Page 2 of Malek

Axel invited his brother along on this trip with him, but Rowan passed hard on the invite. Ro said he had to work at the hospital,little liar.Axel knew Ro had gotten a shift just to get out of coming with him.

The dickhead.

He kind of wished Alfie was about, his younger brother was more the adventurous type, probably why he was backpacking through Europe on his gap year from uni.

Well, gap year to mum. Alfie wasn't even sure if he planned on going back to uni.

He would have invited his half-brother Wes along, but he was off cataloguing some library, in Cambridgeshire or something.

At the moment Axel just wished his brothers were here. Well, right now he wished he’d gone along with Rowan's Cheshire shopping-spa plan. Especially since his older brother had offered to pay.

Bollocks.

He wasn't even sure why he’d gone for this whole camping thing. He should have just gone along with the spa day, but for some reason, he remembered the Trip Advisor recommendation right when he was wanting to get away, and now here he was.

Cold, wet and miserable.

Really served him right.

It wasn’t that Axel hated camping, he really didn’t. He actually kind of liked it. Well, he’d liked it while he was at school and had gone on a couple of camping trips while participating in the Duke of Edinburgh awards.

Which you dropped out of, remember, because it was too outdoorsy?

The more he thought about it, the more he questioned his sanity, and what on earth made him decide to go into the bloody mountains of the Lake District.

What kind of crazy person went camping by themselves, when they hadn’t been camping in over twelve years.

Apparently, he was that crazy person.

It occurred to him, the more miserable he felt, that if Matt was here he would have known what to do. They probably wouldn’t have got lost. Matt was proper adventurous, and outdoorsy, and all that crap.

Fuck, he really needed to stop thinking of Matt as the guy he called when he was in shit, or when he got himself in shit more like.

Especially, because his now ex-best mate was a married man.

Axel raised his arm up and checked his watch. Yup, Matt should be sayingI doright about then, and instead of showing up for him, Axel had chickened out like a coward. This was probably his reward.

Well, you're on your own now, mate.

You can do this… of course he could. He was a grown man, strong, independent and all that.

Yeah, that depended on your best friend so much, that now he’s married and probably not speaking to you, you’re going to have to figure shit out for yourself for the first time in forever.

Maybe he shouldn't have started out with camping in the middle of nowhere. Axel shivered and looked around. All the sounds were kind of creeping him out now. Were there wild animals out here?

That was something you should have checked before starting your hike, dummy.

Okay, his spur of the moment decision was feeling stupider and stupider by the second.

It wasn't like he could fight or anything, all five-foot-four of him would probably make a nice chew toy for any wild animal.

Yeah, dummy, because if you were taller you'd have a chance against a wild animal.

The Cheetah Girls song from when he was younger came in his head, so he sang it out loud, “I don't wanna be like Cinderella, sitting in a dark, cold, dusty cellar waiting for somebody to come and set me free…”

Okay, he could save himself. He might look like Cinderella, being blond and grey-eyed, and maybe a little dainty, but he didn't need a prince to save him.

Hold up, was he allowed to quote/sing The Cheetah Girls at twenty-seven? Whatever. Who would stop him? He carried on humming, and walking. Axel figured if he could find shelter soon. He would be gravy.