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“You what.”

  “You’re called Jeremy, and you like jazz. And you’re short. I don’t know why I ever took shit from you.”

  It was all just—pouring out. Running out of him like blood. It was Donna and Cian and Lewis, even Grandpa, everyone who’d ever told him he wasn’t just a useless fat lump. It was Mr Ryhill and Mrs Pellow and Mr Fraser. Everyone who told him he could be someone.

  It was Max. And it was all in there. It had all sunk in.

  And now he was wringing it out.

  “You’re going to apologise for that.”

  “No, I’m not. Now back off, or—”

  Tom moved.

  He was quick—but Max was quicker. He lashed out, his open palm smashing Tom’s arm away. Opening Tom’s chest for attack.

  He could have kicked him. Could punch him. Could give a warning.

  But Max was running late to see Cian. And this wasn’t just Tom anymore. It was every girl who’d ever ridiculed him in public. It was every boy who’d ever shoved him into lockers and walls. It was every bully at every school he’d ever been to.

  It was everyone who’d ever called him Fatso Farrier.

  Max’s arm went up. Forearm to ear. Elbow, a jut of bone into the sky. His shoulder rolled.

  And down.

  Bone on bone. A crunch. A flash of red. Max fell back, feet bouncing under him. Balanced. Poised. Perfect. Tom crumpled to the pavement, his hands groping blindly at the flagstones as the blood burst out of his forehead and splattered down his face.

  For the second time that summer.

  And when Jazz stumbled forwards with a strangled yelp, Max—caught him.

  This wasn’t boxing.

  This wasn’t Thai boxing either.

  This was his fat fingers firm around a skinny throat. A dangerous hold.

  Jazz stilled, and Max tightened his grip.

  Until he could feel a rabbit-fast pulse under his thumb. Until he could feel the air whistling in Jazz’s throat.

  “Leave it,” he said and lifted.

  God, he was tall. Jazz’s feet left the ground. He whimpered. Wriggled.

  And Max’s lip curled.

  Jazz Coles wasn’t tough. He was some skinny idiot with a bad band T-shirt. He had snot bubbling out the end of his nose. He was called Jeremy.

  Max dropped him. Kicked roughly at his thigh, and stooped down.

  “If you come near me again, I’ll squeeze tighter next time. Got it?”

  Jazz wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve.

  “Got it?” Max repeated.

  His heart was pounding in his chest. And it wasn’t fear anymore.

  “Got it?”

  The answer—the yes—was meek. Feeble. And for the first time, Max heard himself the way Jazz had always heard him. Pathetic. Weak.

  That was what he had sounded like.

  “Yes, what?”

  Jazz’s eyes came up. They were venomous—but there was something else there too. Something else Max recognised from his own reflection for so many years.

  Fear.

  “Yes, F—”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “Max.”

  Max straightened up. Drew himself to his full height. Five feet eleven inches. Six foot when he stood properly.

  And…walked away.

  Shifted the bag higher on his shoulder and walked away. Walked down the road. Around the corner. Down the slope, and around another.

  Cian was lounging in the bus stop, legs crossed at the ankles. Max stepped over them and bent down to kiss him. It was lopsided with his own smile, and Cian laughed at him.

  “What’s gotten into you?”

  “Nothing,” Max said. “Budge up.”

  “No room for you, big man.”

  “Then move, then.”

  Cian moved, only to sit on him.

  And there, hands on Cian’s arse—balance, manners, the usual—and waiting for the bus to take them up to boxing, a dull throbbing in his elbow and a sense of freedom in his blood, Max felt—

  Fine.

  Fatso Farrier was just fine.

  Epilogue

  MAX RIPPED OFF the bow tie with enormous relief.

  The ceremony was over. The photographs had been taken. The confetti had been thrown—everywhere. He grinned and plucked some of the paper out of Cian’s hair.

  “Not quite the bouquet,” Cian quipped, “but it’ll do.”

  “Oh no,” Max said. “I’m never getting married.”

  The last week had been hell. He’d been half convinced Mum would call the whole thing off only last night.

