A Walk Along the Promenade - 15. Scene Six, A Hotel at Breakfast Time on a Summer’s Morning, Part 2

The hotel’s dining room was at the back of the building, perched on the edge of the cliff, with a wide view of the Scarborough beach. Shaun had wondered, the first time that he’d seen that room, whether it had once been a Palm Court or Sun Room, it certainly wasn’t like any other dining room he’d ever been in before. The room was a huge, a conservatory-like construction, white wooden framed windows that made up three of the walls and half of the roof. In the summer, like that morning, the morning sunlight poured into the room, but in the winter this room must be like a glass-line fridge.

The room was laid in a self-service style. Along the only brick wall in the room was a long breakfast buffet table, laid out in a careful progression from cereal and cold drinks, to tea and coffee, through breads, jams and cheese, with two large stainless-steel toasters, ending with row upon row of hot plates keeping the cooked food warm. The buffet table was kept stocked by two women, dressed in the hotel’s uniform of black dress with white piping along every edge. These two women seemed to be kept constantly busy by the stream of guests seeking their breakfasts.

Harley quickly found them an empty table next to one of the huge, wooden framed windows there, and they sat down together at it.

“Right, what do you want for breakfast?” Harley asked him.

“It’s okay, I’ll get my own,” Shaun said.

“Don’t worry, it won’t take me a moment and it’ll be nice to do it,” Harley smiled back at him.

“Are you having a full breakfast?”

“Too right, I’ve paid for it. It fills you up for the day and you don’t want a big lunch,” Harley replied.

“Thanks. Can I have a couple of bread rolls and butter, eggs, sausage and hash browns?”

“Tea or coffee?”

“Coffee, milk but no sugar.”

“No problems, I’ll be back in a minute,” Harley said, with that broad smile of his.

For a moment Shaun watched Harley’s muscular body threading his way between the groups of tables there. Harley was almost striding across the room, taking long and fast steps, walking far faster than he had done when he’d been walking beside Shaun.

Shaun turned away and felt something watching him. He turned his head in the other direction and saw a large, grey-white seagull, perched on the windowsill, on the opposite side of the window next to him. It was staring at him with one of its dark, black beady eye. There seemed to be a bright, tiny spark of light in the centre of that eye, sharp and bright and trained right upon him. For a brief moment it felt as if that seagull could see straight into his mind and actually read his thoughts.

Shaun shook his head, shaking the thought from it. It was a stupid thought, seagulls were just dumb birds, more interested in food than in anything deeper, and he was just being silly and nervous, he was strongly attracted to Harley and everything that had happened in the last twelve hours was leaving him feeling very nervous. Nothing like this had happened to him before, he was deeply attracted to Harley and Harley appeared attracted back to him, and he didn’t want to screw it up, even though he wasn’t certain how not to do that.

The seagull let out a loud and angry-sounding squawk, opening its beak wide, with appeared to be a tongue curling up inside that open beak, its cry reverberating through the glass between them. Shaun turned away from it and saw Harley returning to their table, carrying a plate of food and a large mug of coffee.

“There you go,” Harley said, placing Shaun’s breakfast down on the table in front of him. “I’ll be back in a moment”

“Thanks,” Shaun said, smiling up his thanks at Harley.

As Harley hurried back to the breakfast buffet, Shaun started to eat his breakfast. The food was hot and stodgy but was rather low on flavour. It tasted very manufactured rather than cooked with care but this whole hotel felt very manufactured. It was comfortable but it didn’t feel like a place one could linger, it felt as if the whole building had been redesigned to funnel as many guests through it as possible. Shaun did not care too much about that, the place was cheap and comfortable.

He looked up and saw Harley at the far end of the end of the buffet, loading his plate up with cooked food. Harley’s movements were strong and yet smooth, and even from the back Harley’s body was attractive, his curving muscles plainly visible under his thigh clothing. A moment later, Harley turned around, and with his loaded plate and drink, and returned to their table. It only took him only a few moments to walk across the dining room, taking such long and fast strides.

Harley placed his breakfast down at their table and sat down himself.

