Love and Tea Bags

by C F White

  “Yes.” Mark waved his hands, urging his mother to move and show them where she’d parked the blasted car.

  “Macy…now there is one reason why I’m thankful Mark is gay.” Vera directed her comment straight at Bradley with a tut. “Because if he wasn’t, I’m sure he’d marry that disaster of a woman just to annoy the hell out of me.”

  “Mother!” Mark’s clipped tone startled even him.

  “No need to shout, Mark. I may be getting old, but hearing is one faculty I do still have.”

  “But tact is sadly lacking,” Mark replied. “Bradley is Macy’s cousin.”

  “Really?” She whipped her head, giving Bradley the once over. “So whereabouts from up north are you?”

  “Oh, dear Lord.” Mark hung his head. “He’s from Australia, Mother. Apologies, Bradley, my mother believes anywhere north of the M25 is northern.”

  “Fair dos.” Bradley shrugged.

  “Now if you don’t mind.” Mark tapped Vera’s arm. “We do really need to get back.”

  His mother obliged that time, not before adding another tsk, and sauntered to the station car park. On clicking her key fob, the lights on a black Bentley illuminated like Blackpool at night. Bradley hurried beside Mark and gasped.

  “Is that a—”

  “Yes.” Mark clenched his jaw. “I ask you not to mention it again.”

  “Are your oldies loaded?”

  “It’s a long story.” That Mark had neither the energy nor the time to retell just then. Certainly not within earshot of Vera.

  “And yet you can’t afford a roof?” Bradley widened his eyes.

  Mark sighed and slumped away from the car, waiting for his mother to slip her slender body elegantly into the vehicle and slam the door.

  “My mother is money. Came from money. Always had money.” Mark shuffled his feet and tried to tuck his hands in his jacket pocket only to rip the stitching farther. “Pa, unfortunately, gambled most of it away on the horses.” Mark held up a finger to stop Bradley from replying. “They lost it all. But Mother likes to keep up the pretence that they still have it all. It wouldn’t go down well in her circles to know the car is on credit.”

  “Right-o,” Bradley said.

  Mark held open the car door and allowed Bradley to climb in first to the back seat. Mark followed behind. There was simply no way he was sitting next to his mother for the hour and a half drive back home. That would be longer than any time he had been that close to the woman since he’d suckled her breasts. Mark shuddered, so much so that his whole body convulsed and Bradley shot him a concerned look.

  “Someone walked over my grave.” Mark yanked the seat belt, getting it stuck in his haste.

  “So, Bradley, dear?” Vera sailed the car out of the station driveway and headed through the London streets toward the South, with Mark still entangling himself from the seat belt. He could put that down to his mother not caring all that much about his safety, but it was more that her focus was on the stranger in her car. “Were you opening a new tea shop in London? That’s something I can imagine my son being a party to.”

  “No, no.” Bradley clicked his own belt into place with the ease of normalcy. “It was another job I was doing here. I kinda have a few fingers in a few pies.”

  “Well, you are still young, dear, unlike poor Mark. I’ll bet the pies quite like it.” Vera winked in the rearview mirror. “Wish my Mark could find a pie.”

  “Mother,” Mark warned between gritted teeth. “If we’re talking jobs, I have one.”

  “Being a glorified secretary for that awful man who pays you peanuts is hardly what I consider worthy of my son. I mean for goodness’ sake, Mark, you have a degree!”

  “You do?” Bradley whipped his head around.

  “Yes.” Mark nodded at Bradley but returned his exasperated glare on his mother in the mirror whilst still yanking his seat belt free from its constriction. “But graduate-level jobs were hard to come by in a seaside town, Mother. You know that. I got what I could when I came back.” At your request! Mark would have added that in, but it would just add salt into an unhealed—and surreptitious—wound.

  “You could run that place! You could be a top executive in a multibillion pound law firm. But, no, you chose to be girl Friday for a midget!” Vera was clearly on one of her rampages.

  “Mother!” Mark finally got the clunk-click of confirmation he was strapped in.