  And now here he was, standing in the hotel gardens, watching his mum trying to teach his Uncle George how to waltz. They were both bright white—her in her wedding dress, him in his captain’s uniform—and looked, thanks to the Farrier genes of pathetic dancing skills, a right sight.

  “I dunno,” Cian said. “You’d look good in a wedding dress.”

  “I look even better out of it.”

  “Now that is true. Dance with me?”

  Max scowled.

  “Please?”

  “Urgh, I hate dancing.”

  “Boxing’s dancing.”

  “A better type of dancing.”

  “Tell you what,” Cian said, sidling up close. “If you dance with me—just one dance—then I’ll give you another thirty seconds look in your hotel room later?”

  Max bit his lip and glanced unwillingly down. Cian was binding. No way his chest would look flat in a suit shirt otherwise.

  “No, thanks,” he said eventually.

  “No?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you get uncomfortable.”

  “So—”

  “And I want you to be relaxed. For. Um. Other stuff.”

  A slow smile spread across Cian’s face.

  “Are you asking me to spend the night in your hotel room with you?”

  “Um. Yes?”

  “One dance and I will.”

  Max considered it. Just one dance. Okay, it would be embarrassing as hell—but a whole night in a hotel room on their own? There was no way Cian wouldn’t want to do something, considering how much he wanted to do things in much more public places than hotel rooms.

  “Yeah, okay. But—”

  “Max? A word?”

  Aunt Donna’s voice granted a reprieve—although he was sure it was temporary, judging by the foul look Cian gave him when Max squirmed out of his grip. Aunt Donna had changed out of her tuxedo, albeit into a more standard suit. Max was immediately jealous.

  “Why do you get to change? Mum threatened to kill me if I did.”

  “My wedding, fifty per cent my rules,” she said tartly and jerked her head at the glass doors. “Come on. Where that loudmouth uncle of yours won’t hear, eh?”

  They stepped out into the gardens. Fairy lights were strung up in all the trees and the sea glittered below a full moon, calm and carefree. There was a warm breeze. It was nearly October—everything would be cold and grim soon—but the weather had held off for just that one evening.

  Max leaned his arms on the railings of the little decked area and waited.

  He didn’t expect to hear, “It’s not my place to be, Max, but I’m proud of you.”

  He frowned at the sea.

  “Sorry?”

  “The way you’ve turned everything around this last summer. You’re growing up. And I’m proud of you for doing it.”

  “You…are?”

  “Yes. It took a lot of guts and a lot of effort. And I’m proud.”

  Max turned it over in his head.

  “What do you mean, it’s not your place?”

  “I’m hardly your mother, Max.”

  Max opened his mouth. No. She wasn’t. But she’d been around for years. She’d bought him that birthday yachting experience. She let him hang up his ships. And she’d totally bullied him into boxing, just like Mum totally bullied him into wearing this dumb tuxedo and walking her
down the aisle.

  “You’re good as,” he said finally.

  Aunt Donna said nothing.

  “I mean it,” he told the shimmering water. A ship was sailing across it, bound for Portsmouth, by the size of her. “You—you make Mum happy. She wasn’t happy before you. That’s why I didn’t mind you turning up, or us moving into your house. She was happy. And—so’m I. And if you’d not pushed, I’d still be—”

  He stopped.

  Beside him, reed thin, Aunt Donna chuckled.

  “Fatso Farrier.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thank you.”

  Her voice was little more than a croak. And Max’s awkward distance crumbled. He turned on her and hugged her. For the first time, she wasn’t his sharp, slightly scary Aunt Donna. She was this…this blue-haired—just to annoy Mum—dungarees-wearing sparky. She was his mum’s wife. His stepmum.

  She was Donna. Just Donna.

  She hugged him back, maybe the first time they’d ever done this, and then he let go and stepped back.

  “Cian wants me to dance.”

  “Uh-oh. Should I clear the space?”

  “Let ’em fend for themselves,” he said and smiled. “And, you know. You’re all right, Donna.”

  By the look on her face, she heard the word he didn’t say.

  And there was nothing more to say. Max stepped back into the conference hall, now decked out like a bad disco, without a shred of anything but determination. Get that stupid dance out of the way. And then—given it was already dark out, and Mum and Uncle George were obviously drunk—make a start on that hotel-room deal.

