Chapter 11 #4
‘I’ve been through more shit in my life than a lily-ass white boy from Dalkeith could ever start to comprehend,’ Curtis snarls.
‘Real shit. Abuse. Violence. Cops coming around and throwing my friends in jail. I left my family. I was homeless. I watched my friends drop dead from a deadly virus, while the government did sweet fuck all, while everyone treated us like freakin’ lepers.
I bore the brunt of bigotry when it was illegal and dangerous.
Where were you then, boy? Still locked up tight in your daddy’s nutsack, weren’t you?
Safe and snug. I’ve worked hard to build something for my boys, and I did it.
Over and over, I did it, I’m doing it, I’ll do it forever.
What have you ever done? Got your bussy out on Insta and the cover of some trashy-ass magazine and decided that made you an activist?
Wore a pin and a T-shirt in an era where doing that gets you thousands of followers instead of followed by the cops?
You’re no activist. You’re an attention whore and a narcissist, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let you call me queerphobic in the place I built.
Get the hell out of my bar before I throw you out. ’
‘OUT!’ Ahmed shrieks.
Xander flinches, and turns to the women. One of them whispers to him, but he shakes his head and backs away from Curtis. ‘Not a good look,’ he says as he retreats to the door. ‘Not a good look at all.’
Curtis’s arms are flexed by his sides, the veins almost fighting their way through his skin as he stands guard over the bar, watching Xander and the women slink out the door.
‘Ahmed,’ Curtis barks, ‘give me the paint that mural artist left behind.’
Ahmed lobs a can of black spray-paint to Curtis, who stalks out the front of the Tool Shed and sprays over the white wall beside the hot tradie mural:
BOYS ONLY.
He returns to the bar and is clearly aware we’re all gawking at him. ‘This is what this place is,’ he declares. ‘Boys only. If you have a problem with it, leave and don’t come back. If you like it, this is the place I built for you. Enjoy it.’
He marches into the back of the bar, Ahmed following him.
‘Holy shit,’ Tommo says. ‘That was fucking incredible.’
Everyone who was in the bar when Curtis shirtfronted Xander has nothing else to talk about all night. I’m not on shift, so I get shitfaced with Mason, Brayden and the footy boys. Everyone’s telling their version of the fight, how it feels like we all witnessed something big.
Everyone thinks Xander has finally gone too far.
So do I. I don’t know why I froze, except I saw my entire future go up in flames if I disagreed with Xander and he added me to his kill list. I wouldn’t just lose a shot at being famous – I’d be piled on and cancelled before I even tried.
Of course I’m on Curtis’ side. And support from the bar punters has naturally coalesced on Curtis’ side too; as Mason puts it, he’s a ‘bloody legend’.
But the Tool Shed has only a few hundred supporters. Xander has over a hundred thousand. When he tells his side of the story, that pendulum is gonna swing the other way, and it’s going to be a shitstorm for us.
‘Don’t think about it,’ Mason tells me, throwing an arm over my shoulder when I verbalise my fears. ‘I thought he was okay at first, but he’s a tool. You shouldn’t pay attention to tools.’
I’m happy to make myself forget about it. Being drunk with a hot guy helps.
‘Except tools themselves,’ I say, wiggling my eyebrows suggestively. ‘Tools need attention.’
‘Tools do need attention,’ Mason slurs, his arm still on my shoulder when it should have moved by now. I’m not complaining. ‘This is true, mate, this is true.’
The conversation is sloppily drunk enough to go in circles a bit.
‘Do you like your tool being given attention?’ I ask Mason.
Mason smiles and pulls me in towards him, pressing my head into the warmth of his neck. He kisses the top of my head. ‘I love it,’ he says.
I feel like the kiss is a green light for me to go full-blown slut mode. ‘There’s a glory hole in the dunnies,’ I offer.
‘I’d love that … but I thought you hated me?’ Mason says thickly.
I pull my head up off his chest. ‘What? Who told you that?’
‘Brayden did,’ he says. ‘He said you didn’t like me. He said you thought I was too dumb to go out with.’
‘That little SHIT!’ I seethe.
I look around for Brayden and spot him chatting up some German beefcake wearing a leather harness and a yellow hanky in his back pocket. I’ll kill him later.
‘No, Brayden got it wrong,’ I say. ‘I think you’re hot, Mason. I’ve got a crush on you.’
Mason lifts me up, clean out of my seat, and puts me on his lap before sticking his tongue down my throat.
I fall limp with his strong arms around my back and let it happen, his coppery beard mashing and scratching my face.
Someone heckles us to get a room, but I don’t care who sees me suck face with Mason or what it makes me look like.
Kissing him makes me happy, the way I was the summer I was in love with a farm boy.