“I’m going to have a Panic Room,” Clarissa announced. As usual, she was wearing something incredibly expensive and stunningly tasteful: a deep green top and a diagonally cut skirt. With her blonde hair and perfect make-up, you could have dropped her straight into a Vogue cover shoot.
“Don’t,” said Natasha, who worked at Flicker a few nights a week and so was an expert. “It’s just a Morello cherry floating in gray sludge. Barely a shot. Have a Moulin Rouge or something.”
“I’m not having a Moulin Rouge. It comes with pineapple and sparklers and a goddamn plastic elephant. It’s…”—Clarissa looked at Jasmine’s dress—“tacky.”
Jasmine stuck her tongue out at her.
I studied the menu. “I think I’ll have a Mamma Mia.”
Everyone groaned. “That barely has any alcohol in it!” said Dan. “It’s mostly marshmallow fluff. At least have a Pretty Woman!”
I sighed. “Okay, okay—a Pretty Woman. Nat?”
Natasha pursed her lips. “I don’t know. Something like The Godfather.”
A wave of dead silence expanded out from her. People at the table next to us stopped talking.
No one
had The Godfather.
Nat looked around her, spooked. “Something
like
The Godfather,” she repeated. “Not the actual Godfather. Obviously.”
We all relaxed.
***
A half hour later, I was sitting with my back to the room when I heard the door to the street crash open. A blast of cold outdoor air froze my ankles. Three male voices started singing—an old love song from the nineties, with the notes flattened out by alcohol. In their heads, I’m sure they sounded great.
“Shut the door!” yelled someone.
The voices came closer, moving towards the bar. Actually, if you ignored the slurring, one of the voices didn’t sound too bad, its Irish lilt making it stand out from the rest. I groaned inwardly as I realized who it was.
Conversation at our table had died when the singing started. It sounded like the same had happened across most of the bar—it was impossible to ignore, since you’d have to yell to talk over it. I could feel the irritation building inside me. We’d come for a quiet drink, and
he
had to burst in and spoil things, not just for us but for everyone in the bar. I
hated
drunk people.
They finished their song, and there was applause. I rolled my eyes. Why were people encouraging them?
I realized that Jasmine was one of the ones clapping. She caught my look. “What? They’re not bad.”
I kept my voice low. “They’re
drunk
.”
“So?” Jasmine leaned across to Natasha. “Would,” she murmured, looking at someone behind me.
I couldn’t resist turning around, even though I knew who it was. Connor Locke was standing at the bar, talking to a busty, blonde-haired girl who was serving.
Probably asking for her phone number.
Connor had two other guys with him, guys I didn’t recognize from Fenbrook.
I turned back to the table. “Why?” I asked Jasmine.
“Are you kidding? Look at him!”
I sighed and took another look. He was turned half away from me, his leather jacket pulled tight around his waist as he twisted, showing off his wide, muscled back. I hadn’t really noticed that before. Or—what Jasmine had probably been focusing on—the fact that his jeans were snug over his firm, athletic ass.
There was a mirror on the other side of the bar, and I glanced at it, wondering if I could get a glimpse of his face. Only to find him staring straight back at my reflection.
I whipped back around to the table, hoping he hadn’t noticed.
“He’s at Fenbrook, right?” Clarissa asked. “Music.”
“I barely know him,” I said quickly.
“Karen!” Connor’s voice behind me. He was suddenly looming over our table. I mentally willed the others to circle the wagons and block him out, but of course they slid their chairs back and turned and smiled. Dan, who’d been sitting next to me, had slipped away—probably chatting to some cute actor—and that had opened up a convenient gap for Connor to slide into.
I slowly lifted my head. He was grinning down at me, his jacket slung over his shoulder, and as he leaned in close his thick bicep was only a foot from my face. I found myself focusing on the tattoo there, to avoid having to look him in the eye. A name, picked out in elaborate lettering.
Ruth.
I knew that talking to him was a mistake, but I couldn’t help myself. “You’re drunk,” I told him.
“And you’re beautiful. But in the morning—No, wait. I got that wrong.”
I ignored the jibe and shook my head. “It’s only eight o’clock. When did you start: six?”
“Four!” he said, sounding almost offended.
I sighed and shook my head. He’d been out partying all afternoon while I’d been stuck in a practice room. Didn’t he have practice to do?
“Rock n’ roll,” he said, with an extravagant gesture. “That’s Connor Locke. Too wild for you?”
“You could use a little taming, Connor Locke,” I said without thinking.
He leaned over me. “You going to be the one to tame me?”
I flushed, unable to think of a comeback, and cursed myself for talking to him. Then it got worse.
“Have you recovered from this morning?” he asked.
I blushed, which wasn’t the signal I wanted to send at all.
“What happened this morning?” asked Jasmine with forced casualness.
“I had Karen flat on her back,” Connor told them.
“That’s not….” I trailed off, unsure how to explain, and feeling myself going redder by the second.
“Don’t you remember?” asked Connor. “At one point, we were like this.” And he squatted down right in front of me, his face about an inch from mine. I didn’t have a choice—I had to focus on his eyes, those beautiful, blue-gray jewels. They were….
There was no other word for it. They were
twinkling
at me. I’d have known he was grinning even if the rest of his face was hidden. There was an openness there, an honesty I’d never seen in anyone. Everything for Connor was simple and easy. He didn’t have a care in the world.
The opposite of me,
I thought bitterly.
I opened my mouth to deliver a witty putdown. My mouth actually formed the first vowel, but I didn’t seem to have any breath. I just stared at him for another second, and a wave of heat rushed through me.
I’m too angry,
I reasoned.
He’s got me too angry to even speak.
