Hard Tail (15 page)

The waitress arrived with our food, and I stared in disbelief at half a pig’s worth of sausages and a metric tonne of mashed potato. “Are you sure you’re a vegetarian?” I asked Matt. “Because I could really do with some help here.”

“I’ll take some of the mash off your hands,” Matt said, not waiting for me to agree but leaning across the table to scoop up a generous portion with his fork. “They do a great mash here.”

They did, too. As I tucked in, my taste buds began to regret giving half of it away, although I knew my stomach would thank me for it later.

After the first few forkfuls, I forced myself to get down to business. “So, you and Steve,” I said. “Do you, er, go out much? Evenings, I mean. To, you know”—I dropped my voice—“gay bars.”

Matt shrugged. “A bit.” He ducked his head. “Steve likes to stay in more. Or go out with his mates.”

“Where do you go, when you do go out? I mean,” I added hurriedly, “are there a lot of gay bars in Southampton? Or, you know, the New Forest?”

Matt looked up again. I hoped I wasn’t blushing. “Oh—there’s a few. Not that many, but you wouldn’t expect it, would you? It’s not like Brighton. No, there’s a couple of places we go to—when we want to go to that sort of place. There’s the Cock in Jeffrey Street, and El Niño in the town centre. But the Cock’s a bit cruisey, really, and El Niño’s always full of posers.” He grinned suddenly. “Luke likes it there.”

I supposed “cruisey” wasn’t really what you wanted, if you were in a relationship. Was it what I wanted?

“But Steve likes to go a bit further out—down to Brighton, mostly.”

Brighton? That was a long way to go for a pint. No wonder they didn’t want to make that trek too often. “Is it pretty lively there?” I’d heard it was the San Francisco of the South of England—but then again, I’d also heard Manchester described as the Venice of the North, so I was taking this one with a pinch of salt.

“Yeah—it’s fun, but it’s not like going somewhere local, you know? Somewhere your mates go too.”

A bit like Southampton was for me, then—although, in my case, that was a selling point. “What are your plans for the afternoon?” I asked, thinking we’d probably spent as much time on
gay
stuff as was safe.

“Oh, you know.” Matt made a vague gesture with a bit of bread and cheese, then frowned as his cheese fell off and went through a gap in the slats of the table. “Bit of gardening, bit of food shopping. Nothing exciting. You?”

“Might get the bike out—I probably need to get in some practice before tomorrow night.”

Matt brightened. “You’re still up for that, then? I told the lads you’d be coming. Adam’s looking forward to seeing you again.”

“Oh?” I couldn’t imagine why. Of course, any enthusiasm expressed by Adam was undoubtedly relative. A word of two syllables, perhaps, or maybe even a distinguishable vowel sound.

I was sorry to leave the pub when we finally finished our lunch. Matt had cheered up no end since this morning, and I felt proud of myself for having in some small way contributed. Possibly.

I could get used to going out places with Matt.

I spent the rest of Wednesday afternoon keeping the shop’s books up-to-date. The quarterly VAT return would be due soon, and I didn’t want to leave it until the last minute. Luckily Jay had (for once in his life) taken my advice about how to set up his bookkeeping system, so I was easily able to work out where he’d got up to with it all. I tutted as I saw he’d been under-claiming on the input VAT, and corrected his figures with a satisfied flourish. When I had a moment, it looked like it’d be a good idea to go through past returns and see if there was anything we could still claim on.

Still full from lunch, I just had a couple of slices of toast for tea. Wolverine gave me a superior look from his bowl of high-protein fish. I gave him a rude gesture and went off to watch comedy reruns on satellite for half an hour.

My palms were a little sweaty as I got out my gi for karate that evening. Had Pit-bull passed on his
poofter
judgment to the rest of the class? Would I be given the cold shoulder? Or would it be more along the lines of jokes about not letting me get them on the floor? Loaded questions about whether I preferred attacking or defending, that sort of thing?

Wolverine, gorged on tuna, padded into the bedroom and jumped heavily on the bed. He stalked over to the bedside table, where I’d placed one of Gran’s dragon figurines. It was a sleek green dragon, smugly holding a sword in its forepaws and with a knight’s discarded armour at its feet. The legend on the base read
Tender is the Knight
. Wolverine gave it a suspicious sniff.

