look awfully cross.”
“Just contemplating the misery of my existence,” I said, tilting my phone so he could see the screen. “Why the fuck did I think I could make drag work full-time? What magical confidence did past Eli have that made him believe we could survive off Pot Noodles and thin air?”
“Wow, you really are broke.” I felt Orlando wince. His arms disappeared from around my neck, taking my phone with them, and two seconds later he climbed onto our sofa beside me, resting his head in my lap like a large, pretty kitten. I brushed his soft, blond hair out of his face as he scrolled through my phone, his lips settling into a pout. Orlando really was the prettiest man I’d ever met with a magical genetic code that seemed to keep him looking eternally youthful. He wasn’t quite twenty-eight, but he didn’t look a day over eighteen. A fact he used to keep men wrapped around his bratty little finger. I lived in eternal awe.
“Did you really need to buy doughnuts last week? Or whatever you bought through the Nintendo store.” he asked, looking up at me through long lashes, disapproval written across his face.
“Excuse me for wanting some small pleasures in life,” I said, poking him in the stomach. Orlando grinned. “I need to have some fun.”
“How’s that working out for you?”
“Horribly.” I laughed, but it was more a hollow chuckle of despair.
“So, what are you going to do?” Orlando handed me my phone, and I dropped it onto the cushion beside me like it was a venomous beast about to strike. I sighed and ran my fingers through my wild hair as I mentally surveyed the options before me.
I wasn’t going to lie: there weren’t many of them.
“I guess I’ll have to get a job. A proper one.” I’d done it before—the whole working a full-time job and doing drag in the evenings and on weekends thing. The money had been nice. The stress and exhaustion less so. But at least the people at Monster energy drinks would make a nice profit from my suffering. “Maybe I’ll see if I can get something at a coffee shop,” I said, turning ideas over in my mind. I needed something that would leave my evenings free, which ruled out bars and restaurants because they always wanted you to work Friday or Saturday nights, which was prime drag time. Fast food would do if it came to a push, but it would depend on the shift pattern I was offered. “Or retail. Fuck, I’ll have to go back to being nice to stupid people.” I gave a dramatic shudder, and Orlando giggled.
“You could get a temp job,” he said. “There’s always things like admin contracts going. And they won’t be very long either. I’d imagine the longest you’d find would be covering someone’s maternity leave.”
“That’s not a bad shout.” An office admin job would be fixed hours and steady money. And if it was only a temporary contract, it would mean I wasn’t stuck forever. The work would be easy as well—most likely just answering emails and dealing with endless reams of paperwork. It would mean I’d have to suck up to people and probably wear a suit or at least a shirt and trousers. But the trade-off might be worth it if I didn’t have to man the tills at Primark and deal with assholes trying to return clothes they’d clearly worn on a night out or the underwear they’d had sex in.
The memory of that encounter was seared into my memory from my university days, and no amount of brain bleach would ever let me forget it.
“See? I’m more than just a pretty face.”
“You sure are, baby.” Orlando smiled up at me, and I grinned, gently booping him on the nose with one finger. He really was adorable. We’d tried dating once, but it hadn’t worked because neither of us could be what the other needed. In Orlando’s case, that was someone who wasn’t going to let him brat about all over the place but would still spoil him rotten. In my case, that was someone who didn’t mind that I had a tendency to be a dramatic bitch and needed a little control. Orlando was the best friend and roommate I’d ever had though, and I still loved him—just as more of a friend than the love of my life. We still fooled around occasionally when we were bored or stressed, and the sex was always fun. We just weren’t ever going to make anything like a relationship work long-term.
“You know,” Orlando said, a mischievous glint dancing in his baby-blue eyes. “If you want to get an office job, you probably ought to do something about your hair.”
“What about my hair?”
Orlando gave me a pointed look. “It’s a mess. Nobody will hire you looking like that.”
“Harsh. It’s not that bad.” I tugged self-consciously at the nearest strand that was resting over my shoulder.
“It looks like an eighties hair metal mullet fucked a noughties MySpace emo profile picture,” Orlando said, sitting up and climbing into my lap, twisting a strand in his fingers and brushing the rest out of my face. I rested my hands on his thighs, grinning at the rainbow-coloured joggers he was wearing.
He might have a point about my hair, loathe as I was to admit it. A couple of years ago I’d shaved one side to see what would happen. Then I’d shaved the other, leaving a wide, fluffy strip all the way down the middle. Then I’d let it grow. It was now well past my shoulders but still hideously uneven in what I vaguely pretended were deliberate layers. And, given the fact it was naturally thick and wavy, it did have a tendency to stick out, especially after I washed it. If I went out in the wind, it looked like I’d stuck half a can of hairspray in it. It was also getting harder to put under a wig. I usually ended up having to pin it flat with a thousand fucking bobby pins, and by the end of the night my head was sweaty and itching. But as stubbornness made up a good thirty percent of my personality, I hadn’t given in and shaved it all off on principle.
