Big Man

by Matthew J. Metzger

  And then—

  He laughed.

  It sounded crazy and high even to his own ears, but the adrenaline crashing through his system suddenly made him laugh hysterically. He slumped against a column between the box office and the snack stands and nearly cackled with delirious, insane amusement.

  Because he’d kicked Jazz.

  He’d body-kicked him. He didn’t even know what he’d done with his elbow. Lewis had never taught him to do a sideways elbow strike, or whatever that was. His thigh was complaining from lack of stretching. His elbow felt bruised.

  But he’d fought back.

  Okay, he’d run like crazy too, but—

  He’d fought back.

  And he knew from all the practice with Cian that he could do a mean body kick. He was big and heavy. Jazz would have really felt that. And Tom—Tom would have a headache for days.

  Max was definitely going to die now. Definitely.

  But he just couldn’t stop laughing—and when Cian arrived, looking bemused, Max simply seized his face in both hands and kissed him.

  “I kicked them,” he said.

  “Kicked who?”

  “Them,” Max said and started to laugh all over again.

  AT HALF PAST seven, Cian said he had to go.

  “Training?” Max said.

  “Yep. Helping with a sparring class at eight.”

  Max bit his lip and followed Cian up off the bed.

  “The beginners’ class is at half past, right?”

  Cian shot him a look. “Yeah…”

  Max opened his wardrobe, fished out a tank top, and chucked it in his sports bag.

  “You’re going?”

  “Yeah,” Max said.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.”

  Cian grinned. His face lit up, gleeful and bright, and Max groaned.

  “Don’t gloat!”

  “Excuse me; I’ll gloat if I want.”

  Max bitched about insufferable, smug boyfriends, and Cian just laughed at him before crossing to Max’s corkboard and unpinning the armband.

  And holding it out.

  “What?”

  “You have to wear it.”

  “I…do?”

  “Yeah. Once you have one, you have to wear it.”

  Max swallowed. Took the slip of fabric.

  And slid it up his bicep.

  He had to tighten it with his teeth, and it felt a little itchy. But when it was tight, it was oddly heavy. It felt like wearing a ring for the first time.

  It felt right.

  And then Cian’s hand was on Max’s neck, soft and warm, just like the very first time. The kiss was like the first one too. Light. Gentle. A tentative expression of what Max was, in Cian’s eyes.

  “This isn’t going to get us to boxing,” Max whispered when it was over, and Cian smiled against his cheek.

  “No,” he agreed. “But let me enjoy it. I’m going to have to stretch to kiss you soon.”

  He wasn’t wrong. Max grinned, rising up on his toes in a boxing stance, and had to duck in for another kiss.

  “Cheat.”

  “It counts!”

  “Cheat!” Cian repeated sternly and finally broke away. He grabbed Max’s sports bag on the way and jerked open the door with a smirk. “Come on. Lewis’ll kill me if I’m late.”

  Max followed, leaning over the banisters halfway down the stairs and yelling for Aunt Donna. The sounds of crashing on the TV dipped, and her grumpy demand that he lay off with the shouting was even louder than he’d been.

  “Can you drive us to the gym?”

  The sound cut out entirely. The sofa creaked, and she appeared in the living room doorway, hair on end and wearing Mum’s jogging bottoms.

  “To the gym?” she repeated and then glanced at Cian. “Oh, I see. Sure, I can drop you off, Cian.”

  “No, both of us,” Max said.

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “Both of you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “As in, you. You’re going to class?”

  “Yeah. See? Got my armband and everything.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Don’t you go letting Lewis hear you calling it an armband.”

  Cian sniggered.

  And then she pulled her jacket down off the hooks and smiled.

  “Go on, then. Get your arses in the van.”

  Cian went immediately, shoving his feet into his trainers and disappearing out the front door. Max reached for his coat—and had his elbow gripped by Aunt Donna’s hard fingers.

  “Good lad,” she said quietly.

  Then she let go and was rummaging for her keys in the bowl like she’d never said a word.

