We’re between the bikes, in a patch of sunshine and I’m facing this one way, near his bike and he lies down on the other side of me. I turn over. He’s all wet and he’s brushing water off his sides, readjusting his cock in his speedos.

‘You okay?’ I say.

He shrugs his shoulders and nods. He has his chin pressed onto his chest. I see his chest expand and it’s like he’s about to say something but he says nothing. He doesn’t look up.

I figure, really, that he’s pretty pissed off about what I’ve done. I take a breath and,

‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

He looks up now and sort of smiles. He shrugs his shoulders and then he moves his hand. He brings it down into the space between us and tugs at a piece of grass.

I figure it’s okay — he’s not angry — and I roll over onto my back. The sunshine is bright. I close my eyes.

Suddenly, I feel his fingers push at the side of my speedos, near my hip, on the side of my arse. I figure he’s just touched me accidentally.

‘I feel like going to sleep,’ I say. I have my hands folded over my chest.

He doesn’t say anything, but I feel the pressure from his fingers increase. He has his hand bunched up and he’s pushing it into the side of my speedos.

‘It’d be good if we had something to eat.’ I turn my head and look at him as I say it.

He has his head down and he’s staring at his hand. He pushes out, increasing the pressure on the side of my arse.

I frown and turn my head back. It’s kind of frightening. I’m not sure what he’s trying to do.

He pulls his hand back and I roll over. I turn away from him and stare at his bike – at his rear wheel, which is quite obviously, now that I’m looking at it, not connected to anything, and ever so slightly askew.

Oh fuck, I think to myself. I’m going to have to double him home. There’s no way we’d be able to find the bolt and the nut – and there’s no way I can tell him, anyway, what it is that I’ve done.

The bolt’s just come undone, somehow, right where he left his bike. That’s the story – and right at the moment, it’s sounding pretty stupid to me. There’s no way he’s going to buy it - and then I see the tyre. I’ve let his fucking tyre down. I’ve slit the fucking thing with a knife.

Oh shit. I take a deep breath – and right at that moment, I feel his hand on my side, in the curve of my waist.

I inhale suddenly, not even thinking about the breath I’m taking. And I’m suddenly frozen. I don’t move.

He slides the hand down to my hip and he shuffles closer behind me. I feel his breath on the back of my neck – and then, all of a sudden, he speaks.

‘I love you,’ he says. His voice sort of cracks. The words don’t come out right, and I have to replay them in my head – and yeah, that was what he said.

My breath comes rapidly and everything starts to spin. He presses his forehead between my shoulder blades – and at the same time slides his hand down to my speedos and lays it over my cock. He cups it and starts to squeeze gently. He takes it between his fingers and thumb and squeezes again.

I start to get hard. My breathing slows and I close my eyes. I feel like I’m sinking into the Earth. The day goes red and hot behind my eyelids and I feel like I’m turning.

Tension releases and loosely, I flop over onto my back beside him. He slides his hand into my speedos. Involuntarily, I start to smile and I feel my cock slide up in his hand. It feels fantastic. It’s the first time I’ve ever been touched.

In my eyes there is darkness and warmth and I’m sinking. There is no time and no place.

Scott pulls himself up on an elbow and leans over my face. I feel his breath on my cheek – and then suddenly, his breath against my lips – his lips touching mine. He takes my top lip between his lips and bites down gently. My mouth opens. I don’t think about it. His mouth opens.

And then it happens.

He locks his mouth over mine and I remember. Perhaps I taste something but I don’t think I do. The guy’s been in the water, drilling water through his mouth, and I don’t suppose there would have been anything to taste - but the idea is there and it is all that matters.

And now he has his mouth on mine.

I push up suddenly. My arms are locked over my chest and I just push him up. My determination is so sudden that I push hard. I knock him over backwards.

I’m standing up. I’m wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. I’m making a face. And he’s all over sideways in the grass with a frown on his face, wondering, ashamed.

He gets up quickly. He’s all hot in the face and he reaches forward and grabs his runners. He sits down on the rock and pulls his runners on, not bothering to undo the laces and they get stuck. He struggles for a moment, gets one over his heel, but can’t get the other one on. He stands up and stomps down on it, and then he grabs his helmet.

He puts it on his head and I realise he’s going to go. I reach forward and I grab his arm. He pushes his helmet onto his head and pulls away from me, jerks roughly. He reaches down and picks up his bike.

