Page 3 of The Cocky for Cody (Mulligan’s Mill)

Cody nodded and pointed with his thumb into the shack. “Brooks, meet Kevin. Kevin, this is—”

“Your latest slutty strumpet!” Kevin finished for him. “That’s who it is!”

I decided to whisper. “You have a talking bird? Who are you, Doctor Doolittle?”

“No. Kevin’s a cockatoo. They’re smart as hell, able to pick up words and imitate them.”

“Imitate them? Cody, this isn’t a case of ‘Polly want a cracker.’ That bird is using fully formed sentences. He’s using syntax and context and—”

“I can hear you, you fucking tramp!”

“And a whole lot of curse words! He didn’t learn those words from you, did he?”

“No! Maybe some. He picks up words here and there all over Maggie. What can I tell you, there’s a lot of colorful characters on the island. And like I said, cockies are smart as hell. Now if I could only teach him some bloody manners.”

“Hey! Watch your language!” came the shriek from inside.

Cody took a deep breath. “Kevin, you need to calm down because we’ve had a very long flight and we’d like to come inside… if that’s all right with you.”

“You have to ask a bird permission to enter your own house?” I whispered harshly.

“I told you it was complicated. Now just stay behind me.” Shoving me behind him and raising his hands like he was negotiating with terrorists, Cody took one step then another through the door while I huddled in his wake.

“Kevin, did you hear me? We’re coming in now.

” He glanced up and added, “I can see you up there.

Can you please put down the barbie tongs?

I want to introduce you to Brooks properly. "

With a reluctant, “Okay, fine,” Kevin let the tongs clatter to the floor.

I saw a flashy flutter of feathers, I heard a whooshing of wings, and suddenly a huge white cockatoo perched itself on the edge of the kitchen sink a few feet from where Cody and I stood in the middle of the disheveled shack.

At the appearance of Kevin, Cody gave a laugh that was half relieved, half unhinged, half attempt to calm me down. Okay, so I know that’s three halves, but like Cody said, this situation was complicated… and fraught with an uncertainty that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

Speaking of hair, I suddenly noticed that Cody’s gravity-defying locks looked a lot like the spikey feathers sticking up out of Kevin’s head.

As though the cockatoo didn’t like me looking at him, those feathers seemed to flare up even more.

I quickly realized this was the bird’s way of warding off enemies, or at the very least his way of warning me that the chance of the two of us becoming friends was out of the question.

“Kevin,” said Cody, still in negotiator mode. “I want you to meet my new friend, Brooks.”

“Friend?” I said, a little offended.

“Boyfriend!” Cody quickly corrected. “This is my new boyfriend, Brooks. We met while I was traveling through the States. He owns the cutest bookstore in a little town called Mulligan’s Mill and… well… we fell in love. I want you to make him welcome.”

Kevin’s feathers ruffled, he raised his tail, and without so much as a word he squirted a shit into the kitchen sink behind him.

“Oh, gross!” I spluttered, choking on my gag reflex. “Please tell me we don’t have to wash any dishes in that sink.”

“What dishes?” Kevin cawed. “I smashed them all. Squark! ”

One glance across the kitchen floor confirmed he was not lying. “My God, are you sure that bird isn’t possessed by the Devil?”

“ Squark! Just because your mother cooks socks in hell, doesn’t mean I’m the one with the problem, you brazen hussy!”

“Now, Kevin… what have I told you about being polite to strangers?” Cody tried to reason cautiously. “Brooks is my guest and I’d like you to be on your best behavior. That means no name-calling, no trashing the house, and absolutely no more shitting in the sink.”

Kevin the cocky gave me the stink eye, then leveled his gaze at Cody.

“Fine. If you want me to behave, I will. But that doesn’t mean I need to sit around here watching you two make hoochie-coochie kissy-face in front of me.

Blurg! Squark! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got better things to do like annoy the hell out of deadbeat Damo by pecking the fuck out of his Casuarina trees. Squark! ”

With a foomp of his wings, Kevin suddenly took flight, flapping up into the rafters and flying out through an open window near the ceiling.

For a moment, Cody and I stood in complete silence, staring up at the blue sky through that window. It wasn’t until we were certain Kevin wasn’t going to reappear that Cody finally turned to me. “Are you okay?”

“I think so. I’m not sure. What just happened?”

“Kevin just happened.”

“Jesus, is he your pet?”

“No. Kevin’s wild.”

“You’re telling me! One look around this place confirms the hell out of that. Can we close the damn window before he comes back?”

“Um… not really.”

“Why not?”

“Because he knows he’s safe in here.”

