Page 48 of Reckless

Just like I couldn’t find the words now to let Alastair know I’d look out for him.

He asked, “Were there any good stories at your mum’s funeral? Anything you didn't know?”

I smiled in spite of myself. “Yeah.” I thought about telling him one of the stories. It seemed like something I ought to do, as part of the whole getting-to-know-each-other thing. But the more seconds ticked by, the less I could think of what to say, and the more it seemed like those things were private.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” I finally asked, resolutely not looking at him.

“Help with what?” he asked softly.

“Help you through this? Losing Anna, I mean.”

“You’ve already helped more than you know.” Which was a stupid answer, and for a second I was angry with him for it.

“You said we’ve got to get to know each other. So, you can talk to me. I know I'm not great at conversation, but I can listen.”

After a few more moments, he said, “At Neal’s funeral, the eulogies were all about what a great guy he was. And he was, in many ways. But he was human. And I found myself thinking that if I were to get up there and speak, I’d want to say something to make him more human. Not like, ‘he once drank two bottles of wine and woke up trousers-off halfway up a tree’—which he did. But more like…how we didn’t speak to each other for twenty-four hours after a fight we had over him eating half my chips from a take away. Or how he always put the new toilet roll on going under rather than over. Things that, weirdly, felt more private than revealing that he once blew me in a lift.”

I opened my mouth, turning to him. “He really did?”

Alastair gave a nod of confirmation.

“Did you…like, did the doors open while you were still…?”

“We did have to send it back to the ground floor and then go up again for me to finish. Got my flies done up just in time.”

“That’s…” I thought back to the health fair and got weirdly embarrassed. “Is that something you like? Thinking you might get caught? Like in the church?”

“It would have been both our jobs,” he said, and then his mouth quirked in a faint smile. “Well, no. Not our jobs, maybe, but it was at the hospital so there certainly would have been disciplinary action, and consequences, and some very uncomfortable meetings with HR. But no, it wasn’t exhibitionism. We were—” He laughed softly. “We were a lot younger, a lot hornier, and we’d been on opposing shifts for about a month at the time. We were both literally desperate.” His smile faded, and he threw me a speculative glance. One of those ones that looked right into the parts of me that I tried my best to keep hidden. “But I did fuck him in a club once. On a stage. That was definitely exhibitionism.”

I tried to swallow but my throat was dry. “Uh…his or yours?”

“Both, I suppose. He liked to be shown off sometimes, and I liked to show him off. Is that something you’ve done?”

It wasn’t. Not on purpose, anyway. Pretty sure I’d given some blokes an eyeful in the toilets at the club in Newcastle a few times, but it was that sort of place. But to walk out onto a stage where an audience was waiting... no, every part of me cringed at the thought. It was excruciating enough that Alastair saw me. Really saw me I mean. Studied me like he could see a whole other level of nakedness below my skin. I didn’t think I could bear it if a whole room full of people did the same. The things I liked to do, the things I wanted, they seemed like the sort of things that nobody else should know about.

“No,” I said, not looking at him. “I’ve never done that.”

I was afraid of what he might say. That we weren’t compatible. That I wasn’t into exactly the same things as he was, and getting to know each other any more was pointless so we might as well end it here. But Alastair just hummed and said, “It’s not for everyone.”

“Is it—” I had to stop and start again. Couldn’t look at him while I pushed the words out. “Is it a problem that we don’t like the same things?”

“No.” There was no uncertainty in his tone. “The things that I want from you, I already get.”

I jolted at that, so surprised that I turned my head to look at him.

“I do like making you uncomfortable,” he said, and his mouth twitched. “I like it when you’re vulnerable, and I know you hate that. I like that you allow yourself to trust me, or at least trust the process. I don’t need to show you off on a stage, Robbie, because what Neal got from that—what I did—it’s the same as we get when it’s just the two of us. I know what I like.” He looked out at the water for a moment, then turned his measured gaze back on me. “Have you thought about what you’re fighting every time?”

My throat clamped, and I shook my head, but suddenly, out of nowhere, I remembered that magazine I found years ago hidden behind the cabinet in the milking shed. The one full of muscled guys with their hard dicks out. I remembered how sick I felt, realising it must have been my dad’s, and what that meant, but how at the same time I felt a thrill deep inside me to be looking at naked men. Not furtive glances, the sort I stole when stripping down to go swimming with the boys I knew. The men in the photographs were displaying themselves for me, proud and intentional and erect. And I hated everything they stood for, even while I’d jerked off over the magazine for the couple of days before I’d finally burned it because I was too afraid Mum would find it.

Discovered more about my dad that I ever wanted to know in those pages, then bundled up his shame with mine and fed the stinking lot of it to a fire. Then, when I was older, I went looking on the mainland for guys like the ones in the photographs, hating them and myself the whole time. Hating my dad too, for leaving us and Dauntless. For being both braver and more of an arsehole that I could ever be.

Music drifted out of the church.

I still remembered his hands. Big, gentle. Remembered him showing me how to feed a horse by curling my fingers back. Remembered how tall he was, how broad, like there was nothing in the world that could shake him and there was no safer place for me to be than right beside him. And then, one day, he was just gone.

At least Anna Hooper’s kids would know where she went.

My eyes stung, and it wasn’t just the salt spray tossed at us on the wind.