Oscar B.A. Chapter 4

I really did have no intention of getting involved.

Cross my heart.

When Richard had offered to tell me about his divorce, and I’d told him to fill me in on our next date, it wasn’t because I was being sensitive to his feelings. Or mature. Or considerate. Or even throwing him a double entendre for the fun of it.

I just didn’t care. I couldn’t have given two short shits about Richard’s ex-cum-doppelganger, Josh, with the same build and hair but an arrogant air of superiority hanging around him like a bad smell. I certainly didn’t have any shits to give over why they’d broken up.

I already knew why.

Relationships don’t last. None of them do. Boyfriends. Husbands. Parents. Friends. They all start well, with good, kind and honest intentions, but inevitably end up going the same way and meaning nothing.

All they’re good for is raising your hopes, higher than they’ve ever been before, only to bring you crashing back so cataclysmically down to earth you’re broken. Like you’re surfing a huge, glistening wave that suddenly drops you without warning into foul tasting, icy cold, shark-infested depths below.

Then what? If you don’t drown or get torn apart you cough and splutter and crawl back onto the board for it to all happen again? The wave will always crash no matter how strong a surfer you are. Fact.

Why bother? Why bother trying?

Why indeed?

As far as I was concerned love made me weak. And stupid. And I’d made a pact with myself, after everything that had happened before university, that I was never going to be weak and stupid again. So, it’s safe to say, that the car crash unfolding in front of me, AKA the burning, stinking aftermath of Richard and Josh’s marriage, did not interest me in the slightest.

Until Josh had made it personal.

No one, I repeat no one, calls me a rent boy and gets away with it. Especially when all I’d been bought was a steak and a few measly drinks.

‘Who the FUCK are you calling a rent boy?’

Josh’s jaw hung. His eyes widened in shock. His forehead crinkled and then he froze. Just for a second or two, but more than enough for me to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I’d caught him off guard.

No one ever expects me to sound the way I do. I don’t look like the kind of boy who should have a deep, masculine voice. Especially with my bright blue eyes, a fatless, defined, almost hairless body and thick, flawlessly-styled brown hair.

If I do say so myself.

Let alone able to turn up the volume in a split-second’s notice from library student to drunk fan at football match, clench my jaw like a roided-up boxer and square my shoulders so I’m standing my entire six feet and then some.

Who would have thought the teen twink on his back getting throat fucked could transform into an angry, muscled nineteen-year-old with a far higher pain threshold than the average straight guy?

Not this big-mouthed, pretentious prick.

We locked eyes. His big, brown and flicking from angry to startled to desperately trying to maintain some measly morsel of dominance. It was his house, I assumed, or at least his and Richard’s. It wasn’t mine.

I smiled. It was fun to watch him squirm. Because I was already the alpha, if only for that blissful blip of time. I’d thrown him off balance with a single question, demanded his full attention with a single breath and floored him with a cold, fixed and furious stare.

Nailed it.

‘I don’t know,’ he finally said two seconds of dumbstruck silence later, shaking his head in disbelief like I was an impertinent child speaking out of turn.

Too easy.

‘I didn’t think so,’ I said before he could finish his sentence. ‘You look like the kind of guy who doesn’t know much.’

Richard, standing in his underwear halfway between Josh and I, turned. I felt his stare before I saw his face. When I shot him a glance his jaw was hanging open too. His eyes wide with disbelief.

Josh still had a face like a slapped arse.

‘How dare you,’ Josh said.

‘How dare I?’ I said back instantaneously. I was on a roll. ‘How dare you.’

‘Me?!’

‘Yeah. You! What’s wrong? Can’t get a date on a Friday night?’

‘Excuse me?’ Josh said.

‘Have to spend your time making up excuses to barge in on your ex-husband because you have nowhere better to be? Pathetic.’

‘I’m pathetic?’ he cried.

‘Well done!’ I said, clapping my hands slowly. ‘You see it too.’

‘I’m not going to listen to this,’ he said, turning to leave.

‘Great,’ I said, walking towards Richard as the ex stormed toward the front door. ‘But you might want to listen to this before you go.’

‘Oh, this better be good,’ Josh said, spinning on his heels – his trainers squeaking over polished floorboards – and death staring me from the hallway.

Death staring us.

Looking him up and down, at his blue Nike trainers and grey tracksuit bottoms to his plain white t-shirt, I returned the favour.

‘If you don’t want to spend next Friday alone, don’t dress like a teenager. You can’t pull it off, grandad.’

For three seconds, he said nothing. He just shook his head and stared at Richard. As cold and as fixed and as furious as me.

‘I hope you’re happy together,’ he said.

One second later the front door slammed shut and we were alone again. Dressed only in our underwear with the echo of Josh’s abrupt departure ringing through the house: Wine glasses hanging upside down on a wrack in the kitchen jostling like crystal bells and chiming through the still apartment.

Richard looked at me again.

‘Sorry,’ I said without looking at him.

Time to leave.

He didn’t speak to me as I picked up my crumpled clothes. He just kept staring as I pulled on my t-shirt, his gaze burning into the back of my neck.

