"That you weren't very good," I said promptly.
Heedless of the fact he was getting in people's way, Elliot stopped dead where he was and stared at me. "That I wasn't... what?"
"Think about it," I knew I was treading on very dangerous ground now, but wasn't able to make myself back down, "we had sex and now I can't stand you touching me. It doesn't take a genius to make the connection." Something else occurred to me and I added facetiously, "Probably the only reason there were 3 condoms was because you needed 3 tries to get it right."
"Un-fucking-believable," he breathed and I knew straight away that I'd made a big error in judgement. Unprovoked Elliot was bad enough, and now I'd gone and prodded him with a big pointy stick. Metaphorically obviously, although if I'd had a big pointy stick...
"Dare you to dance with me then."
It took me a second to realise what he'd said, distracted as I was with the acknowledgement of my own daring. When I did get it, I rolled my eyes at the weak ploy.
"Come on, Sinclair," I said, almost disappointed by his poor form. "I'm not a boy. That kind of 'I dare you' stuff doesn't work on me."
"Because you're too chicken shit." His expression changed to one of faux sympathy and my eyes narrowed as he said, "It's OK, though. I guess if you're genuinely too scared about what your body's reaction to me will give away-"
OK, so maybe that stuff did work on me. I couldn’t stand the implication of what he was saying and found myself snapping, "Fine, I'll dance with you!"
I clapped a hand up to my mouth in horror as he started to laugh and I knew that I'd just risen well and truly to his bait.
"You only asked me to dance to get away from those idiots, didn't you?" I sighed. "You never had any intention of actually doing it."
He nodded, and then leant in to say cheerfully, "But we can dance together if you're really that desperate to."
"I'd rather gnaw both my arms off," I said, furious at myself for so pathetically biting the hook he'd dangled in front of me, "but thanks for the offer."
I wanted to get the hell out of Haze, that was my prevailing thought as I turned away from Elliot and went to march off. Every pre-conceived notion I'd had about the place had been spot on. It was a wanky club that only knobs went to and I was sick of every last one of them. I'd been harassed, insulted and teased and I'd had enough.
Unfortunately, as per usual, Elliot had other ideas and I'd barely taken a couple of steps before I heard him say, "Look out."
Then his hands were on my waist and he'd spun me off course until my back bumped up against the wall. I yelped in surprise, my stomach swooping uncomfortably as the room span and our bodies momentarily pressed together.
God, he was the absolute limit! What in the name of all the monkeys in the jungle did he want now?
I was about to demand that he got his hands the hell off me, but the words caught in my throat as I looked up to see that his head was tilting down as if, oh God, as if...
----------
Roxanne Mapley thought he was going to kiss her.
Elliot allowed himself a split second to consider that. He hadn't been going to at all. He'd just seen the 'arse currency' guy from before, turned her out of his line of sight and had been leaning down to tell her so. After dealing with his dickhead old teammates and then goading her with the dancing thing, he thought he'd cut her a break and spare her from having to deal with that tosser again.
Now that she was looking at him, though, her eyes shining in the low light and her chin slightly tilted upwards, he wondered what she'd do if he followed through on her expectation and pashed her right there.
No dice, he told himself firmly a second later. She was already more trouble than she was worth and she didn't even remember their kisses from before. The last thing he needed was her getting all weird about ones she could remember.
"Right, we're even," he said instead, making her jerk a little bit in surprise. "I didn't tell you about Nan, but I've just saved you from Mr 'Skip Straight to the Arse Stuff'."
It took her another moment to really connect what he was saying, but he saw the moment she did because she blushed again. She did that a lot.
"That doesn't make us even," she said bouncing back quickly, her voice firm. "I've already proven that I can deal with him just fine on my own. Plus," she pressed up onto her tiptoes to peer over his shoulder and then subsided down into his shadow again, "Mr 'Skip Straight to the Arse Stuff' has got some serious muscles on him. Maybe he wasn't such a bad option after all, he certainly couldn't be any worse than you clearly were."
