Page 38 of The Good Boys Club

A note from Mam said to make sure I posted it back to her by the twelfth of October for Zach’s birthday.

My head was now too big to fit the crown without resorting to tearing it, so I balanced it around my ears. Ci snapped a photo with his phone and texted it to me so I could forward to Mam.

At the beginning of the week, he’d asked me if we wanted to go out to celebrate. He’d said his parents always booked a table at this place in Remy, The Wild Phoenix, whenever they visited. It was one hundred and sixty silvers per head, wine not included, but it was six courses and the chef was Demeter starred. He’d said after dinner we could go to Abysm, the nightclub I worked at last year.

But I had told him I’d rather he cooked. It was our first week back at uni, and our first time in our new student accommodation, and I’d rather we settled ourselves in. Plus, food always tasted better when it had been made with love. And Cian loved me. Though he never told me he did, but I knew.

I told him I loved him all the time.

“Hey, dude?”I’d say.

“Yeah?”he’d say back.

“Love you, man.”

He’d roll his eyes.“I know you do.”

“I said love you, man. Don’t you love me?”

“Oh, fuck off,”he’d reply, sometimes accompanying it by waving a very particular finger.

Cian plated up my birthday steak and took the seat to my right. I dove straight in. No pretence, no pussyfooting around with mumbled small talk. We had all the time in the world for small talk.

An almost indecent moan left my throat. No one, not even my nana, cooked meat the way Ci did.

“Shit. Shit.Shiiiit. This is fucking delicious,” I whined again. “It’s so good my knots are popping.”

“I didn’t need to know that.” He grimaced, but a smirk tugged at the corners of his lips. “Oh, I made you a cake too. It’s not fancy, it’s just kiwi and—”

“Ungh, I love kiwi.”

The smile on Cian’s face grew wider.

“What shall we do for your birthday tomorrow?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t like fuss.”

This was a lie, though I chose not to comment on it. Cian secretly loved fuss. Everybody loved fuss. Just because he hadn’t had a great deal of fuss in his life, didn’t mean he had to pretend he hated it.

I was going to make such a fuss of him.

“I was thinking I might get another tattoo tomorrow,” he said.

“Ooh, we should get matching tattoos!”

Over the past year, Cian had been visiting this tattoo artist in Remy approximately once every other month. At first I’d figured it was a rebellion against his prim and snobbish folks, but after he returned from the summer holidays with almost a full sleeve on his left arm, I’d wondered if he was addicted. Nothing wrong with that.

We all had our vices. Mine was women. And booze. And party drugs. And eating myself into a coma. Ci’s was driving a needle rapidly into his flesh and flooding it with permanent dye. Blackdye only, though. He had “a look” to maintain. Mostly an old-school sailor-type look—mermaids, ships, pin-up girls, bottles of rum, swallows. But everything was one hundred percent devoid of colour. Even the roses, which he seemed to have decorating the edges of every tattoo like frames, were black. It suited him with his rolled-up sleeves and trouser hems, his lace-up construction boots, and his teeny weeny beanie.

“Get matching tattoos?” he repeated back to me like he hadn’t heard every word clear as day.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You’re afraid of needles.”

“Am not.” I was.

“And you’re such a wimp with pain.”

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