He must have been upset that I’d stuck my nose in. I didn’t blame him. But I didn’t care either. Not much, anyway. There were plenty more like him on Grindr. Plenty more older guys with big wallets looking for company.

It was a shame though. That our evening had to end so soon. Daddy Dick’s wallet wasn’t the only big thing about him I wanted.

A real shame.

Pulling on my jeans I turned to look at him, my face already softened into a half-sorry but still half-stony façade: ready to force a frown and say an apologetic word before shrugging my way out.

But, to my surprise, he wasn’t angry or upset or disappointed. He was smiling. Grinning wide with his hairy arms folded under his wide, hairy pecs above his wide and defined abdomen.

‘What?’ I said.

‘I can’t believe you just said that to him.’

‘I said sorry.’

‘No. I’m amazed.’

‘You’re amazed?’

‘Yes. You’re amazing, Oscar.’

What?

‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ I said trying to be cool; my face giving away utter confusion.

He’s happy?

Laughing he put his hands around the small of my back. His fingers linked and his forearms pushed into my flanks. Pulling me into him he kissed me on the lips; his hairy chest, even over my t-shirt, sending goosepimples all down my back.

‘You’re a real firecracker, aren’t you?’ he said, centimetres from my lips.

‘Please explain,’ I said, pushing him away playfully before turning and straddling one of the dining chairs so I could still face him.

‘The way you spoke to him.’

‘What? He needed to hear it.’

‘Yeah he did.’

‘But I was rude as fuck. I get it if you want me to leave.’

‘Oscar, he said, stepping back towards me, his bulging crotch now level with my face. ‘No one has ever spoken to him like that before.’

‘Piss off,’ I said, unable to tear my eyes from his semi-hard cock filling his black briefs. ‘That’s impossible.’

‘Honestly. No one,’ he said, taking a seat next to me.

‘How?’

‘Because Josh is known for being, well, cutting.’

‘Cutting?’

‘You know. Sharp tongued.’

‘A cunt?’

He laughed again. Said, ‘I suppose that’s a word for it.’

‘And you’re trying to tell me no one’s ever given him a taste of his own medicine?’

‘Oh, people have tried. Believe me. But I’ve never seen anyone disarm him like that so quickly. You really got under his skin.’

‘Didn’t you ever talk to him like that?’

He looked down at his hands. Shrugged. Said, ‘No.’

‘You’re a stronger man than me, then,’ I said.

He smiled. Nodded. Said, ‘I’ll be right back. Make yourself at home.’

Five seconds later he disappeared down the hallway and through a closed door that I’d assumed was his bedroom. Two minutes after that he was back, dressed in a pair of navy pyjama bottoms and wide, black-rimmed spectacles that made him look a little older but almost twice as hot. Nothing else.

‘Thought I’d slip into something a little more comfortable,’ he said, throwing me a pair of black tracksuit bottoms.

Catching them one-handed I stood up from my chair and let them roll down my legs. Almost exactly my size.

‘Nice,’ I said, undoing my jeans and pulling them down, slowly, so he could watch.

He did.

‘I was going to wear those,’ he said, my jeans by my ankles, gesturing to the trousers in my hand. ‘But I thought you’d rip me a new one like you did Josh.’

Laughing I pulled up the joggers and smoothed them down my thighs. Very comfortable. And clingy. They made my quads and arse look fantastic.

‘These Marks and Spencer’s PJs are much more my age bracket, don’t you think?’ Richard said, giving me a half-twirl.

‘I made that up you know?’

‘Made what up?’

‘His outfit. There was nothing wrong with it. He just looked like the kind of guy who would care about that kind of thing.’

He laughed. But just once. A small, breathy burst through his nose.

Then he said, ‘You weren’t wrong.’

Walking to the kitchen and opening the large stainless-steel fridge, he pulled out a bottle of champagne. Then he picked two glasses from the hanging wrack to his right and placed them on the black marble counter; his triceps and biceps and back muscles tensing and bulging in all the right places.

Turning he said, ‘You’re an insightful so-and-so aren’t you?’

‘How so?’

‘You guessed that I danced.’

‘That was easy.’

‘Ok. But you also guessed that I’d been married. And now you’ve basically described my ex in a single sentence, including why I couldn’t stand to be with him anymore.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

Great.

‘Yeah,’ Richard said, turning back to the champagne and popping the cork; its bang muffled in a white and blue chequered dishcloth. ‘Josh is the vainest person I’ve ever met.’

Here it comes.

‘I just can’t believe it took me so long to realise,’ he said, passing me a fizzing glass and walking past me and the dining table to the living room.

For a split-second I considered bailing. Faking some sickness brought on by bad meat and getting the hell out of there before I had to play psychiatrist. Listen to his story of lost love.

But, as the delicate gold bubbles of my champagne sent tiny clouds of sweet smelling temptation up my nose and into my brain, a second and far more tempting reason to stay began to materialise in the living room.

Chop-chop-chop went a credit card.

‘Is that?’ I said, walking over and sitting next to Richard on the sofa.

Hunched over a long, glass coffee table he said, ‘Yes. The purest cocaine you’ve ever had.’

‘Wow.’

‘I figured if I was going to get all deep you may as well enjoy yourself.’

And how I enjoyed myself.

To be continued …

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