He’s so angry that he does it quickly. He picks it up by the handlebars and steps over the seat all in one motion. He sits down on the seat to do up his helmet and the bike collapses underneath him. The rear wheel slides backwards out of the forks and Scott slips off the seat. He lands on the tyre and slides down the front of it, giving himself a wedgie in his speedos. His feet splay out in front of him, heel first in the dust and he lands heavily on his arse. His helmet falls backwards off his head and the bike flips over one way in front of him, landing on his leg. The wheel flips over the other way behind him and the chain is caught between his thighs, grease smearing the naked skin.

He stares for a moment, unable to understand what has happened and then a voice says, ‘Are you alright?’

There is an old woman there. She has white hair and a stick planted firmly in the dust.

I stare at her.

Scott turns and tries to get up. I reach down and pull him to his feet and there is a tearing sound. Scott’s speedos are caught in a spoke on the wheel and as I pull him to his feet the back of them tear out in a large V-shaped flap.

Scott turns on his feet, stumbling and reaches behind him with a hand, trying to paste the flap back over his naked arse and turning it away from the woman. He holds the flap behind him and stares at the woman.

I feel like putting my arm around him.

The old woman looks away, embarrassed by Scott’s sudden nakedness. ‘Have you seen a dog?’ she says, looking back at us. She frowns around her, at the pool, at the surrounding scrub.

Neither of us answer. We thought we were alone. Where she has come from, so suddenly, is a mystery. She must have been walking down the path for minutes and must (if she was looking) have even seen Scott on top of me – have seen us kissing each other – but she says nothing about this, and nothing about Scott’s falling on his collapsed bike.

‘His name’s Jed,’ she says.

I swallow. ‘What sort of dog is he?’ I say.

She doesn’t answer me. She is staring at Scott. He is leaning forward and feeling the insides of his thighs. The chain has left a greasy mark, but there is also, I now realise, blood, a slight graze.

‘Are you alright?’ she says.

Scott looks up and winces. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I cut myself.’ He has blood on his fingertips.

Scott’s face is red.

‘What happened to my bike?’ he says.

I shrug.

He steps forward and squats down, staring at the forks and the wheel.

‘There was something on the hill up there a while ago,’ I point to where I mean. ‘It could have been your dog.’

The old lady looks at hill. It is steep and covered in low prickly bushes.

‘Jed!’ she calls. She whistles. ‘Jed!’

I stare at the hill and swallow.

There is silence. Scott stands up, frowns at his bike. He looks at the old lady.

‘Do you want us to go have a look?’ I say.

‘It’s not like her fucking dog’s gonna be up here,’ Scott says when we’re on the hill. ‘It’s not like we’re gonna find her fucking dog.’

‘He might have got bitten by a snake,’ I say.

The day has grown dark and wintry. It is only two-thirty or three, but the shadow of a cloud, large and lumbrous, has passed over us, and halted; and it suddenly seems much later, like it is four or five.

Scott is climbing the hill in front of me. He has given up worrying about the tear in the back of his speedos. The flap of fabric gets caught in the prickly bushes a few times, and Scott stops wraps the flap inside, at the top of one leg.

‘It’s like a jock-strap,’ I say, as he does this.

He shrugs and keeps walking. He beats a stick at the bushes and pushes forward.

‘What the fuck happened to my bike?’ he says, stopping and turning and looking back down to the pool.

I don’t say anything.

‘Do you reckon she did that?’ He frowns, looking down at the old woman who is sitting on a rock by the pool

Scott has discovered, before we set off up the hill, that the bolt is missing. He has looked for it in the grass but found nothing.

‘It’s just come loose,’ I say.

Scott grits his lips together and shakes his head, looking at nothing.

‘I don’t see how,’ he says, turning and starting up the hill again.

Suddenly there is a call from down below. The old lady has found her dog. Jed is there beside her, rollicking around and grinning; and the woman is calling up to us and waving.

I raise my hand and wave back.

‘I hate women,’ Scott says. He frowns.

We make our way back down. Scott has discovered that his tyre is punctured also, and I’m thinking, as I’m walking down and he’s behind me, that he knows I’ve done this.

‘I’d believe it if it was just the bolt,’ he says. ‘But she’s slit the fucking tyre as well.’

‘Maybe she’s crazy,’ I say.

‘There’s no maybe about it. She must have been hanging around all day. She must have done it when we were...over the other side.’

I suppose this is possible. ‘Do you reckon she really did?’ I say, stopping. The old lady is retreating up the path.

‘I know she fucking well did.’

When we reach the bottom of the hill we’re on the other side of the pool – and here, Scott suddenly stops.

‘Hey!’ he says. He reaches down and picks up my knife. The little knife I’ve used to slit his tyre with. It’s not a knife he’s ever seen before. It’s a knife I’ve got out of the kitchen at home and it’s meant to be used for eating fruit. ‘Look at this.’

