Tag-along

It's fair to say that Lindsey doesn't exactly bring out the best in me. But when she messaged offering me a ride home, seeing as she was coming to get James anyway, I was thankful. Especially given the alternative was waiting an unspecified amount of time on a windy station platform for some replacement buses which might or might not show up while listening to folk around me debate whether the continual track failures were principally an infrastructure problem or an underinvestment problem or a climate change problem...

I was thankful, but...the first thing she said to me as I tucked myself into the economy-sized back seat of her Toyota Starlet behind James was;

"Gawd. You need to get that hair seen to yesterday, Jezza. You're into hobo territory by now..."

I felt my shoulders rise. Jezza. I just can't cure her of it. And yeah, okay, Lindsey...maybe I actually realise I need a haircut and maybe my barber has a broken wrist at the moment and maybe I'm not comfortable with just anybody touching my head...

I couldn't say that of course, because she'd come back with some version of hey you don't seem to have a problem letting just anybody touch your... Yeah. Nah. Don't need to hear that from my sister. And what the hell does she know? I'm practically celibate now I'm not living in town anymore...

I shoved my laptop bag into the tiny crevice in front of my knees, willed my shoulders to relax, reminded myself I was grateful. Then she wound down her window, leaned out, and bawled;

"Goin' to Waikanae! I got one seat free to Waikanae! Any takers?"

Ahhh, come on, Lindsey! I wailed internally. There isn't any room! And if I wanted to sit cheek-to-cheek with some rando I could've just waited for the bloody bus, couldn't I? Why do you always have to-

A body filled the space by her window and I heard a voice ask;

"Any chance you could let me out at Paekākāriki? Just by the crossing would be fine."

"No probs, matey," Lindsey brayed, "no probs at all. I gotta drop Jezza off there anyway. Hop on in."

It was unfortunate, bad timing - super bad timing - that that was the last 'Jezza' which finally broke the camel's back. As the door opposite me opened and the body lowered itself in, I hissed;

"I prefer Jeremy actually..."

It was said, and I couldn't un-say it, so it just hung there for several moments, like a levitating turd in the small awkward space between me and...goddamnit...quite possibly the most beautiful man I'd ever laid eyes on, before he murmured;

"Ahh...good to know..."

Fuck, he was stunning. Broad shouldered and well filled out beneath, solid but not fat, square jaw, loose dark curls, big expressive eyes and full lips that right now were slightly...bunched...tensed, trying not to laugh. At me. At my precious, fussy, old-fashioned demand to be called by my whole name. I didn't blame him. I blamed myself. And Lindsey.

He got his amusement under control and turned to me fully. "I'm Quinn," he breathed.

As usual, Lindsey barged in before I could do anything to repair the situation. "Hey, Quinn! Welcome to the world's crappiest limo service! I'm Lindsey and this is James. How long've you been living up the coast?"

I got the sense he didn't necessarily want to chat, but she managed to wrangle a sentence or two out of him. He'd been living in town until a couple of months ago when his flatting situation kinda went nuclear, causing him to need somewhere else to stay - fast - and there was nothing available, just nothing.

"I mentioned it at work," he said, "and one of my colleagues told me her sleep-out had recently come free and I could sublet it if I wanted. I like the place, but the commute's...uhh...a pain in the arse."

"Yeah, Jezza's real down on it at the moment too," Lindsey quipped. "I keep saying to him, remember the accommodation's free at Mum and Dad's! Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, little bro..."

I buried my head in my hands. Thank-you, Lindsey. Not only for the gift of yet another Jezza but also for announcing that I'm living at home without clarifying that actually I'm house-sitting...Through my slitted fingers I could see Quinn watching me, wearing that cautious little must-not-smile face again, and I died a bit more inside.

How does it matter? I asked myself. He's almost certainly straight anyhow. Let's face it, most people are. But what if...

He was wearing a pink shirt. Gentle pastel pink, and it looked great on him, it was evidently a considered choice - a perfect fit, and it really accented his skin and those big brown puppydog eyes. And his pants, they were the darkest charcoal grey, not default black. Thought gone in there too...

Get a grip, Jezza! Knowing how to dress isn't an indicator of queerness, and pink shirts are-not-signalling! Stop buying into the sort of crappy heteronormative stereotyping you know you hate!

