Chapter 9
Aiden
Owen Bosley’s pub is freaking adorable, but it’s packed.
It’s Halloween and everyone’s turned out for the party in costume.
Some are less practical than others and take up more space than is necessary for a building with such a microscopic floor plan.
The air is dense with other people’s breath, and I’m finding it hard to remain enthusiastic and social.
The Little Thatch is a stereotypical English cottage slash inn in the middle of woop woop, in the middle of England, and it’s almost the middle of the night. Okay, it’s only just past nine, but I’ve had to come outside again to get some fresh air.
Luckily, it’s not too cold. Or it is cold, but I’ve been sweating so much inside the pub that it’s taking my body a while to realise the existence of the coldness.
Or maybe I’ve simply lived in the UK for so long now that I’ve become fully acclimatised to their horrifico weather systems. Eight months of bitter, bleak winter, three months of sodden spring, two and a half days of summer if we’re lucky, and exactly ten days of crisp, sunny afternoons and pretty leaves falling before the cycle repeats itself.
But as refreshing as the nearly November temperatures are to my overheated, overcostumed body, I can’t stay outside for much longer. It’s already my third trip to come and stand beside the bushes, and I’m not even a smoker. People are starting to comment.
Or they probably are. I don’t know. It’s too fucking sweaty inside to hear anything being said. That makes no sense, but it totally makes sense. It’s too hot to pay attention.
My best friend Abs has only recently arrived, and I haven’t had a chance to say hello yet, but he seems very preoccupied with his . . . boyfriend, not-quite boyfriend. Not sure what label to attach to their situationship. I only know that Abs is in way over his head this time.
This Lando kid is all Harry ever talks about.
I know more about Orlando Reginald Oakham-Goodwin than I know about my own father.
I know that he lost his mum at a young age.
I know that his dad is a multimillionaire and also a “piece of work.” I know he lives in a mansion just down the road from this very pub, that he only ever wears black, that he’s severely lactose intolerant, and that he’s been stringing Abs along for months now, though this is the part Harry won’t comment on.
Won’t tell me why they’re not officially dating.
Even so, it’s not difficult for anyone with eyeballs to clock how wildly into each other they are, and as happy as I am for my best mate, I can’t help but feel a little . . . when will it happen to me?
I’ve had plenty of girlfriends before, both in England and Australia, and technically, technically I have a girlfriend at the moment, so I’m not a stranger to finding a romantic partner, but the way these two flaunt their adoration makes me wonder if . . . I’m looking in the wrong place.
I’ve had suspicions for a while that I might not be straight. I’m not gay—women are far too sexy for that—so perhaps I’m somewhere in the middle. Though bisexual feels wrong too. Phoney. I just . . . don’t feel queer enough for that.
Like I don’t qualify for that label. That I don’t meet the right specs.
Or it could just be that Abs and Orlando have a kind of love that’s rarely replicated.
Even if neither of them ever realise it, they have something a lot of people never will.
I’ve probably had too much to drink, but now I’m thinking it would be a good idea for me to make them aware of this and caution Orlando, because I cannot let Abs’s heart get broken by this modelesque libertine.
Shit, maybe I am jealous.
My dirty pint glass rests on the soil in a nearby planter. I pick it up, collect another empty that someone else has left on the patio, and suck in the last few lungfuls of fresh countryside air before heading back into the sauna.
Owen and Gadget have hosted karaoke nights here before, and quiz nights, and the atmosphere has always been on the slightly too warm side of things, but those times I hadn’t been wearing a three-foot-long purple wig.
I consider ditching the thing behind the bar, but then I’ll just be some guy in micro hot pants, fishnets, and massive balloon tits. My fit only makes sense with the hair.
I’m Rumi from KPop Demon Hunters. Eggo’s suggestion. He had originally told me he was going to dress as the main Saja Boy from the same movie because that’s who his six-year-old kid, Logan, had wanted him to be, and that we could make it a couple’s costume.
When Eggo arrived wearing nothing but a pair of brown jocks and an upside down brown bucket helmet with cartoon-like eyes and a bulbous pink nose stuck to the front, I knew I’d been conned.
“Why aren’t you dressed as Jinu? I thought we were going to coordinate? Now we don’t stand a chance of winning the couple’s competition,” I’d said to him when I’d finally deciphered who the massive hairy chest and belly belonged to.
