Page 28 of The Good Boys Club

Personally, I wasn’t a fan of rom coms. They all felt a little too convenient to me. Not to mention very straight. Super-hot white woman falls in love with super-hot white guy who doesn’t think he has the capability to love her back, but guess what, it’s raining and they’re outside in the rain and they’re all wet and her top is see through and her nipples could gouge out eyes and now he does love her. Yay.

But for some bizarre reason, they made Mash happy, and that in itself made me happy.

We had fallen into a routine. Sunday afternoons we’d watch a movie together, and then afterwards Mash would cram in any last-minute coursework that needed doing for Monday morning while I cooked our tea. I did ninety-nine percent of the cooking because I loved it, and I loved the homely feeling I got from watching Mash sated at my hands.

During the rest of the week, we’d go to uni. Though we were technically in the same department, our lectures and workshops were in separate buildings, and we hardly saw each other. Mash took a job working behind the bar at Abysm. He only did two or three nights a week. The pay was shit, but what he took home intips more than made up for it. He’d come through the door as the sun was rising and empty his pockets onto the dining table. It wasn’t unusual to see twenties or even fifties stuffed in with the smaller notes.

I didn’t work. Didn’t need to. Between Mash’s tip jar and my parents’ allowance, it more than covered everything two single nineteen-year-olds could want.

We ate well. We bought expensive meat and fish and coffee and wine. We went to the cinema and concerts and festivals and occasionally nice restaurants. Mash bought a suit. It had to be tailor made to fit his gargantuan frame, but he looked so fucking delicious. We partied, though Mash partied hard enough for the both of us. We always had weed money. I’d dabbled in some of the other party drugs, but unlike Mash I didn’t care for them. I didn’t like the control I lost on ket, or the dizziness I felt on benzos, or the panic attack I got whilst on coke. Weed was fine in small enough doses. Only smoking it, though, not edibles. I hated edibles.

Mash loved them. He loved all the drugs, actually, but for the most part I stayed sober. Partially because I didn’t really like getting high, and partially because Mash needed someone to look after him following one of his binges.

Someone to fetch him water and a sick bucket. Someone to hold his hand and reassure him he wasn’t in a house on fire with a bunch of asshole-probing aliens.

More than once, I’d had to change his bedsheets and hose him down in the shower.

One time he k-holed so bad in the bathroom of a friend’s dorm, he stripped himself naked and painted his entire lower body in his own shit. He’d also thrown up on me more times than I could remember, and despite his merciless good looks, he’d gotten into more fights than any one person should have—usually because he’d hit on some girl who’d undoubtedly fallenover herself for Mash, and whose boyfriend had been watching nearby.

The number of times I’d received a call at three a.m. to save him from himself was unreal. We’d even made a pact of sorts. I would pretend to be Mash’s boyfriend.“No, no, he’s gay. He’s not a threat to you, I promise,”I would say, slinging an arm over Mash and letting him give me a sloppy kiss on the cheek.

“Love you, bro,”he’d half whisper, half hiccup to me in the taxi on the way back to the apartment. I never said it back.

Even though I did. I loved him so fucking much it nearly made me sick.

I was obsessed with him. But I could only stand beside him and watch as he threw himself at everyone but me.

Unrequited love was a bitch.

On the screen, Lucy’s character opened her new front door to a very sexy, bespectacled Timothy Everhart.

“How was your date with Jett?” Mash asked. He shifted his weight on the couch and his legs rubbed against my feet.

“Meh,” I replied.

“You fuck him yet?”

“No,” I whinged. “Ooh, but I did fuck Luka. That was fun.”

“Luka? The gorgon from your coding class? The one you said was a five but could be a seven if he grew a beard?”

“He grew a beard. He’s a solid eight.”

“You gonna see him again?”

I shrugged. “Probs not.”

“Tens shouldn’t be fucking about with eights anyway.”

I threw Mash a sloppy smile. He knew it was to hide my disappointment. I wasn’t like Mash. Hook-ups were fine, they were great, lots of fun, but I always found myself wanting more. Not necessarily from the guys, but from life. From the relationship itself.

Mash grew up with squillions of siblings in a busy, fast-paced pack. He craved solitude and short, meaningless relationships with everyone and no one.

As an only child to two workaholic parents, I yearned for more profound bonds.

“I’m just . . .” I began, but didn’t let myself finish that sentence.

“Go on.”

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