  Max curled his thoughts around the warm burn of pride in his stomach—at her approval, at Cian’s feigned disgust at his height, at the gap between his jeans and his shoes, at the dull throb of his elbow from Tom Fallowfield’s temple—and hugged it close.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  AUGUST WAS—

  Happiness.

  It was a month of sheer happiness. Exams were over. Cian fractured his wrist in a bout and couldn’t go to his summer training camp with the cadets. Aunt Donna postponed Max’s apprenticeship until September. The gym was quiet. Half the town had gone on holiday, and the other half were working at fleecing tourists of their money. Day after day yawned out, hot and bright under brilliant summer skies. Their secret cove below the fields of dead grass became an evening joy after the picnickers had gone home and before the sun sank over the sea and vanished. In the cool, calm waters, Max finally memorised the feel of those shadow-shapes and the way Cian’s freckles tasted under the salt.

  It was perfect.

  Max’s sixteenth birthday was on the twentieth. To his embarrassment, Aunt Donna gifted him with a packet of condoms and a wicked grin. Mum shrieked and smacked her arm, and her gift was better. Max got to spend his birthday at the cove with Cian, a freezer bag full of food, and Aunt Donna’s camping equipment. They spent the night in the dead fields, watching the stars through the wide open tent door. Naturally, they shared a sleeping bag. It was only manners, after Max had insisted on stargazing.

  And sometime in the night, one of the condoms may or may not have been used. He couldn’t possibly comment.

  The first noticeable thing was that Mum had to buy him a whole new wardrobe. Not only were all his T-shirts far too large around the belly and too tight across the shoulders, but his jeans were getting shorter by the minute, and he had to constantly wear belts to keep them up.

  The second noticeable thing was that Cian really, really liked well-fitting jeans on Max. Go figure.

  The third thing was that Max graded a second time. Near the end of August. Lewis made him—said if he did it, Lewis would make special mention of potential and skill and dedication in that promised reference—and when Max passed that too, he earned himself another thirty seconds in the changing rooms after hours.

  “You don’t have to keep doing that,” he said as Cian put his bra back on.

  “I don’t mind.”

  “You hate them.”

  “You don’t. And I like the way you look at me when you see them.”

  The second grading was even tougher than the first—Max really was too tired for Cian after that one—and it felled him with a cold after the savage going-over Josh gave him. But the new armband felt good in a whole new way, and then Lewis insisted he get proper boxing shorts. They were a bright pattern, with Thai writing on the seat, and when Max got them home, he stripped off everything but the shorts and stared in the bedroom mirror again.

  The big man was staring back.

  His dad was staring back.

  As early September rolled in—with a heavy thunderstorm on the first, and Cian laughingly saying they ought to go down to the harbour and kiss in the rain, like what was supposed to happen in all the movies—Max figured he must have changed, and not just in short jeans and an all-over tan.

  Something in his head had changed.r />
  “You’re happy, honey,” Mum said one evening when he asked. “And you know you deserve to be.”

  It seemed too easy. Too simple. Was a new boyfriend and a hobby all it took to be someone other than Fatso Farrier?

  “But—” he started, and Mum sighed.

  “Honey. Do me a favour.”

  “What?”

  “Go and see Grandpa.”

  Oh.

  Yes.

  That might have something to do with it.

  HE WENT ON his own.

  It was the last day of the summer holidays, and Cian’s mother had dragged him by the ear—probably literally—into town to see the dentist, leaving Max in the lurch, and with Mum’s words ringing in his ears.

  Grandpa and Grandma were buried in the village that they’d retired to. The village was little more than a hamlet, a stone’s throw from the rocky Cornish coast, and the little chapel was the type that would have rung the bells for pirates and smugglers back in the day.

  Now, Max rather doubted it had a bell.

  The church was closed, the village population too small to sustain a vicar, but the graveyard was well maintained and often visited. Flowers decorated most of the graves. And by the back wall, hidden away between Mr and Mrs Fisher and Ethel Pellow, lay the Farriers.

