Chapter 26
Finn
It’s nine p.m. and Payday Karaoke is in full swing.
Abs is on the stage belting out “ABCDEFU” by GAYLE as Megan and I walk through the pub doors.
It’s already too warm inside Owen Bosley’s micro taphouse, so we strip off our jackets and hoodies and any extra items of clothing we can afford to lose without bordering on public indecency.
As it turns out, Abs is not a terrible singer. I’m awful and Pi’s okay. He falls somewhere in between the pair of us, but it’s the only time outside of rugby where he’s not so self-conscious.
He’s already standing at the bar with Georgia, and when he catches my eye, my stomach does a weird jiggly dance.
“We need to end things,” he’d said to me in the old lice room five months ago. “My girlfriend is getting sus.”
I’d known this moment would come at some point. Known that sooner or later Georgia would figure this whole thing out, and it’d spell disaster for Pi and me.
“End things?” I’d said, instead of voicing my true thoughts. I’d held out a hand, palm up, like that was the first option. “Or . . . fuck my face?”
I’m pretty sure Pi made the wrong choice that morning. Actually, we both did.
And we continued to make the wrong choice at each subsequent meet-up. I mean, it wasn’t entirely my fault. I don’t know how anyone is supposed to look at that face of his and resist it.
But it definitely didn’t help matters when I’d say things like, “Just one more time,” or “Princess, when I’m done with you, you won’t even remember your own name, let alone your girlfriend’s,” or “We’ll quit next week, promise.”
Only we never did. If anything, we met up more often. As though we were trying to cram in every moment of each other’s company before it was stripped away from us.
I half want to question Megan on what she knows—and what she’s told Georgia—but we’re both fully locked into this bizarre game of feigning ignorance of our partner’s extramarital activities.
She’s been spending a lot more time in Bristol recently, and coincidently, who seems to have moved to Bristol but Lucy.
Sometimes Megs will come over to my place covered in festival glitter, or smelling of bonfire wood smoke, or sporting random hickeys.
She never offers explanations for any of these things, and when I point them out to her, she acts surprised like we’re discovering them at the same time.
I’ve sort of given up now, but at least she returns the favour and doesn’t ask me why I cancel plans last minute to be with him, or why the bottle of lube next to my bed depletes and replenishes itself so quickly, or why there’s an anal douche in my bathroom cabinet even though she hates butt stuff.
Still, it seems to work for us. And neither of us has any desire to upset what we’ve built, together or separately.
“What you having then, babe?” I ask as we push through the crowd to get to the bar.
“Just a Diet Coke.” Both Megan and Georgia have self-elected to be our designated drivers. More than likely so that they can hang out in the beer garden all night and gossip about everyone else while we let loose with our teammates.
“How ya going?” Pi says to both of us.
“Wasson?” I say with affected nonchalance. The girls don’t even seem to care. They’re already arm in arm and have begun a conversation in what sounds like the very middle.
“Okay, but what did Luke say?”
“Was it . . .”
“Right? God, I hate that guy . . .”
“I know, be so for real right now.”
“Here you go, me ’ansum.” I hand Megan her glass of pop as soon as the barmaid—not Owen’s daughter, someone else—has finished pouring it, but Megs hardly notices.
“Cheers, babe,” she says, and immediately the girls dip outside.
Today, Pi’s wearing a white T-shirt, a pair of beige shorts, and even though we’re edging into October, “thongs.” I cannot stop my gaze from sweeping over him.
“Damn, you look good,” I say to him as he leans across me to grab his beer from the bar. The clean, oceanic notes of his perfume flood my nostrils, and I’m having a Pavlovian response to it.
“Fuck off,” he replies with faux embarrassment.
“We should put our names down on the karaoke list and then sneak out to the bogs,” I say.
He reads my unspoken thoughts. Or he’s having them himself. “The stall in the men’s room is out of order.”
“In the trees behind the play park?”
Pi shakes his head. “Beer garden’s teeming. There’re loads of other people outside. Dan’s even brought his kids. They’re on the swings.”
“That’s a shame.” I really need to see more—or less—of that outfit. “I’ll think of something.”
“Alright, bellend,” Abs says, pulling Pi into a bro hug. He’s finished his set and one of Owen’s regulars is now on the stage.
“Yeah, how ya going, cunt?” Pi replies. “I didn’t think you’d be here.”
“Gadget already assured me that he wouldn’t be here. Said he’s gone to Bruges for the weekend with Daisy and her girlfriend,” Abs says in reference to his now ex . . . boyfriend-person, Orlando.