“ He might be, but nobody else is!”

Cody took my hand, brushed some broken teacups off the couch, and eased me down.

“I couldn’t possibly lock him out. I don’t want to lock him out.

Kevin and I have known each other for years.

Back in 2011, a cyclone named Yasi blew through here.

Tore up half the island. Kevin was just a young chick.

I found him in the bush after the cyclone, and he was barely alive.

I nurtured him back to health, then when he was strong enough, I set him free. ”

“I hate to tell you this, but you didn’t exactly do a very good job of the ‘setting him free’ part.”

“You know what they say, if you love them, set them free. If they love you, they’ll come back.”

I stared around the pillaged shack. “This is Kevin’s idea of love?”

Cody shrugged. “I know, I know, he gets kinda hectic. And needy. And batshit crazy. But… he’s a bird. He knows this is his safe space, it always has been. Whether there’s a storm or he’s in danger from a predator—whether I’m here or not—he knows that window up there will always be open for him.”

“You leave it open? All the time? Even when you’re not here?”

“Uh-huh.”

“But what if someone breaks in?”

“Brooks, we’re on an island. Who’s gonna break in? The koalas? Besides, I don’t exactly have anything worth stealing. And even if someone did break in, they couldn’t do much more damage than this.” He pointed to the mess everywhere.

I sighed at the sight of it. “And here I was thinking the flight over here took a long time. Cleaning up this mess is going to take forever.”

But Cody just smiled and kissed me, then pointed to the bed in a corner of the shack. It looked comfy and inviting. “You’re not doing anything. You’re exhausted. I want you to hit the hay, right now. I’ll clean, you sleep.”

I kissed him back. “Thanks for the offer, but if it’s all the same to you, when I crawl into that bed, I want you to crawl into it with me.”

He grinned. “You do?”

I pressed my lips against his again. “You bet I do. Now, hand me a broom. I’ll start on the floor. You can clean the sink.”

By the time we fell onto Cody’s bed we were both exhausted. As much as I may have wanted a cuddle and maybe even more—how did Kevin put it, ‘hoochie-coochie kissy-face’?—the fact was we were unconscious the second our heads hit the pillow.

It was still daylight when I opened my eyes to find Cody in the kitchen, naked but for an apron, his impressively concise tan line framing his perfect ass cheeks and the top of his legs.

Even after a few months in Mulligan’s Mill, that tan line had refused to budge, like a kind of permanent ink stamp or wax seal that I imagined all Aussies possessed as their unique identifying mark.

While the sight of him brought happiness to my bleary eyes, the smell of whatever he was cooking made my hungry stomach flip for joy. “Dinner smells amazing,” I said, stretching the creaks out of my body. “What are you cooking?”

Cody turned with a chuckle. “Dinner? Brooks, this is breakfast.”

I stopped mid-stretch. “Breakfast? Wait a minute. It’s morning?”

“Yep. It’s tomorrow, and a gorgeous day it is. I’ve already walked to the shops and back, and now I’m cooking you up a storm.”

“But where did yesterday go?”

He laughed. “We slept through it. And right through the night. With any luck our body clocks should be in sync with Australian time now. Hungry?”

“Starving!”

I slid out of bed, only then realizing I was completely naked. “I seem to remember falling asleep before I could get my clothes off. Did we?”

Cody chuckled again. “You mean did I take advantage of you while you slept? No, of course not. I did undress you, though. You started tossing and turning and getting all caught up in your clothes. Even your bloody shoes were still on, so off they came. I just wanted to make sure you had a nice long comfy sleep.”

I pulled on my boxer shorts and made my way to the small kitchen table as he set down the frying pan, sizzling with bacon, eggs, and grilled tomato. “Well, next time you decide to undress me, I’ll make sure I’m awake for it.”

He hitched an eyebrow. “You’d better.”

I smiled at the sight of his bulge swelling beneath the apron. My own cock did its fair share of twitching and growing too.

I reached playfully under the apron but he smacked my forearm with the spatula. “Now, now. First things first. You need some food on your stomach. After that, there’ll be plenty of time for a little fun and adventure.”

“You sound like you have something planned for us.”

“Indeed I do.” Cody served breakfast onto our plates, then brought a fresh mango to the table, skinned it, and diced it up like a sous chef. He popped a cube of the tender, juicy fruit into my mouth and the sweetness of it just about turned me to liquid.

“After brekky,” he said. “I thought we’d take the boat out and do some snorkeling… you know, check out the reef.”

I coughed on my chunk of mango. “Snorkeling? What exactly do you mean by snorkeling?”