Chapter 8

All day I hadn't been able to stop staring at him.

I'd woken from a deep sleep in which all I felt was the presence of Maxie and some calm and soothing feeling I did not name; and I had been filled with a sense of peace the likes of which I had never known. Reading poetry through he all had seemed a perfect way to start the day. Once I'd been sharing the same air as Maxie though, the confidence had taken a back seat to desire.

I'd never wanted anything this much, not least when Maxie had taken off his shirt and I had allowed myself to stare, slack jawed at the awesomeness of his body. How did he not know he was beautiful?

After Mina's slight interrogation at lunch I felt buoyed, Maxie's confidence rubbing off on me. Maxie went off towards Work, for his creative writing class, and I headed towards the changing rooms.

Ian was waiting for me. His nose had a simple tape over the bridge and his eye sockets were still sort of dark, but other than that he looked OK.

"Hey," I put down my kit bag and smiled at Pete, who, half dressed, came to stand with us, "Look I'm sorry for breaking your nose."

Ian seemed to consider this.

"I shouldn't have said what I did." He shook his head, "And Pete says I have to forgive you." I smiled at the chubbier boy. Yeah, Pete was sort of cute, but Maxie held all my attention even when he wasn't there. "Plus cross country is coming up and we need you, it'll take the pressure off everyone else."

The air cleared, the dingy changing room with filled with 'light and sound'. I breathed easy, let imagined strains of Maxie's music wash over me. 'And friends who said they had your back/But they just turned and ran and let you fight'. I had listened that album a lot, along with others, in the long days that Maxie had been away at school. I sang the songs in my bedroom, wandered all around the house drifting in and out of music that reminded me of him. I hummed as I got changed, and realised that tonight everything was going to change. Better or worse, something would be different.

'The ground is uneven/You stumble from day to day/You tread where it's easy/Although your feet are like lead/And you gotta get underway.'
'Drag your heart up to the starting line/Forget the ghosts that make you old before your time/It's too easy to get left behind/I know you've been kicked around/But tie up your thoughts and lay them down on me.'

During the lesson let myself be distracted by the immediacy of sport and exercise, the burn of muscles and joints: push ups, star jumps, sit ups, laps. Then basketball: weaving, passing, jumping, throws. We were all sweaty by the time we were sent in for showers and the flood of endorphins could not stop the roaring of blood in my ears. I stood under the cold showers, my skin turning to ice, knowing that if I allowed myself even the shortest reign that my cock would leapt to attention. As easy as Ian had forgiven me, he was not above teasing, and I wasn't so sure of my self-control not to knock him for six again.

Maths was the last lesson of the day, and equilateral equations held no distraction for me. It wouldn't be long until I was walking the road with Maxie, not long until I would be in his house. A little nagging voice told me I had to get through a family dinner first, with people I had never met, and mum was no doubt going to be her most skittish and stressed.

I waited for Maxie at registration. Miss Shin had made scones for her year seven class and had extra's for those of us who arrived on time. I munched my way through the baked creations, trying not to glue my eyes to the door. Maxie was late, inexcusably messy, his uniform ruffled and dishevelled. How he had ever made student leader I would never understand. Other prefects were smooth, supple creatures. Neat and precise, for teenagers, and generally unruffled. But none of it mattered, because my heart started trying to flap right out of my chest when I saw him, and the smile that spread across his face was the sun in the morning.

'You'll follow me back with the sun in your eyes... '

Maxie refused a last remaining scone and slipped into the chair next to me.

"I wish I had your metabolism. You skinny bastard."

"I missed you." I kept my voice low, not that the rest of our tutor group were ever anything other than raucous.

"Me too."

We were dismissed for the weekend with the instruction to 'be good; and if you can't be good, be safe; if you can't be safe, just don't get arrested' and Maxie and I hung back as everyone flooded out of the school towards their exciting weekends. I had no idea what my weekend held. I couldn't think past tonight any more than I could keep my eyes off him.