  “Your problem, Mark, is that you’re just lazy. You don’t want to work to earn money. You want it given to you, as if it is your God-given right. Like when you asked us for that loan for your house. We refused, because you need to learn the value of hard work. You still live in your pipe dream of travelling the world. And when you ran off to London to let someone else to take care of you… Well, that didn’t last, did it, Mark?”

  Mark avoided Bradley’s open-mouthed stare at him and rather wished he’d forked out for a first-class bloody train ticket. It would have avoided all this painful headache-inducing trip down Memory Lane. At least it reminded him of why he didn’t visit his mother with any sort of regularity. If it wasn’t for his father, he probably wouldn’t at all.

  “Anyway, Bradley.” Vera smiled. “How long are you in the country for?” She over-pronounced every word, like she did to those who worked in the post office through fear of not being understood.

  “Ah, well, not long.” Bradley scratched the nape of his neck, which would have been a drool-inducing sight with those biceps flexing and the scent of underarm manliness wafting Mark’s way.

  Instead, Mark just felt a painful stab in the chest. Heartburn? Too much breakfast?

  “What?” he blurted. The seat belt acted accordingly to his jerky movement by believing Mark was in danger of hurtling through the windscreen and so pinned him to the seat, restricting his ability to breathe. It was either that, or Mark’s chest was painfully constricted with the thought of Bradley leaving. He tested the belt anyway.

  “Macy’s back soon and I was just standing in…” Bradley hardly looked Mark’s way as he spoke. “Anyway, I’ve got a chance of a gig back in Sydney, earn some more money, then I’ll fly off somewhere else.”

  “Wow.” Vera raised plucked eyebrows. “You don’t stay in one place very long, do you, Bradley?”

  The bastard actually had the audacity to shrug. “Not unless there’s a reason. I go where the stars tell me.” There was that wistful look in youthful eyes.

  Mark felt sick. So very sick. And trapped. He tugged the seat belt again and it released. He breathed.

  Okay, he gasped.

  “You all right, mate?” Bradley slapped Mark on the back.

  Like a mate would. Like someone who was passing through. A travelling companion. Except they weren’t any of that, were they? Hardly friends at all, really. What are we? What is this? What have we been doing? Mark felt like his life had significantly changed since the Australian’s arrival on his doorstep with perfect toes within pink thongs. Did Bradley even feel the same? Had anything changed for him? Or was Mark simply another person met on his intrepid exploration of the world?

  “Fine and dandy,” was what Mark’s frozen brain decided to allow him to utter, along with giving a flippant wave of his hand.

  Bradley nodded, once, then held Mark’s gaze. Without processing what that look could mean, Mark raised his eyebrows, willing Bradley to say something, anything, else. He didn’t. He turned away and glanced out of his passenger-side window at all the vast farmland passing by. Mark’s lips parted—

  “You’ll catch flies, Mark, dear,” Vera said.

  Mark slapped his mouth shut.

  “You know,” she continued, her eyes finding Bradley’s through the mirror once more, “Mark said he was going to move to Australia.”

  Bradley gazed back from his idle scenery pondering. Mark was still too preoccupied with the previous conversation for his brain to catch up on the current one, still processing the thought that Bradley was vacating his life for good in a mere twenty-
four hours. He’d just started getting used to having him around. Is that why Bradley’s so eager to get his leg over so quickly?

  “It was after his little speech at school.”

  That snapped Mark from his bubbling emotional turmoil of figuring out what he was more upset about—Bradley leaving or that he’d only been chasing after Mark because he knew it wouldn’t be a long-term thing.

  “Has he told you about that, Bradley?”

  “No, he hasn’t, Vera.” Bradley smiled, his pure white teeth bursting from behind pink lips so much so that Mark could taste the enamel. “Do tell.”

  The untold is about to be told! In a desperate attempt to prevent the following detail falling from his mother’s treacherous mouth, Mark lunged forward. The seat belt in its infinite wisdom retracted once more, gloating over a job well done. Mark slammed back against the seat, the wind firmly knocked out of his sails, and drank in the sight of the English Channel approaching over the horizon. Maybe she won’t have enough time to tell it all?

