Muscling Through

by J. L. Merrow

  And then I thought about Phil, all upset because Leanne from Lidl was cheating on him, and I thought about Larry being all upset, and I wanted to smash things again. I pushed Ren away. I did it gently, though, ’cause I didn’t want to hurt him.

  That was when I saw Larry was there, at the top of the stairs. I don’t think he must’ve called out or nothing when he came home this time. He had this look on his face that made my throat feel all tight.

  “Let me guess,” he said really quietly. It sounded like his throat was hurting too. “It’s not what it looks like.”

  I thought about that. What it must’ve looked like was me kissing Ren without his kit on. So I didn’t say nothing, ’cause that was what it was.

  “I’m… I’ve got to go,” Larry said, and then I heard him running down the stairs.

  “Oops,” Ren said.

  Something went snap in my head, and I took a step forward.

  Ren’s eyes went really big, and he walked backwards a bit. “Hey, calm down, all right? Look, I’m going.” He grabbed his clothes and started putting them on. I don’t think he noticed his T-shirt was inside out. “No need to pay me, okay? On the house. I’ll see myself out.”

  He grabbed his shoes and ran down the stairs with them. I heard the front door go so quick he must’ve still not got his shoes on when he went outside.

  I sat on the floor and looked at my picture of Ren. For a moment, I wanted to throw it out the window, but I thought Larry might be cross. So I just went downstairs and waited for Larry to come home.

  I waited a long time. It got way later than Larry normally comes home. I’m not sure how late it got, ’cause in the end I fell asleep on the sofa, but Larry still never came home.

  I didn’t feel like going in to work next day. I called my boss and told him I was sick. I thought maybe if I waited around the house, Larry would come back. I didn’t know what to do, so I called my mum, but she was working.

  I didn’t know where Larry could’ve been. I thought maybe he’d had an accident or something and was in hospital or dead, and that was why he never came home. I didn’t know how you found out about stuff like that. I thought maybe I should ring the hospital or the police or something, but Larry and me, we’re not family or nothing. I thought they probably wouldn’t tell me.

  I thought maybe I should ring Larry’s family, because if something bad had happened to him, the police would have told them. So I looked up the number and called them, but it just went to Larry’s mum’s voice on the answerphone. I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t leave a message. I thought if I left a message asking if Larry was okay, and he’d just stayed out at a mate’s or something, he’d be really mad at me for making his mum get all worried. I didn’t want him to have something else to be mad at me for.

  So I just stayed in the house all day. I didn’t really feel like eating nothing, but I thought maybe I should, ’cause Mum always says it’s really important to get three meals a day, even though she’s always on a diet. But when I looked in the cupboard, we was all out of bread and stuff, so I didn’t bother.

  I didn’t know what to do. I watched TV for a bit, but I kept forgetting what I was watching. Then I put on a Charlie Chaplin DVD, but it just made me sad. I didn’t feel much like painting or nothing, even, but I thought maybe if I drew Larry from memory it’d make me feel better, so I went up to the studio to get my stuff, but I forgot Ren’s picture would be there.

  There was all kinds of stuff going round in my head. It wasn’t nice stuff. It made my chest hurt and my eyes go all funny. I think if Ren had been there, I’d have hit him. I don’t know what I’d have done if Larry had been there. I think I’d have wanted him to hit me, because it would have hurt less.

  When it got dark I didn’t want to stay in the house on my own no more, so I called up Phil to ask if he’d go for a drink with me. Then I remembered it was Saturday night, so he’d be out anyway. I went up to the pub on my own, and he was there with Daz and some other blokes. I think I had a lot of beers. I don’t remember everything that happened, but there was this bloke what kept getting in my face, and I think we went outside, and then his mates were everywhere, and there was three of them on top of me, and I think I passed out.

  When I woke up I was in A&E, and Phil was sitting by my bed. My head hurt. So did lots of other bits.

  “Bloody hell, Al,” Phil said. “You look like shit.”

  I thought that was fair enough, ’cause I felt like shit. “Am I in trouble?”