I tried. I tried to stop buying into the...etc., but my mind wouldn't let it go. It made me kinda tongue-tied and awkward - even more tongue-tied and awkward than I usually was around Lindsey - and by the time she pulled over to let us out into the blustery dusk, I was annoyed at everything and ready to consign this whole wreck of a day to the bin. Go home, feed my parents' overindulged Burmese cats, heat up some leftovers, jump into bed and press the reset button.

But no. I didn't even get to do that, because approximately three seconds after we left the shelter of the car, the sky let rip. We sprinted toward the meagre shelter of a storefront awning, as a mad gust of wind came following, whipping the rain nearly sideways. Even plastered against the gritty wall, my lower legs were exposed to it.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" I roared into the void. "What is this dickfuckery?"

"Just keeps getting better, doesn't it?" I heard Quinn murmur beside me.

I dropped my head in my hands again. Great. Now I'm the guy who yells at the sky. It does indeed keep getting better...

The lightest touch on my shoulder made me jump. "I might get a beer, meantime," Quinn said as I looked up, gesturing toward the 'Bar' sign dangling from the awning, see-sawing in the wind. "You on?"

Well, yeah. I only agreed to get out of the rain, of course. Not because I wanted to be able to survey his gorgeous topography some more, or to talk to him without Lindsey getting in the way and fucking everything up. Kidding. Kidding. I had a feeling already that Quinn was somebody I'd find it very difficult to say 'no' to. If only he'd ask...

Unfortunately everything he asked was totally standard conversational stuff, but my bad mood ebbed away as I covertly mapped him out while we drank - the wings of dark hair along the outer edges of his hands, the way he unbuttoned his cuffs and folded them back once, twice, past his thick wrists, leaving his forearms erotically exposed-yet-concealed...

He wore a watch. Not a FitBit or an Apple Watch, not a piece of technology, but an actual watch, the chunky brushed silver once again a perfect fit for his overall aesthetic...surely...?

"I love your watch," I told him. He'd caught me staring anyhow.

"Thanks," he said, glancing briefly down at it. "My parents got it for me for my twenty-first. I know it's kinda old fashioned, but they have some fixed ideas so it was pointless protesting. The girls get a bracelet, the boys get a watch, that's how it's done, y'know? And they live pretty simply mostly - the farm tends to eat up all the spare money - but these things are important to them so they plan ahead, they save, they make it happen."

He shrugged. "My sister's getting married next year so they're at it again. Never ends I s'pose. Anyhow, at the time I'd definitely rather have had some money toward a better ride, but now...yeah, they were right."

I was just at the point of getting excited, thinking, wow...this isn't chat, this is sharing - when Quinn seemed to realise the same thing. He blinked, squared his shoulders, cleared his throat, re-setting...

"So anyhow, what do you do, Jeremy?"

Damn. Fuck.

I shrugged, grimaced. "Work for the government. Who doesn't?"

"I don't," he said, putting away the last of his beer.

I was rapidly running through a list of other possibilities in my head that fit with the level of dress - not insurance or law, no tie...consulting? medicine? real estate? menswear? - when he added; "I work in retail...kinda."

So...menswear.

"Where at?" I enquired. Because I will for damn sure start getting my stuff from there, even if I can't afford it...

He raised his chin a little. "I asked first," he said.

Ooh. A pushback. Delivered with a sly little smile, but definitely a pushback. Answer the fucking question, Jeremy..I had sudden visions of him 'pushing back' at me for real, us wrestling on the couch, the floor, winner takes all - would I want to win? Or lose...?

He was staring now, one brow raised. Right. Answer the fucking question, Jeremy.

"I, uh, work for the Ministry of Health," I stuttered. "Forecasting. Before that I was at the Ministry for Social Development. Also forecasting."

"You've got a degree, then?" Quinn prompted.

"Ahh, yeah?" I replied, shrugging. I mean, obviously. "Economics. Nothing fancy, just a bachelor's..."

Quinn was nodding thoughtfully. "So you're a numbers guy, basically?"

"I guess..."

"I'm not," he said decisively. "Not a letters guy either, unfortunately. I'm dyslexic. But there was nobody to diagnose something like that at a tiny country school. I always just figured I was dumb, and I think probably everybody else thought the same. It wasn't until I got to high school...and by that time it was a bit late to start catching up on shit. I left when I was sixteen and started a plumbing apprenticeship instead..."

