Big Man Read online

  But the thumping in his chest and the dizzying sense of euphoria that was starting to rub out the pain was unmistakeably that.

  Slowly, he shuffled towards the doors. He’d taken so long to drag himself out of the training room that the shower bank was completely free, and by the time he’d limped out again, the other boys had long gone. Except for one.

  Cian was sitting on the bench, playing with Max’s phone.

  “What are you—”

  “Levelling you up on Candy Crush,” Cian drawled and then grinned up at him. “Just drip-dry there for us, yeah?”

  Max scowled.

  “I nearly died in there.”

  “Sure.”

  “I could have had a heart attack.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I could have drowned in my own sweat.”

  “If you weren’t going to drown yourself in that shower, I doubt the sweat would have helped.” Cian beamed. “So. Josh might have mentioned something about an armband.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You passed, then?”

  “Uh. Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”

  “You guess?”

  “I don’t pass stuff, okay? It’s…weird.”

  “Why?”

  Max coughed a laugh. “Fatso Farrier always fails.”

  And yet it didn’t sting. It sounded…almost like a joke. Almost funny. Because of course he didn’t always fail. He could see his feet, and he was drip-drying in front of his boyfriend. He’d passed a grading. He was—

  “Funny,” Cian said, smirking. “Fatso Farrier looks like he’s doing pretty okay from where I’m sitting.”

  Max pulled a face. Cian just pulled one right back and bit his lip.

  “Is your stepmum picking you up?”

  “Not ’til I text her.”

  “How about you don’t text her.”

  Max blinked.

  “You deserve a reward,” Cian said and stood up. Began to shrug out of his jacket. “And I know you’ve wanted a look. So—one time only deal. You can have thirty seconds. Thirty seconds to do whatever you want.” The T-shirt came off. “Then they go away, and you’ll have to find some way of earning another thirty seconds.”

  Max’s lungs closed up for a totally different reason.

  The bra hit the floor.

  “Oh,” Max said.

  Um. Well. Shape. And shadow. Only—yeah, well, no shadows under the bright glare of the halogen lights. They were just—there. All of a sudden. Small and soft, and—

  Max’s palms itched. Both to touch, and with the memory of the one and only time he’d been allowed to touch them before. Thirty seconds. He could touch in thirty seconds. Feel them again. Remember.

  But then he curled his hands into fists.

  No way could he not look, but—Cian didn’t like them. Didn’t like Max seeing them or touching them. This was—this was, like, the biggest gift Cian could give. Right up there with that Saturday morning in the sea. This was Cian being brave.

  Because Max had been brave and done the grading.

  So Max squeezed his fists until he felt the knuckles aching and stared as though he could burn the image of them into the backs of his eyeballs.

  Then Cian stooped and picked up the bra.

  Covered them up.

  Shrugged back into his T-shirt.

  His face was a little pink, and Max swallowed thickly.

  “Thank you,” he mumbled.

  “You were doing your stare again.”

  “What stare?”

  “The one where it’s like you want to bite me.”

  Max coughed. “Might have occurred to me.”

  Cian laughed and his shoulders eased. The jacket was shrugged back on without a trace of unhappiness.

  “It’s nice,” he said quietly. “Does that make it weird? That I want you to look at me like that, even though I hate why?”

  “Um, I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Max said, “but I stare at your legs like that too, and those aren’t exactly girly.”

  The next laugh was higher. Sweeter.

  Better, and Max could taste it when Cian kissed him. Taste mirth and relief.

  “Thanks,” he whispered against Cian’s lips and then shoved.

  “Hey!”

  “I’m too tired for you!”

  “Oh whatever,” Cian mocked. “Come on. Let’s go and get your armband. Too tired to walk up to the field?”

  “Yes,” Max said emphatically.

  No, said his body.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  IT WAS OVER.

  That had been Lewis’s deal in the end. Max had passed the grading. So he didn’t have to go anymore.

  So why, the following evening, did he find himself staring at the ceiling, at his ships racing across the white plaster sky, and simply counting the breaths in his lungs?

