Big Man Page 13

  Max fidgeted, unsure of what to do with her—well, delight. Aunt Donna wasn’t often thrilled with him like this.

  “I can’t do it,” he mumbled.

  “Of course you can,” she said briskly. “I’ll tell you what, Max. I’ll do you a deal.”

  Max’s knuckles tingled where they’d bumped Lewis’s in the gym.

  “If you do your A-Levels, I will take you on during the holidays as an apprentice anyway. We’ll get you a decent certification—a nice practical skill to go with your book smarts and your boxing. And then it’s just a case of acing the recruitment process, because with those three things on your applications, they’ll want you.”

  A lump swelled in Max’s throat. He blinked at the suddenly fuzzy windscreen and had to swallow to stop the burning sensation spreading into real tears.

  “Deal,” he croaked, and Aunt Donna reached over to briefly squeeze his shoulder.

  “Tell you what,” she murmured. “Just this once—just today—I’ll let you skip the gym. How about it, eh? Want to pop into town and see if the model shop’s got anything new in?”

  Spend the evening sprawled out on the floor, piecing together that submarine he’d been eyeing up for a while? Instead of sweating, dying, and being shouted at by perpetually, annoyingly cheerful Lewis?

  Max’s thighs shifted, a sucking noise peeling them from the leather.

  He shook his head.

  “No. I made a deal with Lewis.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. He’s—he’s gonna give me a reference. For the Navy. If I grade.”

  Aunt Donna’s fingers tightened on the wheel.

  “So I gotta practice.”

  Finally, the white in her knuckles faded, and then she said, “I never met him, Max, but your grandpa’d be so proud of you right now.”

  It was the best thing Max had ever heard.

  THE GYM WAS dead.

  “All the schools are out, aren’t they?” Cal boomed cheerfully from behind the desk. “Nobody wants to be boxing when they can be celebrating!”

  Max smiled awkwardly, only half catching the sentence through Cal’s thick accent, and lumbered towards the changing rooms. There were boys again, half a dozen maybe, talking about a football match. They ignored Max. He gratefully ignored them in return.

  He’d brought a T-shirt this time. The tank top had somehow managed to give him a full-on nip slip the other day. And he had to tie the strings on his shorts. Staring down at himself in bewilderment, he wondered vaguely if Mum had stretched these in the wash too. There had to be something up with the machine.

  But—

  He turned his feet, examining them.

  He could see—

  Bone.

  He could see his ankle bones. Only just, but there they were. Poking out of each side, shy and hesitant. There was a divide. Foot. Ankle. Calf.

  “Jesus,” he mumbled.

  He stared in fascination at them as he padded out into the corridor and into the training room. He could see dense muscle under the flabby layer of waste.

  “What’s so amazing?”

  Cian was doing the splits on the mats and stared at Max’s feet too, although with a blank, uncomprehending expression. Max felt torn between showing off his feet and shamelessly staring at Cian’s, um, position.

  “I, uh. I lost my cankles.”

  “Your what?”

  “My cankles.”

  Cian raised his eyebrows. “What the hell’s a cankle?”

  “You know, calf-and-ankle. When you can’t see an ankle because your leg is too fat. I lost them.”

  “Uh—”

  “I can see my ankles,” Max clarified, sticking out a foot.

  “Max, look down occasionally, yeah? You’ve had, uh, visible ankles for weeks.”

  “I have?” Max asked, still staring at his feet.

  “Yeah.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, I am very sure. I’ve been eyeing you up for a while now, and your feet have been in my ribs and stomach about three times per week, so…”

  Max laughed. The sound—and the feeling—bubbled up in his chest like raw sunlight on the inside. And with it came this burst of…something.

  He was going to put his options form in. He was going to get an apprenticeship anyway. He was going to get a reference from Lewis.

  If—

  If.

  “Is there a class on?”

  “Yeah. Mixed beginners.”

  “Can we go in there with them?”

  Cian paused, dragged himself up out of the splits, and grinned.

  “If there’s room. How busy was the changing room?”

  “Six or seven?”

