The Bucket List

by Douglas Black

  Kade nodded. “Or child protection.”

  Mr. Australia laughed again. “You know, if you want to buy something, they will kill it and prepare it for you.” The man didn’t sound like he was mocking Kade. Kade appreciated that, since having those bright blue eyes on him already made him feel like blushing.

  Kade shook his head again. “I don’t eat that much meat. I’m a bit of a halfhearted vegetarian.”

  Mr. Australia didn’t reply. He just nodded. He wasn’t showing any signs of backing away, and they remained standing abnormally close to one another. For the briefest of seconds, Kade wondered what would happen if he reached up and brushed the back of his hand against that shoulder-length blond hair.

  “You come here often?” Mr. Australia asked.

  Kade laughed. That question broke the spell, and he slipped to the side and moved away, putting some distance between himself and that tight T-shirt. He could see the man’s abs perfectly under the thin material, could see his hard nipples and—God help me—could see a nipple piercing. It was easier not to stare when he was laughing.

  “Now that’s a terrible line,” Kade said.

  “I mean it.” Mr. Australia gestured to Kade’s basket. “You seem to know your way around, but I know for a fact that I’ve never seen you in here before. I would have remembered you.”

  Kade laughed again, and the man reached out his hand.

  “I’m Blake, by the way.”

  Kade nodded and shook Blake’s hand. “Kade. And no, I don’t come here often. This is my first time actually.”

  “Kade.” The man seemed to roll the syllable around in his mouth as if trying it on for size. When Blake smiled, Kade assumed his name had passed inspection. Blake still hadn’t let go of his hand, and Kade wondered if he ought to be pulling it away. Blake’s grip was strong, the pads of his fingers as rough as his palm.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to get some fish?”

  Kade hadn’t been expecting that. He’d thought they had been flirting, but maybe he was mistaken. He had been out of the game for nearly a decade.

  “Like I said, I don’t eat much meat, and I wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway.”

  “I could show you,” Blake said. Kade pulled himself free, but as he did so, Blake let his index finger stroke across Kade’s wrist and palm. Kade hoped the temperature in the store was a good enough explanation for the shiver that little gesture forced through him.

  “How could you show me?”

  “I have a few hours going spare this afternoon. I could pop back to yours, we could make something nice, eat it together…”

  Kade laughed. He was relieved he hadn’t been wrong about the connection between them, but times must have changed since he’d gotten with Niall, because he was sure he had never heard of anyone getting picked up in a supermarket. He wondered if Blake was going to suggest they go have a look at the vegetables and select some of the most phallic items on offer to complement their impromptu lunch.

  Kade shook his head. “That’s a very kind offer, but I can’t. Sorry.”

  “Are you sure?”

  No. “Yes.”

  Blake shrugged. “Okay. Well, if you change your mind, I’m heading for the butcher’s counter.” Blake bent and picked up his basket. When he straightened, he looked at Kade and bit his lower lip, releasing it on a smile.

  Kade’s words gushed out on a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding. “You’re very forward, aren’t you?”

  Blake leaned into Kade. Blake was a few inches shorter, but somehow the way he held himself made Kade feel small. Blake brought his free hand up and pressed his thumb against Kade’s cheek, cupping his fingers on Kade’s neck just beneath his earlobe.

  “My mum, in addition to trying to mutilate me with lobsters, always told me that shy kids get nothing.” He flicked his head back in the direction of the butcher’s counter and, with another smile, left Kade standing alone.

  Kade’s breathing was a little rougher than it should have been and his cheek felt like it had been touched by fire. He took a few minutes to pretend to stare at the fish and try to work out what had just happened. He wasn’t stupid and was pretty sure he understood the basics, but he was confused.

  A gorgeous man had just walked up to him in the middle of a packed supermarket and propositioned him, admittedly only to share lunch, but Kade was in no doubt there had been more going on behind Blake’s eyes than the simple thought of sustenance.

  And I said I couldn’t? But why can’t I?

  He was single, he was still young—even if he didn’t feel it anymore—and he had left his bedroom looking relatively tidy. Why can’t I take a random stranger home for fun? Kade turned and looked at the queue for the butcher’s counter. Those broad shoulders and the long blond hair were easy to spot. He looked Blake up and down and caught himself before he could start laughing.

  Flip-flops in Scotland in November. That’s why not.

  Blake might be hot. His accent might be the stuff of Kade’s teenage sexual fantasies, but if the man thought that was appropriate footwear for a Scottish winter, he was obviously a few chips short of the full fish supper.

  Chapter Three

  You’re no James Bond

  Kade found himself sitting alone at his friend Ian’s kitchen table a little after nine o’clock that night. He was waiting on Ian to finish getting dressed so they could head over to The Basement, but since Ian’s boyfriend, Paul, had just shown up and gone to check on what Ian was wearing, Kade imagined he was going to be kept waiting a little longer than he’d initially expected.

  He had already turned up the music so he wouldn’t have to listen to any noises that might be about to start coming from the bedroom, but now he reached for the bottle of wine in the middle of the table and topped up his glass as well.

