Love... From Both Sides (A laugh-out-loud romantic comedy) (19 page)

Damn my manners!

‘Yes I am,’ I lie.

‘Yeah, me too. Wouldn’t mind leaving soon though.’

Brilliant!

It sounds like I won’t need to use an excuse anyway.

‘Getting a bit hot and bothered here and wouldn’t mind going somewhere quieter.’ Martin leans closer to me.

Oh dear.

‘Um… that’s nice,’ I say and try to back away. Sadly I’m right up against the railing that runs around the veranda and have nowhere to go.

‘Maybe we could blow this joint and have a little fun on our own,’ he says and waggles his eyebrows.

Martin then does something so incredible I still have trouble believing it happened.

He leans against the railing and starts to gently massage his right nipple through his shirt with one finger.

My eyes widen in shock.

He must be mucking about.

‘How would you like to come back to my place?’ he says, leering at me while continuing to play with his nipple in a slow, seductive circular motion that makes me feel quite ill.

Oh good God, he’s serious.

Martin has gone from potential relationship material to potential restraining order material in the space of two hours.

I have to suppress a horrified laugh as he starts to caress both nipples.

He’s also pouting at me.

‘Sorry! Feel ill! On my period! Have to leave!’ I blurt out and shove past him.

‘Wait! Laura!’ he calls after me as I speed back into the club, heading towards the main exit as fast as I can in the tightly packed throng of people.

I can hear Martin calling my name even over the bombastic music, so I know he’s close behind me.

If I can just get to a taxi as quickly as possible, I’ll be okay.

Bursting from The Cheetah Lounge I hurry along the pavement to the taxi rank.

There aren’t any…

Unbelievable.

Martin is now right behind me again.

‘
Oi
! Where the hell are you going, baby? The night’s still young.’ He grabs me by the arm and spins me round.

 
‘You can’t just fuck off and leave me like that.’ He drunkenly stabs a finger at my face. There’s an edge to his voice that makes my heart race.

Okay, this has now gone from plain weird to downright scary.

I look over his shoulder to see the bouncers busy with a herd of scantily clad girls. No-one is looking at me - and what is fast becoming my maniac stalker.

‘I reckon you should just relax and give me a kiss,’ Martin says, leaning in. His breath is horrendous.

‘Let me go, Martin,’ I tell him firmly and try to shake off his grip. He outweighs me by a good four stone though and his arms are very strong, so I can’t get free. ‘You’re hurting me.’

‘Nah… I’m not hurting you. You’re fine. You just need to loosen up a bit.’ He tries to kiss me and I turn my head away in disgust. ‘Don’t be a fucking bitch Laura,’ he hisses.

I try to pull away again.

Now I’m scared to death.

‘Let her go, mate,’ a calm voice says to my left.

I look up and Jamie Newman is standing there.

‘Piss off, dickhead,’ Martin replies.

What happens next is scary, but quite wonderful at the same time.

Jamie walks forward, grabs Martin round the throat, puts his face right up to Martin’s and stares at him with an absolute look of hate. ‘I said let her go, or I’m going to beat the living crap out of you right here and now…
dickhead
.’

Martin is a good three inches taller and two stone heavier than Jamie, but the venom with which the threat is issued causes the bigger man to instantly release me.

Martin pushes Jamie away and steps back.

You can see his intoxicated brain trying to size up the situation. Jamie looks to be stone cold sober, so it could be something of a one-sided fight.

…mind you, if Martin starts busting out some of his head butting dance moves it might end up being a close run thing.

Given the look of fury on Jamie’s face and his sobriety, Martin wisely decides this is a fight his inebriated body is very likely to lose and puts up his hands. ‘Chill out, mate. Jus’ mucking about.’

‘Go muck about somewhere else.’

Jamie couldn’t be my hero any more right now if he had his pants on over his trousers.

Martin looks back at me. ‘You’re a fucking slut,’ he says and points a finger.

Charming.

The drunken idiot then turns and marches back towards the club.

I lose sight of him in the crowd of girls and turn to Jamie. ‘Thank you so much,’ I say with relief.

‘Not a problem. I was walking along and saw you over here. Wasn’t going to bother you, but I saw him getting handy.’

