Chapter 9 #2
And now I can’t get this newest image out of my brain. Orlando facing away from the camera and bending forward, like a female panda presenting herself for fertilisation. All I see now is a lace-covered asshole and a lace-covered pair of testicles, and I think it’s burned itself into my retinas.
Harry’s face is as red as his dress, but Orlando seems unperturbed. I should apologise, even though it wasn’t my fault I’ve been scarred for life.
Instead, I go with, “Soooo, you fellas fancy a drink?”
Of course Abs doesn’t answer. I know him well enough to understand he won’t regain capacity for speech for another few minutes at least.
“Sure, thanks, Pi. Harry’ll have a lager and I’ll have a white wine, cheers,” Orlando says.
I leave the pair and head to the bar, change my mind when I see the queue, and sneak outside to stand by the bushes again.
I’m not this person. Not the guy who runs from social situations, though not through lack of wanting to.
I make it my business to be someone people want to be around.
Who they actively engage with, even if it depletes my energy levels faster than Eggo’s Subaru burning through petrol on the M4. I don’t know what’s got into me.
My head’s spinning. It’s the booze, or I’m getting sick, or it’s all the thoughts inside it. All these new feelings swirling about. I’ve shaken the image of Abs’s boyfriend’s butthole, so why am I still being weird about it?
I’m not jealous. Am I? Am I jealous of saucy lace undies and raunchy secret photos?
Whenever I’ve asked Abs about his relationship with Orlando and whether they’ve slept together yet, he replies with, “No, we don’t really do that.” The “really” part of his statement always throws me off. You can hide a lot of baggage behind the word “really.”
And why doesn’t he want to tell me? We’re best bros. Aren’t we supposed to tell each other everything?
I have a girlfriend. In a manner of speaking. I shouldn’t be jealous.
I’m not jealous.
I’m happy for Abs and Orlando.
It’s only because I’m worried about my bro. That has to be it. They’re not officially a couple, and I’m pretty sure Abs is in love with the guy. I don’t want him to get hurt. That’s where this odd, unsettled sensation is coming from. I should say something to Orlando, threaten him or something.
Fuck, maybe it’s Gadget. Who’d have ever thought I’d have a thing for low-rise jhorts?
I close my eyes and lean my head against the limewashed pub wall.
No, that’s not it. Those aren’t the reasons I feel weird.
“Diglett,” a gruff voice says, piercing through the stillness of the night.
I open my eyes as though waking from a dream. I hadn’t heard Eggo approach, but he’s standing in front of me now in his full bucket helmet and jocks regalia, holding what appears to be a pina colada in each hand. He knocks one against my fingers, and I accept it.
“Diglett?” he says again, like a question this time. I hear, “Wasson?”
I have no idea how well Eggo can see through his mask, but I take a few moments to gather what’s left of my spiralling thoughts before answering him.
It’s a clear night. Since moving to Bath, I’ve developed a new level of understanding for the phrase “blanket of stars.” They really do cover the entire sky. Especially out here in Mudford-upon-Hooke, where Owen and Gadget’s pub lives. To overthinkers and Trekkies like me, stars are like crack.
Eggo doesn’t rush me for an answer, even though I’ve been silent for a couple of minutes. He manoeuvres his cocktail to the base of his helmet and takes a noisy slurp through the straw.
“Do you ever just know something’s . . . amiss, even if nothing is evidently wrong?” I say eventually.
“Diglett?” he replies. Probable translation: “What’s up, me ’ansum?”
“I feel like . . .” I pause, wonder how much I should tell him, or whether I should even have such a serious conversation with a guy clad in only jocks and a helmet. A guy who so far has communicated tonight solely through the use of one singular Pokémon name.
Fuck it, Eggo’s here and he’s willing to listen, which is more than I can say about my smitten, arsehole-obsessed best mate.
“I feel like I’m missing out on something.”
“Diglett?” (Missing out on what?)
