Page 3 of Taste Test

Some mornings you wake up feeling like a superhero. This wasn’t one of those mornings. This was more “flattened cartoon character, peeled off the footpath by a council worker” vibes, the result of staying up way too late cleaning up after the Jared Sutherland fan club while stone-cold sober.

Ignoring the fact I was tired as fuck, the morning light streaming through my bedroom window was quite pleasant.

Somewhere in the distance, I could hear the low hum of traffic flowing along Grey Street.

I shifted under the covers and my dick decided to remind me it was alive and well.

Nothing like a solid morning erection to start the day, especially when your brain was still processing last night’s shitshow.

I let myself think about the skinny bogan with the shaved head and badly drawn tattoos.

The way his low-rider jeans had hung off his hipbones like they were defying gravity.

That broken-tooth grin when he’d looked me up and down.

I wondered what he was packing under those red boxers, probably thin and long like the rest of him, maybe a bit bent to the left.

Fuck it, my hand was already heading south anyway.

I closed my eyes and let my imagination run wild.

What if he’d stayed after everyone else left?

What if he’d pushed me down onto my knees right there in the kitchen, let me find out if he tasted as rough as he looked?

What if those bony hips had thrust forward while I worked my mouth around him, his tattooed fingers tangled in my hair, spouting “fuck yeah” in that gravelly voice?

It didn’t take long. Never did when I was this wound up. I came with a muffled groan, shooting across my stomach and chest like I had most mornings since I’d discovered the joys of masturbation at thirteen.

I lay there for a moment, catching my breath, then reached for the old Metallica t-shirt I kept by my bed for exactly this purpose.

My makeshift cumrag was getting a bit crusty, probably time to retire it to the washing machine before it could stand up on its own.

I wiped myself clean and tossed it towards the laundry basket, missing by about a metre.

I checked my phone. Half past nine. Jared’s room was dead quiet next door—no snoring, no movement, nothing through the thin wall that separated our bedrooms. He was probably still passed out, which meant I had a couple hours of peace before the inevitable post-breakup meltdown.

But have they broken up?

I wasn’t sure. Jess was his first proper girlfriend. Before her it was just a parade of one-night stands and Tinder hookups, never anything that lasted longer than a weekend. But if what I thought had happened last night did indeed happen, then surely Jess was out of the picture for good.

I felt like a prick for wishing they were over, but Jess was a manipulative cow, even if she did it all with that sweet smile and perfectly innocent tone. Maybe now I wouldn’t have to deal with her passive-aggressive bullshit every time she came around.

How the hell do you console a heartbroken straight boy anyway?

Something told me he wouldn’t be keen on my usual routine of sad music on repeat and watching Bridget Jones’s Diary with a bottle of Bernadino and a pile of snacks.

Straight guys probably just needed a bit of Pornhub, greasy takeaway, and someone to nod along while they swore about how “bitches be crazy.”

Whatever the magic cure turned out to be, I had a sinking feeling I’d be the one administering it.

After all, I was the one Jared came running to whenever something went tits up, whether it was a failed assignment, a pulled muscle, or just needing someone to play Florence Nightingale when he had man flu.

The guy turned into a total sook the second he got so much as a runny nose.

Last winter when he caught the flu, he’d practically turned into a toddler: whimpering from his bed about needing soup, asking me to check his temperature every hour, making these pitiful little groaning sounds whenever he had to get up to use the toilet.

I’d ended up missing three days of lectures playing nurse, bringing him Lemsip and toast cut into triangles because apparently that’s how his mum did it.

The worst part was when he’d asked me to rub Vicks on his chest because he was ‘too weak’ to do it himself, lying there half-naked and fevered while I tried not to notice how the menthol made his nipples go hard, or how his breathing changed when my hands moved across his skin.

Ugh. What a baby.

Growing up, I’d never imagined I’d end up playing nursemaid to the golden boy whose dad used to ruffle my hair and call me “little mate” at family barbecues. But life had a twisted sense of humour like that.

