Newt took the lube and condoms upstairs. He wasn’t going to run out of lube. The container was huge. But the condoms made him gulp.
Just in case.
Perhaps.
Maybe.
If I can get my head around it. Around Dila.
His heart thumped hard.Would they just…let it happen? Who’d do what? What are we supposed to do to prepare? Should I google? What if I read something that puts me off?He took a deep breath and told himself to stop thinking about it. If it happened, it happened. Not the googling, the sex.
He’d ordered a stunt kite with a tiger’s face on it, a magic set and two yoyos. If River felt up to it after his physio, they could go to the beach and fly the kite. According to the internet, Camber on the south coast was a big wide expanse of sand with plenty of room for kite flying. The other item he’d ordered was Lego, a Star Wars Tie-Fighter and an X-Wing. He thought they could make the models together. It would be good for River, occupational therapy.
When Newt told him about the kite, he was all for going straight out. Newt let him drive until they reached busier roads, then they swapped over.
“Can you read number plates?”
“No.”
“Road signs?”
River shrugged.
Shit.“Maybe we better not do that again until you can.”
River slid his hand over to his knee and squeezed it. “Liked… Thank you.”
On the way there, they played a game where Newt said a word and River had to find a word that meant the opposite. When he saw River was tiring of that, he switched to a different game.
“I’m going to describe an object and you have to name it. They’re made of glass. They’re small and round. Kids—”
“Mar…ball. Marble.”
“Yes. This object is long, green, slightly bent and you can eat it.”
“Gr… Grinch’s cock.”
Newt chuckled. “Or a cucumber.”
“Oh.”
River didn’t tire of that game, not when it grew more and more raunchy.
Camber Sands wasn’t a disappointment. On a cold, windy day, there weren’t many people around. With no risk of River being recognised, he didn’t need his mask. The stunt kite was fun and Newt wished he’d bought two so they could have flown them together. There were kite and wind surfers out on the water, zipping along the waves and sometimes soaring above them. Further down the beach, people were whizzing back and forth on kite-powered buggies. River pointed to them and said, “Us?”
“Another time.” When he had a safety helmet for River and permission from Max.
Every day, Newt came up with something different to do. The Lego was a huge hit and they took turns finding the pieces or putting them together. River persuaded Newt to order another kit. Using the yoyos turned into a competitionas they kept trying to master more and more difficult tricks. It was brilliant exercise for River’s arm and hand. Same with the magic set. River was better at magic than him. He could produce a coin out of nowhere. Newt found it hard. He wondered if River realised that everything that they were doing was helping his recovery.
River even managed to explain to him that he wanted to send flowers and an apology to Max’s parents for being an ungrateful shit. Newt helped him place the order and didn’t use the wordsungrateful shit.
With River wearing his mask, they walked round a Roman villa, explored Dover Castle, shopped at the supermarket, went to a car boot sale and challenged each other to buy something worth having that only cost a pound. River bought a compass. Newt found a game with magnets where you had to make something appear to hover in midair. They’d still not managed it.
They watched the deer in a local park, had a close encounter experience with meerkats at another park, which was fantastic, played crazy golf—three times to decide who’d won after Newt had thrashed him in the first game. River won the next two. He was far more competitive than Newt.
They swam and used the gym most days. Newt made River count the repetitions with him. They played ping pong on the kitchen worktop and River kept score. All good exercise. Newt thought River seemed fine physically. The limp had completely gone. His weak arm was no longer his weak arm. He looked healthier, stronger and was more confident. Ed dropped the number of physio sessions to once every two weeks because he was so pleased with River’s progress. He still tired quickly but he had more muscles than Newt now.
His speech was slowly emerging and Newt knew he wasfrustrated not to be better. River had more difficulty speaking and finding the right words when he was tired and Newt always called a halt at that point. Progress in reading and writing was slower, but in everything they did, Newt found a way to make it fun. They wrote an erotic short story about Roman and Ezra. Ezra was a demon and Roman, an angel. River wanted to turn it into a screenplay. He even came up with a title –The Demon in You.
