Page 89 of Going Solo (The Brent Boys #2)
THREE MONTHS LATER
T he sky was grey, and the wind blustering through the ancient rocks of Stonehenge was chilly. The joys of summer in England. I tucked my hands into my armpits, but the synthetic fabric of my waterproof jacket completely failed to provide any warmth. Cole kicked his shoes off.
“Are you mad? It’s absolutely bitter. You’ll catch your death, babes.”
“I want to feel the grass under my feet,” he said. “Can you believe we’ve come all this way and they don’t even let you touch the rocks?”
“Nope, no rock touching,” I confirmed.
“Like, I’ve wanted to see Stonehenge all my life, and now I’m so close. I can see it. It’s right there . But I don’t feel like it will be real until I can actually touch it. I need to put skin to stone, you know?”
The wind whipped around us, lashing drizzle against my face. I put up my hood.
“Can you hold me? I’m bloody freezing.”
Cole slid his arms around me, his oversized loose-knit jumper making him as soft and warm as a teddy bear. I leaned into him, stealing his heat. I closed my eyes, pretending I hadn’t seen a group of teenage girls walking towards us.
“Can we please get a picture with you?” one of them asked.
“Of course!” Cole said cheerily, and the girls squealed in delight.
I opened my eyes and reached out a hand for their phone. “Here, let me take that for you.”
“Would you be in the picture, too, please, Tobias? If you don’t mind?”
I smiled. “Of course not.” I waved them in. “A selfie, then.”
Taking photos with Cole’s fans, I had discovered, was a bit like going for a leak at the pub. You can drink pint after pint and not need the loo. But the second you do, the moment you break that seal, it’s a never-ending flood, and you’re off to the toilet every five seconds. Once we had taken a selfie with these girls, the floodgates would open, and everyone would be queuing up to meet Cole and take a picture. He loved every minute of it. I was still getting used to it.
“So, is he marriage material, then, Cole?” an older man shouted across the field. His teenage daughter looked mortified.
“I’d marry him in a heartbeat,” Cole said. And for the first time on that blustery Wiltshire hilltop, I felt warm. Not only flush with love and gratitude, but with a rush of self-satisfaction—and with the realisation that being “marriage material boy” no longer carried any weight. It couldn’t hurt me. I felt unburdened. I was comfortable in myself, so I was finally free to leave it behind, to move on.
We spent an hour meeting fans, taking photos, in the freezing cold afternoon. The five-thousand-year-old ancient monument we had come to see was being almost completely ignored by everyone. Everyone except Cole, that is.
“Fuck it, I’m doing it,” he said, a look of steely determination on his face.
“Doing what?”
“Are you coming with me?” Cole turned to me with a massive grin. He grabbed my hand and looked across to the stones.
“Oh no, we can’t, babes, we’ll get in trouble.”
Cole could not have cared less. Before I knew it, we were under the rope, our arms wrapped around the ancient granite pillars. Cole’s eyes were closed, his face pressed against the rock, a smile on his face as broad as the landscape around us. Someone blew a whistle and shouted for us to get back.
“I told you we’d get in trouble,” I said.
“Rock and roll, baby,” he said, squeezing my hand.
Sometimes the headlines write themselves. And we were definitely going to make headlines.
THE END.