  He found Cian dancing with one of Max’s cousins and stole him back. He expected a quick sort of pretend-to-dance thing like at school dances, but instead, Cian threw his arms around Max’s neck and hung on for dear life, grinning at him from only inches away.

  “Oh,” Max said.

  “We only have to turn in a circle, and it’s dancing.”

  “But this isn’t a slow song?”

  “I’m sorry,” Cian said, “but do you see me giving a damn?”

  “I see you being a dick.”

  “I see you not caring.”

  “It’s my mum’s wedding—you shouldn’t be a dick at my mum’s wedding.”

  “Of course I should. You like me best when I’m a d—”

  Max applied the only known way to shut Cian up.

  He kissed him.

  It was a hard grip. A demand. And then it softened as Cian’s fingers crept up to play in Max’s hair. Someone whistled, and Max didn’t care. He could feel—Cian. The hard planes of the binder. The soft sweep of his lower back. The taste of him, indescribable and uniquely his. Could feel the memory of salt, sea, and sun on his lips where they touched Max’s.

  He could taste summer.

  Something landed on his head, and Cian broke away with a laugh.

  “A sailor already!” Uncle George cheered as Max adjusted the captain’s hat that had been dropped over his hair. “Need to be getting a lad in every port, though, Max!”

  Max grinned, pushing the hat up.

  “Well, yeah,” he said. “Gonna be in the Navy, see.”

  “You can have me in every port,” Cian bargained, coming back and stealing the hat for himself. It was far too large, and he looked so gleefully ridiculous Max had to kiss him again.

  “Deal,” Max whispered, right up against his mouth, and felt Cian smile.

  “I do like a man in uniform,” Cian murmured and rubbed his nose against Max’s. “Captain Farrier. Has a nice ring to it.”

  Yeah.

  It kind of did, didn’t it?

  About the Author

  Matthew J. Metzger is an ace, trans author posing as a functional human being in the wilds of Yorkshire, England. Although mainly a writer of contemporary, working-class romance, he also strays into fantasy when the mood strikes. Whatever the genre, the focus is inevitably on queer characters and their relationships, be they familial, platonic, sexual, or romantic.

  When not crunching numbers at his day job, or writing books by night, Matthew can be found tweeting from the gym, being used as a pillow by his cat, or trying to keep his website in some semblance of order.

  Email: [email protected]

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/mattjmetzger

  Twitter: @MatthewJMetzger

  Website: www.matthewjmetzger.com

  Other books by this author

  Walking on Water

  Life Underwater (coming October 2018)

  Bump (coming November 2018)

  Coming Soon from Matthew J. Metzger

  Life Underwater

  Ashraf never thought he could fall in love. So when he falls hard and fast for marine biologist Jamie Singer, it’s a shock to the system—in more ways than one.

  Even if he can wrap his head around what love is and how relationships work, Ashraf’s not sure this is viable. He’s hydrophobic. And Jamie’s entire world revolves around the sea. What’s the point of trying if so much of Jamie’s life is inaccessible to Ashraf?

  But Ashraf has vastly underestimated the pull of loving Jamie. For the first time, he wants to face the water, rather than flee from it. He has underestimated the power of love in making people brave, stupid, or a little bit of both.

  Maybe it’s time to take a leap—and sink or swim.

  Bump

  David’s pregnant.

  He’s always wanted to have children, and being a stepfather for the past two years has been a great adventure. There’d even been a plan to start looking into adoption and turn their family of three into four.

  But now there’s a bump, and David doesn’t know what to do. He’s spent years escaping the grip of his own body and burying the past—but there’s no way he can hide from his history if he lets the bump get any bigger. It’s not just his baby; it’s also his breakdown.

  He doesn’t know if he can do this.

  Also Available from NineStar Press

  Connect with NineStar Press

  www.ninestarpress.com

  www.facebook.com/ninestarpress

  www.facebook.com/groups/NineStarNiche

  www.twitter.com/ninestarpress

  www.tumblr.com/blog/ninestarpress

  Table of Contents

  A NineStar Press Publication

  Big Man

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Coming Soon from Matthew J. Metzger

  Also Available from NineStar Press

 

 

 
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