I was starting to think principle or not, it was going to have to go.
“I can do it,” Orlando continued, giving me a full-on puppy pout. “It wouldn’t take me long, and I promise to make you look sexy.”
“This was your plan all along, wasn’t it?”
“What? Make you go broke so you’d have to get a job and finally let me get my hands on your hair?” He grinned. “You saw right through me.” His voice was dripping with sarcasm, but his eyes were sparkling. “Can I do it now?”
“Now?”
“Yes! Before you change your mind. Plus, I’m going out this evening, and I’ll be tired tomorrow.”
“Fine,” I said before I talked myself out of it. I’d probably regret it in the morning, but that would be tomorrow, and it would be too late by then. Orlando had been dropping hints about this for months, and if I refused, he’d only bring it up again and again until I relented. Might as well get it over with. “But only if you make me look sexy.”
Orlando clapped his hands, kissed me, and then hopped off my lap to go and find his scissors. Given that Orlando was a trained hair stylist, I wasn’t worried. This wasn’t going to be a hack job like that time I’d decided I could make myself look like the lead singer of Black Veil Brides when I was fifteen. I thought I’d looked cool. Photo evidence proved that was a lie.
“Can you go wash it?” Orlando asked, sticking his head around his bedroom door. “It’ll be easier to style if it’s wet.”
I sighed begrudgingly and hauled myself off the sofa, picking up my phone to take one last photo of my hair in all its glorious infamy. I still wasn’t sure how I’d gone from bemoaning my lack of funds to being forced into a haircut in the short span of half an hour, but I was just going to roll with it. It wasn’t like I had a choice. My options right now were to make money or starve, and I quite liked food. The myth of the starving artist was all well and good until it was staring you right in the face, and although I knew neither Orlando nor my family would let me struggle, I didn’t like the idea of taking advantage of them.
I’d gotten myself into this, and I could get myself out.
And if I couldn’t? Well, then I’d light the beacons and call for aid.
I walked into the bathroom and shrugged off my clothes, hoping our temperamental shower wasn’t about to dump icy water all over me. I turned it on and put my hand under the spray, waiting until it vaguely resembled warm before I stepped in. If I had my way, I’d have the water so hot my skin turned pink on contact, but warm-ish was about as good as it got until the letting agency finally decided to answer our complaints and fix the fucking shower. Apparently they’d decided as long as it still worked and was chucking out water that it wouldn’t kill us. We were not their biggest problem.
In the background, I heard Orlando firing up some clippers and singing along to whatever was on his Spotify. Just how fucking short was he planning to go?
I grabbed the cheap bottle of shampoo off the side and began to scrub my scalp. At least if it was shorter it wouldn’t be such a pain in the fucking ass to wash. Or dry. I’d miss my hair metal fluff though. It was a wonderful talking point, and it annoyed my oldest brother, Richard, to no end. Which may or may not have been another reason I’d been so determined to keep it.
If Dick liked something, you could guarantee it would be boring. That man was as exciting as the colour beige.
Eventually, I couldn’t waste any more time in the shower, and it was time to say goodbye to my hair. May it rest in peace. I stepped out and towelled off, wrapping the rough, dark material around my head before scooping my clothes off the floor and wandering into Orlando’s room. I was still naked, but it didn’t really matter. It wasn’t like Orlando hadn’t seen it before.
He grinned when he saw me and winked. “Very nice. But I’m going to play later so not today.”
“Damn, there goes my planned distraction.” I laughed, pulling on my boxers and tank top. They clung to my damp skin. “Still enjoying your men?” I asked as Orlando directed me to head back to the kitchen, which I supposed would be the more practical venue for the massacre about to commence. I tried to think where the dustpan and brush might be for later. I didn’t fancy scooping hair off the floor with my fingers or picking it out of the brushes of our shitty hoover.
“Yes! They’re so much fun!” He giggled and gave a happy wiggle as he directed me to a chair and plugged the clippers in by the kettle. Orlando was currently sort of seeing a married couple, one of whom was a Dom and the other a switch. Having a bratty little whatsit like Orlando to play with was fun for all parties involved. I was almost a little jealous because he got spoilt rotten and always came back utterly fucked out. Not that I wanted spoiling, not unless someone just wanted to give me money and buy me wigs and maybe a large takeaway, but the fucked-out part would be nice.
No money. No sex. And now forced to get an actual job. Damn, my life sounded bloody depressing. Teenaged Eli would have been very disappointed. Then again, teen Eli thought I’d be a famous West End star by now.
Teen Eli also hadn’t known about drag or the wild and beautiful discovery that awaited him.
Orlando grabbed a brush and gave me a wicked smile. “Are you ready?”
“Full speed ahead.”