by Nicola Haken
“Yes, Mr Misery, I know having fun isn’t usually on your To Do list but it’s my birthday and you’ll hurt my feelings if you say no.”
We’d reached the office now and I handed my keys over to June through the window partition while raising a sceptical eyebrow at Benny. “Fine,” I said. “But as soon as you’re too drunk to notice whether I’m there or not I’m leaving.”
“I love you.” He turned to June who looked rather amused by my dickhead friend. “I love him, you know.”
“Knock it off, moron,” I said, ramming my shoulder into his.
“Watch the jacket!” he shrieked as he rubbed at the tan leather that made him look like a seventies pimp. “You’re covered in dirt and smell like oil.”
“Please excuse my friend, June. They don’t usually let him out unattended.”
“Don’t mind me, lovey. I’ve seen all sorts in my time.”
I risked a glance at Benny, whose mouth had dropped ever so slightly open. For a man who wasn’t easily offended, the image was priceless.
“You’re on the Midlands run tomorrow, lovey,” June added as she tapped on her keyboard.
Nodding, I told her I’d see her in the morning, swung my holdall over my shoulder and started making my way to the car park, all the while trying not to laugh at Benny’s reaction.
“Did she seriously refer to me as an all sort?” he muttered under his breath when we neared my car. I knew he wouldn’t let it go so easily. “Clearly, out of the all sorts she’s met none of them have been make-up artists.”
“Stop it,” I said, snorting as I clicked open the central locking on my matte black Ford Galaxy. “June’s lovely. A little old-fashioned, but harmless.”
“I’m sure. It just wouldn’t hurt for her to go down a shade or twelve in the foundation department is all I’m saying.”
Opening the rear door, I tossed my bag onto the back seat. “Have you finished being a bitch?”
“God, I hope not.”
Removing my thick, Hi-Vis jacket, I threw that on top of my bag, revealing my dark green uniform polo shirt, before closing the door and getting into the driver’s seat. “Is that all you wanted? You could’ve called or text.”
Benny leaned against my open door, hand on hip. “Told you, I wanted to see your big truck.” He winked at me.
I wanted so badly to roll my eyes, or at least keep a disinterested expression, but I couldn’t help chuckle at him.
“I was in the area, and besides, you’d have said no without my pretty face to seduce you.”
Probably.
“And hey, if you want to bring a plus one your red-haired co-worker is more than welcome.”
Shooing him away from the door, I pulled it closed and brought the engine to life before rolling down the electric window. “Let me know when and where during the week,” I said, dismissing the idea of inviting Rod. He’d only been here for three months and I didn’t know the guy well, but the fact he had a wife and three kids told me Rod wouldn’t be interested in the kind of socialising Benny had in mind for him.
“Will do,” he said, tapping the roof of my car before backing away. “Don’t forget I have expensive taste!”
Shaking my head, I bit my lip to suppress the grin that wanted to escape as I reversed out of my space. I already had his present – a bottle of Dior aftershave, same as every year. It was the only thing I knew the fussy bastard wouldn’t return in exchange for store credit.
* * *
“If I don’t move soon I’m gonna fall asleep.”
Marv didn’t even have the decency to look up at me as he lay on my knee with his head tucked into his body.
“Ignorant bastard.”
Still, I got no reaction, yet I carried on stroking his ginger fur anyway. It was Friday already, and I only had two hours before I had to meet Benny, and no doubt a bajillion of his friends too. I wasn’t a miserable fart, despite what he told people, and I’d actually been quite looking forward to tonight until I ended up having a stopover last night. An accident on the M6 meant I wouldn’t have made it back from my run to Edinburgh without exceeding my legal driving hours, so I spent the night in my cab at a truck stop in Carlisle. Nights out were part of the job. They didn’t usually bother me, but the makeshift bed in the back of my cab didn’t make for the comfiest night’s sleep and I didn’t normally have a night with the most energetic man in Europe planned the next day.
I didn’t actually think I’d drift off, but I must’ve done because the slam of my front door made me jump, which then made Marv’s claws shred the shit out of my skin as he scarpered up my chest and off the back of the sofa.