  He felt—twitchy.

  He’d been revising all day—the last of his exams were coming up over the next fortnight, and then he’d be free—and usually after dinner, Aunt Donna would give him that look, and he’d grumble all the way into the van and all the way to the gym.

  But tonight, he’d just shuffled back up to his room, and she’d stayed downstairs to argue seating plans with Mum.

  So Max found himself staring at the ceiling and counting his breaths.

  He felt—unwell, almost. The steak and kidney pie was sitting heavy in his gut. It felt like it was stretching him. His fingers were restless, twitching on the sheets in time to soundless music, and every rake of air—in, out, in again—too sharp and too painful inside his chest.

  He wanted to move.

  It was a weird feeling, and Max didn’t know what to do with it. He was done boxing. He didn’t have to go and get smacked around anymore. And even if he wanted to go back—which he didn’t—Aunt Donna wasn’t going to keep paying for the private lessons. He’d have to go into the main class. With all the others.

  It wouldn’t just be him and Cian anymore, which had been the only good thing about it, so why the hell was he wondering what time the bus out to the industrial estate was?

  “Stop it,” he told himself. “You can have your life back now.”

  No more training. No more sweating to death. No more being tortured by Lewis—torture sanctioned by his own stepmother-to-be. None of it. He was free. He could eat what he wanted, do what he wanted, go where he wanted.

  So he was lying on his bed. Drumming the mattress with his fingers. And staring at his ships like they had personally insulted him.

  Christ, what was the matter with him?

  He didn’t want to watch a film. He couldn’t text Cian, because Cian would be training. More than ever now—he had his instructor’s course coming up. Mum and Aunt Donna were brewing up a storm downstairs, so offering to help would probably only get him yelled at. And just staring at the ceiling was making Max feel antsy—as though he was jumping out of his own skin.

  He had to move.

  Slowly, he heaved himself off the bed. Staring down at his bare feet, he eyed the lines of muscle in his calves. His ankles. The shadows of his shins. Where had everything gone?

  The mirror didn’t help find it. His thighs were like tree trunks—massive, but hard. His stomach was still a roll of fat shoving out his shirt like a pregnancy, but his shoulders were bursting out of the sleeves for an entirely different reason. The neckline gaped open, sagging and misshapen. His chin—well, there was a chin. Not five of them. And his arms, when he experimentally curled his hands into pudgy fists, rippled and hardened into ropes. His shirt strained.

  Fatso Farrier stared into the mirror, and a big man stared right back.

  In more than one sense. His sweatpants weren’t covering his ankles anymore. The hem of his T-shirt didn’t quite touch the waistband.

  By the time school started again, he’d be back to himself. Back to the lardy lad in Year Twelve. Back to double packets of digestives and six-packs of Pepsi. This humming in his veins, this weird energy he couldn’t sha
ke, would be gone.

  And Max frowned.

  He didn’t want Aunt Donna to win, but…he didn’t want to go back either.

  He didn’t want several days of torture in the gym a week, but—

  But Fatso Farrier hadn’t put in his options form. Fatso Farrier hadn’t graded yesterday. Fatso Farrier didn’t have a reference from his boxing instructor for the Navy. Max had.

  Fatso Farrier got pissed on by Tom Fallowfield in the boys’ toilets. Max didn’t.

  And Max didn’t want to be Fatso Farrier anymore.

  Slowly, Max turned away from the mirror—and reached for his sports bag.

  IT WAS COOL. There was a fine, misty rain that had rolled in off the sea. Max’s T-shirt was sticking to him, and his calves were howling in pain by the time he stopped running.

  And he stopped at the bottom of the hill.

  He’d been running for an hour, but Cian wouldn’t be home. There was nobody Max wanted to see at the cottages on their tiny, darkened lane.

  But the hill stretched out above him. Like a challenge. Like a dare.

  He’d never run it. Limped it. Staggered it. Even walked it, once or twice. But never run.