He holds the knife up and hands it out to me. I take it and turn it over in my hands as though it’s something I’ve never seen before.

‘It looks new,’ I say, not that it does look new. It just looks like it hasn’t been hanging around in the bush for a long time.

He takes it off me. ‘Other people must come here,’ he says. He pushes it into the side of his speedos with it and makes a holster on his hip. ‘They’re fucked anyway,’ he says.

The sight of him pushing the knife into his speedos, so close to his gear, starts to give me a hard-on. I stare at it for a moment. I look at him and smile. But Scott is pissed off. He’s being all superior and tough and manly as though he didn’t tell me he loved me or try to kiss me or let me shit in his face. It’s making me want to hit him.

He turns and starts walking around the pool. I look down at his feet and I see the bolt from his rear wheel. He actually steps on it and keeps walking.

When we get back to the bikes, I’ve already started thinking about my plan and how I’m going to have to double him home. The paring knife at his hip and the creamy white skin of his naked arse along with the fact that he’s pissed off with me about something is making me want to hurt him.

Scott takes the paring knife out of his speedos. He gets his tools out of the tool pouch of his bike and puts them into mine. He has a patch kit and a screwdriver and this huge adjustable wrench that he can hardly fit into it.

‘Where are your tools?’ he says, not looking at me.

‘They’re at home,’ I say.

We walk up the hill and then, at the top, Scott says, ‘I’ll double you.’ He grabs the handlebars and steps over the bike. He steps forward, pressing his body up against the handlebars and expecting me to get on the seat behind him. There is nothing I can do.

I hesitate. I get on the seat. I grab his hips. And then, as he stands up to start to pedal and his arse rises up I push myself off backwards and stand up.

‘No way, man,’ I say. ‘I’m not having your fucking arse in my face all the way home.’

He stops and stands down. He pushes the bike over to me and reaches behind him with one hand and touches his arse, trying to cover it up. He had obviously, I realise, completely forgotten about the fact that it was naked. He pulls the flap out and tries to cover it over his arse.

We have to ride home through the streets.

‘Oh, yeah, it’s not like I haven’t had your arse in my fucking face,’ he says as he’s trying to cover it up.

I get on the bike and push my body up against the handlebars. There is a moment when I’m just standing there; and then he is getting on behind me. He grips my hips and sits down on the seat.

In front of us is one long downhill run. It’s maybe a mile long and on a forty or fifty degree angle; and it’s the one place where the track is wide. The ground is rutted with rocks and the erosion of water.

It is here, on this hill, that I imagined him falling and hurting himself, and I figure now, as my heart starts to race, that this is exactly what’s going to happen, and that the fucker deserves it for being such a prick.

I stand up and start to pedal and I decide I’m going to go fast. I’m going to hit a jump and I’m going to push him backwards. I’m going to do exactly what I planned to do and it’s going to work and he’s going to get his balls hurt.

I don’t put on the brakes and we’re about a third of the way down when we reach the jump.

‘I’m gonna take the jump,’ I say.

He locks his hands tighter on my hips and I see his feet lifted higher in the air.

The jump is a gentle, stony rise. I crouch into it and lift the bike as I take air. The bike comes down and, as it hits the ground, I push backwards with my body hard and fast. I hit Scott in the torso with my arse and push him backwards off the seat.

I feel my arse pulled backwards. I wobble and almost lose my grip on the handlebars.

I look down between my legs and see Scott land on the rear tyre. He lands on it heavily, the tread eating into the crack of his arse. He is thrust forward. His groin hits the forks. The bike jolts.

‘Umph!’ Scott says.

The first thing that happens is something I didn’t expect. Scott’s speedos rip away from his body and pass through the forks. It’s like a vanishing act. One minute he’s wearing them and the next they’re gone. I don’t even see what happens to them. They’re simply gone and Scott is naked.

His balls suck through the brake clamp; and as I watch, the motion of the wheel drags them further, under the bar between the forks. They’re bouncing up and down on the off-road tread of the tyre.

I suck in a breath and my mouth is open in disbelief. I’m smiling and feeling guilty all at once; and I figure I’ll let him suffer a bit more. I try to watch and keep control at the same time, figuring that we’re slowing anyway. It’s maybe been five seconds since he hit the tyre.

Suddenly Scott’s cock, which has been bouncing up and down on top of the brake clamp, falls to one side of it. It slides beside the brake pad. It seems like it is way too thick to fit between the pad and the rim of the tyre. But suddenly, after a moment of scuddering behind it, Scott’s cock slips under the pad.

I don’t know, later, whether I’ve done this on purpose, but the moment Scott’s cock slips under the pad, I slam the rear brake on as hard as I can.

