Page 25 of Rock Giant

“You’re sure?”

“We’re all good, Bushie.Promise.”

Ronnie’s brows stayed knotted, and only slowly unravelled when Paul slung an arm around his shoulder.“What’d you say we get back to hunting ’shrooms, eh?”

“Sure, if you like.I don’t think I’m going to be miraculously better at it though.”Ronnie patted himself down and finally located a packet of sweets in his back pocket, that he frowned at, but peeled open, nonetheless.They were squashed and chewy and not even vaguely jelly like.While his jaw worked, his fingers made spidery movements against his thighs.“Should we try somewhere that’s more open?”

“Like… like a field?Good thinking.This way, right?”

He led.Ronnie followed.They eventually found the edge of the wood, and a wide expanse of a moonlit paddock.It wasn’t the field they’d come from, or any of the fields by it.It was occupied, not with tents, but with people.All of them bent over and pacing.

Seemed they weren’t the only ones looking for mushrooms that night.Of course, the presence of so many foragers told him precisely what sort of mushrooms they were likely to find.He started humming an old folk tune.He knew better than to mix booze and ’shrooms.Then again…

“Just talking in hypotheticals, how are you with breaking the law?”

Ronnie shot him a quizzical frown.“Depends on the context.I mean shagging outside is kind of…”

“I wasn’t thinking about that.”He nodded his head towards the foragers.“It’s like totally illegal to pick those things.”

“What?How can it be illegal to pick something that just sprouts naturally?”

They might have got into the ins and outs of it, but he didn’t feel like having a debate.“Snack time,” he announced.

CHAPTER 7

Paul “Rock Giant” Reed

Sometime later…

“Oh!All alone.”

Even Bushie had gone away.Where’d he gone?Where was he going?Paul had a vague notion that he was heading to meet someone.Who, he couldn’t quite recall.A friend… maybe?No, he’d met his friend… his friend had… He grinned at the memory of a dark-haired individual’s head bobbing.Xane… right?No, that’d been years ago not recently.He was getting mixed up.Had probably stumbled over a stray sod… oops, like that… and wound-up pixy led.

Paul picked himself up off the grass, where he’d landed face first, pausing on all fours to get his bearings.He was still in the field.Of course, the field.Failing to straighten his feet out, he rolled onto his back.Above him in every direction the jewelled blanket of space stretched out.He lay there for a while until it occurred to him that the grass was cold.

Around him, scarecrows were still grazing.Where was Ronnie?

“Bushie?”

Where’d he go?Off with some BushBaby, probably.Never mind.He could find a new friend.He never had trouble making friends.

The first few people he tried were genial, but not very interesting.He ambled on, a smile on his face.The world was beautiful… and vast.He threw his arms out to encompass it but couldn’t quite manage it, even though his arms were long… and they had these funny things at the end of them… fingers.He could do all sorts of shit with his fingers.Fingers were cool.He played bass with his fingers.

Music…

Man, he loved music…

That’s when he saw her, like she’d solidified right from the lyrics of the song that he was mouthing.Twenty or so yards away, stooped low, hair loose about her shoulders, dressed in a grey-blue smock that emphasised her considerable assets.He was running before he realised it.

Had swept her up in his arms beforesherealised it.

Jodi Castle.

Nothing could make him forget curves like hers.Even if they hadn’t shared a particularly memorable night, she’d have lived rent free in his head.She remained exactly as he remembered her.Waves of dark blonde hair that settled on her shoulders, an acreage of bust and that defensive but sassy scowl that pinched two lines between her eyebrows.

She squealed right into his ear, but he didn’t mind that.

“Found you,” he said.