Wrestling for Top: Part 3

Excerpt

Wrestling for Top, Part 3
Jack Stevens © 2016
All rights reserved

La Gallette turned out to be over three kilometres out of the town. Yves drove them there in a very fast, very expensive car. How much do wrestlers make over here? Terry had thought when he saw the car. Must be a fucking mint! he decided when he saw the hotel Yves was staying in. He couldn’t help whistling out loud, immediately feeling like a prick for being such a rube. But Yves seemed to take it in good part and shrugged modestly.

“Le Catch, wrestling, pays a little better here than at home, I think. There are so many more…opportunities in Europe. I am surprised it has taken you so long to come over to find out for yourself.”

“Yeah, well, my family’s kind of always been against travelling, y’know.”

“Your family?”

“Yeah. Well, Doug mainly. He’s the, y’know―” Terry waved his hand over his head in a polishing gesture “―bald guy.”

Yves laughed. “Ah oui. Le chauve. He is your father?”

Terry shook his head. “God, no! Sort of an uncle. My dad’s best friend. They wrestled together as brothers years ago, but they weren’t really.”

“And your father is…?”

“He’s dead.”

“Ah, c’est triste,” Yves said, and nodded sympathetically. Terry felt a bit embarrassed. He hadn’t been looking for sympathy. He’d been a very small child when Geoff Ryan had died.

“And your mother?”

Terry usually lied whenever this question came up. He’d say she was dead, too, and change the topic quickly, and people were always more than happy to let him do that as no one liked talking about dead mothers. The truth was Sally Ryan had left the family not long after he’d been born. He knew that wasn’t his fault. Mae had always made that perfectly clear. But he still lied about it. Until now. Not asking himself why, and not having the time to consider it anyway, Terry told Yves the truth. “I never knew her. She left,” he said simply.

Yves gave a small expression of sadness but also shrugged, as if it was just one of those things that sophisticated people dealt with all the time. “Families,” he said. “They are complicated.”

Terry looked at him, and realised that he wanted really, really badly to kiss this man.

Together they walked into the plush reception, and as Yves signed in and picked up the key, Terry saw the concierge looking at him, taking in his T-shirt, jeans and trainers, and their complete absence of designer labels. Terry knew he was in a class establishment when the emaciated old guy didn’t let his disapproval show by so much as the raising of an eyebrow―and yet he somehow he still managed to make it felt. It didn’t bother Terry one jot. In front of him, he had a close-up view of Yves’s tight arse in his most-definitely-designer-label jeans as he leaned over the front desk, and suddenly all he could think about was that in just under ten minutes he’d have an even closer view of those tight buttocks without any obstructing denim. He hoped the rooms had thick walls. He had a feeling things were going to get noisy.