“Honestly, I have no idea. Everyone is living their life, doing the things they want to be doing, and here I am still trying to figure out what it is I want to be doing. I have FOMO, and I don’t know what for.”
“Diglett.” (Pard, that’s deep.)
I nod, not even annoyed that he’s not communicating with proper words. This is probably what therapy’s like.
“Have you ever felt like you aren’t really participating in your own life?
I dunno . . .” I glance up at the stars again.
Saturn is so bright tonight. I love it when the planets are visible to the naked eye.
“I’m twenty-three, I’m still so fucking young, but I feel like I’m just waiting for the next thing to happen to me.
Like . . .” Urgh, I hate how deep this has become suddenly.
“Like I’m chasing happiness. I keep thinking I’ll be happy if this thing or that thing happens, but so far . . .” I shrug.
Eggo says nothing. Not even his Pokémon name.
Evidently, I have not finished. “I thought that leaving Perth would make me happy. I thought going on an adventure to the other side of the planet would make me happy. I thought playing rugby professionally would make me happy. I thought buying a house and a car and getting a dog would make me happy, and fuck, I am happy. It’s just that I see other people being .
. . happier, and it feels like I haven’t reached my full happiness potential. ”
I take a sip of my pina colada and continue my thoughts.
“My phone does this thing where it’ll only charge itself up to eighty per cent.
Apparently, it’s to preserve battery life over an extended period, but that’s what this feels like.
That I’m only ever at eighty per cent happy, but there’s room for another twenty per cent of happiness.
I don’t fucking want to preserve my battery life, I want to live. ”
Eggo pushes his half-drunk cocktail into my empty left hand, pulls his mask off, and shakes his head like a dog stepping out of a lake. Beads of sweat fly off in every direction.
“Fuck, it’s warm under that thing,” he says, setting the helmet down on the planter I had used as a table earlier. He takes his drink back from me, pushes the straw to the side, and downs the rest in one swig.
Suddenly it dawns on me that this guy is more than a hairy-chested sounding board.
He’s my teammate and friend, and I have to see him every day at training.
I have to play rugby with him, and travel around the country with him, do press conferences with him, and share hotel breakfasts and posh, post-match restaurant meals, all whilst quietly sitting on the knowledge that I’d just used a phone-charging analogy to describe my weird, sad little life.
I’m cringing. I can’t help it, but it’s like someone switched the club lights on at the end of the night and I’m only now realising how sweaty and disgusting I must look.
“Is this about Gadget?” Eggo says.
My stomach flips. Has he noticed me staring? He probably thinks I’m such a fucking perv. I guess he wouldn’t be wrong. “What?”
“You’re gonna pour your heart out to me about how you’re not living your life to the fullest and that you’re watching everyone else live their lives, and then pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about?”
I’m lost for words. I open my mouth to form a response, but nothing comes. Not even a squeak.
Eggo raises his brow, challenging me to refute his claim, but I can’t.
“You’re having an existential crisis about your sexuality, no?”
“Jesus!” I say, leaping off the wall. “That’s not it at all.” But I might as well be holding my hand over his mouth. It’s as good as a confession. “It’s not entirely that. How did you . . .”
“I saw the way you were looking at him. I saw where your eyes went,” he says, and my stomach drops further into my guts. “And even though it’s pretty dark out here, I can see where your eyes land on me too.”
It could be the middle of July for how flaming hot my face grows; however, Eggo doesn’t seem to care that I’ve been staring at his belly, and sometimes lower.
“God, am I really that obvious? Does everybody know?” I’m gonna have to move back to London. Actually, that’s too close. Scotland? Or maybe France, but there’s still a remote chance I might bump into people I know there. Fuck it, Fiji it is.
“I don’t think anyone else has noticed. To be honest, I’m a lot more observant than most people give me credit for,” he says, which makes me feel a little better.
I still have to move away, though. “Listen, Gadget is everyone’s type.
Everyone’s, okay? You could tell me until you’re blue in the face that you don’t look at him and start to chub up, but you’d be a liar. It doesn’t change who you are.”