* * *

When I finally got home it was close to ten - it had rained for ages and by the time it quit I'd stopped noticing the weather. I fed the cats, who were a whole other kind of demanding by that time, then changed into pyjama pants and sat looking out the window seat with my chin on my knees, watching car headlights winking along the highway northward, the fat crescent moon sinking toward the sea. And I thought.

I thought about Quinn. I saw him in my mind, little mannerisms, blunt square fingers transporting chunky-cut fries to his mouth, his easy unselfconscious habitation of that gorgeous body, with apparently no idea how desirable he was...about how that only made him cuter. Hotter. And I thought about how my supposedly diverse life experience to date was nothing but a phantom.

When he said to me; 'You've got a degree, then?' as though it was an actual question - I was thrown off balance. Because I knew left-wingers and right-wingers and anarchists, trans and polyamorous folk, Germans and Swedes and South Africans and Koreans and more besides, but I didn't know anybody - socially - who hadn't been to university.

Likewise, I'd met a couple of folk who came from what you might call farming dynasties, old money, but none whose bedroom growing up was in the porch of a leaky cottage on the frostbitten high plateau north of Taupō. I really only knew people like me, and he was nothing like me. I was confronted by the revelation - but intrigued. They kicked us out of the bar in the end, and I had to reluctantly end my interrogation...

He told me - after I went first - what he did, which was work in the showroom of a high-end bathroom and tapware company in Newtown. "It is unreal, that place," he confided. "I mean, tapware's expensive generally because metal things aren't cheap to manufacture, but this...and it's all imported from Europe, of course..."

He leaned in, lowering his voice. "Did you know you can drop twelve thousand dollars on a gooseneck faucet for your kitchen sink? And that people do? And a lot of the time I deal with architects or designers who don't even enquire about prices, because they're representing clients who don't care. They just want what they want and the price is irrelevant."

It was the plumbing that got him into it, obviously. When you're the apprentice, you get to do all the shit jobs - including the ones involving actual shit - but also other little random low-status tasks. "I was errand-bitch most of the time," he said, "fetch coffees and pies, go down to the wholesalers and grab whatever bits and pieces they were needing for a job..."

The guys at the local wholesalers got to know him and like him and when a job in their own showroom came free, he applied for it and got it and left the actual shit side of the plumbing world behind.

"I turned out to be good at it," he told me. "I suppose I had the background knowledge, and I like talking to people - but also, the whole not being able to read thing meant I needed to remember in order to learn at school. All the time I thought that's what everybody was doing and I was just worse at it than them, I didn't realise there was, like, a system...but basically I was treading water and I could only cope by being tidy and on time and super-organised, because if I was panicking or distracted I couldn't memorise."

"It set me up pretty well in a way," he mused, "because now I have the kind of habits that bosses like, and I can hold lists in my head for as long as I need, even if they're just a bunch of random product codes."

He pointed an accusative finger at me, smiling ruefully. "But you dudes who can read, you have no idea of the advantage you're carrying. You can leave stuff to the last minute, you can blag your way through things, because you have access to all the cheat codes. Whereas I am a person who cannot afford to wing things. Ever." He shrugged. "But at least I know this about myself."

That stuck with me. By the time we went our separate ways I was hooked on a whole lot more than just the surface of him, and that knowing of himself was at the core of it. He was - I mean, apart from his looks - he was just an ordinary guy doing an ordinary job, but he seemed very centred, very grounded. He knew he had limitations, but he'd acknowledged them, accepted them, and moved on.

I thought I'd run into him again - I banked on it. I might easily miss him on the trains, given they were often full enough that you couldn't see your own feet. But...at the station, around the village? Not a heap of places to hide in Paekākāriki...however after several weeks of no sightings I concluded he'd moved on from here as well.

Then one lunchtime I went to get a burrito from a joint whose burritos were great enough that it was worth standing in a half-hour line for them, and there he was four ahead of me, turning from the counter, neatly-wrapped to-go package clutched in one of his delectable hands...

His face lit up when he saw me. "Jeremy!"

I nodded at him. "Hey, man." Hoping I sounded casual enough. I could feel my heart thudding in my throat, my ears, my elbows - everywhere. Oh, my god. Quinn. He looked soooo good. Bright eyes, gorgeous smile - the shirt was a dark wine red this time but once again it fit like...like sin. My mind was doing wheelspins. Honestly, he was too beautiful to even make sense...