“Fucker,” I muttered under my breath, rubbing at my chest, surprised to find the little sod hadn’t ripped through my T-shirt. “Oh, hey, buddy.” I stood up to greet Scott when he appeared in the doorway. “Thought you were going to your nan’s this weekend.”
“We are. Mum and Jenny are in the car with Josh and Rachel. I just came for my hoody. The Nike one. I left it here last week.”
“It’ll be in your wardrobe.”
“Cool. Thanks.”
Sliding my feet into the gorilla slippers Scott got me for Christmas last year, I walked out to Lisa and Jenny’s car while I waited for Scott. Lisa and I had been best friends since high school. I guess you could’ve called us the loner types. We didn’t really bother with anyone else, well, except Benny, who used to follow us around like the Norovirus; there was no escaping that fucker.
I figured out my sexuality a lot sooner than she did, wondering if I was gay from being about twelve, wishing I could be gay or straight until I was sixteen, and then finally accepting I was bisexual when I was seventeen. Lisa, however, was still confused, or as she says now, in denial, when we were eighteen, and being young, drunk and stupid, one night we determined a great way to help her decide would be to have sex.
Whaddya know, nine months later we became nineteen-year-old parents to a baby boy named Scott, who I’d loved more than anything or anybody since the second I laid my eyes on him.
Oh, and Lisa did indeed discover that she was, in fact, a lesbian. Or rather, she found the courage to admit it to herself. On reflection, our master plan was a really shitty idea, fuelled by alcohol and teenage idiocy, but I wouldn’t take it back for the world. Because now we had Scott, and he’s the most perfect mistake I ever made. Lisa and I remained best friends, only now we were a family. An unconventional, amazing family, and that didn’t change even when she met Jenny several years later. Inevitably, I saw Lisa less, but we were still close, and my time with Scott didn’t alter.
Rachel and Josh, their four-year-old twins, started waving through the car window as I meandered down the drive in my big fluffy slippers. I waved back before sticking my tongue out.
“Thought you were leaving after Scott got out of school?” I said to Lisa when I reached the driver window.
“We were,” Jenny answered from the passenger seat while piercing the back of Lisa’s head with a thoroughly unimpressed stare. “But then somebody forgot to make up the picnic, and now we’re going to hit rush hour traffic.”
Lisa raised her palms in the air. “I thought you said you were doing it!”
“And then Rach had a meltdown because she had a lump in her sock,” Jenny continued. “Josh trapped his willy in Barbie’s jeep, and-”
Ouch! “How the-”
“I have no idea. And then Scott decided he can’t leave without his Nike hoody, even though he has a thousand others.”
“Got it!” Scott called, interrupting us as he jogged down the drive, waving his blue hoody in the air.
Placing a firm hand on his shoulder, I stared right into his eyes, which were the same shade of rich brown as mine. I liked that he looked like me. He shared my dark hair, square jaw, and he was almost as tall as my six foot two frame. Over the past year, patches of uneven stubble had started sprouting across his jaw and upper lip too. Not much, but enough to make me feel really fucking old. How in t
he hell was my tiny kid almost a grown up already?
“My advice, man to man. Keep your gob shut in that car. Pissed off lesbians and teenage sarcasm don’t mix. Got it?”
Scott snorted a chuckle and fist-bumped my chest. “Dad, I live with them, remember? I’m experienced with this shi- um, stuff.”
“Well saved,” I said with a scolding raise of an eyebrow. I imagined a lot worse tumbled from that mouth of his when his parents were out of earshot. I was fifteen once, and seeing how many fucks you can fit into a single sentence is almost a rite of passage.
I brought Scott in for a hug, not caring if he was too old and cool for one, before clapping his shoulder and releasing him. “Have a great time. Always use a condom. Say no to drugs.”
Rolling his eyes, he shook his head and climbed into the back of the car next to Josh.
I made my way back to the front door, pausing outside to wave them off and called, “You two kiss and make up! The bulldog chewing a wasp look doesn’t suit either of you!”
