"Interesting?" I repeated and her eyes lit up as I offered this proof of awareness.
"Yeah, very interesting actually." She obviously enjoyed the exaggeration, but also didn't seem to need any further prompting to get to the point as she added, "I heard that you gave some guy a private surfing lesson earlier in the week."
I blanched at the ambush, but forced myself to remain silent. Perhaps it was all the porn I'd been watching with Livvy, but somehow, I knew this wasn't the money shot.
"Well," Merry took another drag on her straw, clearly enjoying the moment, "when I say 'you' gave him a private surfing lesson, what I mean to say is you and Fletcher Townsend gave him a private surfing lesson."
Yep, that was the money shot.
I wasn't surprised that Merry had found out about it; the girl was surely destined to work for a spy agency, nothing got past her.
Still, I said nothing. Where it was my actions that seemed so dangerous around Fletch, it was words that got me in trouble with Merry; she had an uncanny knack for batting away any of the verbal red herrings I threw her way.
She clearly wasn't going to let me just wait it out, though, as she leant forward over the table and demanded, "So, go on then, talk me through how that went down. There's a whole bunch of mental images there that I just can't seem to conjure up. You on a beach. You and Fletch on a beach. You and Fletch working on a good deed. Together. On a beach."
I lifted my cappuccino to my lips. The thought of swallowing any of the sweet, milky liquid turned my stomach, but I needed some sort of diversion as I collected my thoughts.
"Aidan wanted to be taught to surf," I said eventually, setting my drink down untasted. "Fletch teaches people how to surf. No big mystery."
Merry let out a disbelieving little choke of laughter and shook her head. "Yeah, OK," she said sarcastically, "that's one viewing of it. Here's another: you don't like Fletch, Fletch doesn't like your good deeds, ergo, huge mystery." She fixed me with one of her no-nonsense looks, the one so incongruous with her cherubic blonde curls and dimpled smiles, and added, "Come on, La-La, you're more likely to have asked Daz for help than Fletch."
I snorted, thinking that that was answer enough, but Merry continued to eye me pointedly, clearly wanting more.
Uncertain that anything I said didn't go straight back to Fletch via Daz, I wasn't going to get into the real reason Fletch had mistakenly believed I was asking for his help, AKA the Saskia situation. Instead, I just shrugged and said, "I go for the best. Fletch is the best."
As soon as the words left my mouth I knew I'd made a mistake. Sure enough, Merry let out an almost triumphant cackle before exclaiming, "Oh, sweetie, we're so not talking about surfing anymore."
No, we weren't, and I'd walked right into that one.
"OK, I was interested before, but now I'm fascinated. What the hell is going on with you? You've been even more uptight than usual this morning and now this Fletch stuff..." Merry trailed off and then added, more quietly, "Last I checked in with you two he was making you hide in the scummy bathroom at O'Malleys, care to bring me up to speed?"
What was I supposed to say? 'The O'Malleys incident became old news right about the time your boyfriend's best friend and I had hot car sex'? Or, 'oh, it's just that Fletch has suggested a future of casual sex between us, leaving me to decide whether to take him up on the, way too tempting, offer'? Hardly.
And I thought I'd been doing so well too. After Fletch's bombshell proposal and subsequent withdrawal, I thought I was well within my rights to be curled up in the foetal position somewhere, letting my brain and libido duke it out in a battle to the death. Here I was, however, up bright and early the next day and at brunch for Christ's sake. That alone was taking it out of me, there was no way I could let Miss Mind-reader Merry any further into my head.
"Nothing," was my decided response in the end, one that skirted the 'hiding in the bathroom' crap completely. "Nothing is going on with me."
She raised her eyebrows looking disappointed in my cop out of an answer. "I don't believe you."
"That's your prerogative." I took another pretend sip of my coffee.
"Ugh," Merry sank back into her chair, punctuating her groan with a big, crunchy bite out of her toast. "You, Miss Montgomery, are hard work."
"Well, look who you're dating," I found myself replying bitchily. "I guess difficult must be your thing."
And, just like that, the glint returned to Merry's eye. "Resorting to Daz-bashing?" She asked archly, running a finger along the honey wood of the cafe table. "My, my, you really are out of sorts today."
"Who's out of sorts?" I snapped. "I'm just saying I don't get your choice of arm candy."
And, OK, I was out of sorts, and, yes, I was trying to distract myself from Fletch's ridiculous proposition, but it didn't take away from the truth of the statement. Because, seriously, the sunshine of Merry with the dark cloud that was Daz? It'd never made sense to me.
