Golden Boy (20 page)

1. Because it made it sound to people who were up for fooling around and didn’t want to go out with me like I was definitely up for having sex with people, only after a couple of hours, days or weeks, when we had worked through kissing, hand jobs, oral etc.

2. Because even if I really, really liked the person I was getting off with, and especially if I thought they really liked me, I couldn’t let myself fall in love with them, or them fall for me, because then they would want to have sex anyway, because they would think I’d done it already, same as the others.

And if I had sex with them, everyone at school would find out what I was. And then everyone would crucify me, just like they crucified Samuel Collins, when he came out last year, or when Ellie Panger kissed Katie Fox at that party this summer and Katie told everyone Ellie was way too into it. It would be another sexuality/gender thing that would give people the creeps, and it’s no use asking why questions of sexuality and gender give people the creeps, and it’s no use blaming it on society and saying it should change, because nothing is going to change about high school, and bitches who gossip, and guys who get freaked out and think people like Samuel want to get off with the entire football team. Nothing is going to change my high school in the next year and make it OK for people to know the truth about me. Nothing is going to change that would stop everyone from wanting to know and from talking about it and from feeling . . . grossed out, I guess.

Now when I kiss a girl, I just move her hands away from that area, or stop kissing altogether and suggest we go inside, get a drink. I guess I’ve already lost my virginity anyway. I guess that’s one bonus of the Hunter thing. I won’t die a virgin. Fuck. I’ve lost my virginity. I didn’t imagine it would go like that.

Understatement of the century.

I rest my head on my knees and turn to look at Sylvie’s big red pillows and her teddy bear propped at the head of her bed. This thing with Sylvie has been different. She’s different. I’m different with her. It’s not that I don’t want to kiss her, because I really do, but it’s that I want other things more. I want to hang out with her. I want to talk. I want to be her best friend. And that complicates things so much more, because it means that she invites me home, and I go, my legs excitedly carrying me there even as my mind is apprehensive of what will happen. I don’t want to offend her. I don’t want her to hate me. And yeah, even though I won’t take off my clothes, and I can’t go further than kissing, this time I really, really want to. My whole body is humming with it.

You’re in Sylvie’s bedroom
, says my brain.

Yup.

Are you gonna do it with her?

No, how can I?

Oh, go on. You want to bury your face in her hair so bad. What’s the worst that could happen?

She could scream and run away and tell everybody.

Come on, she likes you! Maybe it won’t be like that. How do you know how she’ll react?

I know.

But—

Please stop talking about it or you’re gonna make me cry in her room.

You’ve been so emotional lately.

I know.

You’ve been emotional, you hurt your chest, you’ve been throwing up. Are you sure there isn’t anything wrong? Are you thinking about that night in September again? With Hunter?

Shut up!

‘Hey.’ Sylvie comes back in. ‘Rum and Coke?’

I nod, smile, hold my hand out for a cup and realise it is shaking.

‘Definitely need one or three of those right now,’ I say. I think she sees I look nervous, so she takes pity on me and turns on the TV.

‘I was thinking about what we could do. Do you want to play
Tech Dog
?’

‘Sure,’ I say, watching her set it up. ‘My brother loves video games. We play all the time.’

‘Cool,’ she says, and hands me a controller. We sit down together on the floor. Our knees are touching, I can smell her perfume, and I can’t help thinking
It’s really nice, and I don’t want to leave
.

‘
Y
ou’re so drunk!’

‘I’m not!’

‘Oh, Max . . .’ I stroke the hair around his face and tease him. ‘You’re such a lightweight.’

It’s after we’ve played
Tech Dog
and had a few rum and Cokes, and I’m surprised to see Max is pretty smashed. He’s all floppy and cuddly and, during the last few games, he kept putting his head on my shoulder.

I was like, ‘That’s no way to play a game to beat me!’

He said, ‘I’ll never beat you, you’re too good.’

‘Are you tired?’ I said.

‘No.’ Max shook his head. ‘I like your hair.’

‘You like my hair?’

He nods and looks studiously at the screen, a slow smile forming over his face. ‘You’re pretty.’

I laugh out loud at how shy he’s being. ‘I’m pretty? Where’s the Max Walker who, like, makes out with everyone at Year Eleven parties? Aren’t you gonna, like, pounce on me?’

‘I don’t pounce on people!’

‘Yeah, right!’

‘I don’t! They pounce on me,’ he says and laughs, not arrogantly, but joyfully and hysterically, like he knows it sounds obnoxious and that’s why he’s said it, as a joke.

‘You know,’ I murmur, looking over at him, ‘people are wrong about you.’

‘Why? What do they say?’

‘Oh, you know. Just that . . . you’re full of yourself.’

‘What?’ Max looks really offended. ‘Who said that?’

‘Err.’ I shrug, thinking I shouldn’t have said that. Why am I so prickly with everyone? ‘Just people.’

‘But I get along with everyone I talk to. I go out of my way to be nice to people and to do favours,’ he mutters. ‘Who said that?’

‘Just . . . Emma and Laura.’

‘Oh,’ Max says sadly. ‘That’s not nice. Why do they think that?’

‘Um . . .’

‘Do I come across like that?’

‘Well . . . no.’

‘Then what? I don’t get it.’

I look at him. He looks that kind of too-upset you get when you’ve had too much to drink.

‘Look, honestly, um . . . fuck.’ I blush, embarrassed, which doesn’t suit me. ‘I just think it’s because you’re . . . oo-ookin’.’

‘What?’

‘Um.’ I clear my throat. ‘Good-looking.’

Max suddenly breaks into a massive grin and turns to me. ‘You think I’m good-looking?’

‘Well . . . I meant that Emma and Laura do.’