  It was one thing to know what your friends could be doing in the privacy of their bedroom, another thing to hear it but it was much, much more of a thing when one of those friends had been your first lover.

  Ian had taken Kade’s virginity all those years ago now in the back room of a nightclub in Glasgow during their university freshers’ week. They had gone out for seven months until they’d decided they made much better friends than they did lovers. Niall had come along not long after that. Paul was a much newer addition to their now-fragmented group.

  Kade took a large gulp of wine and settled down into his uncomfortable wooden chair. He already didn’t want to go out to The Basement. He didn’t feel much like going anywhere or doing anything other than curling up on his sofa and losing himself to thoughts about Niall and what the bastard had thrown away.

  He should really have canceled on tonight, but Ian had texted to extend an invitation to dinner and Kade had reluctantly accepted. He had managed to find homes in his own kitchen for all his new ingredients, but he was still clueless as to what to do with them.

  He’d been in the process of eyeing a lonely tin of baked beans and the slightly blue remains of a loaf of bread when he’d gotten Ian’s text. Beans on moldy toast would definitely not have been enough of an evening meal, considering how drunk Kade knew he was going to have to get to make it through a Saturday night on the town.

  Now Kade was wishing he’d said no to the dinner invitation and to the nightclub too. He could have eaten his baked beans at home where his ego wasn’t at risk of a further bashing. Since Niall had walked out, it was fragile at best, and the last time he’d sat at this particular table, in front of Ian and Paul, his ego and confidence had taken what might most inappropriately be described as ‘a minor hit’.

  Kade remembered the first time he’d looked up from the table that night two weeks ago after finishing telling his friends that Niall had left him. His gaze had flitted between Ian and Paul as he’d tried to force himself to stop crying.

  “And what did he say exactly before he left?” Ian asked.

  “I told you. He said that our relationship wasn’t working for him anymore. That
he hasn’t wanted to be with me for a long time.”

  “What else did he say?” Paul asked, Paul being the only man Kade had ever met to be born without any ability to grasp basic social skills.

  Kade sighed. “He said… He said… He called me boring, said that I’m stuck in my ways and that he needs something new, someone more exciting.” Kade choked over the words, tried and failed to disguise the sound with a cough.

  The tears had been so close to the surface ever since he’d watched Niall slam the door shut behind him, and talking about it put a physical ache in his chest that he was trying hard to ignore.

  “Well?” he asked, looking for reassurance. Instead of the looks of concern he had been expecting from his friends, Kade found them both looking decidedly shifty and uncomfortable. Ian was staring at the floor, apparently amazed that his floorboards were still in exactly the same place they had always been.

  “What?” Kade asked, starting to get angry.

  “Nothing.”

  But Paul had said it far too quickly for that to be believable.

  “What?” Emotion rose in Kade’s chest so fast that he felt it in his throat.

  “Well, don’t take this the wrong way…” Paul trailed off, throwing a glance at Ian, who was still staring at the floor. He also seemed to be trying to chew through his bottom lip.

  “Now that you’ve said that, Paul, you can guarantee I will.”

  “Well, try not to. Okay? And there is no way I am saying what he did to you was right, and there are no excuses for it, and he is a horrible person who will probably burn in hell—or at least meet with a terrible and much deserved end, but—” Paul had looked again to Ian, but Ian was doing a solid impression of existing in a completely different world. “But… I mean… What I’m trying to say is… Well, let’s face it, Kade. You’re hardly James Bond, are you?”

  Paul leaned back in his seat and pulled his drink toward him. He seemed perfectly satisfied with what he had just said. Kade opened and closed his mouth a few times.

  “I didn’t realize I was supposed to be.”

  “Yes, I know. I mean… You know? It’s just—”

  “What is it just? I’m not James Bond? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Are you saying you think Niall was right? I’m boring, am I? You think Niall has a fucking point?”

  “No.” Paul shook his head so violently Kade thought he would be carrying a strain injury for the next week.

  “If we all stare at the fucking floor, will you tell me what the fuck you’re on about?” Kade couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so scared, and it took him by surprise. As much as he wanted to hear what Paul had to say, he wished there was a way of hearing it without having to listen.

  “It’s just that…you’re not exactly the world’s most interesting person, are you? If we’re being honest, you are pretty dull.”

  Ah, Kade thought, those dazzling social skills were coming into play.

  Paul went on. “And that’s fine. That’s good. I mean, who ever said you had to be interesting, right? You’re happy—or at least you were happy until this happened—and you’re healthy and… But you’re not really exciting, are you? No, wait. Let me finish. You’ve been in the same job for over four years. You wear the same suit and shirt and tie—”

  “That’s not true. I have three suits and ten shirts and I wear them on rotation.”

  “They all look the same.”

  “Because I like that style.”

  “You only have one tie.”

  “I like that tie.”

  Paul sighed. “You eat the same sandwich every day for lunch—one slice of ham, butter on one side, mayo on the other, wholegrain bread cut on the diagonal, with one apple and one cheeky biscuit.”

  “I’m cutting down on the biscuits,” Kade pointed out, already hearing the defeat in his own voice.

  “That’s what I’m saying. You’re very staid, very stuck in your ways.”

