“Doubles this time,” she boasted.
“They were doubles last time,” Eliza protested.
“Oh, well.” Leesa shrugged. “Down the hatch!”
They repeated the torture complete with face pain.
“Come on. Let’s go dancing.” Leesa grabbed her bags and pulled Eliza out of the booth.
They staggered out of the bar and down the street to the club. Ankles bending at right angles as they struggled to stay upright on the cobbles. The sexiness of high heels, lost in their efforts to walk without breaking bones.
There was a queue outside the nightclub. A mix of punters that were being refused entry, inebriated evictees and the usual late night die-hards, like them, just on their way in.
The door men spotted them and guided them to the front of the queue. Eliza was the city’s most famous rock music export and identifiable anywhere in Amsterdam. Gaining entry to any establishment was no problem for her.
Leesa ditched her bags, jacket and heels as soon as they got into the humid club. Exposing a tiny cropped halter top and low waist slung leggings. Her tattoos emblazoned in the heat and light of the club. She quite obviously meant business.
Dancing business.
Bounding onto the dance floor, she totally owned it. Hands high in the fog of dry ice, weaving in and out of the strobing laser beams. A small clearing developing around her.
Eliza watched on from the side for a few minutes before the night club owner made an appearance at her side.
“Hey, Eliza.” He kissed her on both cheeks. “Can I show you and your friend to our VIP area.” He pointed up to the balcony overlooking the dance floor. “You will be more comfortable up there.”
“Yes that would be good.” Eliza agreed, feeling a wave of eyes from drunken clubbers upon her. She retrieved Leesa’s belongings and tugged on her friend’s elasticated waistband.
“Come on. We’re going up to the VIP area.”
“OK.” Leesa nodded and danced her way behind Eliza, passed the rope barriered entrance, up the spiral staircase and onto the balcony.
There was a bar and a dozen booths, of which only one was empty. Scantily clad waitresses floated from bar to booth with trays full of champagne and cocktails. A group of expensively suited men were sat at the booth adjacent to theirs. Muscled arms filling the sleeves of their suit jackets. Shirts that were pristine white, unbuttoned slightly and hinting at toned, tanned chests.
Leesa clocked them first. “Eliza, don’t look now, but those guys are so fucking damn hot. And… they’re looking right at us.”
Eliza, of course, looked straight at them.
“I’ve got a serious case of FG’s.” Leesa swooned.
“FG’s?” Eliza looked bemused.
“Yeah. Fanny gallops!”
Eliza doubled up with laughter. Leesa joining her. The pair of them rolling around the booth at their private joke.
Eliza looked over again at the guys, who were all now shuffling around nervously. Adjusting their crotches and tensing the muscles above their jaws.
“Shit, they think we’re laughing at them.” Eliza whispered to Leesa.
Leesa regained her composure and waved at them.
Eliza pulled her arm down.
“What you doing? Nutter! They’ll come over… oh shit, now look what you’ve done, one of them… shit, no two of them are coming over here.”
“Hey, lovely ladies,” the dark haired one started.
Eliza swallowed down the taste of bile in her mouth. Lovely ladies? Who, other than a slime ball, would say lovely ladies?
“Can we get you both a drink?”
“Champagne perhaps?” offered the blond one.
“Ooh yes. Champagne cocktails sound good,” Leesa replied, patting the space next to her for them to sit down.
Eliza elbowed Leesa, but she ignored her and carried on regardless. “I’m Leesa and this is my friend Eliza.”
“Oh we know who you are.” The blond one said to Eliza offering out his hand to her. She hesitantly held hers out in return and he pulled it towards his mouth, kissing it on the back whilst staring intently back at her.
The dark haired one beckoned to a waitress and asked for champagne cocktails all round, before taking off his jacket and placing it on a stool near the booth. Rolling up his shirt sleeves, he revealed the most amazingly muscular forearms. Leesa salivated and grabbed hold of one of them. “Ooh, you look like you work out.”
“Yeah part of the job.”