“Do you?” I ask him. Despite everything I’d said to him when he was wearing his helmet, this might be crossing the line of acceptability.
“Do I what?”
“Do you chub up when you look at him?”
Eggo laughs and takes a step closer to me. My nostrils are flooded with the scent of fresh sweat and his spicy perfume. “I mean, I’ll be the first to admit we’ve all had a cheeky tug thinking about Gadget’s physique.”
A noise escapes my throat, somewhere between a foghorn and a seagull's squawk.
“You can’t tell anyone that, okay? Pretty sure that’s grounds for club dismissal right there.”
“I won’t say anything,” I reassure him. I will, however, overthink it in every way imaginable. “So, does that mean . . . Are you . . .”
Eggo shrugs. He understands what I’m trying to say without me having to finish my sentences.
“Fuck knows, pard. I hate labels, remember. I’m living my life based on the whims of the winds.
” He’s smirking now. “I’m not gay, and I’m definitely not straight even though I have a girlfriend.
I just don’t need to define myself with a label.
I’m joy-maxxing, that’s what I am, a joy-maxxer. ”
“Is that why you dressed as a Pokémon tonight instead of the other half of our intended couple’s costume?”
“Logan wanted to FaceTime a Pokémon. What could I say?”
“That’s fair. If I had a kid, I’d do anything they asked me to. Even if it meant leaving my mate in full drag with literally zero heads up.”
Eggo makes an “eek” face. I discard my now soggy paper straw into Eggo’s empty glass and sip my pina colada from the side. It’s good.
“I think . . .” I say a few moments later. “It’s cool that you don’t need labels, but I do. I just think . . .” Urgh, I can’t seem to articulate my thoughts the way I’m experiencing them. “I just want to know that I’m not the only one who feels the way I feel.”
“You aren’t. There are billions of people out there, with every imaginable combination of sexuality and sexual expression.
You’re not alone. So what if you don’t quite know what you are yet.
If labels are important to you, you’ll figure it out eventually,” he says, and I’m glad he’s not dismissing my need to define myself, even if I can’t vocalise why it’s important to do so.
“But . . . like . . . how am I going to figure out whether I like blokes if I’ve never been with a bloke before?” I lower my voice because it’s fucking embarrassing. “I haven’t even kissed a guy.”
Eggo drops his volume to match mine. “Listen, pard, you don’t need to have shagged every gender to know which ones you like and which ones you don’t. Not boinking a dude doesn’t make you any less queer. But . . . I can help you with one thing on your list.”
He vanishes the last foot of space between us, and two seconds later, he brings his lips down onto mine.
I freeze. Eggo reads my response incorrectly and pulls away.
“Wait,” I say, slipping my fingers into his damp hair and bringing his mouth back to mine.
His lips are cold and boozy and sugary sweet. His beard rubs the bare skin on my chin, and it’s not weird at all. It’s . . . fucking hot actually. I push my tongue into his mouth and stroke it against his, and we both whine in unison before he pushes me back.
“Shit, we have to stop. I’m only wearing pants,” he says. “They’re going to announce the costume prizes soon, and I can’t walk in there with a fucking rager.” It’s a very valid point. He clicks his tongue. “I can’t believe you’d just kiss me like that with no warning.”
I can feel cool air in places I shouldn’t be able to. “My bad,” I whisper, surreptitiously pushing my semi back inside its micro denim hammock so I don’t get arrested for indecent exposure.
Eggo doesn’t notice, or pretends not to. Either way, he hasn’t taken another step away from me. Our knees are still touching. He holds me by the chin and stares at my face for a few moments.
“You have the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen on any human.” Then he slides his helmet on, adjusts the front of his jocks less covertly than I did, and slips back inside the pub.
And I do that thing they do in rom coms. I sigh and lean my head against the wall.
By the time I’ve rejoined everyone at the party, I’ve completely and eternally forgotten about Gadget’s pelvic muscles and Orlando’s sphincter.