  “That’s because those ways are the best.”

  “Fine. But… Can you not see what Niall was saying? And might it not be worth considering it, not for his sake but for your own? I mean, you’re only twenty-six, right? And since you learned to drive, you have driven the same car—”

  “No.”

  “The same type of car then. You go on the same holiday every year to the same resort. You go to the gym only on Tuesdays and Thursdays and get annoyed if someone is on the machine you want because that mucks up your schedule. I’m just saying…maybe you could loosen things up a bit. Go out to a different restaurant for dinner, book a different holiday, buy a different type of butter in the supermarket. Just…you know…spice things up.”

  “I bought a red leather sofa two months ago. Is that not spicy enough?” Kade should have realized how pathetic that was going to sound before the words even left his mouth. He should have tried to pass it off as a joke, but it wasn’t funny. Nothing seemed to be funny anymore.

  “And you panicked about it every day for a fortnight afterward. You were threatening to cancel the order!”

  Kade wondered if a punch to the throat would shut Paul up. He regretted not finding out when Paul delivered his final, knockout blow.

  “Hell, you probably only have sex in one position.”

  Kade remembered fighting to keep his facial expression calm. Paul had touched a nerve—with all of it, but especially with that. He had looked up in time to see Ian glaring at Paul like someone might glare at a small child who has just slapped their own face to find out if it really does hurt.

  Ian knew the truth, of course, and that made Kade’s cheeks burn. At the start of their relationship all those years ago, they had been pretty adventurous, but things had quickly settled down.

  Everyone did things in bed at the beginning of a relationship that they never revisited later on. Don’t they? Not even that piercing and Ian’s impressive length had stopped them from falling into a pattern that they hadn’t broken until they’d admitted to each other that they couldn’t keep the sexual side of their relationship going any longer—because Ian had wanted something fresh and exciting. Kade remembered dropping his head onto the table, admitting defeat.

  He was tempted to do the same now, after letting all the memories of that conversation flood over him. Of course it had been embarrassing, and no one wanted to be called boring—in the bedroom or otherwise—but he supposed he was. He hadn’t always been like that, but now he just liked things a certain way. It was comforting. Reassuring. Yet, because he had come around to this flat two weeks before and cried and ranted and not walked out with the sympathy he’d wanted, he was stuck pretending to work his way through a bucket list written by Paul and Ian that, in addition to things like Go to a nightclub, Shop in an Asian supermarket, Take up a new sport and Buy a different color shirt, also included ridiculous things like Do a skydive, Drive Route 66, and Learn to ride a motorbike.

  Kade drained his glass and found Ian standing in the doorway looking at him, finally dressed and ready to go to The Basement.

  “You okay?”

  Kade nodded but he meant no. He felt totally lost. He poured himself another swig of wine, downed it and got to his feet. If he ordered triples when it was his round at the bar, maybe he could get himself drunk enough quickly enough so that he wouldn’t have to endure too much torture in Ian and Paul’s company.

  Chapter Four

  The Basement

  The Basement, although it had undergone many name changes since Kade had first stepped through its doors, had always been an alternative nightclub. Strictly speaking, it was more of a dive bar with a small dance floor and strobe lighting than a proper club. The music ranged from indie to heavy metal via reggae, and while it hadn’t started out life as a gay bar, it was so close to the rest of Glasgow’s gay nightlife that it had quickly been absorbed into the fold.

  The Basement was always busiest on weeknights when cheap drink specials brought in the students from the nearby universities and art colleges, but
as Kade leaned up against the bar and looked around, he could see that the club was almost at capacity, even though it was still early for a Saturday night.

  The bar was thronged with people and the dance floor filled with heaving, sweaty, half-naked teenagers grinding and rubbing against each other. Kade hadn’t thought that twenty-six was particularly old until he looked out over that writhing sea of bodies. Some of the guys he could see didn’t look old enough to be legally allowed to drink, but Kade knew checking IDs had never been The Basement’s strong point, regardless of which owner’s name was over the door. That was the reason he and his friends had started basing all their nights out around the place from the age of sixteen.

  He turned to share his thoughts about one particularly young-looking blond twink with Ian and Paul, only to find them engaging in what appeared to be an attempt to swallow each other’s tongue. He sighed. Turning around, he gestured to the bartender, who passed over another double vodka with lime and tonic. He had switched to doubles when the first triple he ordered felt like it was ripping the lining of his throat on the way down.

  “Come on, man. Let loose a little,” Paul shouted in his ear, his tongue seemingly still intact.

  Kade wiped the newly acquired spit from his cheek and glared at him. If Paul had noticed, he didn’t react. He just kept grinding his hips back into Ian’s groin while Ian downed beer from a bottle and ignored Paul’s movements, as if this sort of thing happened to him all the time, even when he was standing waiting at bus stops and cashpoints. With Paul, maybe it did.

  “Go out there and find someone. Get a kiss. Have a dance. Take him home!”

  Ian choked on his beer. “Paul, come on. He’s not going to do that.”

  “Why not?” Paul asked. Kade wanted to know the answer too, although he knew he probably wasn’t going to like it.