The F Words Read online

  And failing miserably.

  “Yes, you do. You want it hard and fast, slow and strong, you want to feel a man’s tongue plunge himself into you—”

  The images exploded into live detail in his head and his dick betrayed him by stirring. He bit the insides of his cheeks to stop a gasp and willed his dick to fucking cool down.

  “—you want your mouth filled with a guy’s hot salty-sweet come, and—”

  “Fuck you!”

  Eric laughed and motored through the green light. “Not in a million years.”

  Rory muttered something under his breath and slouched down into the seat. How long before they arrived? He glanced at the clock on the dash at the same time as Eric. They both groaned.

  Rory swung his head in Eric’s direction and for a second their gazes clashed. Then Rory twisted on his seat and looked away from those vivid green eyes and the disc-shaped tattoo just under his ear.

  An hour went by before either spoke. Rory almost felt the rumble of Eric clearing his throat. “Just stopping for petrol . . . and a coffee.”

  They pulled into a service station. Rory arched as he fished into his pocket for his wallet. But by the time he pulled it out, Eric’s door had slammed shut and he was rounding the pickup to fill it.

  Rory sighed. Why the hell couldn’t he be normal? Find something to chat about? Be thankful the guy had picked him up?

  Why had he gone and called Eric out on knowing him? What was the point? He was a shit. He did it just to wind Eric up.

  He took out a twenty and a ten from his wallet and slapped it into the nook above the console.

  When Eric returned from paying inside, he was holding two coffees. He slipped inside the pickup and offered Rory one.

  Rory looked out the front windows to see if the Samoan family in front of them could see. Would it look like they were a couple or something if he just took it?

  He wished the windows were down so they would hear him speak: “Um, nice, but I’ll pay for this myself.”

  Eric shook his head and shoved the coffee into his hands. “You’re welcome.”

  Rory cradled the drink all the drive back to the highway. He should apologize or something. The guy had just been friendly. Not coming on to him or anything.

  He took a tentative sip as if it would give him the power to admit he’d been a fuck. Unfortunately, it was just coffee.

  “Where in Wellington are you staying?” Eric asked.

  He gave him the address.

  And that was it: the only communication they shared the rest of the journey until Eric pulled up outside his uncle’s house.

  Eric helped him unload his bike.

  “Thanks for that,” Rory said, leaning the bike on its stand.

  “Yeah. Whatever. It’s cool.”

  “It really was.” But Rory’s voice was too soft and got lost over Eric’s “Gotta hit the road.”

  Rory stood, watching the pickup shrink into the distance. He hoisted his art container by the strap over his shoulder and rolled his bike up the drive, letting out a curse with each step. One frigging sorry, and he couldn’t even manage that. How was he ever going to get anywhere with a fuck-off attitude like the one he had?

  Eric got to the hostel, placed a shiny green jar on the defunct fireplace mantelpiece, and collapsed into bed. He thought the moment his head hit the pillow he’d be out like a light. But instead he tossed and turned worse than his grandpa had after eating potato salad.

  He punched the pillow and tucked himself into a ball on his side.

  It didn’t help any. He stretched and flung one leg out across the blankets, curling the sheet into a knot around one foot.

  Everything he tried was uncomfortable as crap.

  He dragged himself to his private bathroom and rubbed one out, hoping it might relieve the stress built into the marrow of his bones. Ripping off his clothes, he headed back to the bed, throwing his stuff over his suitcase on the way.

  This was all Rory’s fault. If the guy hadn’t been such a prick to him, hadn’t wound him up enough that he exploded back in that car with all that talk of Rory badly needing to be fucked, if he hadn’t been on the edge the last few hours, he’d be sleeping right now.

  With a sigh, he slid between the sheets once more and did his grandpa’s version of counting sheep: imagine what his ideal life might look like. Grandpa’s thought was simple. The more you dream of what you want, the more it etched into your bones, and the more it etched into your bones, the easier it was to walk the right path to get it.

  He did it, even though the thought was flawed. Eric’s ideal life had his grandpa alive and healthy.

