Chapter 14 Heavensent
HEAVENSENT
CHARLIE
I got Zeke to cover my Thursday shift at the bar, because tonight, I have a date with Mason Shaw.
I’ve been buzzing about it since we kissed. I was keen to hook up, but when Mason stood up to follow me to the glory hole, he stacked it – wasted. Brayden called him an Uber.
When Mason messaged me the next day, he surprised me by saying he wanted to take me on a proper date.
Obviously, I said yes. I’m crushing on Mason hard.
I want to marry him and spend the rest of my nights curling my fingers into his pelt of chest hair (which I have never fully seen, but assume exists) and spooning his meaty cub arse (definitely exists, and in my imagination is as furry as his pecs).
If I was a contestant on Farmer Wants a Husband (a reality-TV show that absolutely should exist) the audience would find me overly schmaltzy, but this is who I am.
A punk in the streets and a sap in the sheets.
Before I can marry Mason, though, I’ll need to hire a hitman to assassinate Brayden.
Lying little shit. Can’t believe I didn’t click that he foiled my plans with Mason at the Court.
Conveniently, Brayden’s been nowhere to be seen since I found out he duped me.
He’ll keep. Bears Perth have their Den Night at the bar next week and even my wrath isn’t enough to keep Brayden from sniffing around for bear dick. I’m not gonna hold back when I see him.
There’s also a Reyna-shaped spanner in the works.
She finally bit the bullet and met up with her now ex-boyfriend Ben, who told her he wanted to see other people and wound up seeing a whole heap of Reyna’s vocabulary spat into his eyeballs.
When she calls me all devo on Thursday arvo, I invite her over to my place for what we usually call a ‘Flop Day’, where we day-drink rosé, chain-smoke and watch music videos on the living room big screen.
Reyna’s not a crier. In fact, I’ve never seen her shed a tear, which is fine, cos I’m crap at handling emotional people.
She doesn’t cry today, either. She just rants a lot about Ben, and plays The Rapture’s ‘No Sex For Ben’ three times in a row, and by the last go she’s almost shouting the chorus, half-angry and half-laughing.
‘Do you want to crash here tonight?’ I offer, ultimately willing to do it but hoping she’ll say no. ‘I can cancel my date if you need.’
Reyna throws an unlit menthol cigarette at me. ‘Ew. No. I would never cockblock you like that, Chucky! I will absolutely survive. But thanks for the tea and sympathy. Or rather, rosé and bitching.’
After Reyna leaves, I hurl myself into the shower: Mason will be here soon.
I’m styling my scruffy hair with my trusty hair wax – which has the colour and appearance of congealed cum – when the doorbell rings. I look at my cummy hands and realise what an unhinged impression that would make for a first date.
‘Zeke, can you get the door for me?’ I call into the corridor. ‘It’s Mason.’
Zeke’s getting ready for his bar shift, and calls back all throaty and hoarse, like a teenager whose voice is breaking, ‘I gotchu, bro.’
I smirk. It’s weirdly adorable to watch Zeke find himself.
He’s adding ‘bro’ to the end of every sentence, and he ‘froths’ things now, refers to anything good as ‘elite’.
If this was high school, I’d tell him to quit being a tryhard.
But playing with the Centurions has put a light back in his eyes.
When he first moved in, he was a walking ghost. Now, Zeke’s alive again and coming out of his shell in a way I never would’ve predicted for him.
I hear him greet Mason, talk about footy training, laugh.
As I spray the bottle of Hugo Boss cologne Ahmed forced on me (‘You always smell like an ashtray, Charlie!’) I notice I’m humming an upbeat Killing Heidi song that reminds me of when I was young – a rare song both my parents loved, one of the only things they ever agreed on – and I’m smiling.
Holy shit – am I happy?
Maybe Zeke’s happiness is contagious and it’s spread to me.
I check myself out in the mirror. Choppy hair, long-sleeved black shirt rolled up at the sleeves, spiked wristband I got from the Coventry Village markets, silver-studded belt I got at Dangerfield, ripped black jeans that show I have no arse but am at least slim.
Gotta roll with what you got. And my trusty black-and-white Converse hi-tops.
I sidle into the living room to see Mason’s in his red-and-black checked flanno and denim, hair slicked back and beard trimmed. He looks hot, like the mythical Farmer Who Wants a Husband. He breaks eye contact with Zeke to look at me, checking me out, and says, ‘Hey, Charlie – these are for you.’
Mason whips out a cellophane-wrapped bouquet of twelve red roses from behind his back and thrusts them into my hands.