  “Mark was chosen to write and give a speech on the last day of term at school. Such a bright boy, lots of potential back then. Most likely to achieve. What? I’m still unsure.” Vera waved a flippant hand from the steering wheel. “Anyway, it was proposed he write something about his educational journey, School—The Best Years of our Lives! That sort of thing. Mark didn’t allow anyone to read it before the big delivery—”

  “Mother.” Mark hacked out a warning through the pressure of his seat belt slicing into his neck and almost decapitating him.

  It came out as more a whimper than an order. He would have tried again had it not been for Bradley’s hand laying itself on his knee and trailing upwards to his thigh. That had to have been done subconsciously, because Bradley hadn’t moved any other muscle, including his eyes that focused solely on Mark’s mother.

  “So little Mark, sweet sixteen, stood in front of the whole school and declared to all of Marsby that his school years had been torturous.” Vera clutched a hand to her chest and sniffed, as though the memory pained her.

  Mark fought for breath, or at least the bravery to go through with the decapitation.

  “He explained, to everyone, that he was gay, that throughout his years at Marsby Boys Grammar, he had been made to feel like an outcast. He’d been bullied and ridiculed and singled out, and that finally, on his departure from compulsory education, he was so deliriously happy that he no longer had to conform to their…what was it, Mark?”

  Mark shook his head. Bradley’s hand squeezed.

  “Hetero sadomasochistic rituals.” Vera swerved the car, narrowly missing a truck. “Then said he was off to go live in the Australian outback.”

  “Far out.” Bradley grinned. “I’ll bet you were a hoot at school.”

  “Far from it.” Mark sank into his seat. “Unfortunately, every word of that speech was true. Except the Australia part.”

  “Why Oz?”

  Mark sucked in a deep, shaky breath. “Because it’s very, very, very far away.”

  “Yeah.” Bradley slipped his hand from Mark’s leg and turned back to count the sheep outside his window. “Sure is.”

  * * * *

  Mark convinced his mother to drop them both at his house. He didn’t invite her in for a cup of tea. She looked relieved at the fact. She hated stepping foot in Pa’s childhood home at the best of times. Mark doubted she’d spent much time here during his parents’ courting days. Mark didn’t dwell too much on those thoughts. He found it hard to believe his parents had ever dated. Or had sex.

  Or enjoyed each other’s company.

  Bradley, however, hovered at his door and although Mark didn’t actually utter the words, it was explicit in both their actions that he would at least come into the house before buggering off to, well, who knew where anymore?

  Mark bolted through to the kitchen, flicking the kettle on, and Bradley slipped in behind. Whilst Mark wiped off two mugs from the draining board, Bradley opened his fridge and passed over the milk with a sly grin.

  “What?” Mark narrowed his eyes.

  “You bought OJ.” Bradley smiled. “I’m touched.”

  “Ah.” Mark had bought a litre carton the last time he had been at the corner shop, with no suggestive reasoning whatsoever. It had simply been to check out the wonderment that is a sunshine breakfast to see if it could rival his morning tea fix. Less time faffing about with a kettle. The fact it remained unopened in his fridge was neither here nor there. “Well, perhaps you can take that back with you to Australia?”

  The words tumbled from his mouth and seared his tongue like a paper cut. Of course Bradley wouldn’t be hanging around Marsby forever. It was a retirement destination after all. A young, travel-hungry man should not, by any means, see out his days in a sleepy seaside town whose newest development in fifty years was a Costa Coffee. He should be roaming the world, seeing the wonders on offer, soaking up the experiences that Mark hadn’t been able to.

  “You okay, Mark?” Bradley slipped up behind him. The water from the kettle spilled out of the cup Mark had been pouring it into and onto the counter, trickling over the edge to the floor.

  “Bugger.” Mark slammed the kettle down on the counter.

  “It seems like you’re have trouble making tea recently.”

  Mark yanked out a roll of kitchen towel, wound it around his hand and bent down to wipe up the spilled water.

  “Yes,” Mark agreed. “Why might that be, I wonder?” He stood and twisted to throw the wet towel into the bin but collided with Bradley directly in front of him.