“You’re on speaking terms with Gadget now, are you?” I ask.
Abs shrugs a single shoulder. “I found somebody to hate more.”
About a month ago, Abs and his situationship split up. Nobody knows what happened. He hasn’t even told his best buddy, Pi. All we know is that one day Harry and Orlando were sickeningly in love, then they went on a romantic sunset boat trip, and the next day they were mortal enemies.
Abs refuses to talk about the twenty-one-year-old millionaire or even mention him by name. It’s always “him” or “it” or “evil personified.”
“So, what are you singing later?” he asks us.
“I dunno. ‘Killing in the Name of?’ Why not light tonight on fire with rage?” I suggest.
“Fuck yeah!” Okay, angry Harry is a lot more fun than dopey, lovesick Harry.
Pi and I add our names to the list. I’ve picked “Jar Of Hearts,” because why shouldn’t I treat everyone to my vocal acrobatics on this fine September evening?
And after some serious nagging on my part, because my Australian friend isn’t feeling the limelight tonight, he’s agreed to sing Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own.”
We pop our heads out of the pub and ask the girls if they want to go on the list, but they wave us away. Then wave us back again for more drinks.
There are fourteen people ahead of us in the queue to perform. Pi explains that the average song is three minutes and fifteen seconds long.
“Which is very close to pi, in case you struggle to remember it.”
Multiply three point two five by fourteen singers and that equals forty-five and a half minutes until we’re needed on stage. Well, the upturned half barrel that acts as a makeshift stage.
We slip out of Bosley’s fine establishment on the pretence of needing fresh air, but instead of joining everyone at the back in the beer garden, we creep around to the side and cross the road.
There’s an old chocolate box style cottage opposite the pub, and like the pub, it has a thatched roof, a sage-green front door, and a pair of climbing roses.
It looks like an anglophile’s wet dream.
“That’s Gadget and Owen’s home,” Pi says.
“That makes sense.” Both Owen and Gadget were in the pub when we escaped, meaning the house should be empty. “Wonder if they’ve left their door unlocked.”
I jiggle the handle. They haven’t. It doesn’t budge.
“I could suck your cock right here behind these bushes,” I say, because I fucking need him and our forty-five minutes are depleting too quickly.
Pi punches me in the arm and launches into this odd, overloud fake laughter. “Fuck off!”
Why’s he being so weird with me? I catch his eye and follow the journey of his gaze.
Bosley has a Ring doorbell camera fitted to the wooden frame.
Without saying anything else, Pi grabs my elbow and pulls me round to the side of the cottage, down a very crunchy gravel path, and to the back door, which is also locked.
There’s no security device here, and it’s a blanket of darkness, but there is a handy alcove between the cottage’s newer extension and the original limewashed building.
I push him against the wall. Kiss him.
He pushes me off. “There are no deadly spiders in the UK?”
Admittedly, it is a tad cobwebby in the alcove, and Pi already knows more about British wildlife than I do, but he needs that verbal reassurance.
“No deadly spiders. The house spider will shit you up, but it won’t hurt you. Deadliest creature we’ve got is probably a badger.”
“It’s cows, actually.” Sometimes I’m in absolute awe of how straight he can keep his face when he say things like this. “The highest number of animal-related fatalities in England is caused by cows. Usually by trampling ramblers to de—”
“Shut up, nerd.” I kiss him before he finishes his sentence.
He breaks free. “Okay.” Then kisses me again.
I’m unbuttoning his shorts, dropping them to his ankles, skating my fingers over his buttocks, and sliding down his pants just enough to give me access. “Turn around, princess. Hands against the wall.”
Pi turns without hesitation. “I don’t have any condoms or lube. Do you?”
“No, we won’t need them. Well, lube might come in handy right about now, but . . .”
The sentence and thought go uncompleted, as I unzip my fly and drag my hard cock over his hole, hold it there, and try to memorise every single minute detail of this perfect moonlit moment.
The dimples on his lower back, the freckle at the very base of his coccyx, the way he smells, his shallow, needy breaths.
I want to slip inside him, feel his tight warmth wrapping itself around me, but neither of us has prepared for that, so instead I reach my hand in front of him.
“Spit.”
He spits into my palm. I add my own saliva, and I lube myself up as I would normally.
“Legs together, soldier.”
“Oh.” He snaps them closed.
I pull his bare flesh apart, creating a gap wide enough to slip my cock into, and I fuck his thighs.