He joined me in the queue, standing alongside. "How've you been?"

"Great," I told him, which was a total lie. "Haven't seen you around - did you move?"

"Nah," he said. "I got my full license. For my bike, that is. Sat the test the Saturday after I saw you. Fuck, that was a hellish experience. But I passed, which is good because I was so fucking done with having to train in here and then catch a bus out to Newtown every day - if it ever showed up. Now I never have to sit in traffic, I can park at work no problem, plus I can do spontaneous shit like come into the city centre just to get a burrito for lunch, 'cos I know I can make it back in time."

I asked him about his bike, even though I was never gonna understand his answers, because I figured he'd want to talk about it, and he did - animatedly, in between bites of his burrito and shuffling slowly forward in the line with me.

"You should come for a ride with me on Saturday," he urged after a couple of minutes, "if you're free, that is. I'm allowed to carry passengers, now I've got my full." He leaned in and lowered his voice. "I've been carrying passengers for years, obviously, even though you're not actually meant to on your restricted. Nobody bothers with that stuff out in the country 'cos there's no-one checking, but I thought I'd better do it properly now I'm using the same roads as other people..."

Motorbikes. Another thing I hadn't done, hadn't tried...

"I, um, could," I stammered. "I'm not doing anything specific on Saturday..."

"I have a spare helmet," he told me, "so if you've got some-"

"Um, hello? Whaddya want?"

I blinked. We were at the front of the line, I needed to order, and my mind was...not on lunch. What I wanted was to sit up behind Quinn on his bike and hold onto his waist and - I couldn't even remember what I normally ordered...

Desperate to come up with something, I turned to Quinn. "What've you got?"

"I'll have what he's having..." the guy behind me lisped campily, before he and his mate dissolved into sniggers.

I turned around and gave them my dirtiest look. Then I said to the cashier;

"You know what? I will. I'll have what he's having. Exactly the same."

Quinn raised an eyebrow. I remembered him doing that...before, and something in my chest leaped at the sight of it.

"Exactly?" he queried.

"Down to the last molecule," I confirmed.

"You might regret this," he murmured, before he began rapidly reeling off ingredients to the cashier.

No I won't, I thought delightedly, as the list grew and grew. I won't, Quinn-baby...because apparently we both like it hot...

* * *

I rode the gut-tingling high of having found him, of knowing I'd get to see him at least one more time, for two whole days. Then it was Saturday and I just had to wait it out until after lunch...

Goddamn. He looked as combustible in leathers as he did in...apparently everything else. So am I gonna develop a bikie kink now? I wondered.

He threw up the visor on his helmet as I approached. "Jeremy!"

It was the same as last time - the mad grin, the exclaiming my name like he was thrilled to his core. But what were the chances? He could be into me - but he could just be a super cheerful, genuine, nice, unfiltered person who didn't feel an obligation to act like some kind of stone-cold bro all the time.

I didn't know. I couldn't read him. He was so different to me on every axis - every axis I knew about. It wasn't exactly likely we were aligned on that one. I took the spare helmet he had slung on his arm and fixed it under my chin, listened to him carefully explain some safety basics, and swung a leg over to settle in place behind him.

He turned to speak to me before putting his visor down. "I'm just gonna amble about the village for a bit to get you used to the feel of things, before we head out on the highway, okay?"

I nodded, feeling like a bobblehead with the extra bulk and weight of the helmet. Yes. Treat me gently, please. I am waaay out of my comfort zone here.

Quinn pulled over before we left the village, twisting around, shunting his visor up. "You okay? Enjoying yourself?"

I was enjoying being close to him - as for the rest? I was...getting the hang of it.

"Yeah - it's good." Wow, so eloquent, Jeremy...

He nodded. "Right. Let's do this."

'This' turned out to be the Transmission Gully motorway - the first half of it, anyway. The climb up to the saddle was a revelation. Taking on that steep grade in a car, you're really aware of gravity just absolutely clawing at you like some monster from the deep, trying to drag you backwards, down, down into its grasp. On the bike, that feeling plain wasn't there. Only the unperturbed whirr of the engine and a sense of lightness, progress, potential...