  Their chests bumped so close that Mark was sure Bradley could feel his hammering heartbeat. Mark felt a fool at being so reactive to the close proximity, and incredibly small and impossibly skinny. Bradley’s shoulders were easily a whole other person broader than him and Bradley’s chest was a rock-solid foundation that consumed Mark’s slender frame. Distracted by the body comparison, Mark hadn’t noticed Bradley sliding his large hands onto Mark’s hips until Bradley cocked his head and leaned in to brush his lips against Mark’s.

  “Because of me?” Bradley’s sweet, warm, honey-coated breath tickled Mark’s lips.

  “Pardon?”

  He’d forgotten what the question was, or the answer. Whatever it was he was meant to be responding or referring to. To anything. Ever. There were no questions and there were no answers, not at this moment. There was only him and Bradley and—dear God, those fingers!

  Dry, calloused fingertips ran up into Mark’s shirt and stroked along the sensitive skin by Mark’s hip bone. Mark shivered and traced the outline of Bradley’s full pink lips ghosting his own. Is this a dream?

  “Mark, Mark, Mark,” Bradley whispered his name in a teasing call, tingling Mark’s lips with his own. “How do you do this to me?”

  “I’m quite sure that I haven’t been doing any doing, or if so, I am not aware I have been doing it.” Every hair on Mark’s entire body stood to attention. “And what exactly is it I’m doing, may I ask? Just for future reference.”

  Bradley exhaled a low, discerning laugh. The warm breath dried Mark’s lips and, as if he noticed, Bradley pressed his down on top, warming Mark’s with his own soft, plump cushions.

  Mark shut his eyes. He wasn’t sure why, as this was most probably the best sight he was ever going to witness in his life. But Bradley would only appear as an oversized blur if he to tried to watch the whole scenario play out—whatever that was going to be. He quite wished he could float out of his own body and gaze down upon it, because he’d never believe himself otherwise.

  In a spurt of out-of-body experience, Mark seized the moment and kissed Bradley back. He parted his lips, capturing Bradley’s bottom lip between his, and kissed the man’s face off. Bradley slid his hands up into Mark’s shirt and Mark wrapped his arms around him to squeeze those devilishly pert cheeks that would forever be ingrained in his mind as the arse to rival all others. He dug his fingers in, making Bradley tumble forward and squish him a
gainst the counter. If I die right now, what a way to go!

  Mark couldn’t quite believe this was all happening. Maybe he had died. An amazing hunk of Australian Adonis was in his dishevelled kitchen and kissing him. Not only was he kissing him, he was devouring him. Bradley’s mouth took over his entire face, slurping and slapping at Mark’s lips like he’d just been trekking the outback for months and Mark was his only water supply. He delved in with his tongue and Mark sucked in a breath through his nose at the sheer shock of the wide, thick, sloppy muscle entwining around his own. Mark pondered as to how that tongue actually fit in his mouth. He decided, on second thoughts, he didn’t care. It did, and it tasted better than tea.

  He gasped.

  Before Mark’s new-found freedom could really be let loose and test how far he could trail his hands up from Bradley’s arse to touch the tense and firm contours of muscles beneath Bradley’s top, a strangled inhalation caught Mark off-guard. At first, he thought it was his own, because Bradley would never have sounded that feminine.

  Oh bugger!

  Mark dislodged his tongue from inside Bradley’s mouth and peeped out of the corner of one eye.

  Macy, hands clasped over her mouth, stood with eyes wide enough to rival the dinner plates at the Hungry Horse pub, where they gave you a free dessert if you finished your meal.

  “Mark Johnson!” She slapped her hands to her floating multicoloured skirt, that if unravelled could be used as the flag for Marsby’s first Pride Parade. “What are you doing to my baby cousin?”

  “Ah,” Mark uttered, wiping his lips.

  Bradley stepped back.

  “Bugger.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  No, Non, Nein, Nah, Mate…Yes

  “This is most definitely not what it looks like,” Mark stuttered, wiping his saliva-coated lips.

  Bradley stepped away from grinding his erection against Mark’s leg and stifled a chuckle. Mark would have preferred he responded with something more confirmatory to Mark’s statement.

  “No?” Macy folded her arms to underline her scepticism and shook out her fuzzy ginger hair that bunched around each ear in pigtails.