He never even tried to respond to my outrage. “Diglett,” he’d replied instead. And proceeded to answer all my questions in the same manner until all I could hear coming from under his mask-hood-bucket thing was giggling.
He’s the most underdressed person in the room, though Mathias Jones, The Cents’ fly-half, is giving him a run for his money in those early noughties low-rise jhorts and nothing else.
At one point he was wearing a full silicone werewolf’s mask, but since the body count in the pub had raised the temperatures to threat-to-life levels, he’d abandoned it on the bar. It—he—is distracting, to say the least.
I’m quite fond of labels. Generally speaking, of course, and in everyday life, I enjoy knowing things fit neatly into one category.
I like girls. Mostly. But Gadget in his Twilight Jacob costume is . . . giving me pause for thought.
In the past, whenever I’ve had to fill out one of those diversity monitoring forms, under sexuality I’ve always ticked the “straight” or “heterosexual” box.
Only because it feels like the closest fit.
I’ve dreamed of checking the “bisexual” box, but it’d feel fraudulent if I did, and there’s never a check box that says “fuck, actually, I just don’t know” or “does it count if I’ve only ever fucked dudes inside my head” or “mostly straight, I guess.”
For all my “mostly straight, I guess,” I’m suddenly noticing a lot of new lines and angles of Gadget’s body that I previously hadn’t thought existed outside of ancient Greek mythology.
Like those pelvic dips. Um . . . how? How does a person even exercise those specific muscles to get definition like that?
I see Gadget naked almost every day in the showers. I’ve seen his dick hundreds of times. So why am I stealing covert glances at those ridges like a peeping Tom?
I place the empties on the bar top, and I’m about to order another drink for myself, and one for Eggo since he seems a little too . . . Eggo right now, when I spot Abs and Orlando. They’re also in full drag with wigs and heels. I run over so we can be three sweaty wig-wearing messes together.
“Oi oi!” Abs yells as I push deeper into the pub.
“How ya going, Abs?” I say, pulling him into a hug. He is daaaaammp with sweat. So very, very damp. Very moist. “Love the costume, mate. You’re whatsherface from Death Becomes Her?”
Harry’s wearing a long ginger wig that I’m pretty sure is the same shade of red as his normal hair, a floor-length skintight fire-engine-red dress, and red high heels.
He has modest fake breasts—unlike mine—and I’m trying not to let my eyes wander farther south, because the dress is snug.
Extremely snug. Almost as though it was made to fit a woman half his size.
It highlights every single curve and bump of his body, including Little Harry, who seems intent on making his presence known.
“And you’re Rumi! Fucking love that movie.” He bursts into the opening lines of “Golden” then says, “We need photos! Before we get too pissed and smudge all our makeup.”
I’m already halfway to that point, but I take Harry’s phone from him—my arms are longer and can therefore fit more of us in the frame—and begin snapping away.
“Girl, please. You’re doing it wrong,” Orlando says, taking the device from my hand and directing us to step back a little.
We strike a series of poses that start off somewhere in the region of KPop Demon Hunters and Death Becomes Her, but morph into something closer to Charlie’s Angels circa Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu.
“Let’s see them,” Abs says, forcing the phone out of Orlando’s grasp and swiping across at the snaps he’d taken. Okay, fair play, Harry’s not-boyfriend has a good eye for snapping a decent pic—
Abs has swiped through all the photos we’ve just posed for, but has gone even beyond that, sliding straight into the deeper, darker depths of his camera roll.
“Oh, hello!” I say, staring down at the screen, unable to whip my eyes away quickly enough.
There’s no mistaking what we’re looking at.
An “artful” shot of a nearly nude Orlando.
He’s wearing black lace undies, and it’s simultaneously tasteful and the most indecent thing I’ve ever seen.
He’s smiling at the camera, all shy and sweet, practiced, one hand on his stomach, one in his hair, and his soft cock is just there.
Tucked along the elastic edge of the fabric.
My best mate simply stares at the photo, as though his eyes have not yet connected to his brain. And then, with sudden crashing clarity, he realises.
“Fuck!” Abs tries to shove his phone into his pocket, but he turns his head to look at his boyfriend-not-boyfriend and drops the device on the floor.
It slides over to me. I pick it up and hand it back, but not before glancing at the screen one last time. I mean, I didn’t deliberately do it. It’s just that . . .
Oh, damn. I might be a pervert.