Fireside Romance Book 4: Glowing Embers

Chapter 2-2

Back at home, we tried to interest Noel in the various goodies we’d bought. But he kept glancing at an empty cotton reel that Sam had given him a couple of days earlier.

“It’s just like Charlotte and her toys,” Mark said. “You buy them something new, and all they want to do is play with things that we’d normally throw away.”

As we weren’t expecting our visitors until later, I made us a round of sandwiches. We sat at the kitchen table and began eating.

“Simon?”

“Uh huh?” I asked after swallowing.

“When we make love, we’ve always used condoms.”

I nodded, not sure where he was going. When I’d met Mark, he’d been working on the streets, forced to sell his body for money to pay his pimp. Mark’s past was something we rarely discussed as it was a painful episode in his life.

“I’ve been thinking.” He laid down his partially-eaten sandwich. “The other day when you rubbed yourself on me?”

I took his hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

“They call that frottage, you know?”

I nodded.

“We didn’t use rubbers then, because, well, it’s pretty safe as our c*m didn’t go into the other’s body.” Mark bit his lip. “I liked not having that barrier between us. More natural and everything.” He ducked his head.

“Yes.” I didn’t want to say any more; it was obvious Mark needed to get out whatever was on his mind.

“What would you think about us not using condoms in future?” He held up his free hand. “I mean, I want to get tested for AIDS first. Can’t put you at risk.” He shook his head. More softly he added, “Just can’t.”

I let out a breath. This was a huge step. Mark had had unprotected s*x with any number of men. I got up from my seat, knelt down next to him, and gave him a hug.

“Why now?”

“I have to face it sometime.” He sniffed and wiped his nose and eyes. “The other night. It felt so great, so free. Just us two and nothing between us. I want that all the time.”

Knees aching, I got up off the floor, brought my stool next to his and took his hand once again.

“You remember back when we first met, I said I’d go and see the doctor and get a test done then?”

I nodded. We’d talked about it and Mark had confessed he hadn’t been ready to find out the potential bad news.

“I think I need to know now if I have it. The virus.”

I nodded.

Mark let out a breath. “If the opportunity comes up, I’m going to mention it to Tom and Cliff. You remember how supportive they were when we told them how we really met?”

“Yes,” I said hesitantly. I was a very private person and wasn’t used to sharing personal issues with anyone.

“Cliff seems pretty clued into what’s going on in lots of areas. He might be able to offer me…us, some advice.”

“True.” I still was unsure, but Mark was right, Tom and Cliff had been nothing but supportive of us.

Mark put his arms around me. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I thank my lucky stars every day that it was me you walked up to that evening on that street corner.”

“Me, too.”

I heard the front door open. “Only me,” Sam called out. A second or so later, he came into the kitchen. “You two at it again?”

“Sod off home!” Mark said.

“Shut up and put the kettle on.” Sam beamed. He and Mark had developed such a close connection. To an outsider they seemed to be hurling insults at one another, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Mark got up and did as Sam had requested.

“So where’s your side-kick?” I asked.

“He’s had to go and see his grandma in Manchester again. She’s been causing more trouble.”

“Oh, dear. What’s she done this time?”

“She’s been saying the staff at the nursing home have pinched her ration book.”

“But food rationing ended in the early 1950s,” Mark said.

“Yeah well, his grandma thinks the war’s still on. She keeps demanding to know where the nearest air-raid shelter is.”

I thanked God that my gran had ‘all her chairs at home’ as she put it.

“What, aren’t you going to offer your guest a biscuit?” Sam asked once Mark had placed a mug of coffee in front of him.

“No!” Mark said, sitting back down on his stool.

Sam shook his head. “I’ll get one myself then.” He got up and found the tin that he and Billy had given Mark for Christmas. “Good heavens, you’ve eaten half of them already!”

“Yeah, well, I like them.”

“So I can see,” Sam said, taking three out of the tin and bringing them back to the table.

“So do you, by the looks of it,” I said.

“I’m still a growing boy. Don’t know what Mark’s excuse is though.”

“Don’t need one.”

“Yeah. Anyway, I came round to ask what time Tom and Cliff are due.”

“Anytime soon I think,” I said, looking over at the kitchen clock.

Mark and I finished eating our sandwiches while chatting with Sam, until a knock sounded at the front door.

“That’ll be them,” Sam said, racing to let them in.

“Oy, that knock’s for us, not you. This isn’t your house, you.” Mark should have saved his breath for all the notice Sam took.

“Good to see you again. Come in,” Sam said.

Mark and I got up from the table and went into the other room to greet our guests.

“You’ve met the butler?” Mark told Tom and Cliff, resting a hand on Sam’s shoulder.

“I thought for a minute we’d knocked on his parents' front door by mistake,” Cliff said, giving first me and then Mark a hug.

“He’s always round here making a nuisance of himself,” I said, ruffling Sam’s hair. “Anyway, go and fetch your bags in, and I’ll show you up to your room.”

Tom went back to the car.

