With a final desperate glance at Sean, Daz swallowed and shrugged helplessly.
“OK,” he said. “You see, guys, the thing is . . . I’m gay.”
Twenty-one
Is that it? So what?
The words formed in my head but I didn’t let them out. In fact, for a moment the only sound was the rush of the surf against the rocks and the raucous cries of the gulls circling overhead. It sounded like they were laughing at us.
Then Paxo snatched his arm away, flushing furiously. He took a step back and gave a splutter of laughter that died in his throat.
“Ah, mate, come on!” His eyes swivelled from face to face, looking for the first chink in the practical joke. “Don’t kid us about!”
“I’m not,” Daz said calmly, more confident. It was like, now it was done, the act of coming out had lost its terrors for him. “It’s true. I’m gay.”
William nodded slowly. “Well, good for you, Daz,” he said. “I know that must have taken some doing, telling us that. I admire you for it.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Paxo wailed. “Not you as well?”
“What’s the big deal?” Jamie said, nonplussed. “So, he’s gay. So what?”
“Plenty – if you’re completely homophobic,” Daz said, body tense.
“Why did you wait until now?” Paxo demanded. “I have to tell you, mate, your timing on this stinks.”
Tess, I realised then, had been standing silent in the background. But when I glanced at her I found she was wasn’t entirely still. She was trembling. As I turned towards her she took a couple of quick steps forwards and launched a long telegraphed right at Daz’s jaw, regardless of her swollen fingers. He ducked away easily enough and her punch hit his shoulder.
“You bastard!” she cried, flailing at him then. “You only wanted me along on this trip as cover!”
Jamie grabbed her arms and pulled her off and, after a moment’s struggle, she turned her face into his chest and burst into tears. He led her a little distance away and sat her down on a short basalt column, holding her hands and shooting reproachful glances in Daz’s direction.
“Is that right?” Paxo demanded, watching them. “You told us she wouldn’t be left behind, that you didn’t have a choice but to let her tag along. And all the time—” He threw up his hands and spun away.
William raised an admonishing eyebrow. “I realise it’s difficult, but you could have handled this better,” he said at last. “It’s not what you’ve done, Daz, it’s the way that you’ve done it.”
“Yeah well,” Daz muttered, flicking his eyes to Sean. “Maybe I didn’t have much of a choice about that.” And he too walked away, stumbling slightly over the rocks, in the opposite direction to Paxo.
“I guess from that that you forced his hand somewhat?” William said to Sean.
Sean shrugged. “He was doing his best to break his neck proving what a man he was,” he said. “And he was going to get round to bringing it out in the open at some point. I just hurried him along a little.”
“Best part of ten years I’ve known Daz,” William said sadly, shaking his head. “And I’d never have guessed.” He paused, gave Sean an assessing glance. “How did you know?”
“I’ve learned to be a good judge of people,” he said. “It goes with the territory. Besides, there were one or two things in Daz’s background that made it a possibility and then on the ferry there was something about him so I played along and he—” Sean shrugged, “—revealed himself, shall we say.”
Sean had always a sixth sense for, not weakness exactly, but people’s secrets. I’d never successfully been able to hide much from him, that was for sure. But even so . . .
“Revealed himself how?” I demanded and thought, unbelievably, that I saw a faint slash of colour across his cheekbones. “What? What did you do?”
Sean’s eyes flicked from me to William and back again, a slightly pained expression on his face.
“You made a pass at him, didn’t you?” I said, incredulous, and saw the pink darken round his neck. “You did!” I concluded. “So that’s what you found out when you were out on the back deck together,” I said. “I’m not surprised you wouldn’t tell me.”
“I just wanted to be sure,” he said, nodding, still looking a little sheepish. “I gave him my word that I wouldn’t say anything – that I’d let him tell you and the others himself. If he hadn’t been riding like he had a bloody death-wish I would have left him to it, but this was getting beyond a joke. Someone was going to get killed.”
William’s gaze had tracked over Jamie, still crouched with the upset Tess, and to Paxo, a hundred metres away sucking furiously on a cigarette. “Still,” he said, his voice mild, “Paxo and Tess haven’t taken it well. Might have been better to have left it until we got back, don’t you think? Instead of pushing him out of the closet now.”
“Why?” Sean said. “What’s so special about this trip?”
William just smiled and shook his head again, as though Sean wasn’t going to catch him out that easily.
“If you’re so good at this intuition business,” he said, “why don’t you tell me?”
“Don’t worry,” Sean said, favouring him with a tight little smile of his own. “We will.”
***
Tess refused to get back on Daz’s bike for the few miles from the Giant’s Causeway down to the little village of Bushmills. Paxo wouldn’t take her and, although Jamie offered, he was struggling to keep up solo. Neither Sean nor I wanted the added encumbrance, just in case of trouble, so in the end it was down to William to pat his pillion seat and give her a ride. She scrambled onto the Kawasaki behind him and wrapped her arms round his waist like she was using him as an oversize comfort blanket.
Daz just shrugged, fired up the Aprilia and resumed the pace he’d been setting all morning. If anything, I suppose he felt he had even more to prove now than he did before.
Either way, Paxo wasn’t about to be outridden by his mate, regardless of his sexual preferences. The two of them goaded each other to ever greater risks, scything past what little traffic we encountered and carving through bends on totally the wrong side of the road.
“Hey guys,” I said at last over the radio. “Remember Sam? This is going to end with somebody going home in an ambulance.”
Nobody replied.
Jamie and I were in the second wave with William, making progress but still going a lot more cautiously than Daz and Paxo. I occupied the small part of my mind that wasn’t tied up with the mechanics of riding the bike, with the problem at hand. Daz’s announcement explained a few things about his behaviour, but not everything. So, he’d been keyed up and worried – quite rightly, as it turned out – at how some of his mates would react. But that told nowhere near the whole story.
My eyes flicked ahead to where I could just make out Paxo, hunched over the tank of his Ducati. Paxo might be angry enough to be less cautious than William, in which case we might get something useful out of him. Not that Paxo had a very high opinion of me, but perhaps he was scared enough of Sean to tell him something. It was worth a try.