“Oh yeah, what job’s that then?” She moved her bum forward, so she was perched on the edge of the seat and slowly started gyrating on the spot, like she was stimulating herself.
“Oh my good God.” Eliza murmured under her breath. Placing her hand on her friend’s thigh to try and stop her full on public display of masturbation.
“We’re baseball players. And…,” pausing whilst he moved Leesa’s hand up and down his forearm, “I’m a pitcher.”
Eliza tried to bring the conversation back to a more normal footing. “I’ve never seen a baseball game.”
“Well you’ll have to come and see us play before we head off for the next US tour.”
“Hmm.” Eliza replied, not very convincingly.
“Ooh cocktails.” Leesa clapped, bouncing up and down on the hard edge of the seat, giving herself one final pounding.
Seven cocktails in and Eliza’s head was spinning. She prised it off the back of the tall backrest in the booth and prodded Leesa, who was leaning in talking intimately to the dark haired pitcher. The blond one had persevered with Eliza but she had given him short change. She wasn’t in the mood for flirting. She had unfinished business with Jonny and nothing else would get in the way of that. He was quite obviously only still there because his friend was and the others had already left the club.
“Leesa, come on, we need to go.”
“Don’t be so booringggg.”
“No, we really need to go.”
Leesa humpffed, but went with Eliza’s demands. Grabbing her shoes, bags and jacket in one hand and steadying herself as she shimmied around the table in the middle of the booth. “Come on then Little Miss Boring. Let’s go.”
Eliza tried to stand up, but the room spun around as she did. She held out her arm to find something to steady herself on, only finding blond man’s stiff chest.
“Come on.” He put a strong arm around her back and under her arm. She draped hers around his neck, her legs not able to take her own weight.
God knows how he managed to get her down the spiral staircase, but he did, through the throngs of hardened clubbers and out into the fresh air.
The hit of oxygen rushed into her head, a shooting pain and bright flash across her eyes. She closed her eyelids, the bright white explosion imprinted onto the back of them.
The nightclub security whistled for a taxi from the nearby rank to come across to them. It screeched over and Leesa, Eliza and the baseball players fell into it.
***
Hearing a retching noise, she tried to sit up and open her eyes. Ugh. The retching noise was coming from her. She just hadn’t registered.
“Oh God.” One too many movements. She fell back onto the pillows.
She’d never had a hangover like it. Everything ached. Her mouth dry. Her stomach churning. She rolled onto her side, legs dangled over the edge. With all her might she pushed up into a seating position and staggered towards the door; feeling her way down the wall to the bathroom.
Leesa was already there, sat on the floor, resting against the bath, wearing just her panties.
Eliza flushed the toilet and sat on it. When she had finished she pulled up her knickers and sat on the side of the bath. Reaching across for her toothbrush. The sour taste from her mouth gone, she just need something for her stomach and head.
“Kurt’s on his way.” Leesa groaned.
“Oh.” Eliza nodded.
“How did we get home?”
“Taxi, I think.”
“Ku
rt’s not happy though.”
“Why?”
“We made the papers.” Leesa looked up to Eliza in a sheepish way. “Or rather, you made the papers.”
“What do you mean. I didn’t do anything.” She stood up to spit the toothpaste out of her mouth and wipe the white drool from her chin that crept out as she tried saying something with a mouthful of it. “Did I?”
Leesa shrugged. “Dunno. Kurt said he’s bringing a copy.”
“Oh.” Eliza thought no more of it and went to get dressed and carefully made her way down stairs to the kitchen. She folded back the shutters and nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard a protest coming from the living area.
The baseball players.
“What the fuck…?” she shouted at them. “What the hell are you doing here?”
They both bolted upright. Fully clothed and looked around unwittingly at their surroundings.
“You’d better go. Like right now,” she demanded.
Kurt was on his way. What if he found these two chancers coming out of the apartment, or worse still in it?