Connor straightened up. “Nothing? Really?” He clapped a hand to his chest. “She doesn’t call, she doesn’t send me flowers….”
Natasha, Clarissa and Jasmine all giggled.
The traitors.
“I’ll see you in class,” Connor told me. Then he pointed at me theatrically. “Be careful! I might not be there to save you, next time!”
I hadn’t thought I could blush any more than I already was, but I felt it happen. Half the bar was looking at us. Then Connor clapped an arm around one of his drinking buddies and they stumbled off across the room.
I could feel the other girls all looking at me, and took a long drink of my Pretty Woman to buy some time.
“I fell over,” I said. “He caught me. It was sort of his fault anyway. That’s it.”
Jasmine glanced at Natasha. “Natasha fell off a stage, once, and
that
worked out.”
“He’s not—are you
kidding?”
I stared at her.
“
He’s an idiot! He’s drunk half the time, he’s loud, he’s arrogant….”
“He has those eyes,” countered Natasha quietly.
“You’re taken,” Jasmine told her.
“And that voice. I love that accent,” said Clarissa.
“You too,” said Jasmine.
“He’s about to flunk out! He doesn’t even bother coming to class most of the time!” I told them.
Jasmine pretended to catch her breath. “Oh no! And I pick my boyfriends by their GPA!”
“He’s completely squandered his opportunity! They gave him a scholarship and he’s just wasted it on…on…girls and booze!”
Jasmine frowned. “For a guy you hardly know, you seem
very
knowledgeable about him.”
I realized the others were all staring at me.
She’s right. What do I care?
I swallowed. “No, I just—”
Jasmine snapped her fingers. “When we were at your place, you were in the shower for like three years. Were you thinking about him?”
“No!” I almost shouted.
How could she know? How could she possibly know?!
Jasmine was beaming, delighted. “You were! I was sitting out there waiting for you—well, and making a sandwich—and you were in there flicking the bean—”
“No!”
“—thinking about Connor Locke!”
“No! Really!”
Jasmine collapsed into giggles. “Relax! I know you weren’t.” She shook her head. “You’re so easy to wind up, sometimes.”
Everyone laughed, and I let my breath out, smiling nervously. OK, fine. She hadn’t guessed. Not that there was anything
to
guess. I mean, I’d been thinking about him in the shower, but not in
that
way.
“How’s Neil?” I asked Clarissa, to throw some of the heat off me.
“Great.” Only she said it too quickly, and in a not-great way. We all turned towards her. “No, seriously, it’s fine. Better than fine. It’s just—”
“He wants a threesome?” asked Jasmine.
“He—
WHAT?!”
“He wants another woman to join you. Or—God, another man? Is it a biker?” Jasmine clutched Natasha’s arm. “Is it Darrell?”
“No! Where did you get
threesome
from? No, nothing like that. He’s just…Neil.”
We waited.
Clarissa stared at her drink. “It’s just…when it started, it just sort of…worked. I mean, I don’t know why it worked, exactly, but it did. He had this…hold over me.”
“And now he doesn’t?” asked Natasha quietly.
“Oh, no, God, he
does
,” said Clarissa. “That hasn’t changed. He just has to say something in my ear and—” She reddened. “That works fine. But I keep wondering if that’s all we have. I mean…”—she looked around at us—“…we’re very different.”
“Opposites attract,” I said carefully.
“Yes, but do they
stick?”
Clarissa asked.
***
I’d said I’d only stay for one drink, but it was two before I persuaded Jasmine that I was serious about going. I wanted to put her in a cab back to her place—I figured I could quietly pay the cabbie in advance.
Jasmine, Dan and I left Clarissa and Natasha choosing drinks and braved the freezing wind outside. It was blasting straight down the long street that Flicker was on, numbing our exposed faces, so it was a relief when we turned into an alley. We planned to cut through to a busier street where we’d be more likely to find a cab. Dan was lagging some way behind Jasmine and me because he had his wallet out, trying to figure out if he had enough money left for his cab fare. There wasn’t a lot of light in the alley, and he was using his iPhone to count the bills, the screen glow lighting up his face.
“You think they’ll be okay?” asked Jasmine.
“Clarissa and Neil?”
“Mmm. It
has
always been about sex, with them.”
I thought about it. A relationship based entirely on sex was about as far from my personal experience as it was possible to get. I glanced around while I thought—it was that sort of alley. “I don’t know. I—Where’s Dan?”
He wasn’t behind us. He wasn’t
anywhere.
Then I saw a flicker of light—the glowing screen of his phone, reflecting off the brickwork in a side alley near where I’d last seen him.
Jasmine and I looked at each other, and then Jasmine ran towards the side alley. My eyes nearly bugged out of my head, and I grabbed for her hand but just missed it. I hesitated for a split second and then ran after her.
She stopped at the mouth of the side alley and I managed to grab her arm to stop her going any further. Dan was halfway down, backed up against a wall by a bigger guy who was holding something against his throat. It was only when it caught the light that I realized it was a knife.
“Shit,” whispered Jasmine. We both hovered there, unsure of what to do. Scream? Try to help? Would that stop him stabbing Dan, or make him do it?
“Hey!” yelled Jasmine, her voice breaking as she said it. The guy didn’t even look round. Dan handed over his phone and wallet and started to take off his watch.
I pulled my own phone out and dialed 911. My brain kept freezing and I had to think about each digit.
Dan almost dropped his watch as he handed it over. The guy grabbed his shirt and ran him towards the opposite wall, pushing him hard when he was halfway across. I winced as I saw Dan bounce off the bricks. It looked like he managed to slow himself a little by putting his arm out, but he still whacked his forehead and folded to the ground.