“I’d have thought you and that dragon would get on like a house on fire,” I told him. Wolverine gave me a look as if to say I’d better not be making fun of him and started to knead the duvet into submission.

“Does it bother you that Daddy’s a poofter?” I asked him. God, that sounded gay. Although probably not as gay as calling myself “Mummy” would have been.

Wolverine yawned. I hoped the guys at karate, if they’d heard the news, would treat it with the same complete indifference, but I wasn’t sanguine about my chances.

When I got there, though, everyone seemed to treat me exactly the same as ever. Did that mean Pritchard hadn’t told them? Or they hadn’t believed him? It seemed hard to believe that everyone there except him simply found it a non-issue.

Prick-tard himself wasn’t actually there, which surprised me. I’d have put him down as the sort of bloke who’d miss his own mother’s funeral if it clashed with a training session. It certainly made for a more relaxed evening. Afterwards, I went for a drink at a pub down the road with John, where I studiously avoided all mention of Prick-tard and mentioned my break up as a way of bolstering my shaky straight credentials. John chatted happily about his recent divorce and clued me in on a couple of pitfalls to avoid. All in all, I was feeling pretty mellow when I wheeled my bike back down Jay’s drive later on.

Even the discovery that Wolverine had left me a present didn’t ruin the mood. It was—or rather had been—some sort of mouse-like creature. As Wolverine had neatly bisected it down the middle and left me only the rear end, it was a bit hard to tell. Especially since I’d discovered its presence by treading on the little beastie.

I got upstairs to find Wolverine had already turned in for the night and was purring loudly in the dead centre of the duvet. I had a quick shower, considered turfing him out, but in the end, reluctant to seem ungrateful for his delightful gift, slipped into the minuscule amount of space under the nearest side of the duvet.

I was asleep within minutes.

Chapter Eleven

Matt was late for work again Thursday morning. He scrambled in with a big smile on his face and his hair all over the place. No prizes for guessing what had delayed him, I thought sourly, my mood already ruined by a bad night’s sleep and a stiff neck on waking, courtesy of that bloody cat.

“Sorry,” Matt called out cheerfully and disappeared straight into the back room.

I shut the till drawer with a vicious snap. An early customer who’d been browsing around the bike lights looked up. “Cheer up, mate—it might never happen.”

“It already did,” I muttered. “Probably several times. And that’s just this morning.”

Later, I wandered into the back. “Have a good evening yesterday?” I asked, keeping my tone painfully neutral.

Matt looked up briefly, then bent back over the brake cable he was working on. “Yeah—it was great. Steve took me out for a meal, and it was brilliant. I mean, he missed training for it and everything.”

I wondered what kind of training Steve did but didn’t want to get into another conversation about the lucky bastard. Maybe Matt just meant going down the gym—gay blokes were a bit fanatical about their looks, weren’t they? One of the many things I liked about Matt was that he didn’t appear to have got the memo. He was 100 per cent natural. “Oh? Where did you go?”

“Hotel out towards Ringwood. It was dead posh.” Matt looked up again and grinned at me. “You’d have liked it.”

He was probably right, but just then I’d have happily seen it burnt to the ground. “Special occasion?” I forced out.

Matt had his head down again. “Nah—we just had a bit of a barney the other day, and he wanted to say sorry, that’s all. Are you still on for tonight?”

What’s the point?
I felt like saying. But that would have been petty. “Yes—of course. Looking forward to it.”

Actually, after a day spent rushed off my feet in the shop, I found I really was looking forward to it. I was obviously starting to appreciate the benefits of fresh air and exercise. And it’d be my first opportunity to use the Genesis in the environment it was designed for.

All right, maybe I was looking forward to seeing some more of Matt outside work too. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d enjoyed a pub lunch so much as I had yesterday, and it wasn’t just because of the sausages.

