It's the summer break, and for the first time in his life, Mike would rather stay in the bloody classroom.<br><br>It's wedding season, and Mike is doomed to spend all summer sipping cheap champagne and pretending he likes tiny portions of posh food. From the passive-aggressive torment of Mike's mother-in-law to the insulting incredulity of his colleagues over what his mysterious husband actually looks like, Mike would voluntarily teach sex education to fourteen-year-olds for the rest of his life if it would only get him out of one more wedding. Even his husband in a kilt isn't going to save this one.<br><br>But there's nothing like watching someone else get hitched to remind him of where he's come from ... and where he's determined to go from here.

Married Ones

“Least I’ll get a good look at those legs,” Mike said jovially as they joined the Saturday morning traffic heading into town.


The sun was blazing. They drove with the windows down to the motorway, then wound them up and blasted the air conditioning as Mike barrelled down the slip road and into the northbound traffic. The route was semi-familiar, and semi-not. They didn’t visit the Black family at all if anybody involved could help it, but Stephen was so in love with the Scottish mud and mountains that Mike usually ended up being dragged to some cabin in the woods at least once a year. He would find a pub, Stephen would find a mountain, and there was always a lot of genuine Scottish tablet involved afterwards. Bit of genuine Scottish shagging, too, if Mike was lucky.


Chapter 5