  “There’s room. Come on then, big man. Let’s show ’em what you got.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  MAX HATED THE beginners’ class.

  But not for the reasons he’d feared.

  Josh took beginners. Turned out Josh was a drill sergeant, or at least subscribed to a philosophy where if the students weren’t grey with eyes rolling into the backs of their heads, they weren’t training hard enough.

  So it hurt.

  And the others did laugh at him but not the way Max had imagined they would.

  He’d imagined sniggers the minute he walked in, but nobody even frowned. A couple of girls with bodies like Olympic athletes had even nodded and smiled at him. He’d imagined disgust when he started to sweat all over the mats, but it turned out he wasn’t the only one who sweated a lot. In fact, it turned out Cian was weirdly dry. Everyone was soaking. Towels went everywhere after the warm-up.

  And when the laughter did start—

  It was okay. Because it wasn’t him. It was—well, no, it was, but it wasn’t just him.

  They had to line up and do head kicks on the training dummy. And Max hadn’t done one before, so he not only missed, but overswung it and fell over. The ripple of laughter made his face burn. But then the girl after him did the exact same thing, and the same ripple swept through the room.

  And Max…relaxed.

  It wasn’t nasty. It was just…kind of funny. It did look funny. The way the other foot slid made the tumble look almost deliberate and artificial. Like slapstick comedy. And when another guy managed to turn a head kick into a sort of strange roundhouse and managed to somehow bring the dummy down on top of himself, Max found himself chuckling along with everybody else. Josh rolled his eyes, called them all children, and the guilty party extracted himself from the rubber with a sheepish grin and a “Well, at least I didn’t miss!” in his defence.

  But for all the relaxation and that fear of sticking out a mile and being laughed out of class, Max did not enjoy the experience. He hobbled out, feeling like he’d been battered. He hurt way worse than the private sessions with Cian. And he felt disgusting. Worse, the changing rooms weren’t empty. Somehow, he hadn’t quite realised that particular side effect of going to a proper class.

  And he needed a shower.

  He couldn’t not shower. He wanted to hang out with Cian after class. And Aunt Donna wasn’t picking him up unless he called, so—

  He sucked it up—and sucked in his gut at the same time—and stripped with shaking fingers.

  All the confidence had been sapped out of him, along with a billion gallons of sweat. He kept his eyes on the floor as he shuffled towards the showers. They had no curtains, no cubicles. Just four showerheads jutting out of the wall, the water cascading down into a sunken tiled area in the floor.

  He was two feet from another naked boy, and he could hardly breathe.

  Fatso Farrier. Oozing into three times the space another kid would.

  Roll up, roll up. See the fat freak in the flesh!

  He scrubbed quickly, cringing with every shift of his folds, hunching in on himself in some pathetic attempt to look smaller. His chubby toes flexed on the tiles, and he stared resolutely at his ankles and tried to grasp at the glowing feeling they’d given him earlier. It could be worse.
This could have been six weeks ago. Aunt Donna could have just signed him up for classes, not private classes. It could be worse.

  But since when had ‘it could be worse’ made anyone even feel better?

  He stayed under the cool spray until the last boy left the changing rooms and then fumbled into a towel and back into his clothes with a burning embarrassment in his face. Covering up the fat with fabric helped Max pull himself together, and he sat in his jeans and T-shirt, staring at his bare feet for another long minute.

  And then someone knocked on the door.

  “Uh—”

  “Max?”

  Cian. Max relaxed. “Yeah. Sorry. Just coming.”

  “You alone in there?”

  “Um, yeah—”

  The door cracked open, and Cian slipped inside. His hair was sticking up, darker with water, and he’d changed into some jeans tight enough he must have been poured into them. And, uh. Tight enough to show off…something else too.

  Max reddened, and Cian followed his gaze before smirking.

  “Always pack in tight clothes,” he said. “Helps people remember what I am.”

  “Uh—unfairly attractive?” Max tried.

  “Smooth,” Cian said. “You about ready to go?”