“How long were you thinking about staying?” I asked once I’d gotten a look at the huge suitcase Tom pulled out of the boot.

“Cliff packed. He always overdoes it,” Tom said, hefting the huge case with ease up our garden path.

“You didn’t have any trouble finding us?” Mark asked as he led the way up the stairs.

“No, not with my Boy Scout’s sense of direction,” Tom said.

“You were never in the Scouts,” Cliff said.

“No, but I thought the Scout master was hunky, though.”

“Just get up those stairs,” Cliff said, and Tom laughed.

“Well, this is it,” I said once we were all in the loft bedroom. “I’m sorry it’s just a standard double bed. We didn’t anticipate anyone of your size, Tom, when we were choosing the furniture.”

“It’s fine,” Tom said.

“See, I told you,” Mark said. “This one flaps about everything.” He put an arm around my shoulders and gave me a half hug.

Back downstairs we caught up on each other’s news. Although we’d talked on the phone on Boxing Day, we’d not stayed on for long, as Tom’s parents were due to pay them a visit.

“You’ve got a cat,” Tom said as Noel put in an appearance about an hour into their visit.

We told them the saga of how we found him.

“He’s smashing,” Tom said once he’d picked Noel up and the kitten was lying in Tom’s lap purring away.

“He likes you,” I said.

“Animals tend to. Many of my fellow posties don’t get on with cats and dogs, dogs especially. But I never seem to have any trouble.”

Tom told us about some of the things he and his fellow postmen got up to on a typical day. This led to a discussion about the stunning views their village offered. It was a lot more picturesque than Littleborough.

Mark must have picked up on my thought processes because he said, “We can’t offer you nice scenery like you have near you, but do you want to take a walk to our local park? If there’s no one else around, we might even be able to persuade Simon to go on the swings.”

“Can’t a guy keep any secrets around here?” I asked.

The others laughed.

“Sure, a walk would be great,” Tom said.

I remembered Cliff saying Tom soon got cabin fever if he was cooped up for too long.

* * * *

“Where’s Billy today?” Cliff asked Sam as we entered the park’s gates.

Sam filled them in on his boyfriend’s emergency visit to Manchester to see his grandmother.

“My granny lost her marbles, too,” Tom said.

We made our way over to the playground and, as we didn’t have an audience, I let my hair down and had a go on the swings. Mark pushed me for a while. Even Cliff got on the swings. Tom said with his weight he might break the chains, so he contented himself by pushing Cliff.

Mark and I moved onto one of the seesaws, though as I was a little heavier than Mark, it wasn’t such an even ride, but we had fun nonetheless. It was great regressing back to our childhoods.

Sam and Cliff had a couple of goes on the slide, but the rest of us chickened out. I’d remembered once before my feelings about the slide being just too childish. I couldn’t work out why, though.

The clouds started gathering, so we decided we ought to make a move back to our place before the rain started.

Sam went back to his own house when we returned, just before the first drops of rain fell. We’d see Sam later, along with Paul and Helen. I’d booked a table at the Mucky Duck for us all to eat dinner there.

* * * *

It was raining heavily when it was time to leave for the pub, so Mark and I rode with Paul, Helen, and Charlotte. Sam and Billy—who had come back from Manchester an hour or two earlier—went in Tom and Cliff’s vehicle.

“I know our Sam said Tom was a big man, but I didn’t realise how big,” Helen said as Paul drove us through the teeming rain.

“He defines gentle giant, though,” I said from the back seat, anxious to defend Tom from any negative stereotypes she might have.

“You often find that,” Paul said. “You remember Clint, love?” he asked Helen.

“Yeah. What happened to him?”

“He got a job as a bricky in Canada.” Over his shoulder he told us how Clint was a big guy but he was one of the gentlest men Paul had ever met. “He once found a bird’s nest on a building site we were working on. The mother didn’t seem to be around. Dave, he was the guy who did the wiring for your loft room, wanted to just move the nest and the chicks, but Clint stepped in. He made everyone leave the nest well alone, and sure enough, the mother bird came back to her brood. It inconvenienced us a bit having to work round them, but Clint was determined that no one should lay a hand on that nest. He even brought some earthworms from his own garden and put them near the nest.”

We’d arrived at the pub by this point. Paul let us out at the main entrance before parking up so at least four of us were able to stay dry.

I’d reserved the large table in the far corner of the dining room, because I thought it would give us a little more privacy.

Paul handed a menu to Tom.

“I wouldn’t bother; he only has steak and chips,” Cliff told him.

“No, he had paella with me that once.” Sam piped up, referring back to when Mark and I had taken him to a restaurant in Menorca with Tom and Cliff.

“I’d forgotten about that,” Cliff admitted.

“Don’t think they have paella here,” I said, flipping through the pages of the menu.

We made our choices and Mark went up to the bar to order the meal.

Although the food was good and plentiful, it wasn’t up to the standards of Tom and Cliff’s local, but they seemed to enjoy themselves nonetheless. Our friends got on well with Paul and Helen. I’d worried there’d be problems about that, but as Mark always said, I worry about everything.