  And there was that humming in his veins. He’d been running for an hour, but he was still restless. If he ran up the hill—

  Max raked a deep breath past aching ribs and lumbered forward. One wet trainer in front of the other. His calves stretched uncomfortably. His shoulders hunched up, before he forced them down. Run straight. Run tall. Lewis had taught him that. Scrunching up hurt, was inefficient, made it worse. Run tall.

  Big men especially should always run tall.

  The first ten yards hurt. The next ten were worse. The third gave him a stitch. The fourth defeated the run and turned into a wildly veering jog. His thighs ached. His shins felt like they were breaking. All Max could do was gasp—in, in, in, in—as his shoes slid and squeaked against the damp, dirty track.

  As he rose.

  Rose out of the town and up the hill.

  It was exposed, where the old road gave up the ghost and turned into nothing more than a muddy track. The wind caught at his hair and tugged the damp curls into rough spikes at the back of his neck. The misty rain was full now. Drops slithered down his back—sweat or seawater, he couldn’t tell. There was salt in the air. A heavy oppression had lifted.

  And the track was levelling. The lights from the cottages were like tiny suns in the blackness of space.

  Max gulped at thin air and turned around.

  Below him, the town glittered. Beyond it, the sea. He could see flashes of lightning on the horizon, far away and unfurling above the ocean.

  He breathed.

  He’d run to the top of the hill—and still, still, there was something raw and powerful in his veins. Something sweet in the aching in his ribs and legs. Something big.

  Max curled up his fists next to his chest and peered downwards. Downhill was easy. It would be downhill all the way home from here. Another forty minutes of running if he ran properly. If he put the effort in.

  He could never have done this sixteen weeks ago.

  “Okay,” he gasped. Squeezed his fists tighter. Relaxed his shoulders.

  And ran.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  HIS PHONE BEEPED the minute Max switched it back on.

  You, me, back row, bad movie. Y/Y?

  He grinned.

  He hadn’t seen Cian since grading. He hadn’t been back to the gym either. And apart from a couple of texts over the weekend, which were mostly Cian whining about babysitting duty and Max whining about wedding planning, there hadn’t been anything going on.

  Max missed him. Both simply missed him—the company, the fun, that little thrill that someone like Cian wanted to be with someone like Max—but also, in a far more basic and primal way, he missed the feel of Cian’s mouth.

  Yes, he replied. Just leaving my exam. Where are you?

  At home, came the swift reply. Let me get an ETA.

  There was a brief pause, while Max shoved his stuff in his bag and followed the crowd of chattering students out of the building and across the grass towards the side entrance. Then—

  Mum says I have to get the bus because she’s a witch.

  Your mum is amazing.

  WITCH. See you in about 20?

  I’ll go get tickets, Max offered and was firmly told that musicals would see him single again. Grinning, he pocketed the phone. What did Cian care if he picked some shitty musical? They wouldn’t be watching it anyway.

  The heatwave had broken over the weekend, but it was coming back with a vengeance. Town stank. Everyone was crowded into the shadowy, narrow side streets, desperate for a reprieve from the sun, and so Max found himself sticking to shop windows and doorways and creeping along in the little shade left behind. Seagulls strutted down the middle of the high street, lording it over their new kingdom.

  Bad movie and then maybe go home. Mum was out with her girlfriends tonight, and Aunt Donna always took the excuse to turn up the TV really loud and watch Formula One or something else with lots of explosions and crashes. She’d not bother them if Max and Cian just sort of…stole away upstairs. Back row in the cinema always got Cian in a sort of handsy mood, Max had learned, and Max felt that their run of luck in not getting caught at it in public was going to run out sooner or later. And—

  “Oi, Fatso!”

  He stopped.

  Despite the heat, a prickle of cold shot up his spine.

  New shadows formed around him. Boots wandered into his view of the dry, hot pavement. Timberlands.

  Max balled his hands into fists. Really? Really? He—he had plans. Good plans. He’d done well on his paper. He was going to see a bad film with his boyfriend. Why did he have to run into them?

  “Come on, Fatso.” An elbow dug into his side. “Come with us.”

  “Where?” Max asked.

  “Just come on.”