  The grave was a family one. Henry and Alice Farrier, Max’s great-grandparents, had been the original owners. They’d died before Max’s dad had been born. And then Mary Farrier. Grandma. And then—

  The engraving was still shiny.

  Max stuck his hands in his pockets and stared.

  He’d been exactly once. And the hole had been open. He remembered throwing a fistful of dirt onto the coffin and crying his eyes out at home later. He’d not cried at the funeral at all. But later, at the thought of his granddad, his seafaring Grandpa with his encyclopaedic knowledge of the ocean and his devotion to the sea, being entombed in dirt…

  He’d never been since.

  Not once.

  He’d sat in the car sometimes when Mum visited. He’d bought flowers with Uncle John or Uncle George occasionally when they’d been visiting. But he’d never stepped foot in the graveyard, not since the funeral itself.

  His throat closed up tight, and Max could barely breathe.

  It hurt.

  It hurt all over again—a sharp pain right down the middle of his chest. He sat down on the grass with a thump. There was a little rose bush, trying to inch its way onto the grave. Mum had been last week and put down a bunch of gaudy sunflowers. Grandma’s favourite.

  He hadn’t brought any flowers.

  “M’sorry,” he managed to croak, and the grave shimmered, blurry and indistinct in front of him.

  He breathed.

  And then again.

  Then began to unpick at the pain in his chest.

  “I miss you.”

  He’d missed Grandpa every day since he’d died. Every minute of every hour of every day. Every birthday, every Christmas, every time a ship sailed past on its way to Portsmouth.

  “I’ve not built a single model since—”

  Since.

  “And I’ve been—”

  Bad. Wrong. Fatso Farrier.

  “Grieving.”

  Depressed.

  He swallowed and pulled the threads back together in his head.

  “I started boxing. Lost the weight. Mum says I look like Dad now. I think she’s right.”

  Grandpa would have scoffed. Sentimental claptrap, he’d have said, and Mum would have fussed and told him not to be such a grumpy old man. Sentimental claptrap, Lucy! he’d insist, and then he’d harrumph at Max. I suppose you do a bit, he might have eventually agreed.

  God, Max could hear him in his head as if there’d never been a funeral.

  “I’m doing A-Levels. Going to—going to try. You know. Navy.”

  Try, Grandpa would grumble. Try, try. Trying is for failures. Farriers don’t try. Farriers—

  “Do,” Max whispered.

  The sea roared not a thousand yards from the church walls, and Max felt himself relaxing.

  “I’m going to do it,” he said. “Going to go to sea. Be an officer. Like you. Like Dad.”

  Like all Farriers ever.

  And Farriers didn’t let other people tell them they weren’t made for the sea. Farriers didn’t even let themselves say they weren’t for the sea. Farriers were sailors. Born and bred. And Max was a Farrier.

  Fatso Farrier.

  And Fatso Farrier’s grandpa had been in the war. Fatso Farrier’s father had been in the Navy. Fatso Farrier had passed two Muay Thai gradings in just over a month, and Fatso Farrier was a Farrier.

  And Farriers didn’t try. They did.

  “You’d be proud of me now,” Max whispered.

  The sea bellowed and agreed.

  And Max hugged his knees.

  “Same as you were then,” he breathed.

  Something deep inside his chest—and even deeper, buried away in the darkness at the back of his skull where nobody else could have found it, felt it, known it was ever there—sealed.

  His lungs unlocked. His throat eased.

  Max smiled into the sun and said, “Sorry I haven’t been coming. But I’m better now.”

  Grandpa would look at him with that sharp eye and harrumph. Tell him he ought to drink more brandy. Good for the constitution.

  “I’ve got loads to tell you,” Max said. “So…so let’s start with Cian.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  SCHOOL STARTED THE next day.

  Seven o’clock alarm. Mum had put out some of his new clothes. A proper lunch. Even a tenner for the shop round the corner if he wanted to.