  And no amount of dreaming could ever get him that now.

  Chapter Two

  As morning light stamped its wake up call through the slit in the curtains onto his face, Rory cursed the little sleep he got, and stumbled downstairs in his jocks. It wasn’t until he reached the open kitchen and dining room that he realized not throwing on a t-shirt and some slacks was a mistake.

  Uncle Davy blinked at him and shook his head. He turned to the fourteen? fifteen? year old girl sitting next to him at the table, ogling Rory as she poured orange juice into her glass.

  “Lily,” Uncle Davy said in the dry manner that was his signature tone. “Fact: Not all boys are photoshopped like he is.”

  “Gah, Dad! I was just . . . I mean, it’s Rory. I just couldn’t remember what he looked like. Ew, I so wasn’t, you know”—she lowered her voice, dipping her head so that her gold pendant clunked against her glass—“checking him out. He’s my cousin, for crying out loud!”

  “Not the point. I just don’t want you getting unrealistic ideas of what real men”—he lifted a finger—“excuse me, most men look like.”

  “I’m thirteen. I don’t look at men.”

  Uncle Davy nodded and picked up his spoon. “Ah, good.”

  Lily smirked and raised a brow at Rory, who hadn’t brought himself to step over the threshold into the room. “I look at boys . . .”

  She curled a finger at him and then pointed to a chair. “Sit down. Scoff some of Dad’s awesome porridge.”

  Rory did as he was told, thankful for at least the partial cover sitting at the table offered him. He couldn’t believe it. Little Lily was meant to be, well, little. What had she been? five? six? the last time he’d seen her? So much had changed. This girl with her long, wavy fool’s gold hair—

  that’d obviously been dyed, judging by the dark roots—and the smudgy eye-liner and glossy lips . . . god, little Lily was a teenager.

  Uncle Davy pointed his spoon in Rory’s direction, looking over it, he spoke. “I see you found your way inside and to the guest room last night.”

  “Yeah, sorry it was so late. Thanks for leaving the key in the envelope outside. Good thing I saw it before ringing the doorbell.”

  “Yes, yes,” he said, waving away the conversation. Rory paused; he could feel his uncle had something else to say. “Rory, I think now is a good a time as any.”

  Ah, here it comes. He’d prepared for a lecture.

  “Good time for what?” he bit out, taking the bowl of porridge Lily prepared for him.

  “There’s cream and brown sugar, too,” she said.

  He thanked her and looked back to Uncle Davy, who’d lowered his spoon to the bowl. “Why are you on the run?”

  “Dad! You make him sound like a felon. Ease up a little. He just arrived. Well, sort of. It’s the first time we’ve seen him, anyway.”

  “No, it’s okay.” Rory took the cream and poured it slowly in spirals over his breakfast. “I know I keep moving around. It must be hard to follow—”

  “Hard to follow?” Uncle Davy shook his head. “Fact,” he said, staring him hard in the eye, “your mother is beside herself. She doesn’t know how to contact you half the time. She’s worried. You were off to a fine start when you went to Otago, she had hopes you’d come out with a degree and become a counselor like you always said you wanted. But what
are you doing now?”

  Rory left the brown sugar. His hands were shaking, and he didn’t want either his uncle or cousin to know it. He knew he’d lost his way; what his family didn’t seem to get was that he was trying to find it again. He just wasn’t quite sure where the hell the path was.

  “You have no goals, no ambition,” his uncle continued, and Rory slammed his eyes shut to keep the hurt from pouring out. He hated hearing the truth. It dug into his skin worse than a tick.

  Slowly, he opened his eyes again and lifted his spoon. He looked at his uncle, from his faintly receding hairline to the creases around his green eyes that held the memories of a thousand good-times. He swallowed. Hard. Would he ever have lines marking the joys in his life or would his lines only ever remember the shit?

  “. . . so what is your plan?”

  He took a spoonful of porridge, but barely tasted it. “Is it too late to change my mind about this conversation? It’s a little heavy over breakfast, don’t you think?”

