High Heels & Pink Glitter (the heavily edited version)

Chicken wings - they must be debated

March 2016

Ryan squinted at the screen of his phone. The girl looked vaguely familiar. School? A neighbour? The daughter of one of his mum's friends...?

The parkour group he'd joined last year, that was it. She'd been a member. Though she'd been...wearing a lot more clothes then.

"What's that ye're lookin' at?" Snatching the phone out of his hands, Tony stared at it, a lazy grin spreading across his features. Ryan rolled his eyes and stood up, trying and failing to grab the handset back.

"Smokin', Ryan. Who's this wee honey?" Tony smirked, far too delighted to watch the blush spread itself across Ryan's face. Blushing was something he did a lot of, and Tony prided himself on making Ryan blush as much as he could.

"Fuck off, Tony," he said, snatching the phone back and shoving it in his pocket so Tony couldn't take it off him again.

"Ooh, sorry princess! So, c'mon. Who is she? Friend of yours?"

"Who's a friend of his?" Tadgh had come into the room, accompanied by his Staffordshire bull terrier Cocoa, a gentle, affectionate dog despite her fearsome appearance. He'd just taken her out for a walk.

As he let her off the lead, she bounded up to Ryan, jumping up so she could put her front legs on him and wag her tail furiously. She loved Ryan almost as much as Tadgh.

Tony exchanged a loaded glance with him. Shall I tell him or not? He was such an annoying prick.

Ryan beat him to it. "A girl I know from Parkour. She's on Instagram."

Tony raised his eyebrows in comedic fashion. "Aye, Tadgh. This lassie he knows on Instagram. Modest wee soul. Me and Ryan here were just admirin' her... fashion choices. Gottae say though, if that's all she's wearin' in Glasgow at this time of year, she's gonnae be awfy cold."

Ryan glared at Tony once more, refraining from telling him to fuck off this time. Tony was Uncle Tadgh's best friend after all, and as he had called in a fat favour staying here, he couldn't afford to offend Tadgh.

Tadgh shrugged off his coat, dropping it onto the sofa arm. "Is she no' a bit young for you?" he asked, directing the inquiry at Tony.

Tony shrugged. "Doesnae look it."

Ryan pounced. "Actually, she's younger than me. Fifteen, might even be only fourteen."

Tony's brow furrowed, taken aback, though only momentarily. Ryan suspected that he hadn't been overly bothered over the years about the age of consent. Just before Christmas, Tadgh had let slip, Tony enjoyed a dalliance with a seventeen-year-old. He was more than twice her age.

"You baby-snatching pervert," Tadgh said, picking up the remote and pointing it in the direction of the television. "I don't s'pose either of youse sorted out any food while I was oot?"

In a show-off feat of athleticism, Tony vaulted over the back of the sofa and into its comfortable depths. Maybe he'd been inspired by Ryan's talk of parkour. He laid out full length on the sofa, his head on one arm and his feet propped up on the other and, inserting a hand between his tee shirt and his tracksuit bottoms, idly scratched his balls. As usual, he had managed to nab the best seat in the room, leaving Tadgh and Ryan to battle it out over the armchair and the pouf.

"You don't s'pose right, Tadgh-ie boy. But I got the beers in." Tony pointed a thumb in the direction of the kitchen. "And I stuck some in the freezer to get them extra cold. Ryan here will bring them in, along wi' a bit of food while we watch the pre-match build-up."

"Why do I have to..." Ryan trailed off. Tadgh did not seem to be on his side.

"Because a) you're the youngest, and b) you're squatting here against ma sister's wishes," his uncle told him firmly. "So, you have tae wait on your olders and betters. There's a good lad."

With a muttered "youse are not my betters", Ryan took himself through to Tadgh's kitchen. His uncle lived in Partick in one of the old tenement flats, huge-roomed apartments that were very much sought after these days.

Tadgh had bought his flat several years ago and he'd put a lot of effort into it. He'd stripped out the carpets, sanded the floorboards and plastered over the ceilings and walls. The whole place was decorated in a way that said tastefully masculine—white walls, posters of bands and lots of dark wood furniture. A few discreetly positioned photos of Cocoa dotted the sideboards—ones that Tony ripped the piss out of him about.

The estate agent's description of two-bedroom stretched the boundaries of credibility, but Ryan hardly minded the tiny boxroom he slept in. It seemed a small price to pay for the adult freedom of living in Glasgow away from his mum.

Tadgh had put him up when he arrived on his doorstep a week ago, no questions asked. That he came with the added appendage of Tony was a small price to pay.

In the kitchen, he took three beers out of the freezer. That was another good thing about Tadgh. He let his nephew drink. Just to be on the safe side though—sometimes he got a bit antsy about it—Ryan poured himself a vodka from the bottle on the counter, mixed it with some coke and downed it.

Suitably fortified, he checked the fridge for football-type snacks. He shook the packet of pre-sliced carrots into a bowl, sniggering. Taking it through to the living room where the pre-match build up was in full flow, he plonked the bowl on Tony's chest.

"There you go, Tony. I didnae know if you were still on that bodybuilder diet or not so I thought I'd better play it safe."

Tony sat up and pressed the bowl back in Ryan's hands. "Aye, very funny. Thinks he's a comedian, doesn't he?" The latter remark was addressed at Tadgh. "Leave the jokes to the professionals, Junior. Go back into the kitchen and fetch us the real food."

Still sniggering to himself, Ryan headed back to the kitchen. There were two packets of coated chicken wings in the fridge. He tipped the lot out onto a roasting tin. Deciding one packet was not enough, he added the second to the tin and shoved them in the oven.

He'd once been at the flat when Tadgh and Tony embarked on a drunken discussion about the awesomeness of chicken wings, and whether the ones you bought from the supermarket could ever compete with those from KFC or Wetherspoon's. Conclusion? No. The discussion had lasted more than fifteen minutes.

As he waited for them to heat up, taking out packets of crisps and emptying them into bowls as he did so, he retrieved his phone and returned to Instagram. He kind of liked that girl, though he couldn't remember her name. She'd chosen the handle Starlight02 on Instagram.

It was a weird one—not a usual girl's name. No point taking a fancy to her now, though. She'd have hunners of guys after her once they'd seen those pictures. He didn't stand a chance.

He hit the 'like' button anyway. No harm in her knowing he liked her pictures, even if she didn't remember him.

He replaced his phone face-down on the kitchen counter. The oven timer pinged, and he opened the door, fanning his face against the heat. The phone remained stubbornly silent, no matter how much he glared at it. No-one responding, Oh hey, Ryan! Great to hear from you. Remember that time we spent vaulting walls...

He retrieved the trays of chicken wings, by now an appetising shade of golden-brown and the smell too mouth-watering to resist. He plucked one from the tray, and bit into it, the heat enough to burn his tongue, making him flap his had in front of his mouth.

"Oi, Junior!" Tony. "Are you slaughterin' those chickens. butcherin' and batterin' them yoursel'? Get a fucking move on!"

From the safety of the kitchen, Ryan stuck up one finger and pulled the kind of face his mother would have warned him would stay like that if the wind changed. He checked his phone once more. Nope, Parkour girl still hadn't responded to the 'like' from JoelMiller (maybe he shouldn't have chosen a gaming name)

Didn't he have bigger things to mull over, rather than dwelling on some daft girl he had hardly known's lack of reply?

Tomorrow, for instance. The address of the shop was hammered into his heart, one hundred and thirty three Great Western Road. Might this, finally, be the day he met his father?