She marched over. Her headache forgotten. Pulling one of them up. She gathered up their shoes, throwing them at their heads. “Come on. Now! I’m not joking. You need to go before someone sees you here.”
They grabbed their jackets and shoes, hurrying out of the apartment. Eliza waited at the window to make sure they had gone and there were no reporters hanging around to record their exit.
All fine. She breathed a sigh of relief.
She padded over to the kitchen work surface, holding on with one hand and taking the coffee percolator off the stove with the other. She unscrewed the bottom and piled some coffee powder into it. Water gushed in from the tap into the top and she replaced the lid and screwed the bottom back on. Coffee on. She proceeded to open all the drawers and the cupboards looking for some paracetamol.
Nothing. She shouted up to Leesa “You got any pain killers?”
A few minutes later a packet was thrown down the stairs.
Eliza looked around for her mobile phone. It was on the floor next to her jacket and shoes.
Dead.
She plugged it in to charger in the wall, waiting before it powered back up to check for missed calls or texts.
Nothing.
She scrolled back through the calls she had taken and made.
Nothing.
Looked through the texts.
Nothing.
What was going on? Why didn’t he return her call?
She checked again. It was six o’clock when she called him last night and nothing since. Six o’clock. Jesus, was it really that early? They were on their second bottle of wine at that point. No wonder the evening ended the way it did.
He must have seen the missed call. Why hadn’t he rung back? She was about to call him again when the coffee started gurgling.
She went over to switch off the stove.
The buzzer on the intercom sounded, reverberating around the large open space.
“Yes?” she asked, knowing full well who it was going to be.
“It’s me, Kurt.”
She pressed the buzzer and heard his boots pounding up the stairs. He’d obviously not had a heavy night. Reaching for the paracetamol that Leesa had thrown down.
“Leesa,” she hollered up the stairs. “Kurt’s here.”
She flopped on the sofa; horrified when she spotted a wallet that one of the baseball players must have left behind; quickly shoving it under a cushion.
Fuck. What was she being so secretive about? Nothing had happened. She’d woken up alone. In her own bed. There was nothing to feel guilty about. Was there?
Kurt strode in, straight over to the coffee pot. He poured himself a mug of the steaming hot black liquid and looked over at Eliza.
“Where is she?”
“Upstairs. Nice to see you too Kurt.”
Kurt was always serious, but the look on his face today was more than the usual Kurt serious. He looked downright grave.
His response was to fling a copy of the Morning Herald on to the coffee table.
Eliza unfurled her legs and reached forward to pick it up.
There she was on the front page, hanging off the blond baseball player. If that wasn’t bad enough the headline read “Karma Life singer wastes no time finding new lover after surprise split from fiancé”.
“What?” She fell back on the sofa, before sitting up again and grabbing the paper to read more of the lies that she had no doubt Jonny would be reading too. Right now.
The report went on to describe how Eliza and her friend, Leesa, had been partying all night with the baseball players in the VIP area of the nightclub. Both scantily clad and hell bent on hooking up with some new lovers. All done in reaction to her split with Jonny.
Leesa came down the stairs just in time to witness Eliza screaming hysterically in frustration at the newspaper.
She picked the paper up off the floor where Eliza had thrown it in disgust. Looked to Kurt and then Eliza. “Oh my God Eliza. This is all my fault. I shouldn’t have got us so drunk.” Then she looked at her husband. “Nothing happened. Nothing. I swear.”
“I know.”
She went across and hung her arms around his neck and gave him a kiss.
“I know,” he repeated, “but it doesn’t mean that I’m not mad as hell about this.”
“I’m sorry,” she cooed up to him. “We were just letting our hair down and the paps caught Eliza at the wrong time. We came home alone and nothing at all happened. Nothing that we should feel ashamed about.”
Eliza looked at the cushion that was hiding the baseball player’s wallet. How wrong would that look now if it was discovered. Please God, let Kurt take Leesa home right now before it is discovered, or even worse one of the baseball players comes back to claim it.