“I need this,” Harley said, as he started to eat his breakfast, “especially after all last night’s and this morning’s excretions.”

“And it was really nice exertions ,” Shaun replied. Just thinking about the sex they’d had made a rush of excitement head start to Shaun’s groin. He could actually feel his own cock begin to swell, as if he was again a frustrated teenage getting excited over the mere hint of naked male flesh.

“I didn’t think my holiday here was going to take this turn, this very gay turn,” Harley said.

“What turn?” Shaun asked him.

“Meeting you,” Harley smiled. “I’d thought the gayest this holiday was getting to get was that half-hearted blow-job I got in that club toilet the other night. This is so much better.”

“Thanks,” Shaun replied.

“I mean it,” Harley said, as he pushed a forkful of food into his mouth.

“Why did you come to Scarborough on holiday,” he asked Harley. “It’s not known for being… well, very gay.”

“I’ve never been here before,” Harley replied.

“Is that all?”

“I grew up in Preston,” Harley said, “not the most exciting place on Earth. Every year, throughout my whole childhood, for the same two weeks, we went on holiday to Blackpool. We even stayed in the same boarding house, in the same bloody rooms. I hated it, I was bored out of my mind. It was the same bloody thing every year. I soon hated going on holiday, as a child, because there was nothing new or special about it. When I grew up and left home, I promised myself I’d never be bored on holiday, so I decided to always go to somewhere different each holiday, if I went back somewhere it would have to be to do something different there. My holidays are important to me, they’re my way of relaxing and destressing. I’m now able to afford to have two holidays a year, lucky me, so I make them special. So for one holiday I go abroad, and God there’s enough places to explore, and the other one I go to somewhere at home, I like to explore my own country too. This time I choose to come to Scarborough because I’ve never been here before. I didn’t know what to expect really. I knew about the famous Stephen Joseph Theatre, but that’s closed this week. Just my fucking luck,” Harley smiled at him. “Why did you come here?”

So I could kill myself in a place no one knew me, Shaun thought but there was no way he was saying that, and it was no longer true now.

“I’d never been here before either, and my mother said she’d never come here so that was also a good reason to come here,” he told Harley.

“You don’t get on with your mother?”

“It’s all complicated,” Shaun said.

“How complicated?” Harley asked.

“I work for her company, we provide home carers, and that’s hard enough. Since my leg got smashed up I’ve had to live with her again. Often, though, I don’t think she even likes me.”

“Families can be really fucked up,” Harley replied.

“They certainly can,” Shaun said.

They ate their breakfasts in silence for a moment. Harley was also hungrily shoving his breakfast down, and as he ate Shaun found that his own appetite race up, suddenly he was hungry too. This food might not be the most tasty or enjoyable but suddenly it was filling a hunger void in him. Did sex really burn up this much energy, he wondered, because it hadn’t before. Yet Harley was eating hungrily too.

“I’ve been thinking about this morning,” Harley said.

Shaun felt himself emotionally bracing himself, this was where Harley would tell him that it had been great but he didn’t want to see Shaun again, that brush off that had happened so often before.

“Yes,” Shaun simply said, pushing down the disappointment he was sure he was about to feel. He had become so skilled at doing that over the years of practice he’d had.

“I thought we could go for a walk along the prom, the promenade down there together. We could walk as far as we liked and then at lunch time we could find somewhere to eat. There’s enough restaurants on the prom or else we could go into the town centre and find somewhere, I’ve seen that there are buses there from the harbour up to the town centre,” Harley said, his words almost tumbling out with excitement.

Shaun had to push down the surprise that rushed up into the back of his throat, hide it from his face. Harley wanted him more than just for sex, Harley wanted to be with him too.

Shaun smiled back at Harley.

“That would be really nice,” he said to Harley.

“And after lunch we can come back here and maybe make a mess on my room’s bed, or at least fuck ourselves stupid again,” Harley said, his voice lowering into a quiet tone, as if this was only for them two to hear.

“That all sounds really good,” Shaun replied, his own voice falling into a conspiratorial tone too, “but I’ve got a problem with it.”