My brain flashes through multiple reactions.
I can’t believe he bought me flowers – that’s so old school and legit charming.
Twelve flowers would be hell expensive – I am not worth this.
These are nicer than the wildflowers Matt picked for me on our first date.
The third thought boards a steam train in my head and starts to race around an endless track like it’s being driven by the Energizer Bunny.
Why did I think that? Now I can’t unthink it.
Am I betraying Matt’s memory? I always found it so cute and rough around the edges that Matt just grabbed flowers off the side of the road for me (and half were weeds, which made it sweeter).
He didn’t want to buy roses in Northampton or people would’ve asked what girl he was dating, when it was actually me.
His weedy wildflower bunch was so him and I loved him for it.
By contrast, Mason’s a city boy. He’s gone to the effort of choosing roses – red, for romance.
They’re from a proper florist. There’s even a card tucked into the cellophane, with two bees nuzzling each other with love hearts over their heads and the caption For the Man in My Life.
Probably the only male card the florist had.
Mason’s been out since he was eighteen, something Matt never managed to do.
I love that he barrelled up to a florist in his flanno and asked for this.
I wonder if he chatted with them about the dude he was buying them for.
This is the dumbest thing to get in my head about, but here I am, comparing Matt and Mason.
Head over heels. Horrendously guilty.
Is it wrong of me to want to have a bee to nuzzle back?
I try to shove the comparison out of my head for the rest of the date.
Mason drives one of those American muscle utes that have become so popular.
It’s a bright blue Ram: half work ute, half monster truck.
Mason opens his door first and then cries, ‘Aw shit, hang on!’ and bustles around to my side.
He clatters a dozen empty cans of energy drink and empty beef jerky packets into the back seat: the leg room of my passenger seat is his rubbish dump.
I’m hit with a whiff of stale Red Bull, dried meat and body odour.
Mason’s cheeks are rosy as he scratches his chest, embarrassed. ‘My bad, mate – I meant to clean it before I picked you up, ay.’ He whips out a can of Lynx Africa and sprays it all over himself and the dashboard.
On the drive to Mount Lawley, I realise he’s nervous and I can’t fathom why, since he’s the straight-up hottie and I’m the one punching above my weight (Ahmed outright said so).
The restaurant Mason booked is an old-style Italian ristorante called Sinagra.
Nino, an old Italian bloke in a grey peasant cap, greets us at the front.
He ushers us across the terracotta tiles, past a fishpond sunk into the floor, to a table blanketed with a crisp new red-and-white checked tablecloth.
He pauses after seating us, glancing between us furtively, registering we are both men.
I wonder if he’s got the same homophobic streak Zeke’s Italian family have.
But then he smiles warmly at us both. ‘Can I get you nice-a boys something to drink-a?’ he asks, with full wog accent.
Mason orders us each an Italian beer called Peroni Nastro Azzurro and Nino potters off to fetch them.
‘Do you like the vibe here?’ Mason asks me. ‘It’s pretty homey, ay?’
There’s something charming about him saying ‘homey’.
‘Yeah, that’s the word,’ I admit, looking at the photos of Nino and his family in Italy on the walls, the signed photos from semi-famous Perthonalities. ‘Warm and homey.’
Even though he gives off strong, silent vibes in a group, once you get him alone, Mason’s talkative.
He laughs freely, like he doesn’t care if the people at the table next to us look over and see two dudes.
He slams his fist on the table when he gets animated about something (footy, MMA, beer).
He tries to pronounce ‘spaghetti aglio e olio’ in Italian when he orders his entrée, and even I know he’s butchered it: he could not have sounded more like Steve Irwin impersonating Super Mario if he’d tried.
But Nino is nice about it, says bravo, and looks almost disappointed when I order a Caesar salad, no massacred accent involved.
‘You can get more than a salad, mate, it’s my shout,’ Mason says. ‘Want some pasta?’
Bloke has clearly never bottomed in his whole life.
As we talk, I understand why Brayden called Mason dumb as two planks. For instance, he’s convinced Pluto should still be a planet, based on no astronomical theory, but just his vibes that it’s unfair it got demoted to a dwarf planet.
And he’s stubbornly adamant Venice is in Spain; when I google it to prove him wrong, he shrugs and says, ‘Well, geology was never my strong suit.’
And when I mention poppers – the sex drug – he thinks I’m referring to party poppers, the things you shoot streamers out of on New Year’s Eve. I have to explain these are two different things entirely. Has he never had dirty sex before? Are we a total mismatch?
Then he reveals he doesn’t know what punk is.