Lisa smiled before waving and pulling away from the curb, and then I looked down at my watch and realised I only had forty minutes to get ready for Benny’s big night out.
Ugh.
* * *
My body was slowly beginning to shut down from the bottom up. I’d lost the feeling in my feet about an hour ago, and now my legs were turning to jelly. Benny had dragged me from Cruz 101 to G.A.Y, to Bar Pop to Kiki, and back to G.A.Y again, his circle of friends growing larger with each place we went. Now, I didn’t even know where we were, but the bar was quiet and the music low so as far as I was concerned we’d entered heaven.
From a table in the corner I watched Benny shaking his arse and dancing, dressed in a neon-green vest and leather trousers that were so tight I was certain when he took them off his bollocks would fall right down with them. He had to crash soon. I was exhausted just from watching him.
“Finished?” one of the bartenders asked, pointing to the half-empty glass of lager that’d been sitting untouched on my table for the last hour.
I didn’t pay much attention to him, other than to nod while still staring at Benny making a tit of himself. “Thanks,” I said as he picked it up and placed it on a tray with a collection of glasses and bottles.
Too busy concentrating on Benny and his groupies, the first sign I had of the tray falling was the loud crash of several glasses shattering like rain onto the table in front of me.
“Shit!” the guy who’d taken my glass yelled. “Damn, I’m so sorry!”
Swinging my feet away from the lager steadily dripping off the table and onto my shoes, I looked up at the guy for the first time. “Oh.”
Oh? Oh! I hadn’t meant to sound like such a moron, but I also hadn’t expected this man to be so, well, beautiful. “Hi. I meant to say hi. I’m Seb.”
Half smirking, he raised one of his perfectly shaped eyebrows at me. He had long, thick lashes – definitely coated in mascara – that framed a pair of crystal blue eyes. Maybe it was the lights in this place, maybe he wore contacts, or maybe I was just drunk…although I’d only had three pints, but I was completely and utterly fixated with them.
Until he started speaking and my gaze wandered to his perfectly symmetrical, painted-purple lips, that matched the purple décor of the bar and were surrounded by perfectly trimmed designer stubble, which coated his perfectly narrow chin. So much perfect. “Uh, I’m Olli.”
Christ, even his voice was perfect. Smooth, yet slightly high. Although, a little nervous. No doubt because I was glaring at him like some weird-arse stalker.
“I’ll be back in a sec with a dustpan,” the guy I now knew as Olli added before jogging away, over to the door marked ‘Staff Only’ behind the bar. He wore skinny jeans that clung to his slender hips, hips that swished with every step he took. I wondered if that was his natural gait, or if the high-heeled boots he wore were responsible. Either way, I found him mesmerising.
You’re definitely drunk, I told myself, but then I decided I didn’t care. My cock was suddenly, painfully, aware that I hadn’t been laid in, Jesus, over a year, so there was no harm in a little innocent ogling. There was just something about him that intrigued me, and I was trying to work out what it was when he returned with a dustpan and brush.
His hair – vivid copper, buzzed at one side, straight and falling over the side of his face at the other, his make-up, the heels…they all screamed confidence. They told me he was magnificent, proud and daring. Yet, those blue eyes? That timid smile? They told an entirely different story. Those eyes, that expression, held uncertainty…perhaps a little fear. They didn’t match the rest of his appearance and I wanted to know why, which made no sense at all.
“You don’t look like this is your kinda place,” Olli said, briefly looking up from his dustpan as he continued to sweep the shattered glass into it.
I felt a little useless, just sitting there, like I should offer to help. But there was really nothing I could do. “It’s my friend’s birthday.” I nodded in Benny’s direction. “He dragged me along.”
Olli looked over to where Benny continued to dance, then back to me with a knowing smile on his face, a smile that unsettled me. “Ah. I see.”
“I’m not straight,” I felt a ridiculous urge to clarify. “I just don’t go out much.” Great. Way to make myself sound like a loser. “I mean I do go out. I leave the house. I’m not a hermit or anything. Crap, I’m bad at this.”