  “I’d say,” Lily chimed in, before jumping from the table as the doorbell rang. “Yikes, Sammy’s here already!”

  Uncle Davy reached across the table and gently laid a warm hand on his arm. “I don’t mean to jump at your throat like this. It’s just Cheryl’s been worried. We’re all worried.”

  He nodded. “Uh, yeah, I get it. Look, I’ll ring Mum later and tell her what’s happening.”

  “Care to tell me, too? You can stay here as long as you need to, so long as you are trying to figure things out, okay?”

  “I’ll . . . I’ll pay rent and everything. This is just temporary, until I find something of my own.”

  “Well, don’t be too rash to find a place. Lily and I fly to San Francisco in two weeks to see June and we’ll be gone a few weeks. You can have the place to yourself for that time. And we have enough space, so you won’t get me telling you to bugger off or anything. So long as you can handle us family around, you can have us.”

  Rory spooned the sludge in his bowl, unable to bring himself to eat it. Would Uncle Davy still be saying that if he knew . . .

  “Just know,” his uncle said, “with family comes incessant nagging. We all want to know you’re good.”

  Nagging. He wasn’t sure how he’d handle that. Every time he was forced to face the truth of his situation from someone, he got an up close and personal view of what an utter loser he was. He gripped his spoon and forced himself to eat some porridge. He needed to change that view. The big fucking problem though, was how was he going to do it?

  A string of excited chatter came from the hallway, and then Lily entered the room again, followed by a ganglier version of herself with hazelnut hair.

  When she saw Rory in his half-naked glory, her cheeks reddened and she quickly averted her eyes. Rory inched closer to the table, hoping the tablecloth would help. It didn’t. He needed to put some freaking clothes on, but standing now would invite a whole other view that Lily’s friend didn’t need to see.

  “Good morning, Sammy,” Uncle Davy said, smiling, “How’s your little sister doing today, better?”

  Sammy nodded, rubbing her pendant identical to Lily’s between her fingers. “Fever went away last night. She’s fine now.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Uncle Davy turned to Lily, who was taking balloons out of an antique cabinet and stuffing them into her pocket. “Let me guess, the Forster brothers? What did they do this time?”

  “They pinched all the ripe strawberries from my plot. We’re going to water bomb them on our way to the pool.” Lily made a kaaplosh sound before turning to him to explain. “The Forsters are the neighbors just up the road. We’ve been at war half a year now.”

  Sammy nodded, glancing at him briefly and looking away again. “It all started when they stole our apple crumble we made in cooking class.”

  “Yeah!” Lily snorted. “They gave it back when the teacher caught them, but they said they’d farted on it. So, like, there was no way we could eat it.”

  Rory grinned. Listening to Lily, he was transported back to his own teens. He and William had done stupid crap like that. “I’m something of an expert on pranks, so if you ever need some advice . . . ”

  Uncle Davy cleared his throat. “They really don’t need the encouragement. No doubt, they’ll be plaguing each other until the new school year begins.”

  “And after,” Lily added.

  Uncle Davy sighed, shaking his head, a small grin quirking his lips. “Now, Lily, I want you home for dinner, is that clear?”

  “Yup. What’re we having?”

  “Pumpkin soup, and no grumbling. Fact: it’s been in the freezer too long, we need to eat it.”

  Rory scraped the last of his porridge from the bowl and downed it. “Sounds good.”

  The girls left, leaving Rory and Uncle Davy sitting in silence. Before his uncle could restart the conversation from earlier, Rory jumped to his feet and cleared the table. Thankfully, his uncle took the hint, and the only other thing he said before leaving for work was: “Have a good day.”

  Well, he knew that wouldn’t happen. Good days were a rare thing, but he did plan to do the one thing that kept him sane: Draw.

  Eric spent the entire morning searching for flats. It had to be cheap since he’d spent most of his savings on Grandpa’s funeral, and it had to be a place of his own. The last conversation he’d had with his grandpa, he’d been told he needed to grow up.

  “Accept that death’s a natural part of life, Eric. Let me go. Then live your life. Really live it, not this slutty bullshit you do at nights. Find some real friends, a real future.”