  “Not sure. I swore blind to the fuzz it was them what started it. Think you might get a Drunk and Disorderly. Least nobody glassed no one. You hardly hit no one, anyway. It was like you couldn’t be arsed. If I get my hands on that posh tosser boyfriend of yours—bleedin’ hell, Al! Lie the fuck down!”

  “You shouldn’t ought to say stuff about Larry,” I said, but it came out a bit funny ’cause my head felt like someone hit it with a sledgehammer, and I was trying not to be sick. I lay back down.

  “All right, keep your hair on,” Phil said. “If you ask me, though, he’s being a—all right, all right, I’m not saying nothing more, right?”

  The doctor said I didn’t have to stay in no more, so Phil took me home, back to Larry’s house. I thought maybe Larry might be there by then, but he wasn’t. “You want me to take you round your mum’s?” Phil asked.

  I didn’t want my mum to know I’d been in a fight, so I said no. Phil hung around a bit and did some shopping. Then he made us beans on toast ’cause that’s all he can cook. He had to go shopping first. “You going to be all right if I leave you?” he asked afterwards. “’Cause I’m s’posed to be over at Leanne’s.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine,” I said. I didn’t want him to get in trouble with Leanne from Lidl, ’cause they’d only just got back together last night. So he went, and I thought I’d be okay, but the house felt really empty with only me in it. Which is weird, ’cause Larry doesn’t take up a lot of space.

  Then the doorbell rang. I went to answer it, and it was Larry’s sister Alicia. “Larry’s not here,” I said.

  Her eyes went really big. “God, what happened to you?”

  I shrugged. “Had a fight. Too many beers.”

  She gave me a funny look. “Friday night?”

  “Nah. Saturday. I waited in Friday night and all Saturday, ’cause I thought Larry might come back, and I didn’t want to miss him.”

  She sort of pressed her lips together. “It was you I wanted to talk to, anyway. Going to let me in?”

  I was wondering what Alicia would want to talk to me about. I didn’t think it was anything I’d want to hear. But she was Larry’s sister, so I let her in. “Can I get you a cup of tea?” I asked.

  “No, I’m fine.” She took her coat off and slung it over the back of the sofa. “Are you cheating on my brother?”

  That made sense that she’d want to talk to me about it. “No,” I said.

  Alicia stuck her chin out. She’s got quite a big chin for such a little woman. “He thinks you are. He told Mum, and Mum told me.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “I wouldn’t cheat on Larry. Even if he never kisses me again. Not unless he tells me it’s all over.”

  “Do you love him?”

  I smiled, ’cause thinking about how much I love Larry always makes me smile. Even when it hurts my chest too. “Yeah. I love him more than anything. Maybe not more than my mum, ’cause she’s great and she’s my mum, but the same. Only different.”

  Alicia had a funny look on her face. Maybe she thought my smile was sinister too. “So what’s the story about this student, then?”

  After she said that, I didn’t have to worry about my smile upsetting her no more. “You mean Ren?”

  “Probably.”

  “He kept trying to kiss me. And then he did kiss me. And that was when Larry saw us.”

  “That’s all it was? Just a kiss?”

  I sort of shrugged. “Yeah. But Ren still had his kit off from modeling.”<
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  “But it was just him kissing you? You didn’t want to kiss him back?” Alicia was looking at me in this scary way like she could see right through me. I think maybe they teach them that in lawyer school.

  I looked down at my feet. “I was kissing Ren. But only for a moment, ’cause Larry hadn’t kissed me for days, and I missed him. Then I pushed him away, and that’s when I saw Larry was there, and he said he had to go. I don’t know where he went. Then I told Ren to piss off, ’cause I’m with Larry.”

  She sighed. “I think you two need to talk to one another. Come on, I’ll take you to him. My car’s outside—I think you’ll just about fit in.”

  We got in Alicia’s car. It was a Volkswagen Golf. I fitted in easy, once I’d put the seat back a bit. It took a while to get out of Cambridge, ’cause of the one-way system, and then we went down towards Trumpington.

  “Don’t talk much, do you?” Alicia said.

  “Nah. I leave that to Larry. He’s better at it than I am.”

  She just smiled then and didn’t say nothing. I got thinking again. I wasn’t sure what she wanted to happen, ’cause she was being nice, but I knew she didn’t like me. “You don’t like me, do you?” I said.

