Candy Boy
***
Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring.
Levi lay sprawled on his bed like a beached starfish, with little will or ability to move. The alarm clock on his cell phone kept bleating from the floor where he’d dropped his pants the night before. He tried ignoring it, willing it to stop, but it just kept ringing and ringing until he couldn’t stand it anymore. He rolled over and snatched it up, stabbing as many buttons as he could until it died, and went to a heaven known as silence. He dropped it carelessly to the floor, and said sourly, “Now stay fucking quiet!”
He had set it for 11 a.m., hoping that would give him enough of a sleep-in to recover from his boozy night out at Josh’s birthday party. Unfortunately, his fuzzy head and mouth that felt full of dry thistles made him realise he hadn’t got as much sleep as he needed. He closed his eyes and tried drifting off again, but the distant whirring of a neighbour’s lawnmower refused to let him do so. Fighting his hungover body’s wishes, Levi swung his legs out of bed and scrunched his toes into the carpet.
He cupped a hand over his mouth and breathed into it, smelling the alcohol still clinging to his breath. He hadn’t gotten home from Josh’s party until a little after four in the morning, having drunk far more than his fair share of the bar tab. He felt like shit warmed up but he knew it was time to face the day. Josh, a medical wonder who never suffered from hangovers, would be coming to pick him up in just a couple hours for their fishing trip, and Levi would need at least that much time awake to match half his spritely pal’s zest for the weekend ahead.
Levi stood up and swayed slightly, as he stretched his arms and yawned like a roaring lion. He stumbled to the centre of his room and began fossicking through the mess of clothes scattered over the floor, hunting for a clean pair of underwear to throw on. Finally, he settled on a black pair of briefs and slid them up his damp legs until the elastic waist band slapped around his hips, the material snuggly moulding itself around his crotch.
He meandered downstairs where he found his mum and Mark (his stepfather) sitting in the kitchen. His mum was sitting down and sipping her coffee, while his stepfather was dressed in his running gear and reading the local newspaper. Levi greeted them both with a sleepy grunt and made his way to the fridge, where he pulled out the milk and began drinking straight from the bottle.
“Levi, could you please not drink from the bottle,” his mother said half-heartedly.
He pulled the bottle away from his mouth and wiped the milk moustache it had left on his upper lip. “It’s nearly all gone, I’m just finishing it off.”
“That’s nearly half a litre,” his mother replied, somewhat dazedly, blinking.
He shrugged his shoulders and continued drinking from the bottle. It wasn’t like they couldn’t afford to buy another bottle of milk.
Mark sighed disapprovingly. “It wouldn’t hurt you to listen to your mother and just do as she says.” The man may have been a descendent of one of the original pioneer families to New Zealand, but his voice was so devoid of even the slightest Kiwi twang that people often mistook him as being English.
Levi ignored his cranky stepfather’s comment and wandered over to join them at the table.
Mark glared disapprovingly at his half-naked state. “Is it really necessary for you to go gallivanting about the house naked?”
“I’m not naked.”
“You’re pretty much naked,” Mark replied snottily.
Levi patted his flat tummy and grinned. “If you don’t like what you see then blame her,” he said, pointing at his mother. “She’s the one who made me.”
His mother smiled. “I made you perfect, dear, but that’s no need to show everyone what I made.”
“No one will want the cow if they can get the milk for free, right?” Levi grinned, raising the bottle of milk still in his hand.
“That’s right, darling,” his mother said, “but then I guess you get all your milk free anyway.”
Levi winked and swigged back on the milk.
“Was it a big night last night?” his mother asked, pushing her fine blonde hair back over her shoulder.
“Fuck yeah.”
“Language,” Mark mumbled from behind the pages of his newspaper.
“It’s okay, I think Mum has heard worse.”
“That’s still no reason for you to speak like that in front of her, though.” Mark lowered the newspaper to give Levi a stern look. “You need to watch what comes out of your mouth.”
Before Levi could sass his stepfather back, his mother interrupted, “Come on, tell me… how was the party?”
“It was really good,” Levi said, nodding enthusiastically. “Josh said to say thank you again for topping up the bar tab.”
Josh’s mum had paid for her son to hire out the Ivory Bar in town until midnight but she had left it up to him and his friends to buy their own drinks. When Levi’s mum heard this, she stepped in and paid for a three-thousand-dollar bar tab. A stupidly generous amount of money to pay for a friend of your son as a birthday present, but Josh had been Levi’s best mate forever and was more like a brother, and so Levi’s mum treated him like family.
“You tell Josh it was our pleasure,” Levi’s mother cooed. “His mum helped us out a lot back in the day.”
Back in the day is what Levi’s mum referred to as the time before she married Mark, a time when she and Levi lived in a crappy, small house in the rough part of town. It was funny to think that once upon a time it was Josh who was the wealthy one in the friendship. When Levi and his mum had been scraping by below the poverty line it was Josh’s modest family home that felt like a castle. Josh’s mum had separated from his loser father when he was just a baby, but thanks to her good job in the bank she owned her own three-bedroom home and the cupboards were always full with food. It was food she generously shared, giving some to Levi to take home to his mother each time he would visit.
Levi and his mum had never forgotten this generosity and had repaid the good deeds with some of their own, like shouting Josh’s mum a trip to Australia for her birthday and paying for Josh’s tertiary fees. You would think it would be ballsy of Levi’s mum to just dip into Mark’s money and spend it on others, but that wasn’t an issue because Mark had a soft spot for the sensible and sporty Josh. Even if he had disliked Josh, Mark would never say no to his pretty wife. That was the good thing about Levi’s stepfather, he was stupidly generous to Levi’s mother, and by default (albeit begrudgingly) Levi as well.
Mark put his newspaper down and joined the conversation. “Yes. I have no trouble helping out a boy like Josh, who works hard and tries his best to help himself in life.”
Levi flinched internally at what he knew to be a dig at him. Unlike Josh who worked his butt off at his crappy supermarket job while he studied accounting in the evenings, Levi was a slacker who slept in most days and hardly ever went to polytechnic to attend his media arts course. He didn’t see the point in getting a part time job when he didn’t pay any board, and had his own credit card that his mum paid for with his stepfather’s money. It was the easy lifestyle that made him reluctant to move out. Why ditch living in one of the region’s most luxurious homes when you didn’t have to. Yes, he was lazy, but Levi wasn’t fucking stupid.