Chapter Eight Si
Six years ago
Si lay on his bed in Adam’s dad’s house in Peckham, his muscles aching from work and his belly full of hearty, plain food, thinking about Zig.
They’d met up three more times since that first night in Soho.
They’d danced together, they’d snogged, and last night—Si’s knees went weak thinking about it—Zig had given him his first blowjob, in a back alley in Soho that reeked of rotting garbage and piss.
It’d been bloody epic. Si couldn’t wait to return the favour. He was nervous about it, mind, cos he didn’t want to make an utter balls-up of it, but he still couldn’t wait.
And now he was getting a stiffy, so it was a bloody good thing he’d come up to his room.
They hadn’t actually said, but Si reckoned him and Zig were a thing now.
Boyfriends. That was what Adam called Zig anyway: Seeing your boyfriend tonight?
Or when that sharp-dressed, older lad Zig hung around with sometimes turned up at the pub: your boyfriend’s mate’s here again.
It gave him a good feeling, hearing that word. Warmth spread through him.
Mind, he had no clue how his mum and dad would react if he told them he had a boyfriend.
Would they be disappointed? Si didn’t like to think of that.
It’d never come up while he’d been living at home.
He’d never had a proper boyfriend or girlfriend while he was at school.
Lucy Mansfield hadn’t hung around long enough to count, and he still wasn’t sure how he’d felt about her.
It’d been too confusing, he’d told Adam one night, cos he liked boys and girls.
“Yeah, but who do you wanna shag?” Adam had asked.
“No one,” Si had answered, because he didn’t feel that way about any of his mates and why would he want to shag someone he didn’t know all that well? ’Cept that hadn’t been the right answer, cos after that Adam thought he wasn’t into sex at all.
To be fair, for a while Si had thought he wasn’t into sex at all. But then he’d come down here and met Zig, and Si was absolutely, one hundred percent into having sex with Zig.
Zig was the one thing that made being here worthwhile.
Well, him and being with Adam again. But Adam would be going off to uni soon, and if it wasn’t for Zig, Si would be packing his bags to leave too.
Being a brickie wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, ’specially when your best mate was planning to bugger off and get an education.
Si didn’t really feel like he fit in, somehow, with the work crowd.
Most of the others were older, and they talked about their wives and kids and mortgages.
The ones who were younger mostly bragged on about all the alcohol they’d drunk and the girls they’d shagged.
Every time he met one of the girls down the pub, Si was tempted to tell her how her bloke talked about her when she wasn’t there.
He didn’t, though. He didn’t much fancy getting an “accidental” two-by-four in the face from said bloke once they were back on-site.
Adam didn’t exactly fit in, either, but then, he was the boss’s son and was on his way to uni and some artsy-fartsy career in design. This was it for Si.
Unless he got his head out of his arse and worked out what he really wanted to do. But that’d probably mean going back home to Glastonbury, and well . . .
Zig was in London.