Week Eight: exceprt of chapter six

The stars are bright

at 12:18 tomorrow morning

when we ran together

through the field.

Not 12:18 exactly

{ I didn’t have a watch. }

But we were lying there

for quite a while

our fingers were

rtwi

      inte        ned.

I don’t think I love you

{ what of love? }

that’s barely important.

Listen to the wind

in the grass

at roughly 12:18

 tomorrow morning.

x

Alex’s first thought upon waking up was that he hadn’t slept for long enough. When he turned his head, his chin smacked against something hard and he heard Mark swear under his breath. He only realised once Mark started to disentangle himself from Alex’s body that they had been tightly wound around each other in Alex’s bed. It was still dark outside, the room lit up by Mark checking the time on his phone.

“Why’d you have to wake me up at fucking four in the morning?” he said, dropping his phone and sinking back down onto his pillow.

As Alex’s eyes adjusted to the light, he started to make out the shape of Mark’s face. His brain filled in the blanks. “I don’t know. Must’ve had a bad dream, it’s not like I woke up on purpose.”

The shadows around them shifted in a way that suggested Mark had shrugged. “Whatever. Wanna go for a walk?”

“Sure, why not?”

Alex flicked on his lamp, making them both flinch a little. As they pulled back the covers and got out of bed, Alex couldn’t help but cave on himself, regretting taking all his clothes off as he wished he could hide himself better. It wasn’t that he was insecure about his body – far from it, as he spent almost every day shirtless by Carlos’s pool – but he felt vulnerable baring himself in front of Mark. In just his boxers and the silence of his bedroom, lowlight casting golden shadows, he felt like he was showing too much of himself. He turned his back as he pulled on his clothes from earlier in the night.

He looked on his bedside table for his phone and sat on the edge of his bed, waiting for Mark to get dressed before the two of them slipped out the back door and into the night.

Alex took the lead, considering Mark hadn’t been there for four years and had forgotten the lie of the land. They went into one of the paddocks, walked along the flood plain until they got to where the fire was still smouldering. Alex laughed as Mark used the coal to light a cigarette that they passed back and forth, fingers brushing against knuckles. They passed some of the sheep the Lees kept, Mark running up through the middle of them, moonlight illuminating the wool on the sheep’s backs. When they got to the paddock with the small cattle herd, Alex passed the cigarette back to Mark and looked around.

When he caught sight of his old pet calf, now an impressively large Jersey heifer, he approached her slowly. Mark stubbed out his cigarette on a fence post and pocketed it before following after Alex. The animal was curled up under a tree, head laid down on the grass beneath her. Alex put a soft hand on her shoulder and starting rubbing, her head perking up after a few minutes. He smiled fondly down at her.

“Do you remember Beatrice?”

Mark laughed. “She’s still around?”

Beatrice had been born in early August when Alex was twelve years old; Mark’s last year in New Zealand before he’d moved away. Her mother had died giving birth to her, meaning that Alex and Ty had to raise her with the help of their mother. It was mostly Alex and their mother, as Ty’s work load at school had gotten a lot heavier in his second to last year. All of his friends had taken to Beatrice, but Mark most of all. Now, in the early morning on the first of January, Mark pulled some grass out of the ground and held it out for Beatrice as Alex settled against her side. Beatrice sniffed Mark’s hand for a moment before her tongue came out to curl around the grass, tickling Mark’s palm and making him giggle. As she chewed, Mark moved to sit next to Alex, backs leant against Beatrice’s warm stomach.

Alex rested his head on Mark’s shoulder and Mark rested his head atop Alex’s. They sat for a while in silence, just listening to crickets in the night and the breathing of the other cows around them. After a few minutes Mark slipped his hand into Alex’s, linking their fingers together.

“Do you have any new year’s resolutions?”

Alex thought about it. “Not really. They’re a bit pointless, aren’t they? Everyone ends up breaking them anyway.”

Mark huffed a laugh, circling his thumb over a mole on the back of Alex’s hand. “I guess, but it takes work to actually make a change in your life. You can’t just break it once and then be like ‘Oh well guess that’s me done for the year’, you know?”

“I guess. Why, do you have any?”

Mark shrugged with the shoulder that wasn’t housing Alex’s head. “Smoking was cute when I lived in China, ‘cause you know everyone there snorts tobacco. But here it’s different I think. I don’t know, I’m thinking I should stop.”

“But how will you maintain your mysterious bad boy image?”

Mark laughed, squeezing Alex’s hand. “I’ll learn how to ride a motorbike or something. I’ll figure it out. Anyway, there’s nothing bad boyish or mysterious about lung cancer.”

“That’s a good point. Nothing cool about dying young.”

“Exactly. Although, I don’t think I smoke enough to die young, exactly.”

“Whatever, you’re dying with me in the nursing home when we’re ninety like we planned.”

For just a moment, Mark stopped breathing. Alex thought that maybe he’d said something out of turn, but before he could apologise Mark kept talking.

“What subjects are you taking this year?”

“Well, I still have to take English and PE, so those. Uh, media studies, maths, bio, drama. What about you?”

“English literature –”

“Okay mister intellectual.”

“Shut up,” Mark giggled. “English lit, calc, media, French and early childhood.”

“Early childhood?”

“Yeah, I wanted a bum subject. And besides, cross credits from Shanghai pretty much have me qualified for uni now, I just need some core subjects.”

“What was Shanghai like, anyway?” Alex asked, slinging an arm over Mark’s lap.

“A bit shit. All I wanted to do was come home. Pretty sure my parents only agreed to let me come home to get me to shut up.”

“Don’t you miss them?”

“I mean, yeah, but I still talk to them a lot. And Carlos’s mum has been really nice to me.”

Alex laughed, nuzzling against Mark’s neck. “She always gave the best hugs when we were kids.”

They fell into silence after that, later standing up and dusting dirt off the seat of their pants. Alex crouched down by Beatrice’s head and kissed behind her ear, Mark giving her another handful of grass before they headed off to the track that looped back to the house. They still held hands, swinging them back and forth between them as the loose gravel crunched beneath their shoes.