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I hovered over him uncertainly. Sensing my unease, Zeus slunk off to the kitchen. I’d have liked to have joined him.
“Basically, you need to put your foot in this bit here.” He indicated an area of his chest, in front of his armpit, “For resistance. So you don’t pull me off the sofa. And then apply steady traction in that direction.” He gestured towards the television. “Not a yank, a steady pull, increasing the pressure until you feel a clunk. Hopefully.”
Clunk. If my unfortunate car accident victim was hoping for a swaggering, rugged hero, he’d picked the wrong farmer. One of us had suddenly broken out into a cold sweat, and it wasn’t him. The whisky sloshing in my belly threatened a reappearance, and I eyed the washing-up bowl, thinking it might come in handy after all.
Years ago, the class guinea pig bit a kid at school. The vicious rodent hung by its sharp gnashers from her thumb while she danced around screaming blue murder. I felt no different now. Queasy. Squeamish. Ridiculous. And the time when one of the lads broke his collarbone playing rugby, so the sharp ends poked up through his shirt. While everyone else had crowded over him, fascinated, I’d dashed off to puke into the hedge running around the school playing fields. My mates never let me forget it.
“Do we need to get that sweater off?” I may have been stalling.
“Not sure I can. It will hurt too much. Use both hands.” Gingerly, I slid a palm up his solid forearm, lifting it away from his chest. He hissed with pain. “Yeah, like that. Shit.”
Sweat prickled down my spine. My hands circled him, one above the elbow and one below. He tensed, his breathing quickening. My mouth was dry. “Go on. Just get on with it.”
With my socked foot, I braced, as he’d instructed, against his hot armpit. My other leg wobbled alarmingly. “You want me to put it in there? Like that?”
“Yeah. Yeah. That feels…good.”
“And my hands around you like this?”
“Yeah, tight, like that. That’s good.”
Heavy breathing filled the silence—me from having to fulfil one of my worst nightmares and him from anticipation of the agony I was about to inflict. Add in the grunts and hisses, and we were like the soundtrack to a bad porn video. Tentatively, I exerted a little pressure, and he gritted his teeth.
“Shit.” His body jack-knifed. Face reddened and contorted with pain, he clawed the back of the sofa. Immediately, I stopped, but he shook his head violently. “No, keep going. Go on—fuck.”
Screwing my eyes up tight, desperately trying to imagine I was knee deep in cow shit, hauling out a stubborn footling calf and not rearranging a stranger’s internal anatomy, I inhaled deeply, swore loudly, and pulled. And, with a wild grunt, pulled again, harder.
“Fuuuuccckkkk! Oh my god, oh my god, oh my pissing god.”
“Like that, shit, yes, Rob.”
“It’s coming, it’s coming!”
With a sudden rush, the head of his humerus thunked back into its socket, accompanied by the most disgusting clunking, slithering, inhuman popping sensation I never hoped to experience ever again in my entire bloody life.
“Yes, oh yes. Shit, yes, Rob. You fucking beauty.” With the type of yell generally confined to the bedroom, somehow encompassing both anguish and triumph, Evan slumped back against the sofa, lips parted and panting heavily. He made a sound, a laugh bordering on the edge of hysteria. For a split second, his fucking lovely green eyes sobered and met with mine. Almost as if—
And then everything turned fuzzy. My own eyes refused to work, my vision whitened, my belly revolted, and the room tilted sideways.
I’d had less awkward post-orgasm conversations with strangers in seedy nightclub toilets.
“You all right, mate?”
At some point, I hauled myself off the carpet and crawled up onto the sofa next to him, boneless and utterly drained. Evan rubbed my back comfortingly, using his good arm. Zeus sniffed cautiously around the washing-up bowl, which I’d evidently made use of. A vile taste sat cloyingly on my tongue, a mix of half-digested whisky and the remains of one of my sister, Lucy’s, home-made, brandy-laced mince pies. I attempted a dry swallow, which turned into another undignified retch.
The guy gave good back-rubbing game. Brilliant, considering he’d been on the brink of passing out himself.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, “I’m a drama queen. I’m managing to make your accident and injuries all about me.”
He chuckled, which turned into a rib-clutching groan. Several more awkward minutes passed while I drooled into the washing-up bowl.
“Better?”
“Yeah. I…uh…shit, sorry about that.” I brushed the back of my hand across my mouth, sucking in a deep breath. “I’m not good with…stuff. People stuff. Broken bones.” I gave an involuntary shudder, and another wave of nausea rolled through my belly. “I tend to stick to cows.”
Evan chuckled again; he still sounded hysterical to be honest. I certainly felt it. Christ, this Boxing Day had taken an unexpected turn.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Zeus! Get the hell away from that, you disgusting creature!” Too late. The dog had dipped his tongue in and taken a lick. Evan made a sound somewhere between a groan and a snigger.
