Oscar - 10. Part 10

I didn’t open James’s text for at least another minute.

Maybe two. I was busy being mesmerised.

Mesmerised by the sight in front of me, growing smaller and smaller. Mesmerised by his muscled body, wrapped in a sweaty red t-shirt, and his powerful, beautiful legs pushing further and further along the towering-oak-lined pathway.

I found him.

Before he was a fantasy. He was fiction. When Adam had told me his secret, a part of me had thought it was too good to be true. I didn’t think I was out of Mr. Price’s league: that hadn’t crossed my mind. I was too busy savouring the saltiness of the rugby captain’s load on my tongue and between my teeth to think about the coach’s.

And even when I’d got it out of him, butt naked and under me, that the coach still lived close, deep down that same part of me still didn’t truly believe. I’d decided to go looking, sure, but I wasn’t naïve. I hadn’t thought it would be easy.

But, four days later in the old creek field, I couldn’t believe my luck. He was no longer Mr. Price. He was Tim, six-foot-three and fair game.

For a split-second, I considered following him. Hitching my schoolbag high and chasing him down in my shirt and black trousers. But I wasn’t dressed for running.

I had no choice but to stick to my plan and be patient. Something I’ve always struggled with. Fortunately, I had a five-foot-nothing ginger boy waiting to be played with.

He will keep me nicely occupied.

Pulling out my phone I caught a reflection of myself in the empty screen, lit by the last of the dying sunlight. I was smiling.

Big time.

To get to my house from the field was easy. All I had to do was cut diagonally across, jump the fence and then it was a four-minute home stretch. Thumbing buttons and walking I opened James’s reply:

Hey sexy. Sounds interesting! You can come over tonight if you want?

No surprise there. Eager little beaver. I replied:

Would your parents be cool with me fucking you senseless?

Fifteen steps across the grass and his reply pinged through my headphones, vibrating in my hand.

LOL. Definitely not! I thought you wanted to talk?

I want to do both.

Seven more steps.

Hehe they’ll be picking my brother up from judo later. We’ll have an hour to ourselves?

I reached the other side of the park and my phone chirped for attention. It was getting dark, quick, and the glow from my screen obscured my vision. I stopped to reply. Falling into the old creek, dried out or not, wasn’t on my agenda.

What time?

About 7.

Have you done what I told you? I want your hole smooth.

It took him a little longer to get back to me, but when he did I had to stop again. Not because I couldn’t see where I was going. I was already over the fence, back on concrete and under street lamps. But because it was a picture message and deserved my full attention.

Very nice.

I checked the time. Almost six. Replied:

Good boy. Make sure you do the other thing too. See you in an hour.

I wanted to skip the final few hundred yards home, but for obvious reasons I let my thoughts frolic instead. Today was turning out to be one of the best days I’d had in a long time. First Adam. Then Mr. Price. Now James looking better than ever. Even the imminent inevitability of walking through the front door didn’t kill my growing erection.

It’s not that I lived in a particularly bad part of town. It was fine: your bog-standard English patch of grey semidetached houses, all with a small front garden and a bigger, fenced or hedged one out back. Mass built, mundane, unremarkable.

My house was at the end of a street of thirty semidetached boxes, backing onto large, flat fields. The same fields that bordered the town, including behind the old creek field. There were no chavs or drunks hanging about the street corners. People kept to their business. No one stood out.

It was fine. It was what was inside that wasn’t.

He didn’t hate me for being gay. He didn’t beat me like Adam’s did. He didn’t know. But even if he did he wouldn’t have cared. My dad didn’t care about anything. Not anymore.

Not since she left.

When I was fifteen I’d come home from school early to find them arguing in the kitchen, and, as usual, they hadn’t heard me come in. But something had been different. I’d felt it in the air.

I had looked through the crack in the door. Could only see her, hunched over the table with her head in her hands; her long blond hair cascading over her knuckles and piling in messy heaps around her. Without looking up she’d said she couldn’t take anymore. She’d told the tablecloth that now I was old enough, she was getting as far away from this “piece of shit town” as possible.

She’d threatened to leave before. Many times. But there’d been something in her voice that evening. No fury or indignation or desperation. Just emptiness.

She had tucked me in that night for the first time since I was a child. Kissed me on the cheek. Didn’t say a word. Gone the next day.

After she’d left, he’d become a shadow of his former self. And he’d already been spineless. He hadn’t broken down or gone berserk. He’d switched off: work his dead-end job, sit at his computer, sleep and repeat.

Both their parents had died before I was born so there had been no concerned grandparents to swoop in. Dad had stopped answering his phone. Cut out his friends. He’d gone to the doctor once and came back with a diagnosis of severe depression. Instead of taking his medication, or going to his appointments, he’d done nothing.

One time I’d come home from school to find him hunched over the kitchen table. Like Mum, but with vomit in the sink. He’d told me he didn’t want to look at me. According to my drooling, stinking, red-eyed excuse for a father, I reminded him of “her” and that “bitch deserved to die”.

