Page 107 of The Good Boys Club

He gave me that look again, chewing his thumbnail and sizing me up as though deciding on his next move. And then suddenly, he pushed himself to his feet and pulled himself up to the next branch, another five foot from the ground.

“Come on,” he said, before disappearing into the canopy.

I didn’t move. “No thank you. I’m safe here.” Sure, I worked out . . . sometimes, but I did not possess the same natural upper-body strength as Mash.

“Mash?” I called after I hadn’t heard anything from him for a couple of minutes. “Mash? Please don’t make me come to you. I’m already too high, and if I go any higher, I’ll fall.”

“Bangers,” he said, the sound coming from somewhere above me.

The evening sunlight poked through the gaps in the foliage. I shielded my eyes from the rays and tried to locate Mash, but before I’d had a real chance, he dropped in front of me. For five, ten seconds, he just hung there, the crotch of his shorts at eye level. Then he found his footholds, or whatever the fuck he was looking for, and lowered himself all the way to the branch, his entire body now flush with mine.

He laughed, took my face in both of his hands. “I won’t let you fall.” And then he kissed me.

When he stopped for air, he wouldn’t look at me. Instead, he stared at the ends of the branches, where they turned to twigs and sprouted leaves.

“I could be happy here,” he said.

Could.

Either Mash was saying yes, he would eventually be happy here, or he was saying his happiness was conditional.

“You wanna go for a swim?” he asked, seemingly out of nowhere. Though we weren’t far from the lake, so maybe it wasn’t from nowhere.

“Mash?” I felt like I needed to break through this strange wall he’d pulled up. He was grieving. Soon everything would be so different for him—no city, no city life, no girls on tap. Only the never-ending wilderness of Lykos. “Sure, a swim sounds great, but I can’t get down from this tree. So, I’m just gonna have to stay here forever.”

“Climb on my back like a baby koala bear, and I’ll carry you down,” he said in complete seriousness.

“Okay, no. Fuck no. I’ll just wait here until exhaustion or starvation drops my lifeless corpse to the ground like a fucking nut.”

“Suit yourself,” Mash said, effortlessly sliding down to the branch four feet below us. “But I was thinking I might like to try sucking your cock for the first time.”

Damn him.

“Fine, I’m coming.” I sighed, and very,verycarefully eased myself down to the lower branch, making sure my boots were secure before leaning all my weight onto it.

“You will be.”

Huff and Puff and Blow Your House Down

Present Day

Mash

Iclimbed down slowly, letting Cian see exactly where on each part of the oak I’d placed my hands and feet, but the moment my trainers touched the knotty roots at the base I was off, running towards the water.

It was hot for September, but I had just beenK-I-S-S-I-N-Ga boy in a tree, so things were extra hot. Not only that, but all throughout dinner I’d had to breathe in the scent of him, of us, and it was driving all my instincts—and my knots—wild.

Luckily, the lake was only a few hundred metres away, and I was only wearing a pair of shorts, socks, and trainers, which I pulled off as I ran and left wherever they landed.

The banks of the lake were sandy but short. There wasn’t a proper beach here. You’d wade out to about knee height, and with the next step the water would be over your head. One summer, when Clem and Mika were teenagers, they constructed a wooden jetty with their—at the time—boyfriends. The girls used it to moor boats against, or fish from. Zach and I used it for the most epic cannonballing championships this side of Borderlands.

Without sparing a look over my shoulder to see how far behind Cian was, I built up as much speed as my forty-inch legs could muster, and I threw myself bodily into the lake, tearing up the once-calm surface.

The chill of the September water snatched the air from my lungs whilst simultaneously punching me in the chest and the nuts. Fuck, it felt awful.

And incredible.

It wasn’t just a reminder that I was alive. It was being slapped in the face by a neon sign.

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