  A place of his own was a start at growing up.

  “This is it?” Eric said to the bearded man showing him around a musty, two-roomed apartment with peeling ceiling paint and rotting floral wallpaper.

  Bearded Man shrugged. “It’s nothing flash, but the structure is solid. If you renovate it yourself, I’ll give you three months at half-rent.”

  It was Eric’s turn to shrug. As dilapidated as it was, this hole was the best he’d seen for a price that worked for him, and it was close to town too. With his job starting tomorrow, he couldn’t afford to be picky now, could he? “Fine. I’ll take it.”

  In a couple of hours, he had the contract signed and was the first month’s half-rent poorer. It took all of ten minutes to load his few boxes of belongings into the bed-less bedroom.

  He breathed in the stale air as he made his way to the bathroom and shoved open the window. As he fitted the metal stay, the thing fell off. Eric cursed under his breath. Another thing that needed to be fixed. At least the window kept shut without it, even if it couldn’t lock anymore.

  Unzipping his fly, he relieved his bladder. He pulled the chain on the flush, and it got stuck under the flapper. “Un-effing-believable!”

  He washed his hands and made his way back to his new bedroom. At least the taps were working, right? He sat on top of his battered red suitcase and stared at the deep groves and scratches in the wooden floor. He sunk his head into his cupped hands and laughed, deep and hard, until his eyes watered. I’ll take it. I’ll take it!

  What an epic fail. Another ‘F’ word to add to the list. That ever-freaking-growing list!

  He laughed again.

  He shouldn’t have been so hasty. Sure he needed a place to live, but this? He should have checked it out more. He didn’t know squat about renovating. Some paint and a brush he thought he could handle, but mending window catches and toilets?

  There’d better be some books for dummies, because without his grandpa to show him how to fix it, he was screwed.

  After a trip to the Warehouse and setting up the basics: bed, table, and chairs, and lucking out with the toilet chain after yanking at it some, there was one thing left for him to do.

  He polished the mantelpiece. Carefully, he took his green jar and placed it in the middle.

  Guilt followed him as he did it.

  “Now listen here, son, and listen good. I don’t wa
nt no mourning for me when I’m gone. I’ve lived a good life.”

  “How can you expect that? You mourned for mum and dad. Why can’t I mourn for you?”

  Grandpa winced.

  “Difference is,” he said in a husky voice that was neither old man or illness. “I’ve gotten to see two generations grow up. I’ve lived a good long life. This time it’s natural.”

  “It doesn’t feel natural to be the only one left.”

  “You’re a good man, Eric Graham. It won’t be only you for long.” Grandpa sounded so sure of the fact. “Now, let’s talk details. I want to be cremated, and as soon as the funeral is over, I want you to take me to the ocean. That’s where your grandma is. She’s been waiting a long time for me, and I don’t want her to wait any longer.”

  He moved to his new table and looked through the window to the weedy mess of the back garden. He should feel good, right? He was managing, and he had the place to himself. So why didn’t he feel more, well, adult? Why instead did the sound of his echoing steps through his new place make him feel so small and so alone, so vulnerable? It was like being at home after his mum and dad died, before his grandpa had moved in to take care of him.

  He dug into the ink on his left wrist, nails catching the skin, but he couldn’t bring himself to draw blood.

  A scratchy yowl startled him. What the . . . ?

  The sound came again.

  Eric followed it to the back door. He opened—

  A tiny grey cat stared up at him. It made that awful noise again. “Wowzers. Don’t you have a voice on you?”

  The cat said nothing to that, but butted her? his? way past Eric’s legs and into the house. “Oh no you don’t,” he called after it. “You go back to your own sweet home now.”

  The cat ignored him, hopped up onto the chair he’d been sitting on—the only one in a stretch of sunlight—and curled into a ball with a ‘what you gonna do about it?’ purr.

  Rory didn’t get to draw. Instead he spent the morning fixing his bike and the early part of the afternoon searching the paper and internet for jobs. Something temporary, like always, since he didn’t know how long he’d be around.