“What?” Harley replied, surprise in his voice.

“My leg can play up and sometimes I can’t walk far without needing to sit down,” Shaun explained, feeling slightly embarrassed by his own frailty.

“That’s all right,” Harley replied, his face and body falling back into a relaxed posture. “There’s loads of benches along the prom. You can sit on one of them, whenever you need to stop and I’ll take pictures with my phone until you’re ready to walk again.”

“Thanks,” Shaun told him. He felt an emotional pull, Harley was adjusting his plans to suit Shaun, he was quickly considering Shaun.

“God, I’d thought you’d gone off me and you didn’t want to fuck again,” Harley said.

“Oh God, never,” Shaun replied. He felt himself beginning to blush at just the thought of it.

“Good, good,” Harley said, smiling broadly back at him.

“You take photographs?” Shaun asked. He wanted to hear Harley speaking again, Harley’s chatty voice was so relaxing and comforting.

“Only with my phone, I don’t have a camera or anything, but I really enjoy it. I just find it all relaxing, concentrating on getting a good picture, framing it and capturing something about what I’m taking a picture of,” Harley explained. “Here, let me show you,” Harley carried on, as he took his phone out of his pocket and quickly unlocked it.

As the two of them finished eating their breakfasts together, Harley had slowly scrolled through the photographs stored on his own phone. Shaun was impressed by Harley’s photographs, they weren’t just the usual quick and poorly composed photographs so many people took with their phone’s cameras, barely more than “happy snaps”, and far too frequently posted on social media. Harley’s photographs were carefully composed, Harley obviously searching out the perfect framing for his photographs. There were photographs of views, of buildings, of street furniture, of boats in the harbour, of close-ups of the rust on the promenade’s handrail, of seagulls perched or flying, of all kinds of different things that had caught Harley’s attention. Yet again and again, Shaun was impressed at what Harley had caught in his photographs. So many of them caught something interesting or different about what Harley had been photographing. These were photographs searching to be art, not just a quick attempt to save a moment.

As they finished their breakfasts, Harley had come to an end with the photographs he wanted to show Shaun. With his last mouthful of his food, Harley had turned off his phone and asked Shaun:

“Do you want another drink? Another coffee?”

“Another drink would be great, but can I have an apple juice? That coffee was really strong,” Shaun replied.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea. I’ll be back in a moment,” Harley said, standing up from their table.

For a moment, Shaun watched Harley as he weaved his way between the tables and chairs, only some of them occupied, heading straight towards the breakfast buffet, again. Was this what being in a relationship was like? Shaun wondered. Having someone caring for him and having someone he could look after and care about? If it was then he liked it, he liked just sitting there with Harley and planning what they would do together that day. He liked Harley showing him the photographs Harley had been proud of taking, he liked sharing in something Harley was so proud of. Sex with Harley had been amazing but this moment, sat together at this breakfast table had been something special too, he’d just quietly shared his time with Harley and planned how they would spend the rest of the day together. That had felt so good.

He glanced over at Harley and saw him bending over the breakfast buffet, pouring two glasses of apple juice, the muscles in his back and buttocks stretching with his bent posture, pulling and defining themselves under his tight clothes. God, Harley was so attractive, Shaun thought.

What if this thing with Harley was just a holiday romance? What if he never saw or heard from Harley after they returned their homes? Suddenly Shaun didn’t care, he’d have this time with Harley. He’d never felt this relaxed and happy before and he liked this feeling. If it didn’t last beyond this holiday then he’d have this experience, he’d have the experience of being with another man. He could know that he was really attractive to another man. But at this moment he just wanted to be with Harley, enjoy being in Harley’s company, and he’d have that bubbling excitement that they would be having sex later on today, he had sex to look forward to, too.

Something caught his peripheral vision and made him turn his head in the opposite direction, to stare out of the wooden framed window next to him. The windowsill, on the other side of the glass, was empty, the seagull that had been stood there had since flown away, it was gone. Shaun turned his head back towards the dinning room and saw Harley walking back to him, carrying two glasses of apple juice. Shaun smiled up at the approaching figure of Harley.