Scott makes a sound. His feet hit the ground and disappear behind us. His head hits me in the back. The rear wheel skids and the bike wobbles uncontrollably.

I look up in time to realise that we’re going off the path. We fly over the edge and into the undergrowth.

Here, the bank is steep. It’s maybe a fifty or sixty-degree angle and ground cover is sparse.

I have the rear wheel slammed on hard. But the hill is so steep that we slide down it.

I have to release the brake to get control and we start to speed again.

I feel Scott’s hands loosen on my hips. He lets go. His body flips over sideways and his feet cross the path of the bike behind us.

He is sideways on the rear of the bike, unconscious, held there by his trapped gear; and we continue in the position for maybe a second at the most, before Scott’s head hits the trunk of a tree, the bike flips sideways and we stop.

I fly forward over the handlebars and land on my back, ten feet in front of the bike. Temporarily, I am winded, but as I look up at the blue sky above the gently waving branches of the trees, I feel myself smiling.

I get to my feet and climb up to help Scott.

He is lying on his back and my bike is on top of him. His legs are slightly askew and the insides of his thighs are splattered with blood. His balls are trapped under the brake clamp but his cock has slid out most of the way. Only the head is still trapped.

The blood, I figure, has come from underneath him.

I get down onto my knees beside him and put my hand on his forehead.

‘Scott,’ I say. I shake his shoulder gently. ‘Scott.’

He is breathing. His chest is heaving up and down but he’s not conscious.

Gingerly, I reach forward and tug on his cock. I pull it backwards out of the brake clamp. There is a bit of resistance and I have to tug. It comes out with a sudden release and I let it go. It falls sideways, strangely all floppy, like it is broken at the base. I reach forward and grip it at the base and I feel a sudden intake of breath. His cock is like something broken inside a sock, like a chocolate bar broken inside a wrapper. At the place where it has been trapped under the brake pad there is nothing but skin. I pinch it and realise that I can slide the whole inside of his cock up and away from his body. There’s nothing between my fingers but skin.

‘Oh shit,’ I say, and hear myself guffaw suddenly.

I lean forward and put Scott’s cock in my mouth. I move my lips down to the base and close them together. Gently, I put my teeth together and realise that I could just bite through the skin.

Breathing heavily, I sit back on my heels.

‘You’re fucked, Scott,’ I say. ‘Your dick is fucked.’

I brush his blond hair away from his forehead and turn my attention to his balls.

His scrotum is stretched like a tennis ball in a stocking. His balls are held under the brake clamp. I’ve tried not to look until now – like I’ve been saving it. I reach forward and cup my hand around his balls. They’re so swollen I can hardly get my hand around them.

I squeeze gently. His balls are hot and soft and they quiver under my touch.

The toolkit is there, just near my hand and slowly, I start to unzip it.

‘Scott,’ I say. ‘Your balls are trapped.’

I punch him in the thigh as hard as I can. There is no reaction. I reach forward and punch him in the balls. I hit him once, twice, three times. I sit back on my heels again and take a breath. ‘Oh, man,’ I say to myself. In a sudden rush, I lean forward and punch his nuts as hard as I can. I punch them ten, twenty, thirty times, harder and harder and working myself into a frenzy; and then I lay down beside him.

I put my mouth against his ear and whisper gently. ‘Your balls are hurt Scott. I’m so sorry.’ I smooth his hair back over his head and put my hand on his chest, feeling his nipples and his flat abs. I let my hand slide down to his cock and feel the broken shaft under the skin. I prop myself up on an elbow and lean over Scott. I look at his gentle face with its red lips and dimples – and then I spit on it.

He doesn’t make any movement and I figure he’s not going to wake up in any hurry.

I wipe his face with the back of my arm and let the tips of my nails slide down his body to his groin.

The best thing I could do, I realise, is to totally fuck him up.

I sit up and pull the wrench out of the toolkit. I take a breath and try to decide if I really want to do this. Something tells me that I shouldn’t. Some other thing tells me that I want to.

I close my eyes and reach for Scott’s balls. I push at them, squeezing them and massaging them and trying to see if I really could get them back under the brake clamp without damaging them if I wanted to – but no, I tell myself, they’re too swollen, and this is the only way. I’ll have to force them.

The wrench is heavy and it rings out in the silence of the bush when I strike the forks accidentally. I don’t know how many hits it takes to make Scott’s balls mush but eventually I release the brake clamp and watch Scott’s scrotum slide through it like cream. It coils up into Scott’s groin next to his broken cock as the bike falls sideways.

Scott is breathing.

I kiss him on the lips.

And then I put my cock in his mouth.