We stopped talking after that. Unless you count him throwing his wallet and barking shopping lists at me. Birthdays were forgotten. Christmases too. He hadn’t even asked what had happened when I’d come home from school bloodied and beaten and broken one day.

I hated him. I hated them both. Him for never leaving and her for not taking me with her. But at least, in a fucked-up way, they gave me something in return.

Freedom. The freedom to do whatever I wanted, with whoever I wanted. And naturally, at eighteen, I took advantage of every moment.

Warm stale air hit my nostrils as I turned my key and pushed open the front door. It was his signature stench. The kind of smell that told me, once again, he hadn’t left the house. Coffee, body odour, human gas, microwave meals.

Kicking off my shoes, I took the stairs two at a time. Didn’t have long. Throwing my bag into my room I grabbed a clean towel from the pile of laundry I’d done the night before and made my way down the landing to the bathroom.

As usual Dad’s bedroom door was closed as I passed. Only a thin strip of artificial light shone through the gap at the bottom between the carpet and the wood. But I knew he was in. I could hear the machine gun fire of his games and the tap-tap-tap of his keyboard.

Fifteen minutes later I was showered and dressed. Jeans, white briefs, tight white t-shirt and a navy sweater, also nicely tight around my torso. I did my hair and brushed my teeth and looked myself up and down in the mist-bordered bathroom mirror.

Not bad at all.

Back in my room I pulled on my trainers, grabbed my wallet and phone and another two minutes later I was back on the street, waiting for the bus to take me into town. It arrived a minute late.

My fare paid, I took a seat. I had two miles, five stops and plenty of time to check on progress.

On the bus. Won’t be long. You ready?

Almost. It took longer than expected. Just getting dressed. My parents probably thought I was wanking in there.

Would you prefer they knew what you were actually doing?

Good point. Ready now. Do you have condoms?

A couple.

Cool. I have some too. And lube.

You ARE a good boy.

Hehe thanks. You remember the address, right?

Scrolling through his previous messages I found what I was looking for.

Yup. I’m almost at your stop.

Can’t wait xx

Rolling my eyes, I put my phone in my pocket. Kisses on the end of messages made me cringe. This kid thought there was more to our relationship, like I’d bought him flowers and asked him out for dinner.

I fingered him in a toilet.

Making a mental note to ensure everything was crystal clear by the end of the night, I pushed the red stop button on the metal pole next to me. As the metallic chime rang out, I hauled myself to the front of the bus. The huge mechanical box slowed to a stop and the door hissed open.

Thanking the driver, I hopped onto the pavement and into the cold evening air. I hadn’t been to James’s before, but we’d spoken about me coming over plenty of times. About what I’d do to him.

I looked around in the darkness. There was no doubt in my mind: James lived in the good part of town.

Not that there was much to see at first. Stretching left to right and around as the road curved out of view wasn’t an array of huge houses, rising tall and looking down at the street and the ants below. They were further back, away from the public footpath.

Instead stood a tall, continuous brick wall, open intermittently to make room for all manner of security gates or wide gravel driveways.

A few steps from the bus stop was a large set of spiked, black metal gates two foot taller than my six. To the right of the impressive barricade was a small intercom screen and a double digit number in a plain, unassuming font. Seventy-three.

I checked my phone again. When he’d said his drive was right by the bus stop he’d meant it was literally next to it. I thumbed a quick message, to tell him I was here, but before I hit send the gates began to open. Taking a step back I enjoyed the theatrics.

The mechanism creaked and groaned and then whirred loudly as the spiked metal barriers jutted open. Then the grumble of a powerful, approaching car filled the air before a black Mercedes poked its nose out of the drive. It was too dark to see the driver. The car pulled out and I watched its red lights blaze in the darkness as it cruised away.

I was already through the gates and halfway up the drive before I heard the mechanism lurch back into action behind me, my sights set solely in front.

This is some place.

Illuminated by subtle outdoor up-lighting was a three-storey Edwardian manor house with elegant, grid windows and two symmetrical front-facing dormers.

It loomed ever closer as I took step after step on the gravel; first hard and compressed from countless car wheels and then crunchier and unstable as I reached the bright red front door. The knocker was heavy. It boomed like a drum. Three times.

Silence.

I knocked again. Twice. Then I heard swift footsteps running down a flight of stairs inside. They reached ground level. The handle creaked as it turned but the door pulled inwards almost silently.

Dwarfed by his impressive surrounds stood James. His short, thick hair glowing orange next to the red door. His bright blue eyes, filling first with surprise, then excitement, looked straight into mine. His freckled face brightened as he smiled a full, white set of flawless teeth.

Around his torso was a tight, emerald green t-shirt. He was skinny but undeniably more toned out of his baggy school uniform. His legs were bare, apart from a pair of tight, white briefs.

Then they were wrapped around my waist.