She must have been exhausted working so damn hard at hiding her attraction to him and he really didn't know why she bothered. You didn't see him getting that worked up over it. She was pretty alright looking, they'd had a good time when they'd been together (not that she remembered), he didn't have any issue acknowledging that, so what was her problem?
He rolled his eyes, but allowed himself to play along, saying, "You know what they say about guys with muscles like that, though." When she looked at him blankly he held up the little finger of his right hand and waggled it back and forth in her face. He could see that she was working desperately hard not to be amused, but he kept up his pinkie dance until she finally cracked and burst out laughing.
And that was how Jonah and Abi found them, him pressing her up against the wall, Rox's laughter making him smile in return.
"Rox?"
They both turned to see Abi looking wildly between them in confusion. Obviously clocking to what her friend was seeing, Rox batted her hands against Elliot's chest, exclaiming, "Off! Get off!"
He obligingly took a couple of steps back, but Abi was still looking like she'd seen them doing something much, much kinkier than just laughing together over another man's small penis.
"What the…?" She asked, her husky voice slightly higher than usual and all kinds of confused sounding.
"Let's do the girly bathroom thing," Rox grabbed her friend's hand and Abi only had time to send Jonah a significant look before she was dragged away. Elliot watched the two of them practically run off, their mouths moving at a million miles an hour, and wondered how the hell they were keeping track of what the other was saying.
In contrast, he and Jonah simply nodded at each other and ambled in comfortable silence towards the bar. Only once they had fresh drinks in their hands and had secured themselves a couple of bar stools did Jonah say, "I thought Cinders was going to rip you a new one tonight, but you were looking pretty cosy back there."
"You know me," Elliot eyed his friend over the neck of his bottle, "I have a way with the ladies."
"Not that lady you don't," Jonah objected.
Undoubtedly true, but so what? Elliot stared at his best mate until he looked away shiftily, and then made the connection with the look Abi had sent her boyfriend before she left.
"Going to get badgered by the missus, are you?" He grinned. "Did she ask you to get the rundown on me and Rox? What is this? Grade 7? Do you want me to pass you a note to give to her?"
"Piss off," Jonah said amiably and Elliot knew he'd been right.
"Sorry, buddy, but there's nothing to report back," he said honestly. "Just a couple of third wheels trying to avoid as many of the pricks that come here as possible, with a bit of dying Nan talk thrown in for shits and giggles."
Instantly solemn, Jonah nodded, adopting the 'if you feel you need to talk about your feelings I'm braced for it' expression he wore any time Elliot brought up the Nan situation. He appreciated it, but Elliot had had enough emotional crap for one night and he shook his head to show that his mate was off the hook.
"Bit of a dick move leaving Rox on her own, by the way," he said instead. "When I turned up some guy was grabbing her arse."
"Was it you?" Jonah joked, but seeing Elliot's expression, he turned contrite. "Right, sorry, dick move."
"Yeah, I don't reckon Rox'll be coming back here anytime soon," Elliot added after a pause. "We all know she's not my numbe
r 1 fan, and as well as me and the guy who grabbed her arse we had a bit of a walk down memory lane tonight when Henderson and co turned up."
"Lucky you," Jonah said sarcastically, fiddling with the wrapper on his beer bottle. "I take it they're still arseholes?"
"Prime examples of," Elliot agreed. "Why the hell didn't we notice that when we were at school?"
Jonah ripped a long shred of paper from his bottle and smiled bleakly as he said, "Reckon we were probably arseholes too, mate."
It was an uncomfortable thought, but Elliot couldn't really deny it. Seeing his old rugby teammates and the way they'd behaved was bringing up all sorts of faintly unpleasant memories of his time as the self-imposed king of his castle.
"Do you think it was shit, being Rox and being around us when we were growing up?" He asked suddenly, unable to stop himself even though he was pretty sure he wouldn't like the answer.
Jonah looked at him knowingly, but obviously decided to take pity on him and only said, "Yeah, I reckon it probably was."