  Jazz’s voice was deceptively calm. Almost friendly. Nobody would bat an eyelash. Which, Max suspected, was rather the point.

  “Where?” he repeated.

  “Don’t be difficult, Farrier. Come on.”

  A hand closed around his elbow, and he jerked it free.

  “No need for that.”

  “What do you want?” he persisted.

  “We want to talk. So come on. Somewhere quieter.”

  Max eyed the empty street. The shoppers were packed into air-conditioned shops. The seagulls eyed the group of them beadily, saw no sandwiches, and kept on strutting.

  “It’s quiet here.”

  “Move.”

  Max stared at the boots and then lifted his eyes. Tom was blank-faced. Chewing gum. Both hands in jacket pockets. A jacket? Why the hell was he wearing a jacket?

  Max’s gut tightened. There was something in those pockets.

  “Move.”

  He’d snitched. Told Mr Fraser that Fallowfield was in the toilets. And hadn’t Jazz said it once? Snitches get stitches. That’s what Jazz had said. Snitches get stitches.

  He knew what was in Tom Fallowfield’s pockets.

  “You deaf, Farrier? The fat clogging up your ears?”

  Run tall.

  Max straightened his back. Scowled. Shook off the hand grasping at his elbow and turned to keep Jazz in his eyeline. Lewis was always going on about that. Never let the enemy out of your sight.

  “I heard you,” he said, “but I’m going somewhere. Can you let me pass, please?”

  It was possibly the most he’d ever said to Jazz Coles in his life, and everything inside him felt cold and sick at daring to say it at all. He shouldn’t have told. This wouldn’t be happening if he hadn’t told.

  “No. We want a word. You’re being rude again. You remember what happened last time you were rude?”

  His phone beeped, and quicker than Max could move, Aidan’s fingers were in his pocket, and the bright screen was swept free.

  “Where’s he going?” Jazz asked.
>
  Aidan smirked. “It’s his bitch girlfriend.”

  “He’s not a girl,” Max said automatically, and Jazz sneered.

  “No, she wants to be a boy. You said. We’re not deaf. That’s pretty rude too, you know. Blowing us off for some freak bitch. Is that how bad a fuck you are, Farrier? If you did her proper, she’d not think she was a boy.”

  Max’s chest tightened, and he reached for the phone. “Give it here.”

  “No,” Jazz said, taking it from Aidan and twirling it lightly in one hand. “You won’t need it. You can have it back when we’re done talking. Now come on.”

  “Give it back.”

  “You’re forgetting your manners.”

  Jazz’s voice was getting colder. And Tom Fallowfield was getting closer. He was right up at Max’s side now. Hands still in his pockets. Shoved deep. Like he was holding something.

  And Max’s phone started to ring.

  “Should I answer it?” Jazz asked, holding it out between them. Cian’s picture—that wide, toothy grin and hair burned a bright white by the sun—beamed up at them all. “Tell you what. This won’t take long. Ten minutes, just the four of us. Then you can call her back.”

  “Him.”

  “Whatever.”

  Max saw it.

  The opening.

  Jazz shrugged when he said whatever. His hand loosened on the phone.

  And Max struck.

  Turned his hips into it. Leg up. Out. His shin smashed into Jazz’s side like an axe. He dropped his guard, his right hand shooting out to catch the phone. Twisted back, elbow up. It snagged Tom in the temple. The crunch ricocheted up Max’s arm. The turn dragged Tom sideways—and then the pavement was clear.

  And Max ran.

  The phone was still ringing in his sweaty fingers. His shoes clapped on the dry stone as he bolted. He heard shouting. His heart hammered in his chest, punching at his ribs. Run-run-run-run-run, it said.

  And he did.

  Ignorant of the heat. Ignorant of the effort. He simply ran. Shot through a crowded side street and then doubled back along another. Lose them. Be invisible. Shrink into the crowd, and use them. Snitches didn’t get stitches in a crowd.

  And only when the cinema came into view did he stop running.

  Only when the cool darkness of the foyer closed around him did he stop glancing over his shoulder.