  “Uh, yeah, yeah, s—”

  The word was cut off with a squeak as Cian sat down in his lap.

  On it. Facing Max.

  Straddling him.

  And with Cian’s surprisingly heavy weight straddling his lap, and both of Cian’s pale hands braced on the wall by Max’s head, and Cian’s tongue in Max’s mouth, Max’s body sort of…stopped listening to his brain.

  It seemed only polite to steady Cian. Make sure he didn’t fall off or anything. And if a hand on his arse was a good way of doing that then…well. Manners. It was just being polite.

  And given they were dating, and Cian really was unfairly attractive, it would be quite rude of Max not to reciprocate to Cian kissing him like—well, like that.

  Air.

  On his ear. Whispering.

  “The look on your face when you got that head kick right was hot as fuck.” And then Cian’s hands weren’t on the wall anymore. “So call this positive reinforcement.”

  “Um,” Max squeaked. “Are you—are you going to do this every time I get a new move right?”

  “Maybe,” Cian breathed, and Max shivered as he felt Cian’s tongue on his ear. “You got a problem with that?”

  “Nope. No. Absolutely not. No problem. It’s all good. It’s goo—oh.”

  Just coming, indeed.

  “ONE DAY,” MAX said when they reached the bottom of the stairs outside, “you’re going to let me touch too, right?”

  Cian winced.

  “I mean, you know, I don’t have to, like, whatever you’re okay with. But it just feels kind of weird that you do that to me, but I’ve not—” Max was interrupted with a short, sharp kiss.

  “Shut it.”

  Max shut it.

  “At the risk of sounding like a romance novel—it’s not you, it’s me.”

  “You—don’t want me to?”

  A little shard of hurt buried itself in Max’s chest. It wasn’t exactly surprising—who would want Max’s fat hands all over them—but Cian didn’t seem to mind otherwise? If he didn’t want Max to touch him, why would he want to do what he’d just done upstairs?

  Cian blew upwards into his hair.

  “It really isn’t you. I want to and I don’t at the same time. And it’s nothing to do with it being you. It’s—me.”

  Max blinked.

  Then caught on. Ish. “Is this to do with your, um…” He fished for a word and eventually offered, “Layout?”

  “My layout?”

  “Yeah. Your, uh. Design.”

  Cian snorted and then began to snigger behind his hand.

  “Well, I don’t know the terms,” Max whined, and Cian shook his head.

  “No, sorry. That’s just—brilliant. Never heard that one before. My layout. I like that. And—yeah. It kind of is that.”

  Max fidgeted. “Well. Um.”

  He didn’t really know what to say. Somehow, he felt that pointing out he liked girls too would earn him the mother of all cold looks, and possibly a punch in the face.

  “You did something brave today.”

  What?

  “Uh. Thanks?”

  “Going to a class. You really didn’t want to go last we spoke. And I saw your face when you went to get changed. You hate changing rooms.”

  Max shrugged awkwardly. “Yeah, well…”

  “Don’t argue.”

  “Okay.”

  “Say, ‘yes, Cian, I did something brave today.’”

  Max rolled his eyes. “Fine. Yes, Cian. I did something brave today.”

  “Good.”

  Cian rocked forward on his toes. This kiss was everything the earlier kisses weren’t. Soft. Chaste. A breath of sensation against Max’s lips. A hum, gentle and reverent, rather than the electric buzz of excitement.

  Max’s heart expanded like a balloon in his chest, huge and overwhelming.

  “Tomorrow, I’ll do something brave for you.”

  Max swallowed.

  “Don’t care,” he mumbled and closed the gap again.

  He didn’t care about anything but this.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “MUM, CAN YOU give me a lift to Cian’s?”

  It was half seven in the morning. Max had been given instructions. Which were unfair, delivered mid-kiss as they had been, but Max was getting the impression that Cian wasn’t very fair sometimes.

  “What,” Mum said. “Right now?”

  She was in her dressing gown, eating toast and flicking through a bridal magazine.

  “Um. Please?”

  She sighed but finished her toast and brushed the crumbs off her hands. “All right, but I’m not getting out of the car.”

