Total pages in book: 42
Estimated words: 43759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 219(@200wpm)___ 175(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 219(@200wpm)___ 175(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
worry away from his features. “Yeah, I did.”
Chapter Four
Life went on as usual for a couple of weeks. Nothing else happened
between them , and neither of them brought it up. But Jez thought about it
a lot—when he was wanking, of course, but at other tim es too.
The day s rolled by filled with lectures and tutorials, study ing, Jez’s
occasional shifts at the café, downtim e in the evenings, and sleep.
Jez and Mac spent a lot of tim e hanging out together when they were
in the house, even m ore than they ’d done before. He supposed it was
because they were the ones who spent the m ost tim e at hom e, and they
enj oy ed each other’s com pany. Jez preferred chilling out with Mac—
play ing video gam es or watching TV—to sitting alone in his room .
Stay ing in rather than going out in the evenings felt norm al now, and Jez
didn’t m iss the party ing. His overdraft was slowly shrinking, and that was
a good feeling too—especially because his dad kept em ailing him to ask
about his finances. Jez was glad to be able to report that things were
heading in the right direction. The lecture about responsibility and
entitlem ent that his dad had given Jez back at the end of the sum m er term
still m ade Jez asham ed when he thought about it.
Jez and Mac started study ing together regularly. Mac was struggling
to m eet deadlines and worry ing about his grades, and Jez was happy to
help him . It wasn’t that Mac was stupid or not putting the hours in. He did
all the required reading and then som e, and he had a lot of knowledge, but
he alway s found their written assignm ents a challenge.
“You m ake it look so easy,” Mac said one night. They were sitting
side-by -side on the double bed in Jez’s room with their laptops on their
knees and a ton of books and papers spread out between them . Mac
huffed in frustration. “I’ve alway s hated writing essay s. I should have
picked a subj ect that doesn’t involve putting so m any words onto paper.”
“What’s the problem ?”
“I don’t know. I feel like I have plenty to say, but I don’t know how to
get it across coherently.”
Jez rem em bered feeling the sam e at the start of sixth form at school,
but he’d been lucky enough to have a teacher that y ear who’d helped him
a lot with planning and organising his written work.
“Want m e to take a look at what y ou’ve got so far?”
Mac passed his laptop across and then gave Jez his written notes too.
Jez set his nearly finished essay aside and spent the next hour going over
Mac’s, while Mac listened to his suggestions and chipped in with his own.
By the tim e he’d finished, Mac had a solid outline and seem ed m uch
happier, and Jez had gleaned a few new insights from Mac that he
wanted to go back and incorporate into his own work, so it was win-win.
“Thanks,” Mac said at the end of the evening. “That was really
helpful. I never got m y head around how to structure an essay properly
before. Breaking it down like that was useful.”
“You’re welcom e.”
“I want to do better this y ear. I was gutted last y ear when I nearly
failed m y exam s.”
“Were y our parents pissed off with y ou too?” Jez im agined his own
father’s reaction if he’d fucked up his exam s as well as his finances, and
he shuddered at the thought.
Mac snorted, but it wasn’t a sound of am usem ent. “Nope. My dad
j ust said ‘I told y ou so.’ He never wanted m e to go to uni in the first place.
He thinks getting a degree is a waste of tim e and m oney. He wanted m e
to leave school at sixteen and go and work for him . He say s there’s no
j obs for graduates these day s, but people alway s need their roof m ended
or their house extended. May be he’s got a point, though.”
“Yeah, but….” Jez didn’t know what to say. His parents were the
opposite. Every one in Jez’s fam ily was a graduate, and it was alway s
expected that Jez would follow in their footsteps—although his father
would rather he’d studied m edicine or law than geography.
“I want to be a teacher—at secondary school,” Mac said. “Mum ’s
on m y side, but she doesn’t like to argue with Dad.”
“That’s cool.” Jez could im agine Mac as a teacher. He obviously
loved the subj ect, and he had a quiet patience about him that would
probably stand him in good stead with difficult kids. “I think y ou’ll m ake a
good one.”
A pleased sm ile spread over Mac’s face, and his ears turned pink.
“Thanks.”
The next tim e they j erked off together, it was Mac’s suggestion. Jez