We walked along shoulder to shoulder, and it struck me that apart from Paul at the café, we were probably the tallest people in town. We must have made quite a sight walking so close together as to form a wall across the street. Maxie told me about his day. He wrote poetry in creative writing class, and song inspiration seemed to be a common theme this week. As we walked, turning towards our street he handed me a crumpled piece of paper, ink stained and smudged. Everything Maxie handled was crumpled. I made sure to touch his hand when I took it, the contact like a cattle prod, electricity up my skeleton. I looked into his soft toffee eyes and wished I could take the chance to close the distance between us.

Those two short kisses seemed so close, yet so long ago, like the past viewed through a microscope. I wanted desperately to touch him again, scared of him, scared of myself. Why was it so easy to give in with Maxie when I had fought these feeling so many times before? The oxygen between us was warm and wet with a recycled texture to it. One of us was going to have to break away. It was Maxie.

"I have to help mum get ready."

"OK."

"Dress for dinner."

"Yes." I stood at my gate and watched Maxie walk up his path, shoulders shaking to keep from running. I unfolded and flattened the paper scrap in my hand. These were Maxie's words, I knew instantly that they were not from a song or poem, not quoted, but written just for me.

Before I found you, I was fine, now

I'm half a world away from where I was.

I never knew I needed you.

I had found mum frantically cleaning an already sparkling kitchen and guided her to the calm dulcet tones of the television. We weren't due at Maxie's for some three hours and somehow I knew that there would be no conversation through the wall tonight. I showered, stretched, shaved the hair above my pubic bone, touched up my chin and scrubbed at my skin with one of mum's flowery exfoliants until I was pink. Wrapped in a towel in the steam of the bathroom I wiped the mirror and saw myself quickly in the glass before the condensation clouded over.

How could Maxie want me? Near naked in the bathroom I felt wrong, damaged. Ghost bruises flared in my mind where He had touched me. Maxie was so ... pure, refreshing. He was better than me, that was certain. I had never been true or honest to anyone or anything in my whole life; I shook and wiped away the steam again to stare at my reflection. Dear god but I was going to try. Gay or straight seemed to have nothing to do with it. I knew, looking at myself in the mirror, that I had fallen for Maxie, and fallen hard.

I dressed in deep navy chinos, straight cut and pressed with a turn-up at the bottom; yellow socks and blood-brown brogues; a clean white shirt under a checked shirt in four shades of blue with mother of pearl buttons. I dried my hair and brushed it with my usual side parting and made sure the soft wave feel exactly where I liked it. Then I spent a half hour getting my mother changed from jeans and raggedy jumper. She came down stairs in the sequinned ball gown and I returned her to her closet, finally coming out with an A-line red skirt and cream blouse, a mustard coloured scarf and matching belt. Sensible black shoes with a gold buckle. Suitably presented and with mum holding a plate of her best brownies we went next door.

I knocked. My hear pounded in my chest, I wanted to break and run and burst through the door to see him all at the same time. I forced myself to breath, Maxie's voice through the wall flooding my skull; 'to the place of his birth/with a gift for his brother.'

Maxie's grandmother opened the door and I stuttered out my one practiced Turkish word;

"Merhaba."

"Merhaba! Iyi akshamlar Jesse. Küçük! Buradalar!"

Beside me mum looked shocked at the onslaught of language. Then Maxie appeared on the stairs and my heart stilled.

He was wearing bootleg black jeans that fitted through the hip to knee before they flared softly, tucked into them was white dress shirt with wide lapel collars and chunky cuffs that made his cocoa skin glow like the setting sun. Thick fingers fumbled on the last button, still a good hand span from the hollow of his throat and I gulped audibly. Maxie sat something in Turkish to his grandmother and turned to us.

"Good evening, come in." He chastised his grandmother as we stepped across the threshold, "Babaanne! You can't just do that. You'll scare them away."

"Oh nonsense Küçük, you run along to the kitchen and help your mother. And don't get your shirt dirty." She turned to us as Maxie gave me a soft smile and vanished, "That boy. Do come in won't you, I'm Maxie's grandmother. Everyone calls me Babaanne. You must be Jesse's mother."

"T-Tamsin," mum has a way of stuttering when she's really nervous. Dinner at the next door neighbours with her son and the boy he beat up had to be pretty high up that list. "It's so nice of you to have us over."