Chapter 10 #2
After Eggo finishes his set, Dan has a spin on the mic.
Dan favours a good shower sing-song and will often serenade us post training or on game day.
It’s bad when that happens, not gonna lie, but nothing, absolutely nothing could have prepared me for the massacre that takes place as he warbles “Teenage Dirtbag.” He doesn’t even know the words and rarely bothers to look at the screen.
People are putting their fingers in their ears, or else getting up and excusing themselves to the bathroom or to go outside for “fresh air.”
Pi doesn’t want to give up his spot in the karaoke queue—he’s desperate to inflict Sheryl Crow on the other patrons—so we loiter in the corner chatting with the Cents lads and a few locals. Every time I glance over at Lando, he’s looking at me, and my adrenaline spikes when we make eye contact.
He’s not shy about his attraction, and everyone else sees him staring at me. Me, Harry Ellis, of all people. It’s such an intense high to be the chosen one. I couldn’t wipe the smile from my face even if I wanted to.
We neck a couple more pints each. Some folk—not me, though—try to convince Mathias to do a karaoke song, but he waves them away, and I decide to have another go. It doesn’t make me better than Mathias that I’ll sing and he won’t, but yeah, actually . . . it does.
No doubt I’m slurring my words, but I give everything I’ve got to Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life,” and at the end of the song, Lando is waiting beside the stage for me. I hand the mic to an older guy wearing a Bristol City football shirt.
“How much more obvious do I need to make this?” Lando says. Wow, he’s so posh. Eton or Marlborough College level posh. I hadn’t really expected him to sound like that, but I guess I’d not given a lot of thought to it.
I want to say something cool, want to be the suave and sophisticated stranger with the fire one-liners, but my mind has gone blank.
“I’m Harry,” I say instead. And then, horrifyingly, I offer him my hand to shake. I want to crawl to the side of the road and curl up into a ball and die. Thankfully, it’s too dark inside the pub for him to see the beetroot shade of my face.
He doesn’t take my hand, probably because he’s not a twat. “I was hoping we might skip the formalities and head straight to the good part.”
“Um . . . what’s the good part?”
Fuck off, Harry! Shut your stupid mouth. You’re going to blow this with your ineptitude.
Lando doesn’t answer with words. He doesn’t even move any part of his body except for his eyes, which he rakes down my body and back up again, and I now understand the true definition of the term “eye-fuck.”
Damn, he’s very good at this.
Instead of answering his look with one of my own, I take a sip from my pint and knock the rim of my glass against my teeth. I hear the sound ricochet through my skull at seven hundred times the original volume.
Amazingly, when I open my eyes, Lando’s still there, still smirking at me.
“What do you reckon, then?” he says. “I live about ten minutes’ walk from here.”
“You mean . . . go to your house with you? For . . . to . . . now?”
He shrugs and laughs that haughty posh-boy laugh, then leans in close, placing his mouth next to my ear.
His lips brush my lobe, and his breath tickles my cheek.
Goosebumps erupt over my bare arms. “You seem like you don’t do this very often, so I’ll make it easy for you.
I want you to walk with me back to my house, nail me to my mattress, and then maybe we could get a takeaway pizza and watch a movie.
I promise to take really good care of you. ”
Oh my god, oh my god. It’s actually happening. I glance over at Pi, who’s making a subtle shooing gesture with his hands.
“Go. Go have sex,” he mouths, or at least that’s what I think he mouths. My heart is racing, mind swirling.
Lando doesn’t move his head away from mine, and when I pull back a little to look at him, our mouths are only inches apart.
I swallow. By the twitch in Lando’s cheek, I’m sure he heard. “Um . . . yeah, okay. Yes, please.”
He continues to stare into my soul with that smile still plastered across his face.
I’m convinced I’m fucking this up entirely and that he can tell it’s my first time, but I’m already hard, my heart is slamming itself against my ribs, and I’m fighting the urge to close the two-inch gap between our mouths.
Fingers lock around mine, and I’m swept out of the pub.
I spare one last look at Pi, who flashes me the wanker hand gesture, and then I’m outside in the chill evening air being pushed against the whitewashed stone wall.
I don’t get any time to plan my next move, or even wonder what it’ll be before Lando brings his mouth down onto mine.
His lips are pillowy soft, and his tongue strokes my own.
He’s well practiced at this, and it shows.
I don’t know who initiates it, but we flip positions, so he’s against the wall and has to lean forward to kiss me again.
My entire body is already aching for him.
I grind my hips into his and groan at the blissful friction.
“You want me,” he says.
“So . . . so badly.”
Light spills onto the paving slabs as the pub door swings wide open and Mathias Jones storms out into the night, but he doesn’t spot us. Then he disappears off towards the back of the beer garden.
“Come on,” Lando whispers, locking his fingers around mine and guiding me through the car park and across the road.
We pass a tiny chocolate-box cottage, and then we’re walking down a countryside lane, each step plunging us deeper and deeper into complete darkness.