She stood up. “Look guys, I’m sorry to hurry you up out of here, but I need to get hold of Jonny. I’m sure you understand?”
“Yes of course. Let me just go get my stuff.” Leesa disappeared upstairs.
Kurt sat down on the sofa, right where the offending evidence was lodged.
Eliza’s heart skipped a beat.
“So what’s going on Eliza?” Kurt asked in his big brother fashion.
“Just a misunderstanding. We’ll be fine. It’s nothing to worry about. I just need to get hold of him and talk it through. I’m sure we can work this out.”
“Okay.” He leaned forward, placing his hands on her head and gave her a brotherly kiss on top of it. “You let me or Leesa know if you need anything won’t you?”
“Of course. You’re not mad with her are you?”
“How could I be? She’s the love of my life. I trust her implicitly. I know she would never do anything to jeopardise what we’ve got. Believe me when I say this Eliza, that woman is my everything. What I live for. What we have together can’t be bought or conjured up overnight. It’s what happens after years of getting to know someone. Knowing what moves them, what scares them, what makes them sing. The little things that make them who they are. I know Leesa probably better than I know myself. Nothing and nobody can ever come between us. Not even ourselves.”
Eliza felt like she had been invited to look into Kurt’s soul. She could see it as plain as day. He was strong enough through the relationship he had with Leesa to bear his soul to her.
That’s what true love sounds like.
That’s what true love looks like.
And she wanted it.
She needed it.
It’s what she was determined to strive for with Jonny.
Leesa came back down and Kurt moved off the sofa, inadvertently dragging the cushion with him. The wallet twitched from beneath it.
Eliza jerked her eyes up to Leesa who was looking straight at it.
Shaking her head behind Kurt’s back at Leesa.
Oh my God. Oh my God. Eliza chanted inside her head. Leesa doesn’t know the players where here last night. She might thi
nk that is Kurt’s. Oh my God. Oh my God.
Eliza plumped up the cushion to disguise the move she then made by recovering the wallet.
Leesa looked confused and then snapped her mouth shut. Her teeth ricocheting in her head, before turning on a broad smile at Kurt.
“Ready?” he asked, taking her overnight and shopping bags from her.
“Yes. Who’s watching the kids?”
“Your father.”
“Have we got time to go to the deli on the way? Pick up a box of tompouce to take back with us?”
“Sure.” He kissed her.
“Ooh goodie.” She clapped her hands at the promise of the sweet treats.
“Bye Eliza. I’ll call you. Good luck with Jonny.”
Eliza looked down at the paper. Leesa had not even had time to read much of that. Eliza needed more than luck to sort this one out.
She looked out of the window to see Kurt and Leesa getting in their car just as the blond baseball player was striding up the street towards them.
Shit! She willed Kurt to drive off quickly before blondie reached her apartment door.
Just in the nick of time. Kurt reversed away from the player and into a side street, before pulling back out again and down the street in the opposite direction.
She had no desire to talk to the player, so retrieved his wallet from the cushion and lifted up the heavy sash window.
“Here,” she shouted down to him. “Catch.” Slamming the window back down without any further ado.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Jonny picked up his phone again. He’d been lying awake since dawn; intermittently checking the ringer, the screen and the battery.
Nothing.
He’d asked her to text and she hadn’t.
She was probably trying to make him suffer and she was succeeding.
He checked his watch. Six am. It was too early to call her; she never woke before at least nine. He changed into his running shorts, pulled on a beanie and went for a run.
The streets were quiet. Most of the parked cars lining the road where up on the pavement. A pet hate of his, when he was running. That and dog shit.
As his feet pounded the pavement he thought about his predicament. With each jolt his mind flowed faster, problems being worked through. It was always like this. First the problem, then eventually a realisation of how he felt about it. Sometimes a solution, but more often a reconciliation to just let it go. Knowing the process was over when he became aware of his surroundings and an acceptance of being part of a larger entity. The physical fitness was just really a side benefit.
Loving his ANGEL Page 17