The arrangement was to meet up in a forest car park. Matt had emailed me the location and thankfully included a map. I deliberately didn’t set off any earlier than I needed to. I didn’t want to arrive too early and have to hang around like I was hoping for action of an entirely different kind—although apparently there wasn’t much of a risk. I’d asked Matt jokingly if there was any danger of unintentional voyeurism on these bike rides. He’d told me in all seriousness that “the dogging car park” was just outside Marchwood and they didn’t go around that way all that often.

Of course, sod’s law ensured I got held up by roadworks on the outskirts of Totton and spent the rest of the drive worrying they wouldn’t wait for me. I was consequently relieved to swing into the car park and recognise Adam’s orange mop of hair. He was standing chatting to a bunch of lads putting wheels back on bikes and adjusting headlights, one of whom I was fairly sure was Matt, although he was bent low over his bike, so I couldn’t tell for sure. It definitely looked a lot like Matt’s arse.

Feeling slightly embarrassed at the realisation I could pick Matt’s arse out of a line-up, I parked next to the group and gave Adam a wave as I got out. He waved back and loped off towards Matt, presumably to tell him I was here. Feeling I shouldn’t waste time, I got my bike out of the boot and started clicking it back together before wheeling it over to the rest of the lads.

Matt’s mates were a ragtag bunch. I felt positively overdressed in my brand-new cycling shorts and a T-shirt that had neither holes nor stains. Of course, there was every chance that might change before the evening was out. Matt gave a huge grin when he saw me. “Tim! Good to see you. Right—you know Adam.” The cuddly orangutan in question gave me a thumbs-up. “And this is Phil, Tel and Andy.” They all nodded greetings at me.

Phil was dark and whippet-thin, whereas both Tel and Andy had a slight suspicion of too many Mars Bars around the middle. It was reassuring to see they were just ordinary blokes, not lean, mean, cycling machines. They were both fair-haired, which might have caused me problems remembering which was which, except that Tel had the worst broken nose I’d ever seen. It was practically pointing sideways. Once seen, it was impossible not to stare at, so I cast my eyes around for something else to fix on and landed on the hip flask in Andy’s hand. He caught me staring at it. “Fancy a bit of the old muscle relaxant before we set off?”

“Er…”

Adam nudged me. “G’won. ’S good stuff.”

Not wanting to seem like a wuss, I took the proffered flask and had a cautious swig. Fire burned down my throat, and my eyes immediately watered. “Bloody hell, what is that stuff?” I choked out, handing the flask back blindly.

There was a general good-natured chuckle. “Some kind of schnapps Andy brought back from Germany,” Matt admitted.

“It’ll put hairs on your chest!” Andy defended his choice of refreshments.

I winced and wiped my eyes. “More likely to burn them off.”

Everyone laughed, and Adam’s warm, meaty paw clapped me on the back. I hadn’t noticed him getting so touchy-feely with Matt. It was nice of him to want to make the new guy feel welcome, though.

“Right,” Matt began. “Tim here’s a beginner, so look out for him, okay?” He turned to me. “And if these wankers do something daft, don’t feel you have to copy them, all right?”

There was a general chorus of “Who, us? Daft? Never!”

Matt rolled his eyes. “Just remember—follow the track, and if you see a shortcut no one else is taking, don’t do what Phil did the other week and assume you know better, all right?”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Turned out there was barbed wire across it. I ended up getting a faceful,” Phil told me ruefully.

Now I looked closer, I could see the faint marks. “Nice.”

We set off in single file down the narrow dirt drack, with Matt in the front. I’d assumed that, as the newbie, I’d be bringing up the rear, but Adam insisted I go ahead of him.

It was really thoughtful of him to make sure I didn’t get left behind, I mused as I pedalled away, my eyes unavoidably fixed on Andy’s arse as it wobbled away in front of me.

The trees in this part of the forest were a mixed bunch, much like the lads. Not that I could have told you what any of them were, but there were tall, spindly ones with delicate leaves, and ancient, gnarled ones that looked like they could have earned a few pounds as extras in
Lord of the Rings.
Broad-leaved trees with silvery bark, and tall, scraggy fir trees quite unlike the maypole-like pines I’d seen in European forests. Gran would have known all of their names—I had a sudden flash of memory of walking in a forest somewhere with her when I was little, my small hand in hers, on one of those rare, blissful days Jay hadn’t been there to overshadow me.