One time, when I was a kid, we went camping in Cornwall and stayed up until dawn to watch the skies. There are even more stars out tonight than back then. It’s so . . . vast. I want to take it all in, commit it to memory.
“Where do you live?” Lando asks, his voice rippling through the stillness of the night.
“Uh . . . I only recently moved into a little flat in the centre of Bath, but I’m originally from Wrigsham. It’s just on the outskirts.”
“I’ve heard of it,” he says. The fact that he says, “I’ve heard of it,” and not, “I know it,” says more than I care to admit. I bet this boy’s never even stepped foot on a council estate before. I bet the only time he’s ever seen houses like my parents’ is on ITV’s “gritty and hard-hitting” dramas.
I know people enjoy bitching about Wrigsham, but honestly, it’s not a terrible place to grow up.
There’s greenery everywhere, trees to climb, cycle tracks to waste entire weekends bombing up and down.
It’s nestled between Bath and Bristol, and the shopping is great, the nightlife too, and the girls are next level.
I’ve never been short on female attention, and Wrigsham’s progressive enough that all my gay friends live freely and openly. It’s just that I’ve found it difficult to be openly bi. And in all honesty, I’m still not one hundred per cent certain I am bi.
Am I pan? Something else? Maybe I’m straight but a little confused . . . or curious. Who knows?
What if I go home with Lando and we have sex and I realise dudes aren’t for me? Will it change the way I feel about Lionel? Or does that go deeper than physical attraction? I have zero clue.
Lando digs around in the pocket of his leather bomber jacket and retrieves a small cylindrical object. He clicks a button on the end and light floods the lane.
“Wow, that’s a powerful torch,” I say, because I have succumbed to the fact that I’m a certifiable loser and have no rizz.
“You’ve not spent a lot of time in the country,” he says.
I can’t work out if it’s a question, but I answer anyway. “No, not really. I’m kinda used to a few more street lamps.”
“Countryside lesson number one,” he says, and starts walking down the lane.
I hop along after him to stay in the halo of the torchlight.
“Always carry a torch. Lesson number two, watch out for horse shit.” Lando swings the beam in front of my feet, right in time for me to bring my left trainer down into a heaped pile of steaming manure.
Okay, it’s not steaming, but that’s just a technicality. It’s still gross, and squelches up around the rubber sole of my shoe, though it’s too dark to see whether any of it has touched the canvas.
“Fuck my life,” I mutter, but Lando is giggling, and it’s distracting, and kind of adorable. Actually, a lot adorable.
“You’re one of us now. Don’t worry, only about five more minutes this way.”
“So, you grew up here?” I say. I’m using the flashlight setting on my phone to make sure I don’t fall prey to any more mountains of dung.
“Yep,” he replies with a sigh.
“What was that like?” My imagination is flooded with meadows at sunset, picnics, riding horses. It must have been a dream.
He doesn’t answer me for a while, but when he does, it’s not what I expect him to say. “Lonely.” And then he adds more, as though he needs to defend his feelings. “I’m an only child. My dad was always abroad with work, and my mum died when I was thirteen.”
“Oh, shit. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said . . .” I let my awkwardness bleed out into the night.
“It’s fine,” Lando replies. “You weren’t to know.”
We walk over a cattle grid—at least I think that’s what they’re called—and begin making our way towards a blank expanse of plain blackness silhouetted against a patchwork of stars. A building. It looks like a church or a school or . . .
There’s no way that is Lando’s house. No way. He must live in a flat within a section of that building.
The dirt path morphs into a gravel drive, and the closer we get, the more obvious it becomes that yes, this is where Lando lives.
“Holy shitballs! You’re fucking loaded.” If it wasn’t covered in horse crap, my foot would already be wedged in my mouth.
“Well, my father is.” He looks over at me and takes my hand.
“I don’t bring many guys here. Actually .
. .” He shakes his head. “You’re the first one.
” Lando chews on his lower lip, and his eyes search mine.
It’s difficult to know if he finds whatever he’s looking for.
“You’re . . . okay, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re not the type of guy I usually fuck with. ”
I don’t know how to respond to that, so I keep my mouth shut.
“I mean that in a good way. I tend to go for guys who . . . who . . . well, they’re dicks, basically.
They’re usually a lot older than me, sometimes married, sometimes ‘straight,’ and always, always selfish assholes .
. . That way I don’t feel guilty when I ghost them.
I get mine, they get theirs, and I never have to see them again.
” Lando drops my hand and shakes his head like a dog ridding itself of water.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this. ”
“Will you ghost me? After we’ve fucked. If you still want to fuck, that is.” I hold my breath while I wait for his answer.
Again, an entire minute of silence stretches between us. “Probably. Is that a deal breaker?”
I think about it for half a second. “No.” And then, because my well of uncool could apparently be deeper than it currently is, I say, “You’ll be my first dude. I’m actually kinda nerv—”
I don’t finish my sentence before Lando is pressing his mouth to mine and urging my lips apart with his tongue.