"Still," he added after a loaded silence, "she's over it now. Killing it in her studies, Abi reckons, and it's not like anyone gives her heaps about how she used to be a cleaner or anything."
Except that they just had, Elliot thought to himself. Did he like getting under Rox's skin himself? Yes. Did that mean he wasn't going to punch Henderson's lights out if he ever again referred to her as the help? No.
"I know that face, mate." Jonah poked his bottle towards him, his expression apprehensive. "It's not a good face. That's your ‘do-gooder with awful consequences’ face and if you're getting that face on in relation to Cinders then I'm telling you right now, you should just drop it. You want to do good towards her I reckon she would say that staying away from her would be enough."
"Yeah," Elliot smiled grimly, Jonah's warning coming too late, "but where would be the fun in that?"
Chapter 6 – The Invitation and the TV on Fire
That should have been it for a while. After spending just about the whole evening with Elliot, I felt sure I'd earned a couple of days reprieve from him.
No such luck.
The day after my Haze outing I was by myself in the tiny side kitchen of the ref making up the pre-made sandwiches ready for the lunch rush. It was a boring job and cling wrap was my mortal enemy, so I was already contemplating a full on tantrum even before I heard Elliot's voice right by my ear say, "Hey, Rox."
I whirled around in surprise and had the satisfaction of seeing him take a massive leap backwards as the bread knife in my hand whisked through the space he'd previously been occupying.
"Christ!" He exclaimed. "Watch it!"
"Calm down." I deliberately turned away from him and continued cutting up the sandwiches, trying to appear unfazed by his sudden appearance even as my heart clapped wildly in my chest. "I'm really good at fighting the urge to stab you with anything more dramatic than basic cutlery."
"Good to know," he murmured, his voice all deep and, I'm sure he thought, sexy.
God, he was so annoying! How dare he saunter up and say 'Hey, Rox' like that, as if him seeking me out for a conversation was the most normal thing in the world? We weren't friends, we weren't anything, a fact I'd had to spend a good half hour convincing Abi of in the toilets of Haze the night before.
My best friend seemed to think she was sensing something between me and Elliot; an attraction or partiality that was just fundamentally not there. We'd slept together, so what? Plenty of people had sex without it meaning anything; it was just a body parts thing. If Abi had sensed anything last night it was presumably just a joint freak out at the mortality of Nan, but I defied anyone to turn that into a saucy situation.
Still, Elliot was here now, and his proximity was making my skin itch weirdly, what was that all about?
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him obviously get bored of me ignoring him and hitch himself up onto the counter with that long legged superiority of his. Cheeky monkey.
I sighed, put down my knife and snatched up the tea towel that was hanging on a hook next to where I was working. Rolling it up with a deft twist, I turned and whipped him hard on the leg.
"This is a food preparation area," I scolded him as he let out a particularly un-macho yelp and jumped straight back off the counter to escape my attack. "It's bad enough that the poor students who go here have to put up with your pretty boy posturing, they don't need to be infected with your germs as well."
OK, maybe by 'students' I meant me, but honestly! He might think he was above everyone else, but he was not above basic kitchen hygiene standards.
"Pretty boy posturing?" He repeated in bemusement as he made a drama out of dusting himself off even though I knew for a fact that the counter and tea towel were spotless. "I can't believe I never noticed before how out of your way you go to call me pretty."
I ignored that, mostly because there was no getting round that he was pretty; just because he was also a self-involved tosser didn't mean I was blind.
"What are you doing back here?" I demanded instead. "This isn't Haze; you can't expect special treatment here. Go out the front and order like everyone else."
"Order what? Food? From here?" He deadpanned and I quickly looked down at the sandwich I was making so he wouldn't see my battle to not smile. Lord knows the trouble I'd got in last time he'd made me laugh.
"Madness, I know," I said sarcastically. "To think that some students can't afford high quality cuisine delivered straight to their door is repulsive. Poor people are gross."
"Yeah," he nodded and leant back against the bench, much too near to where I was standing, "and I hear that people sit on the counters in the food preparation area at this place. Very unhygienic."