‘Yeah. That was scary as hell. Don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t come along. Very brave of you. Thanks.’

‘Brave? You’re kidding aren’t you? I think I’ve just shit myself.’ The fury is gone and Jamie now looks as white as a sheet. ‘I’m glad he didn’t kick off. He probably would have beaten me senseless. The last time I won a fight it was because my best mate broke my favourite He-Man.’

‘I thought he was a nice guy,’ I say in a small voice.

‘He-Man?’

‘No… Martin. That guy you just saved me from.’

‘Apparently not.’ Jamie fishes out a packet of cigarettes, pulls one out and lights it. He looks at me and misinterprets my expression. ‘Sorry, I keep meaning to quit but don’t seem to get round to it.’

‘No, no. That’s fine. You mind if I have one?’

I haven’t had a cigarette for seven years, but as I’ve been nearly sexually assaulted by one man - and certainly saved from it by another - I figure a smoke can’t hurt at this point.

It turned out Jamie was only in town to pick up his friend Ryan and his new girlfriend Isobel.

He offered to give me a lift home and I gratefully accepted.

As I climbed out of his car outside the flat, I paused and looked at Jamie.

This was the man who had been the cause of the single most embarrassing moment of my life.

…but he was also now my knight in shining armour.

I was still drunk at this point remember, so probably wasn’t thinking straight, but I decided that the second thing cancelled out the first.

‘Would you like to go out with me again sometime Jamie?’ I asked him, eliciting a wide-eyed look of surprise.

There’s that smile again. I’ve missed it.

‘Yeah, I’d love to Laura.’ He looked worried for a second. ‘I promise I won’t cook.’

So we’re going out on a second first date together.

Or should that be a third date?

I can’t quite decide.

Love and miss you, Mum.

Your karmic daughter, Laura.

xx

Jamie’s Blog

Sunday 21 August

This being the twenty first century, I was under the impression that to pull a member of the opposite sex you had to be in touch with your feminine side, openly express your emotions and have ‘empathy’ with other people (whatever the hell that is).

However, it turns out all I had to do to get another date with the lovely Laura McIntyre was threaten to beat up another man.

Who says chivalry is dead, eh?

After the fajita debacle I’d tried to convince myself that Laura really wasn’t worth the trouble anyway, and that it didn’t matter I’d never see her again.

A load of old hogwash, of course.

I was really hung up on Laura McIntyre… whether I liked it or not.

I admitted this to myself for the first time the other night when I was in town meeting Ryan and saw Laura being roughed up by some prick in a cheap suit.

I am not by nature a violent (or particularly brave) man, so it was testament to how much I fancied her that I threw caution to the wind and stepped up.

Thank God he wasn’t some ju-jitsu expert who could weight lift half a ton and crack walnuts with his arse cheeks.

It was the look of fear in her eyes that spurred me into action.

The second I saw it I was consumed by some kind of unholy, indignant rage that propelled me through the confrontation to its successful conclusion - and out the other side into the cool, calm lagoon of reflective dread known as the ‘
what the fuck have I just done?
’ feeling.

You know… when you’ve just narrowly escaped serious physical harm and can’t help dwelling on what might have been.

When my heart beat had returned to a normal pace and my bottom had stopped twitching, Laura and I held quite a sensible conversation.

Explosive bowel movements and pedal bins weren’t brought up once.

I further secured my position as her knight in shining armour by offering her a lift home.

This was only slightly marred by Ryan and Isobel making some unsubtle comments about Laura and me, which probably sounded like the height of comedy genius to them in their drunken state, but was embarrassing as hell for me.

I really shouldn’t have introduced those two to one another…

Once I’d chucked them out of the car - to parting cries of ‘
Wahaay
! Get in there Newman!’
and ‘
Watch out! He
spunked
on Jesus!
’- it was a far more pleasant drive through the quiet early morning streets.

Laura was wearing perfume that targeted my libido and I found it quite hard to stay on the right side of the road.

You can imagine how surprised I was when she asked me out on another date. I think she was pretty surprised herself, judging from the look on her face after she’d suggested it.

I wasn’t going to give her a chance to back out though and immediately said yes.

It seems, gentle people of the
blogosphere
, that the cure for giving someone chronic food poisoning is to save them from a drunk sex maniac.