Our dads had been best mates since meeting at university.

Dave Sutherland studying law while my father pursued a BA in English Literature.

The financial gap between their chosen paths had only widened over the years.

Dave was now a successful corporate lawyer with a BMW and a boat, while Dad had ended up as a high school English teacher driving a twelve-year-old Toyota.

While not as talented as his son, Dave himself had been a handy rugby player in his day, the kind who still got nods of recognition at the local clubrooms. My father was more of a sideline supporter, never serious about playing like the Sutherlands, but enough of a fan to follow the games religiously before retreating back to his classroom and shelves of battered novels.

Their careers might have set them on very different pay grades, but they’d stayed close after both ended up working in the same provincial town.

They’d even married girls who were best friends.

Mum and Dave’s wife Sarah had been inseparable since teacher training college.

Both couples tied the knot the same year and then, as if following some cosmic script, had their first kids the same year too.

While our mothers were happy to let us be ourselves, our dads were convinced Jared and I would somehow carry on their friendship, best mates like them and keeping the tradition alive for another generation.

What they hadn’t counted on was producing two boys who couldn’t be more different.

Our differences were as obvious as our appearances: my black hair, pale skin that burnt after five minutes in the sun, and the kind of slim build that meant I was always picked last for any sports team, versus Jared’s dirty blond hair, permanently golden tan, and the broad shoulders and defined muscle that came from years of being picked first for the same teams.

Jared was everything his father had hoped for: popular, athletic, effortlessly charming, and blissfully unaware that the world didn’t revolve around him.

I was everything my father tolerated with good humour: sarcastic, academic, gay, and possessed of what Mum diplomatically called “a sharp tongue.”

Sure, we’d been friendly as kids, but by the time high school came along, Jared and I existed in different universes.

Jared was rugby captain, head boy material, the kind of guy who made everything look effortless.

I was the kid who spent lunch breaks in the library, got invited to exactly zero parties, and whose idea of social interaction was debating essay topics with my teachers.

We weren’t enemies. Jared had never been cruel like some of his mates, but we weren’t really friends by that stage either.

Somehow, we’d both ended up at the University of Waikato.

I was studying Business Management (practical, Dad had said, with decent job prospects), while Jared was doing Health and Sports Science (a degree that basically formalised what he’d been doing naturally his whole life).

We moved in very different social circles, mostly because mine consisted of about three people and a book club.

After our first year at uni, Dave Sutherland rang my father with what he pitched as a brilliant solution to a mutual problem.

Jared wanted out of the hostels so he could go flatting with a couple of guys his parents considered “bad influences,” the kind whose idea of fun involved more booze and fewer brain cells than the Sutherlands were comfortable with.

So they gave their son an ultimatum: they’d keep bankrolling his social life and cover the lion’s share of the rent, but only if he lived somewhere they approved of and with someone they trusted.

Enter Casey Walmsley—yours truly—the sensible, studious son of Dave’s best mate. The human equivalent of a safety net. The kind of flatmate who’d make sure Jared attended lectures and didn’t burn the house down making two-minute noodles.

Dad had been delighted by the offer. It meant I could escape my cramped hostel and move into a real house where the rent would be heavily subsidised by the Sutherlands’ far deeper pockets.

For me, it meant freedom from shared bathrooms and fire drills at three in the morning.

For Jared, it meant independence with a built-in babysitter his parents trusted.

A perfect arrangement, really. What could possibly go wrong?

Two years later, I was starting to suspect the answer was “everything.” I’d lost count of how many times I’d washed Jared’s sick bucket after big nights out, or scraped his protein powder explosions off the kitchen ceiling, or explained to concerned neighbours why there were half-naked men doing the haka in our back garden at two in the morning.

There’d been the time he’d brought home three traffic cones and couldn’t remember why.

The week he’d decided to “bulk up” and left raw chicken on the bench for three days.

The ongoing saga of him using my good towels as gym rags despite having perfectly functional sports towels of his own.