Page 56 of A is for Aftercare

“Very. To be fair, Blake had already brought home both a girlfriend and a boyfriend by that point, so they’d already had some experience.”

“Blake’s bisexual?”

Archie tilts his head. "No…Corey is, but Blake doesn't see gender. He just sees beauty." He smiles. "You were telling me about Mick and coming out."

"Aye. I realised I was gay when I was about fifteen. I stumbled across Lark in the Park, which was the closest thing we had to Pride in Edinburgh before 1991. I just felt…at home. But as I said, I didn't tell my family until I was eighteen, right before I walked out the door to catch a train to go to university. You probably think I'm a coward."

“No,” Archie says. “You were protecting yourself. It’s different.”

"Maybe. Anyway, Mick asked me to be his Dom, and I agreed to try it out. Only in the bedroom at first. It turned out I liked spanking him as much as he liked being spanked. I enjoyed telling him what to do and adored the way he'd get down on his knees and bow his head for me. He trained me to be the perfect Dom for him."

“How long did you stay together?” Archie asks.

“Two years. We both graduated, and he got a job on the other side of the world.”

“You didn’t want to go with him?”

I shrug. "He moved to one of the hottest parts of Australia. I don't do heat or countries where ninety per cent of the wildlife can kill you."

Archie almost spits his food out; he laughs so hard.

“Spiders as big as your fist that make webs in toilets, no thanks,” I say. “And kangaroos? They look cute, but they’re vicious buggers. They’ll happily box you to death with their feet or drown you. And don’t get me started on the drop bears.”

“Drop bears aren’t a real thing.”

“How’d you know? Haveyouever been to Australia?”

Archie shakes his head. “I’ve never even been out of the country.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Mum’s scared of flying, so we always stuck to UK holidays.”

“What about since you moved out?”

He shrugs. "I haven't had anyone to go abroad with. I'm not averse to the idea of a tropical holiday, putting my feet up on a sun lounger, having someone massage my shoulders." He sighs. "Sounds like heaven."

“Aye, if you like being eaten to death by mosquitoes.”

“Have you been abroad?” he asks.

“Plenty, but I don’t go to hot places. I like the snow.”

“Doesn’t it snow more in Scotland than London?”

“Tons more, which is why I’ll go back when I retire. I like sitting by a crackling fire, watching the flakes drift down. I love it when you wake up to a white landscape and it’s so early not even the birds have made footprints in the snow.”

“Sounds beautiful,” Archie says.

“It is. When I was a wee boy, my sister, Elsie, and I used to get dressed and race outside as soon as we woke up. We’d build snowmen and have snowball fights until Mam would call us in for breakfast.” I smile at the memory. “On cold mornings, that was always a steaming bowl of porridge. If we were lucky, we’d get to add a dash of honey.” I chuckle as Archie grimaces. “Don’t you like porridge?”

He scrunches his face up and shakes his head, making me laugh harder.

“In our house, you ate what was put in front of you, or you went hungry. After breakfast, we’d dash straight back out into the snow. When it was that thick, there was no hope of getting to school, so we were able to play out in it all day, even though our noses, fingers, and toes got so cold we could barely feel them. Mam used to say it was Jack Frost pinching our noses.”

“Did you believe that?” Archie asks.

“When I was younger, aye. Then again, I believed in Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy too. I hedged my bets on all of them. Even once I was sure they weren’t real, I pretended to still believe in casenotbelieving meant not getting a Christmas present.”