Josh was about to start the car but promptly stopped when his eyes widened in surprise. “What’s that?” he blurted, pointing to Wade’s number scrawled on Levi’s arm. “Did you get a girl’s number?”
“Yeah. A big hairy one.”
Josh’s lips curled in confusion.
“It’s Wade Benson’s number.”
Josh burst out laughing. “That’s classic. He has a real thing for you, aye.”
“He has a thing for anything that moves.”
“True, but he does seem to have a sweet spot for you especially. He always bails you up at parties and tries his luck.”
“He can try all he fucking likes but he won’t be succeeding.”
“I think you and Wade would make a cute couple. You should invite him out to join us for drinks.” Josh’s grin gave way to giggles.
Levi snickered and whacked Josh’s arm. “Cut it out. You and him would make a cute couple more like it.”
“No way, man. Even if I was gay there is no way on this earth I would wanna be known as a Benson Banger.”
“Gross, right?”
Josh nodded. “I don’t know if this is true or not, but someone told me that when he cums after fucking someone he yells out ‘Banged by the Benson!'”
They both laughed.
Levi used the light-hearted moment to steer the conversation towards his cock’s wishes. “Since Banger Benson is off the list, what kind of guy would you go for if you were gay?”
“Good question,” Josh said excitedly. He drummed his fingers along the steering wheel, giving the hypothetical question much thought. “I think I’d wanna guy the same height as me so I wouldn’t have to bend down to kiss him.”
“Oh yeah.” Levi grinned. “So you’d be into kissing, would you?”
“Fuck yeah. I’d make sure I give my man affection.”
Levi laughed. “What else?”
“Hmm. I think I’d wanna date a guy with big muscles and shit. Someone who would be able to beat the fuck out of anyone who gave us shit. And he’d have to be romantic. Woo me with singing, take me out for dinner and buy me gifts all the time.”
“So basically you want a bodybuilding sugar daddy who treats you like a lady.”
“Pretty much.” Josh nodded, turning to give Levi a smile. “There has to be some sort of incentive for taking a cock up your arse.”
Levi cringed. Not from the image of two men fucking but from Josh’s dismissive tone at the idea.
“What about you?” Josh asked. “Who would be your dream guy?”
“You,” Levi replied in a jovial tone, masking the scorching truth in his answer.
“Cheers, brother. You have good taste.” Josh laughed and started the car, unaware of how serious Levi really was.
***
The drive to the country road Josh’s father lived on took just over forty minutes . The further away they got from town, the more it felt like they were leaving the 21st century behind. Dwight lived along a narrow strip of coast, squeezed between the rough Tasman Sea and rugged ranges of native forest that kept the surrounding farms at bay. If you continued to the end of the road then you would arrive at a slippery clay track that snaked its way down to the black sand of Rapanui Beach. The beach was framed with high cliffs that crawled along the coast as far as the eye could see. It really was a paradise out here, and one of Levi’s favourite places in the world.
Dwight ran his own lawn-mowing business and all his clients (including Levi’s family) lived in town, so it seemed strange that he would choose to live out here in the middle of nowhere. Levi suspected Dwight’s reason for living out here had less to do with the beautiful scenery and more to do with the privacy it gave him so he could get up to no good. Dwight had been busted more than once for growing and dealing cannabis, but having nearly gone to prison when he was last busted it seemed unlikely he would be back to those tricks again—but then the guy wasn’t known for being smart.
Unlike his sensible and kind-hearted son, Dwight Stephenson was a cocky, arrogant womanizer who made Charlie Sheen look like a gentleman. To make matters worse, Dwight hated Levi. Every chance Dwight got he would have a verbal jab at Levi. It was usually something along the lines of mocking Levi for being rich and lazy. Dwight resented anyone with more money or success than him. But it was more than just the money thing. Dwight had hated Levi even before he and his mum had moved in with Mark and landed on easy street.
When Levi was twelve years old, he’d been invited by Josh to have a sleepover at Dwight’s home. It had all gone completely fine until he woke in the middle of the night and discovered that he’d wet the bed. He had been so embarrassed about what he had done that he didn’t bother to tell anyone, opting instead to sneak the wet sheets into the laundry early the next morning. Unfortunately, the next day when Dwight discovered the soiled sheets in the laundry basket, he hit the fucking roof, yelling and screaming. Being outed as a twelve-year-old bed wetter had been utterly humiliating, but not as bad as what had happened next.
In front of Josh, Dwight dragged Levi into the laundry and rubbed his face in the piss-stained sheets, telling him he was nothing but “a filthy pig.” The gigantic humiliation of it all made Levi burst into tears. As he stood wiping his crying eyes and snotty nose, Dwight told him to harden up and stop behaving like a “soggy little girl.” The off-the-cuff remark evolved into a nick name for Levi that Dwight still used to this day. Soggy.
If there was a silver lining from that ghastly experience it was learning that Josh really was his best friend. After Dwight had finished treating Levi like a cat that had shit inside the house, Josh had settled Levi down by hugging him until he stopped crying, and promised him he wouldn’t tell anyone at school about what had happened. And he never did. To this day no one else knew about the bed wetting incident, not even Levi’s mum.
Levi was using this memory, and his general dislike of Dwight, as ammunition to go through with his planned seduction. Not only would he be deflowering Dwight’s son in emasculating fashion, he would be doing it under Dwight’s roof. With Dwight being a major homophobe, it just made the fantasy so much sweeter. The guy would probably spontaneously combust if he ever found out his own flesh and blood had been turned queer for a night.
As Josh’s car juddered along the shitty metal road filled with potholes, Levi spotted Dwight’s dilapidated home in the distance. The old cottage was in desperate need of a face lift, its white paint peeling and the tin roof rusted golden. The place was framed with a wiry hedge but small gaps gave away snippets of a front lawn that appeared freshly mowed.
As they turned into Dwight’s driveway, Levi got a surprise to see a bulky young man loading a lawnmower onto the back of a red Ute. It took Levi a moment to realise that the pale-faced man with broad shoulders was a blast from his past, and not a welcome one.
Lucas Maxwell!
“What the fuck is fanta pants doing here?” Levi blurted.
“You mean Lucas?”
Levi cringed hearing the name. “Yes. Him.”
“He’s Dad’s new worker.”
Levi shuddered. He didn’t like the idea of Lucas potentially coming to help Dwight mow his family’s lawns. It was bad enough that Dwight already did. “I thought Lucas worked at the chicken farm.”