I will not smile, I will not smile, I will not…
"You're smiling," he said obnoxiously, "which is weird, because last night you said I wasn't funny."
"Your face is funny." I wiped my hands down on the apron tied at my waist in the most officious, 'I don't have time for this' kind of way I could. It was the least I could do after retorting something my 6 year old self would've been proud of. Folding my arms, I turned to look at him and said bluntly, "Right, we've established that you're all witty and everything, but I need to get back to work. What are you doing here?"
My abrupt question seemed to sober him up sharpish and he ran a hand through his dark hair almost sheepishly before saying, "Abi told me where you were."
"…which doesn't answer my question," I pointed out, even as I groaned internally. If he'd gone and asked Abi where I was, that was hardly going to support my 'there's nothing weird going on with me and Elliot' stance.
"Fair enough," he admitted, before he cocked his head to one side and enquired, "Do you want to go to Papua New Guinea?"
OK, not what I'd been expecting.
I blinked rapidly as my brain processed his words, double checking them to make sure he had just asked what I thought he had.
When I was convinced that, yes, he had just asked if I wanted to go to Papua New Guinea, I tried to read him to see where the hell that question had come from. No luck there, his gaze was steady and his expression held nothing but a bland look of polite interest in my answer.
Huh.
Reaching blindly back behind me for support, my hand landed on some bread and I whirled round to grab it and start spreading margarine across it.
"As in ever?" I asked, super casually.
"As in next week."
Oh yes, well, that cleared that up…
Determined to match his nonchalance, I continued constructing the sandwich and said lightly, "I can honestly say that I don't have plans to go to Papua New Guinea next week."
He nudged my hip, making me look at him in surprise, and then grinned so suddenly I was momentarily blinded by the dazzling display of his bright white teeth.
"Yeah," he said, while I was still trying to recover from this blast of charm, "but I do. Wanna come?"
There was a ringing silence, broken
only by a wet slap as the salami slice I'd been holding hit the tiled floor.
"I'm sorry…did you just…?" It wasn't that I couldn't put the words together properly; it was more that I didn't even know what words I needed.
"Was that an invitation?" I finally managed to choke out.
He shrugged unconcernedly. "Yeah, guess it was."
"To Papua New Guinea?"
"Yeah."
"With you?" My voice was strangled and the last word came out as little more than a squeak.
"Yeah," he said again, although, just as my eyes started to narrow at his thoroughly unhelpful repetition of that one word, he added, "well, me and a bunch of other guys. And Abi's going."
Of all the ridiculous things he'd said so far, this struck me as by far the most out there and I snorted. "No, she's not."
"Yeah, she is."
Right. That was it.
I reached down to snatch up the salami slice I'd dropped and then thwacked Elliot in the forehead with it. As he blinked in surprise at the, admittedly odd, processed meat attack, I repeated, "No. She's. Not."
I threw the meat into the bin and wiped my hand on the tea-towel, while he rubbed his sleeve across his forehead and stared at me incredulously.
"Trust me on this, Sinclair," I continued crossly, "I know my best friend and I know she's not going anywhere next week. One of her pieces is being displayed at a gallery in town and I don't think she's going to leave its side, let alone the country."
Elliot still seemed focused on the fact that I'd just hit him with a sandwich filling which was perhaps why he sounded so vague as he replied, "Maybe Jonah hasn't asked her yet."
Salami to the face or not, who the hell was this blasé about the idea of no more than a couple of days advance notice of going overseas? It was this 'whatever' attitude that really made my blood start to boil. Of course, why hadn't I realised it before? Elliot really didn't see anything strange about impromptu international travel.
"God, you're from a different planet, you know that?" I said loudly, any sort of nonchalance well and truly behind me. "You and Jonah both. You can't just drop a trip to Papua New Guinea on someone the week before! People need to prepare for travel, they need to organise shifts at work and save up and-" I stopped abruptly as my whole body went suddenly cold.
Saving from Monkeys Page 8
