Page 113 of The Good Boys Club

Screw it, I was going all in. “James mentioned you might have a position available.”

“Ah,” she said. My stomach dropped at that one syllable. “Did he by any chance read the article inFur and Fortune?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, sure. Well, I do have a job going at the moment, but I’m not really sure it’s right for you,” she said.

I said nothing, tried to hide my disappointment.

“It’s head of women’s development.”

“Oh,” I said, realising my disappointment had been misplaced. “I’m assuming you want a woman for that role?”

“I created it specifically for Riley. Her passion is getting more women and girls into STEM careers, and that’s what we’re going to do. She’ll be managing a series of apprenticeships and training programs aimed at addressing the gender gap. Not just helping women to find jobs, but ensuring employers can facilitate the sustainability of women in their workplace. Like for instance, did you know most office thermostats are set to twenty-one, which is the optimum comfort temperature formen? Most women require it to be three degrees warmer. It’s little things like that which tend to disparage women that Riley will address.”

“Wow, okay, I didn’t know about the temperature thing.” A million thoughts raced through my mind, and I tried not to focus them on myself. I couldn’t begrudge Riley’s mission, even if it meant staying at Howl with the new CEOs.

“But that’s not to say there’s nothing we can do for you at Byte Tech. Why don’t we take these decorations over to the marquee and chat about what it is you do at Howl and how we might utilise your skills?”

“Thank you,” I said, nodding vigorously and picking up the larger of the two boxes. Not that I was being chivalrous or gentlemanly or anything like that, I just needed Dylan to see I was willing to do more than my share to help out.

We walked from the house to the marquee. Dylan let me chat uninterrupted about what I did at Howl, how my ideas and execution took it from a grassroots company to the most profitable canine dating app around, and how I loved my job but no longer felt challenged.

Inside the tent, the guys, who were supposed to be stacking up the bounty into a pleasing autumnal display, were busy playing who could lift the largest pumpkin by themselves. Unsurprisingly, it appeared Mash was winning. He spotted Dylan and me walking in.

“Hey, sexy,” he said, and I was met with another ridiculous pang of misplaced jealousy. He’d been talking to me, of course he’d been talking to me. Not Dylan.

Mash placed his elephantine fruit on the ground, jogged over to me, and planted an achingly soft kiss against my lips.

The lines between performance and what we did in private with each other had become so blurred I didn’t know if this kisswas real. Was Mash putting on a show, or did he actually have the urgency to feel my lips against his?

He took the box from my hands and scooted it onto a nearby table. “Right, I’m going to the cinema now, so I’ll see you bunch of pricks later,” he said to no one in particular. “Not you, Dee, you’re not a prick, you’re a diva and a goddess.” He slung an arm over my shoulder and guided me out of the marquee entrance.

“You’re not going to help with the pumpkin stack?” Felix whined.

“See this crown?” Mash pointed to his head. “This is my get out of gaol free card. No worky on my birthday, as the famous rhyme goes.”

“What famous rhyme?” Felix asked, but Mash was already marching me out of there.

Eight and a half hours we were in that movie theatre. Mash munched his way through four hot dogs, two bags of Peanut Goobers, a caravan-sized box of popcorn, and practically a bathtub’s worth of frozen soda. The armrests between the seats folded upwards, so I spent most of the time with Mash’s arm over my shoulder, or his head in my lap, or my feet in his. Occasionally I caught him looking at me instead of watching the screen, but I was used to that. He’d seen them a thousand times before, and would often observe my reactions to his favourite parts. I did the same to him. I knew when to expect smiles and sometimes tears, especially at the love declarations, but this time when the love confessions happened, Mash stared steadfastly forward, his face impassive, his lip pulled between his teeth as though his mind were elsewhere.

As the credits rolled on the final instalment of theMoonlighttrilogy, Mash tugged on my arm until we fell through the fire escape.

We crashed through the doors, the darkness and the chill of the September evening taking us by complete surprise. I blinkedin my surroundings. The waxing gibbous moon and one very flickery exit sign illuminated the exterior facade of the cinema and a couple of dumpsters. To the other side of us, the never-ending Lykos forests stretched into nothing but eerie shadows.

“I lost my virginity here,” Mash said. Then without warning, he crowded me against the wall, pinned my back to the brick, and kissed the exposed skin at my collar. He dropped to his knees and fiddled with my belt until he had my knot in his palm and my cock in his mouth.

“It’s your birthday. This should be the other way around.”

But Mash didn’t respond, at least not with words.

I knew that each of these moments was precious. That there was only a finite number of times Mash and I could be intimate, and I needed to savour every single one of them.

He didn’t release me, and I made no effort to stop him. Not until I was coming down his throat, and Mash was coming all over the steel-toe caps of my boots.

“Hey, happy birthday,” Mash said at the stroke of midnight, removing the crown from his head and drunkenly slapping it onto mine.

We were sitting on deck chairs in the garden area next to his house with his entire pack and a few random taggers-on, beersin one hand, blunts in the other, fire crackling in the pit. At one point, we’d had marshmallows on sticks, but the kids had polished off the bag over an hour ago.

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