  “What? Excuse me, but here I am, driving you up to my parents’ to meet him. You think I’d do this for someone I didn’t like?”

  That confused me. “I thought you wanted us to split up. You said I was taking advantage of Larry.” I forgot she didn’t know I’d heard her when she was talking to Larry in our kitchen.

  “What? Wait a minute.” She didn’t say nothing for a bit while she went round a roundabout. “I think you’ve misunderstood me.”

  I nodded, ’cause I do that all the time with people.

  “I admit, I didn’t think it was a good idea at first, you and Lawrence. But… Look, I think you make him happy. And he’s certainly not happy now. And I don’t think you are either.”

  I frowned, ’cause did that mean she thought we’d split up? And if we had, how come I didn’t know? Then I thought, I better wait until I see Larry. He’s good at explaining stuff. And he’d definitely know if we’d split up.

  Alicia pulled in at this big posh house with a gravel driveway that crunched under the tyres. We got out of the car, and she rang the bell. I wondered why she didn’t have a key if this was her mum and dad’s house, but I didn’t want to ask. It was an old-fashioned bell that you had to pull on a chain. A bit like an old-fashioned toilet. It had a nice chime, though.

  We waited, and then Larry’s mum opened the door. Her face went all sour when she saw us. “Alicia, in heaven’s name, what are you doing here with that?”

  Alicia stuck her chin out again. “We’ve come to see Larry,” she said, and I smiled ’cause she’d called him Larry.

  I thought for a moment Larry’s mum was going to close the door, so I put my foot in it like my mum taught me. She did a Betterware catalogue for a bit when she was out of work, so she learned all this stuff. Larry’s mum looked at my foot, and then she sniffed and let us in.

  “This way,” Alicia said. She grabbed my arm and took me across the hall to a sitting room. It was really nice, with a big old fireplace and huge windows looking onto the garden.

  Larry was sitting on the sofa looking sad. He was wearing these clothes I’d never seen before that didn’t suit him. I guess he must’ve left them round his mum’s when he moved out. He looked up when we went in. Then he looked again and his eyes got really big. “Christ, Al, what the hell happened to you?”

  I shrugged. “’S nothing. Just had a bit of a fight.”

  Larry’s dad was reading a paper. He looked up once, and then he rustled the paper really loud and went back to reading it.

  “Right,” Alicia said. “Lawrence, I think you owe Al an apology.”

  Larry went bright red. “What? Me?”

  “Did it never even occur to you to ask what was going on?”

  I was a bit confused, so I said, “What was going on?”

  Alicia smiled at me. “Nothing, Al. That’s the point.”

  Larry got off the sofa. “So… You and Ren… That’s nothing?” His face was all tense.

  I wanted to hold his hands or hug him or something, but I wasn’t sure he’d let me, and I didn’t want to find out for sure. “I was just painting him. He tried it on, but I told him I was with you.”

  “I saw you… You looked like you were…” Larry looked at his dad and didn’t finish, even though his dad didn’t look up from his paper or nothing. I was frowning, ’cause I was trying to work out what he thought I was doing with Ren, but then he said, “And then you were kissing him.” His face was all tight, like he might cry, and I felt really bad ’cause it was my fault.

  “I told him to piss off. You missed that bit. I didn’t want kisses from Ren.” I wanted Larry. “I’m sorry I kissed him,” I said, and my voice went a bit funny.

  “So…you never…” Larry looked over at his dad, but he was still reading his paper. I don’t think he’d turned the page for a long time, though. Maybe it was a really interesting article. “You never did…anything else with Ren?”

  I knew he wasn’t talking about me painting him and stuff. “Why would I want him when I got you?” And then I got worried, ’cause I wasn’t sure if I still had Larry or not.

  “Why?” Larry’s eyebrows went really high. Then he looked around at his sister and his dad with his paper and his mum standing there looking sour at us. “I think… I think we should go home.”

  I smiled again, ’cause that was all I’d ever wanted, Larry home with me.

  “Lawrence?” his mum said, all sharp. “Surely you’re not going to just take his word for it?”