Olli chuckled, squatting to his ankles while he swept the floor around the table. “Bad at what?” he asked with a wicked grin tugging at one side of that perfect mouth. That mouth would taste divine, I just knew it.
“Flirting.”
“Ah, is that what you’re doing?”
“Is it working? Or do I need to come back tomorrow and try again?”
Jumping lithely to his feet, Olli removed the towel from his shoulder and started wiping down the wet table. “I might not be here tomorrow. This is my first night and the second tray I’ve dropped.”
Feeling inexplicably bold, I plucked my phone out of my shirt pocket and held it out in front of him, giving it a wiggle when he didn’t take the hint right away. After an almost cautious pout, he took his own phone from his jeans, unlocked it, and handed it to me before punching his number into my screen.
“I gotta get back to work,” he said after we returned each other’s phones.
I held up my index finger. “One sec.” Scrolling through my contacts, I stopped on Oliver Clayton, and smiled as I hit Call. Seconds later, his phone vibrated in his hand. “Just checking you didn’t give me the local Chinese,” I said, winking as I ended the call. A little pushy perhaps, but that’s alcohol for you. If it hadn’t rung, I imagine I’d have simply smiled and skulked away, feeling like a bit of an idiot.
Tilting his head to the side, he flashed me a lopsided smile that would ruin all other smiles I’d ever see, before he strutted away with his dustpan, leaving me alone feeling bizarrely…different somehow.
Startled, I flinched when arms wrapped around me from behind. “Dance with me, you gorgeous beast!” Benny’s voice was hot in my ear as he spun me around and tried to coax me into slow dancing to One Call Away by Charlie Puth.
With his grip on my body, I didn’t have much choice but to sway along with him, but I leaned over and spoke into his ear. “I’m gonna head off.”
Pulling back, he pouted.
“Don’t pull that face at me. You know I love you.”
“I’ll let you go on one condition. Admit you’re glad you came!”
It only took the memory of a certain pair of blue eyes and purple lips to be able to answer with complete honesty. “Yes. I’m glad I came,” I said with a smirk. Pulling him in for a one-armed hug, I clapped his back. “Happy birthday, mate.”
Leaving Benny with his army of friends, two thirds of whom I’d never seen before in my life, I made my way out onto the dark street and found a taxi to take me home.
It was two AM by the
time I crawled into bed. I was royally knackered, yet I could tell sleep was hours away so I didn’t even try. Instead, living the true rock ‘n’ roll life, I sat up against the headboard with a cup of tea wedged between my legs and a packet of digestives. I dunked a biscuit into the sugary tea, obeying the three second rule, before taking a bite while scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed on my phone – noticing every other post seemed to link to some new conspiracy theory about Sandy in Grease being dead all along - with my other hand.
“What d’you think, Marv?” I asked the cat, who lay in a ball at the end of my mattress. “Should I look him up?” I clicked my tongue as I pondered before deciding the answer was yes. Everyone checked each other out on Facebook. It wasn’t weird or creepy.
It didn’t take long to find him. His profile was third from the top in the search list. We even had a mutual friend in common, although I wasn’t really sure who that guy was. Probably a mate of Benny’s. I was quite disappointed to find his settings were private and that I only had access to his profile photo, which I stared at long enough to question my sanity, and some brief parts of his bio.
Probably a wise decision, I thought as I dunked another biscuit. Likely put in place to stop creepy strangers like me stalking the crap out of him.
“Ooo, he’s a hairdresser,” I told Marv. Well, his bio said senior stylist at Hair Design by Claire, and I figured that was just a fancier way of saying it. “I could do with a trim,” I added. “Wait, no. That’s definitely stalkery.”
Dammit. I’d always been useless at the dating thing, not that I was even dating. I’d swapped numbers with a guy, and now we were dating? Get a grip of yourself, Seb. This was probably why I’d only been in three relationships in my life, and each of those came from friendships first. There I went again, thinking of relationships. I’d only had one conversation with this man, and even that was accidental.