‘Oh,’ he says, sitting back against the end of the bed and flicking his controller. His character jumps over a fence and eats a mushroom. He looks confused. ‘Oh.’

I sigh. ‘Max?’

‘Yeah?’

Through gritted teeth I admit, ‘I think you’re good-looking too.’

Max looks over at me and does some mental arithmetic. ‘Ohh,’ he smiles with what seems like relief. ‘Cool. I thought when you said they did that maybe you didn’t.’

‘Don’t be crazy.’ I watch him and he turns to me slowly and meets my eyes and then he looks down shyly and goes a bit red. I decide the time is now and I throw my controller to the side, take his away, and pull him up. I can be very forthright when I want to be. He scrambles to a standing position and then I push him back onto the bed and he giggles.

This is when I stroke his hair and tell him he’s a lightweight.

This is where I suddenly feel that nervousness that you get when you go out with someone new, that fear of fucking it up, of opening yourself up to all that heartbreak again. I close my eyes and in my mind I run over that fear like a truck. I open my eyes again and look down at Max. I lean over him.

He grins at me and then his face gets all soft suddenly and vaguely nervous, like it’s been doing on and off all evening, and he notices my hand moving away from his face, and we both watch it brush over his T-shirt on his flat stomach. I feel hard muscle beneath my hand and shiver excitedly. My fingers finish up over the zip of his school trousers. My palm rests on the thin fabric and then presses meaningfully down, cupping him. The fabric moves and reveals the shape beneath. I feel it halfway between hard and soft. Max lets out a small breath and I rub him softly.

He lies on his back on my double bed, his arms up, his fingers curled. His left arm stretches upwards and holds the edge of the mattress. His eyes move from my hand to my eyes and he swallows loudly, and we watch each other’s face, then my hand again. His chest heaves as he breathes deeply and the T-shirt shows an outline of ribs, of a taut stomach, of slight pecs with a line down the middle of his chest. His eyes close momentarily and I watch his pink lips part and widen. He looks at me. His eyes are this amazing green. Like gold-green. His right hand moves to his forehead as my hand moves further down to the base of his thing and he frowns and turns towards me and props himself up on his right arm and his pink lips move into me and his left hand moves away from the mattress and touches my neck and Max Walker’s lips close around mine and gently kiss my top lip, then the bottom one, then both. He tastes sweeter than Toby. His lips feel softer. No stubble. His fingers hold my neck softly, pressing me to him, and his thumb tracks across my cheek. He flicks his tongue just a little into my mouth, then a little more, then we’re in a rhythm, passing kisses back and forth, his lips still soft and sweet and full. I press my tongue into his mouth and it opens, accepting, inviting, and as if he has no control over it. His forehead creases and he gasps slightly, before his hand on my neck moves to my hand on his pants, and knits our fingers together. He leans into me, our legs slip between each other, and he guides my hand to the pillow behind me, so I’m lying on my back. He does this seamlessly, without moving away from my lips. From above his blond hair strokes my skin. I put my left hand to his face and hold his cheek and the back of his hair. I feel his chest is hard against mine. I feel something else hard too. I make a move to touch it again with my right hand, but Max holds me gently but firmly to the pillow. I frown. I try to move my left hand, but he takes that too and holds it and smiles at me sweetly. I give in, quit trying to rub him off, and kiss him again.

U
hh. Where am I?

I wake up, feeling sluggish and nauseous.

Oh, with Sylvie. She looks so pretty. She smells so good.

Oh my god, it’s eight-thirty in the morning! We slept for, like, eight hours. I still feel so tired. I don’t want to move. She’s asleep on my arm. Her hair is gold in the sunlight and beautifully curly. The house is quiet.

I reach out for my phone with my free hand. Good – I text Mum last night and said I was at Carl’s and she said it was OK. Wow, I must have drunk quite a lot to not remember that.

I look down at the floor.

Oh. Just a few rum and Cokes. There’s plenty left of the rum. Wow. I feel sick. I’m gonna take my arm out . . . slowly . . . slowly. There. Do I feel really sick? Nah.

Wait.

Oh my god.

I roll slowly off the bed and hold my hand to my mouth. I shakily stand up, feeling dizzy and weird. I open her bedroom door and see a tiled floor beneath the door opposite. Relieved, I throw myself through the doorway, pull up the toilet seat and puke into it.

Uh oh. I retched the other morning too.

I turn and put the seat down, sit on the lid and press down the flush.

Uh oh.

I think for a minute. I was groggy and tired a second ago but now I’m wide awake. I do a calculation in my mind.

I lean over the sink and wash my mouth, then pad back quietly to Sylvie’s room. She’s just waking up.

‘I gotta go,’ I whisper.

‘Oh.’ She frowns. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Yeah. I just have to go. We’re . . . seeing my grandparents today.’

She sits up, blinking sleepily. ‘Really?’

I pause. ‘Well, no, not really. I feel sick.’ I pull my jumper on, pick up my school tie and blazer, and stuff them in my bag. ‘Sorry.’

‘Oh. I guess . . . too much to drink?’

‘Err, yeah,’ I say, swinging my bag onto my back.

‘OK.’ She looks uncertain.

I want to say more, but I’m in a hurry. I give her my best winning grin, holding my stomach, feeling like I might throw up again. I murmur, ‘Bye. Sorry,’ and I let myself out.

The pharmacy is on the way home. I could go to the supermarket, but there’d be loads of people there, people that know Dad and Mum. I might not even know them, but they’ll know who I am. The pharmacy is tiny and hardly anyone ever goes there. The sick feeling gone, my stomach nevertheless feels tender. I slip inside the door of the pharmacy, looking around to make sure no one is watching.