  Larry stuck his chin out. It made him look a lot more like his sister. “Yes, because I trust Al not to lie to me.”

  She made this funny tutting sound.

  Larry looked at me. “Al, have you ever lied to me?”

  I thought about it. “There was this one time you cooked a curry with all fresh spices and stuff, and you asked if I liked it, and I said yeah. But you know about that one, ’cause you said, ‘You’re lying, aren’t you? It’s crap, isn’t it?’ Then you tried some and said, ‘Oh God, that’s awful!’ and we went and got a takeaway instead.”

  Larry was smiling by the time I finished speaking, and he turned to his mum. “See? I always know when Al’s telling me the truth.”

  His mum sort of sniffed. “Nigel? Aren’t you going to say anything?”

  Larry’s dad put down his newspaper. “It’s his own grave. Let him dig it.” Then he picked up his paper again.

  I didn’t think that was very nice, but Larry just gave this tight little smile and said, “Fine. You’ll be very welcome to the funeral.” Then he took my arm and said, “Let’s go home.”

  When he was putting his shoes on out in the hall, he looked up at me, not smiling or nothing, and said, “Al, I’m so sorry I doubted you. Did you get badly hurt?”

  I shrugged. “Nah. I been beat up much worse than this before,” I said, ’cause I had. “I think I might be up on a Drunk and Disorderly, though.”

  “Don’t worry,” Alicia said. “You’ve got a good lawyer.”

  So Larry drove us home, and I put my hand on his leg all the way, and he didn’t push it off or nothing, and when we were on the straight bits where he didn’t need to change gear and stuff, he put his hand on mine. When we got back home, I couldn’t wait to get close to him, so as soon as we got in the front door, I pushed him to the wall and shoved my hands up his shirt and kissed him. Larry didn’t try and pull away; he just kissed me back. It wasn’t just nice, it was fucking fantastic.

  We kissed until we had to stop to breathe, and then I rested my head on the wall above Larry’s head while he nuzzled into my chest. Then he looked up. “I’ve been an idiot.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “You’re still way cleverer than me.”

  Then Larry laughed, and we kissed again, and I got his trousers un
done, and he pushed my jogging bottoms down and said, “Oh God, I’ve missed this.” Then he went all serious and stroked my face where it was bruised. “Are you sure you’re up for this?”

  “Take more than a few bruises to stop me,” I said, and he smiled. I wanted to fuck him and suck him and do everything all at once, but I couldn’t wait that long, so I grabbed hold of both our cocks and rubbed them together.

  Larry gasped, and then he said, “Not here!” and he grabbed my hand and took me into the sitting room. “Have you any idea just how much I’ve grown to loathe this sofa while you’ve been sleeping on it?”

  “No,” I said, ’cause I thought if anyone should hate the sofa it should be me. I was the one who kept getting a stiff neck.

  “Well, I’m reclaiming it.” He lay down on the sofa with his trousers undone and his cock sticking out, and he looked so fucking gorgeous I wished I could’ve painted him like that. But I thought Larry would probably rather I did something else. So I knelt down by the sofa, and I took him in my mouth, and he moaned and bucked up like he couldn’t control himself. I love it when Larry can’t control himself. I moved my lips up his cock, sucking all the way, until I came off him with a pop. Then I licked all the way up and down his shaft, teasing that little spot under the head that always makes him go mad. He was gasping and moaning and saying stuff like, “Oh God, oh God, oh God!” so I figured he was enjoying it.

  But then he grabbed my head and pushed, so I knew he wanted me off him. I looked up, and his face was just beautiful, all pink and shiny. “I want more of you,” he said, so I lay down on top of him, careful to keep my weight on my elbows so I wouldn’t squash him, and I pressed my cock against his. “Oh Christ, yes!” he said. “God, don’t stop!”

  I could’ve told him I wasn’t planning to stop. But it felt so good I don’t think I could’ve said the words. I kept rubbing against him, feeling the heat of his body and breathing in the scent of him that I’d thought I’d never smell again, not like this, and then I felt him shudder underneath me, and I rubbed harder, and then I was coming all over him, my spunk spurting out like I was marking him, making him mine again.