Excerpt: The Boys of Summer

After that performance he had no hesitation over getting the board in the water and Tony with it. He zipped his wetsuit closed once more as insulation against more than cold and pushed out to waist height. Swell tugged and nudged him. The lips of the waves curled over all golden and crinkly as toffee-paper. Up above a dozen seagulls flamed like phoenixes in sunset's fire. Tony yelped and hopped. "Oh, oh God, you didn't tell me it was this cold!"

Darren laughed, forgetting money and tricks and broken bones. He shoved Tony in the chest while he hopped and watched him go over in a flume of flying topaz spray. Tony emerged with his well-cut hair looking thick and slick as an otter's pelt, the new T-shirt clinging to cold-peaked nipples, and a sputtering laugh that hovered somewhere between play and accusation. He scrambled, streaming, to his feet launched himself at Darren in a rugby tackle come belly flop that took his knees out from beneath him.

The sky streaked overhead – a brief blurred image of cliffs and cloth of gold – and the sea came up to meet him. Grey underwater light, lances of sunset glitter through the ripples, and that first breathtaking chill of his dry wetsuit soaking up water. Then he emerged to find Tony laughing in glee, and – bless the man – holding on to the board so it wouldn't float away.

This laugh suited the new, private Tony, whose existence he'd only just begun to suspect – unaffected, unashamed. Darren liked it. Lunging back he got an armful of Tony's narrow waist, his head jammed up against Tony's breastbone. They went tumbling together, Tony's heartbeat racing beneath his ear like the throb and hiss of the sea. Arms about him, and long entangling legs between his. They wrestled, slippery in the surf, tumbling and laughing, breathing in the gold and flames of the sunset.

He let Tony win, lay under him, surrendered, while the froth of ripples tickled up him and teased his hair. Moving his hands he placed them carefully on Tony's back. It seemed a moment for care; a moment suspended between two futures. The body above his was warm. Goosebumps stood out beneath his fingertips, but beneath the sea-chilled surface the core of Tony's heat welled out in a delicious tide over his belly and groin. Closing his eyes, he waited for the expected kiss. And waited again. Tony's interest wilted against his hip. Looking up, puzzled, he smiled. "You got me."

"But what am I to do with you now?" Tony rolled off, sat hugging his knees, the leash of the board still in one hand. He watched the waves as though they worried him.

"You really don't know?" Darren scrambled up onto his knees, leaned over and took the leash out of Tony's hand. The fingers opened reluctantly, as if Tony clung to more than a board. What was going on here?

Sun, deep red as a flaring ember, touched the sea. He expected to hear the thunderous hiss and boil as it quenched itself, but only a chill, wilderness-scented wind came from it. Sand hollowed beneath his knees. What was going on?