The Suicidal Peanut

Chapter 2-2

The double-whammy of the portraiture assignment was, well, Tab hadn’t actually done any portraiture since his first six weeks at college. Art at secondary school had consisted of drawing pans in varying lights. Usually badly. And every now and then taking a picture on his mobile and pretending it was artistically bad instead of just s**t. (Somehow, he’d actually pulled that one off, but he’d never worked out how.)

He spent most of the next morning, therefore, sitting with his feet up on the reception desk and sketching loosely on his pad. It was his moving-out gift from Mum, even though he hadn’t so much moved out as…well, never mind. It was a gift from Mum anyway. She’d been nuts, but at least she had always kept him supplied with big, high-quality sketchpads and a range of inks, before…well, before the relapse and the hospital and…

Anyway. By the time Uncle Eddie ambled out of the training room with the cleaning supplies and headed back into the flat to catch a quick breakfast before the first class, Tab had inked the careful outline of a single eye in enormous, delicate detail.

“That’s pretty good, kid,” Eddie said on his way past. “When the intermediates get here, ship ‘em into the bag room. Floor’s still damp in the others.”

“Mm,” Tab hummed, exchanging the thick nib for a thinner specimen and beginning the long, light flicks of eyelashes curving up in a rich arc from the upper lid. The Sydney Harbour Bridge, perhaps.

“Worse’n your mother,” Eddie grumbled, and headed out.

Tab ignored him. He got his artistic streak from Mum, sure, but he liked to think his father had been sane. Or maybe that came from Uncle Eddie, given that his dad was apparently equally nutty and into dancing around rocks naked as Mum. (Tab was pretty sure he was conceived on a rock, under the full moon, probably somewhere in the middle of freakin’ Ireland.)

Tab had been drawing comics—shitty ones, at least—since he could hold a pen. He’d been drawing comics of Mum saving the world from capitalism and energy companies and the police since before he could write his own name. (Well, to be fair, it was a hell of a name to ask of a four-year-old.) He hadn’t known what capitalism or energy companies looked like, and all the comics had Mum in a weird purple cape the same colour as her favourite dream-catcher, and ‘the police’ was always PC Thorpe who’d worked their area and used to give Tab chocolate on the sly and was actually dead nice, but…meh. The thought counted. And PC Thorpe was about six foot six so he’d been easy to make into an evil policeman for Tab’s crappy comics.

As he switched the black ink for the yellow and began to carefully draw tiny circles of gold into the very edges of the iris, Tab considered that if only the assignment didn’t have such horribly strict criteria, he could get away with a huge eye and call it portraiture. After all, it was…

“Oi.”

The God of Not Looking Like A Prat In Front Of Your Crush was frowning on him, because…well. Tab hadn’t heard anyone come in, so engrossed was he in getting the gold flecks in just the right places, that he shrieked, flung the pad into the air, and dived off the chair and onto the lino with a hard and painful smack.

“Ow,” said the voice. “You alright?”

Tab rubbed his elbow, grimaced, and looked up. Right into the gorgeous, amazing, god-like, perfect face of…of him. With those stunning, hazel-and-green eyes that had perfectly round gold flecks in them.

And as if in slow motion, the pad came down, wide open and sailing gaily through the air on a self-made breeze, and a gloved hand shot out to catch it.

“Bloody hell,” he said, turning the eye the right way up. He whistled. “Not bad, mate.”

Tab gaped like a landed goldfish.

“Er,” the boy said, raising an eyebrow at him. Lust and embarrassment declared war and hoisted their flags on each side of the battlefield. “You alright?”

“Yes,” Tab blurted out. “I…fucking hell, yeah, I’m fine, you just…you just…I didn’t hear you come in! I didn’t hear you!”

He shrugged. “Sorry, mate. Door was open. Here.”

And he extended a hand down over the desk. Lust and embarrassment retired from the field. There wasn’t room, after all, for a battle while Tab was having a f*****g heart attack.

“Jesus, you hit your head?” the cause of said heart attack rasped, and leaned down far enough to seize Tab’s T-shirt at the shoulder and haul. When the cotton made a threatening noise, Tab’s survival instincts (JuliKate hated torn clothes) kicked in and he scrambled up, the boxer’s hand transferring seamlessly to his arm to pull him the rest of the way.

Holy s**t. Holybloodyfuckingterminalshit. He was touching Tab. Through leather gloves, but it counted. He had touched his sketch. He had seen the sketch, seen Tab’s drawing of his own eye. He’d talked to him. He had a deep raspy voice, like sand over rocks. In a sandstorm. Tab had never liked the desert before.

“Alright?”

“Um, yes, thanks, I’m fine, Jesus,” Tab scrubbed both hands over his face and sat down in the chair again heavily.

“You’re Eddie’s nephew, aintcha?”

“Um, yes. Yes,” Tab offered, scrambling for the sign-in list. Well. A bit of paper anyway. He should have set it out. He should have set it out before he started drawing.

“Seriously? You’re kinda…not so f*****g intimidating.”

“Yes,” Tab said tartly. “Um, and you? I don’t…we’ve never…you know, you never said hi before.”

The oh-my-God-he’s-talking-to-me-what-the-hell guy shrugged. “Never needed to. Cheers,” he added, when Tab finally found the sign-in sheet and pushed it forward. “Um, pen?”

Tab handed over the yellow fineliner. The boy eyed it for a second before shrugging and scrawling an unreadable signature. “So?” Tab prompted.

“Oh,” he said, capping the pen and handing it back, along with the sketchpad He still held in one gloved fist. “Nick,” he said, and grinned. Two stubs of broken front teeth beamed out at Tab, a twisted canine beside them, and yet they were dangerously beautiful because it was his—no, Nick’s smile.

Tab smoothed out the sketch as Nick disappeared into the changing rooms, and reached for the green pen.

Screw what Uncle Eddie said. He was totally, totally in love.

With a gorgeous, faux-Italian guy called Nick.