  “And if you need picking up after classes,” she said, smoothing down his hair, “then you just call, okay, sweetie? You just call.”

  “I’m just calling,” Aunt Donna said dryly from the front door. “Hurry up or you’re walking.”

  Max pulled a face, making Mum giggle, and headed for the door.

  He felt sick.

  And he kept feeling sicker with every yard the van travelled. Every inch closer to the main gates. Every second that ticked away, and every car that wasn’t blocking their route.

  “You all right?” Aunt Donna asked in an unusually soft tone.

  “Yeah,” Max mumbled.

  “You look pasty.”

  “Yeah, well. School.”

  “Your mum used your measurements to work out your new clothing sizes.”

  Max blinked. “Uh. What?”

  “You’re an inch shy of six feet, Max,” Aunt Donna said as she pulled the van left and onto the road to school. It was already jammed. A gaggle of Year Sevens in far-too-large uniforms, showing their mums’ ironing creases, leapt out of the way with a collective squeal. “Bet none of the other lads in your year can say that.”

  Max didn’t answer. He was too busy watching the gates as they approached.

  No sign of—them.

  “And everyone,” Aunt Donna said softly, “can be one inch taller if they hold their head high.”

  Max stared at the gates until they blurred.

  He was a Farrier. And last time he’d met—when they’d meant to give the snitch some stitches—he’d kicked Jazz Coles in the ribs.

  And now he was certified to be way better at kicking people than he had been then.

  “Grandpa wouldn’t take this shit,” he said.

  “Nope,” Aunt Donna agreed.

  “So why should I.”

  “That’s more like. Now get out of my van. I’m late for work.”

  Max opened the door and stepped out.

  He barely noticed the drop.

  IT HAD TO happen.

  And it did.

  Last thing on the first day was chemistry. And Mr Fraser, true to wizened form, kept them late by twenty minutes—insistent on finishing his lesson whether the bell had rung or not.

  Which meant by the time Max had stopped by his locker, picked up his sport
s kit, and was ready to go, the school was almost empty.

  Almost.

  He could sense them before he’d even pushed through the double doors into the courtyard. And there they were.

  Two figures by the gate.

  Jazz and Tom.

  Max tightened his fingers around the strap of his bag. Took a deep breath. Squared his shoulders and straightened his spine.

  Not anymore.

  He was taller than both of them. Heavier than both of them. He was done getting kicked to his knees and pissed on. He was done getting slammed into lockers and being used as a football.

  He was a Farrier, damn it. And nobody pushed Farriers around.

  His phone buzzed and Max slid it out. Glanced down like he was uninterested.

  Where are you? :(

  Five minutes, meet you at the bus stop opposite Greggs? he suggested. Just got to take care of something.

  ‘Something.’

  Some twats.

  Ahh I see. Go get them, big man.

  Max smiled. Big man.

  Fatso Farrier. So what. He’d never weigh in under fifteen stone again as long as he lived. And so what. He was a big man. Of course he wouldn’t.

  He pocketed the phone, stuck his chin in the air, and walked.

  But fear wasn’t so easy to shake. Every step closer, his guts felt tighter. His palms started to sweat. His fingers were shaking. His heart began to speed up, and up and up and up.

  Jazz smirked.

  Max’s fist tightened.

  “We allowed to have our chat now, Fatso?”

  Max pushed out his chest.

  “No.”

  “No? I don’t—”

  “I don’t care,” Max said, “what you want. You can piss off.”

  His voice was hard. It was Aunt Donna’s voice. Cian’s voice. Lewis’s.

  Max’s. Somewhere from deep down in his chest, it was his voice.

  And for a split second, he saw the crack in Jazz’s sneer.

  “If you don’t leave me alone,” Max said, “then I’ll make you sorry for it.”

  “You?” Jazz scoffed. “You’re gonna make me—”

  “Yeah, me. Make you. Jeremy.”

  The sneer dropped entirely. And a cold, almost reptilian anger replaced it.