Despite my hurt and anger, I almost felt sorry for him. I’d been wrestling this sort of shit for years; he’d clearly been blindsided by it.
“Your secret’s safe with me.” I waved at him dismissively. “Go back to your rugby friends and your pretty girlie and your loving parents—say hi to Richard and Lizzie for me—forget this ever happened.”
I straightened, shoulders back, chest out. Ready to walk away and let him do the same. I’d survive. Worse things would happen than a broken heart. My dad might live another forty years, for instance. I might never earn enough money to leave home. Imagine that.
“I want to kiss you again,” he blurted. His eyes were shiny with unshed tears, his voice choked with horror. “That’s why I’ve been staying away from you. Christ, Matt. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I want to kiss you again.”
Oh my God, oh my God. This could not be happening. On an ordinary Monday lunchtime in March. I had a history lesson starting in twenty minutes. A tuna and cucumber sandwich, beyond its sell by date, awaited me in my locker. I still needed to buy a can of Coke to wash it down. And Alex bloody Valentine wanted to kiss me. Here, on the roof of a multistorey carpark, due to be demolished in a few months to make way for a block of flats. A bloody carpark, not even a romantic, run-down launderette. What would Daniel Day Lewis do if he were in my place?
“Go on, then,” I replied. Pretty damn coolly, considering my knees threatened to give way. “I’m game.”
“Somebody might see us.”
I pantomimed looking over both his shoulders. “From an aeroplane, yeah. Maybe.”
“I think I’m losing my fucking marbles even admitting this to you.”
“I lost mine years ago.”
Alex dithered a little longer, biting his bottom lip, his pale eyebrows knitting together. Somehow, I’d gained the upper hand, maybe because over the last couple of years I’d snogged quite a few girls, in places far less salubrious than this carpark. All for appearance’s sake, obviously.
With my mouth only inches away from Alex Valentine’s I offered silent thanks to each and every one of those poor girls for our soulless encounters. Because without their bad snogs and my terrible sex with Denise, I’d never have known how right being here, with Alex, felt. Not a single one had ever caused my heart to beat as furiously as it did now, they’d never sent blood whooshing through my ears, they’d never given me a breathtaking urge to fling my arms around another person’s neck and crush my lips against theirs. Circling his wrist with my fingers, I tugged him nearer, until our chests were almost touching.
“If you don’t get on with it soon, we’ll miss our next lesson.”
As if I gave a shit.
Alex’s breath smelled of school, and tasted of cheese and pickle sandwiches. His lips were dry, our noses bumped, and our teeth scraped. Our tongues were hesitant. Yet still the most amazing kiss I’d ever experienced, albeit only lasting about five seconds. As he pulled back, he blessed me with an adorably sheepish look.
“I don’t know what I’m doing.” He blushed hard, his eyes sliding down to his feet.
I bit my tongue, holding back a laugh. Had Alex Valentine just confessed he didn’t know how to kiss? With his bloody gorgeous face? Until these last few seconds, I’d assumed him to be a debonair man about town, like Phil. I most definitely needed to unpick all that later.
“We’d better have another go, then,” I smirked. “Get some practice in.”
Alex Valentine was ballsy. I’d glimpsed his inner steel during our detention and when he’d been reluctantly selected to play football with Brenner— making the best of a bad situation. My own cocky confidence was a superficial veneer—like the Wizard of Oz, I was a little man cowering behind a brash screen. My shield was my spikiness, my swaggering walk, my rough mates, my smart mouth. Scratch the surface, and I had no substance to back it up. Sure, I knew what kissing was all about, but like learning about maths, football, and indie music, it wouldn’t be long before Alex gained the advantage.
Our second kiss demoted the first to an entirely forgettable minor division. Shaking off my hold on his wrist, Alex grabbed my cheeks fiercely between both hands. An urgent noise, imprinted on my soul forever, escaped from deep within his throat as he pulled my face up towards his and smashed our lips together. Tongues, teeth, spit, pickle and everything; his mouth slanted hungrily across mine, sending ripples cascading through my belly. I fell back against the metal rail, crushed between the concrete boundary wall of the carpark and Alex’s hard, demanding body.
Now,thatwas a fucking kiss. A Daniel Day Lewis, heart-stopper of a kiss. The kind of kiss I’d dreamed of when I’d rutted on top of Denise, trousers half-mast and eyes screwed shut. Here lay the proof, as if I’d ever needed any, that my young heart pumped gay, my lively brain fizzed gay, and my leaking gay dick ached to join the party.
I prayed Alex Valentine felt the same way. From the state of his groin pressed into my belly, early outward signs looked promising.
“I’m not a homosexual,” he gasped, when he finally let me up for air. His hands had slid down to my waist and the warm hardness of his dick still lay flat along my stomach. For someone not gay, he seemed in no hurry to back off.
“I don’t fancy boys,” he added, as if I hadn’t understood the first time. His agonized gaze fixed on my swollen wet lips and chafed chin, as if trying to convince himself he hadn’t made them that way.
“I shan’t tell anyone,” I promised for the second time. “I swear.”
I pushed him away a little, sucking in a couple of deep breaths. The repeated beeping of a lorry reversing, and an angry car horn sounded below, reminding me that as much as I’d like things to be different, I was still a toerag from a grotty council estate, and we hadn’t miraculously emigrated over lunchtime to a benevolent, non-prejudicial brave new world. Wrapped in his own immediate, existential nervous breakdown, it hadn’t occurred to Alex that this might be a tiddly little drama for me, too. But we were teenage boys—self-centred and egotistical headlined the job description.
“Honestly, Alex. I won’t breathe a word. I’ve got as much to lose as you have. And call yourself whatever you want. Or nothing. You don’t have to call yourself anything. Don’t sweat it.”
The low growl of a car braking, then accelerating, then braking once again as it wound its way up towards the higher levels of the carpark managed to switch Alex out of whatever internal crisis played out in his handsome, blond head. He let go of me—finally, and thrust his hands into his pockets, pushing the front of his trousers out. Always a useful trick for hiding an erection. Nope, definitely not gay. My tactic of leaving my shirt tails hanging low over my groin was much simpler, something Mr Tucked-In wouldn’t dream of contemplating.
We walked back to school in silence. My crew were packing up the football match and I gave them a quick wave. Alex kept his head down. We’d reached the entrance to the history block, where I’d go one way and he’d go another.
“You okay?” I asked him, and he nodded.