Like (Matthew) Fry and Jonathan “Jonno” Gibson, Lucas’s name quickly morphed into one that sounded better bellowed out during a rugby match or across the classroom, until he was Big T to everyone except the teachers.
The first offer of something more solid came during History, as Lucas frowned at the board, copying a timeline of events preceding the Bay of Pigs. Next to him, Kellan doodled a load of pigs storming a beach, cigars in their mouths and machine guns in their trotters. The kind of student who could waste every lesson and still get top marks for his essays.
“I’m meeting the lads down by the river after tomorrow’s match.” Kellan missed the sharp look Lucas gave him, too busy adding red biro spurting out of the severed neck of one of the pigs. “Don’t know if you’ve got any plans, but you can come with, if you fancy it?”
Kellan’s signature delivery was to offer his company like it was optional – as Lucas accepted with a forcibly casual “That’d be cool”, he wondered if anyone ever took the alternative.
The match was tough. They were playing a team from across the county who’d had an hour’s drive to work up a bit of steam that they weren’t shy of letting off. But Campion were at home and, when they remembered how to play, they were pretty good.
The win was all that mattered for the start of the season and the mood in the changing room was buzzing.
“Good to go?” Kellan said, coming to stand next to where Lucas was finishing stuffing his kit away.
“Sure.” Shouldering his bag, Lucas felt suddenly self-conscious walking next to someone whose jeans-and-trainer combo cost more than Lucas could make if he worked double his usual hours from now until Christmas.
Campion sat at the bottom of the high street and the two of them stepped through the gates into a valley of shadows and fading light. This was the hour between the shops shutting and the pubs swelling, and Lucas enjoyed walking in a different world from the one he knew from helping Auntie Helena with the shopping, or heading to the barber who gave Uncle Vas and Alex and Lucas a “family” discount.
“Is it just the lads?” Lucas asked, aware that Kellan hadn’t brought their plans up around any of their teammates.
“Just us, some people from Buckthorn. My girlfriend and her friends.”
Kellan had mentioned his girlfriend before. Never by name, just by title, and Lucas was curious to see what she was like. Also nervous. Not so much about who’d be there – unlike some of the lads at school, Lucas actually knew how to talk to girls (like they were people, it wasn’t hard) – but about what it meant to be asked. He should be starving from the match, but his insides had knotted themselves with nerves and the adrenaline of hope buzzed all the way from his heart to the tips of his fingers, fisted tight in his pockets to stop them trembling.
He wanted friends.
“Here we go.” Kellan nodded to the wharf where the river cruiser stopped during the day, bulbs strung up like bunting along the water’s edge.
Something in Kellan changed as he approached the top of the steps. A straightening of the shoulders, and the confident stride of someone who belonged everywhere he went. He glanced back, tilting his head towards the people round the benches. “You coming?”
Lucas hurried down, eyes on the steps, scared of stacking it and crashing through the crowd on the wharf with all the grace of a bowling ball.
At the bottom he came face-to-face with the girl who’d come to give Kellan a slightly more special greeting than everyone else.
“Big T,” Kellan said, arm resting casually on his girlfriend’s shoulder, “this is my girlfriend, Freya – Freya, this is Big T. He’s new around here, but we like him.”
“We do?” She looked at Lucas, her eyes sharp, smile fixed and fake, and before Lucas could say anything, she said, “Hello Big T. Nice to meet you.”
WIN
Their parents had been suspicious of having a party sprung on them, but Sunny had a way of getting permission that no one wanted to give – permission that would be withdrawn if they saw what she planned on wearing.
“Ann Summers called – they want their mannequin back,” Win said.
Sunny stuck her tongue out at the mirror where she was fixing a couple of false lashes at the corner of her eye. “Ha. Ha.”
“I’m serious.” Win was having trouble choosing between disapproval or disbelief. “I’m not going to a party with you dressed in your underwear.”
“Just because it’s lace doesn’t mean it’s underwear!” In an attempt to instil a little modesty, Sunny gave the hem of her dress a savage tug – and exposed the top of her bra.
Win tugged it back up. “Put them away.”
“What’s wrong with them?” Sunny folded her neck over like an ostrich to check.
“The fact that you’ve tried to stuff them into a bra that’s a cup size too small.”
“My friend Olivia said that’s how to make your boobs look bigger. Everyone does it…”
Whereas Sunny had messaged her mates to brag, Win had messaged hers to stress. Gatherings of more than four people were as far from her cup of tea as a tequila slammer. She could do without Sunny rocking up dressed as jailbait in a nightclub.
“At least wear something that covers your boobs and your bum at the same time.”
Win rooted through the clothes on the bed, looking for an alternative. As she navigated a landscape of inside-out tops twined with leggings and a rainbow array of bras hummocked across the sheets like sand dunes, Sunny wriggled out of her dress and picked up a skirt with a neon pink lightning bolt down the thigh that was so tight Win had to help her tug it on.
“At least I’m not dressed like a generic lesbian,” Sunny added, frowning at Win’s outfit.
“Straight girls wear checked shirts too.”
“Fitted ones.”
“Fake news and homophobic assumptions. Chuck in a little racism and you can run for office.”
Sunny thwapped her with the vest she’d just picked up.
“I’m just saying…” She paused long enough to get the vest over her head. Despite plunging lower than Win would consider, it was an improvement on the original neckline. “Why would you wear that to a party?”
Underneath her favourite charity-shop shirt, Win wore a gun-metal grey tube top and a pair of tracksuit bottoms that sat exactly as she wanted on her hips. Between the two was a slightly daring expanse of stomach. She was making more of an effort than Sunny thought.
“I’m going to be hideously uncomfortable in a house full of people from the year below, so I’m wearing clothes that make me feel better.” And nothing made Win feel better than this over-washed, cotton-soft charity shop bargain.
Sunny rolled her eyes. “Would it kill you to show a little cleavage?”
Win thrust a flimsy hoodie into Sunny’s chest.
“Would it kill you to show a little less?”
“Fine.” Sunny shrugged it on and yanked the zip all the way to the top. “Happy now? Lucas won’t notice me and I shall spend the entire night crying off my perfectly applied lashes in Kellan’s toilet.”
“Was your plan for your breasts to obscure your personality?”