  It was brilliantly sunny already, the car uncomfortably hot, and Max wound the window down and rested his arm on the gap. He had a bag with his swimming trunks, towel, and a change of clothes, but he wasn’t sure what Cian really had in mind. Swimming in the bay was dirty, and there was no way Max was going to be laughed at in the leisure centre.

  “Might be back late,” he said anyway, and Mum shrugged.

  “Got your phone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Emergency money?”

  “Tenner in change.”

  “Okay then. Back by ten.”

  “Eleven?”

  “Ten.”

  He didn’t push further (she usually said eight, like he was a kid) and instead watched the town roll by out of the window. It was dry and dusty. It hadn’t rained in weeks. Max could only hope that if Cian’s exhibitionist streak got some air today, it would choose a shady spot.

  The cottages at the top of the hill were crowded by dying flowers, wilting in the heat. The front door to one of them was open, a ten-year-old Land Rover idling by its gate. At the sound of Mum’s tyres crunching on the dirt track, Mrs Williams came out of the open door, shielding her eyes against the sun. She looked even bigger than that day in the gym, wearing a sleeveless top and black leggings, and her beaming smile was blinding.

  “Cian! It’s Max!”

  Max smiled awkwardly back as he fumbled his way out of the car.

  “Ten!” Mum repeated loudly, and he huffed.

  “Okay, okay. Ten.” He patted his pocket to show her the outline of the phone and closed the door.

  “May as well hop straight in the car, sweetie,” Mrs Williams said. “Cian’s asked me to drop you both off on my way to Katie’s horse-riding lesson.”

  Cian chose that moment to emerge, in one of those clingy T-shirts and the favoured combats, and herding a little girl ahead of him. Katie, it turned out, was Cian’s six-year-old half sister. She looked cute, with a frizzy bun and huge dark eyes, but she was deafening, screeching in delight as they drove down the hill.

  “Um, don’t you
have to drive this way every day?” Max asked Cian.

  “Yep,” came the bored reply.

  “And she does this every time?”

  “Yep.”

  “And you still have hearing in both ears?”

  “Dumb luck.”

  Cian’s mum laughingly chided him for being mean, and Max decided to hell with being polite and put both hands over his ears as Katie squealed at going round a roundabout. Mrs Williams wasn’t even speeding. God, the kid ought to drive with Aunt Donna.

  Cian said nothing of his plans as they left the town behind and headed into the baking countryside. Swifts soared above the car, little black dots in an endless blue. Crickets were humming loud enough that they punctured the sound of the engine and Katie’s yelling. A kestrel, perched on a lonely fencepost, regarded them with cold calculation as they swept by.

  And beyond Cian, beyond the tinted glass of his window, Max could see the sea.

  Mrs Williams pulled over at a seemingly random point in the dusty road and told Cian that if he didn’t call to be picked up by four, she’d leave him for the fishes.

  “Sure, Mum. Thanks, though.”

  And then—

  They were alone.

  In a vast, flat plain of dry grass and barbed wire fences, with the sea an endless blue strip on the horizon.

  “So what are we doing here?” Max asked.

  Cian laughed and held out his hand.

  “Swimming.”

  “In grass?” Max asked doubtfully.

  “Uh, no, nobody needs grass blades in sensitive places.” Cian pointed at the sea. “In that, you moron. Now c’mon, don’t leave me hanging.”

  Max took his hand and, once again, trusted Cian.

  And it paid off.

  The fields ended abruptly in a cliff. Below it lay a bay, tiny and nestled into the coastline like it had been punched in—an almost complete circle bitten out of the landscape. The path was not as treacherous as it looked, but was narrow and uneven, and they had to go single file. The sun beat down on the rocks as they scrambled downwards, but Max felt an old thrill, a half-forgotten pleasure in the dust coating his fingers from the climb.

  How long had it been since cliffs and coastlines? He must have been a kid still. Bouncing down them with Uncle George while Grandpa grumpily insisted he was too old for such nonsense and would go and wait at the ice-cream parlour.