"Alright then," Merry sighed and picked up her fork. "There's clearly Fletch drama happening, drama that's stopped you managing to swallow even one teeny tiny sip of your drink all morning, but if you wanna talk about me and Daz instead then, fine, I'll play."
She paused to stuff a forkful of eggs into her mouth, the pause obviously meant to emphasise that I wasn't getting anything past her because I knew for a fact that a mouth full of food wasn't a hindrance to her talking. My fingernails were glossy from the fresh coat of polish I'd painted on them whilst unable to sleep the night before, and they caught the light as I tapped them against the table impatiently.
She ignored the hint, calmly chewing and swallowing before finally saying, "I'm with Daz because he found me when I was lost." She took another bite of toast then added, "That's not some deep metaphor, the first time I met him I was literally lost and he helped me out."
And this, at least, in a week full of seemingly never-ending craziness, made sense. The good deed that had introduced me to Merry had been her asking for my help with learning her way around the Bay; I'd never met someone with such a bad sense of direction. Still, in a time of need, Daz would've been the last person I would've wanted to help me out.
"So he spied someone looking disorientated and figured he could lord it over them and score himself a date at the same time?" I rolled my eyes. "Figures."
"Don't be a dick, Lara," Merry bit back immediately, her use of my actual name perhaps more illustrative than anything of her annoyance. "I was completely confused, he asked if I needed a hand and, when I said yes, walked with me to where I needed to go. I was the one who asked him out."
"Because he helped you out once?" I asked incredulously, unconvinced that one moment of him not being a complete tool should be so substantially rewarded.
"Give it a rest, it wasn't just once and it wasn't just that." Merry flicked her parsley garnish across the table at me irritably. "Daz is awesome. He's the kind of guy who looks over his shoulder when he goes through a door, you know? Just to check whether there's someone coming that he should hold it open for. And he doesn't do it in that 'look what a good guy I'm being' way, either, he does it in an automatic, consideration for other people kind of way. He was good to me the first time he met me because he's good to everyone." She paused and then continued fairly, "Except you, but even that I get."
"Thanks," I said sardonically, and she sighed.
"Come on, La-la, you must know Daz has a problem with you out of loyalty for Fletch. He thinks you mess his mate around and I have my issues with Fletch for a similar reason so it'd be hypocritical of me to complain."
Two things about that little speech surprised me. Firstly, that Merry had issues with Fletch; she certainly hadn't seemed to when she'd been banging on about him and me having hot babies. The second surprise, however, was the one I vocalised, "You think Fletch messes his mates around?"
That concept didn't sit well with me and, as if to prove why that was, a slideshow of Fletch and Donny moments from my brother's last few months started to
scroll through my mind. Fletch bringing in a bunch of surfing magazines, dumping them on Donny's bed and launching into a tale of the barrel he'd ridden the day before. Fletch rising without being asked to close the curtains when a shaft of sunlight made Donny wince. Fletch making Donny laugh until he was sick, and then holding the bucket for him without complaint. And then, towards the end, Fletch sitting next to Donny's bed, talking quietly with no guarantee that my brother was hearing a word he was saying. A self-righteous pain in my arse, yes. A bad friend, no.
Thankfully Merry pressed the 'quit' button on my Fletch/Donny montage pretty quickly as she slapped her hand on the table and said, in what I saw as wholly unwarranted exasperation, "Not Daz, you idiot, you!"
"Me?" I looked back at her blankly. "You have a problem with Fletch because of me?"
"Well, yeah," she said, as if I should’ve already known this. "Because I think it's a complete crock that he cheated on his girlfriend and you're the one people ended up having a problem with."
I blinked, and stared at her numbly, thoroughly taken aback. I'd never really considered that Merry would be on my side, mainly because I hadn't ever thought of myself as having a side.
"What people think isn't Fletch's fault," I eventually pointed out slowly. "It's not as if he encourages anyone to talk about what went down in high school, pretty much the opposite in fact. And, yeah he was the one who had the girlfriend, but it's not like I didn't know that he did, I just didn't care."
Merry pulled a face at this and I snapped, "What?"
"I'm just trying to decide whether it's Fletch you're defending or your 'I'm the biggest, baddest, bitch on campus' self."
"Neither," I said frankly. "As the only one out of the two of us who was actually present at the big cheating incident of 2010, I'm just in a better position than you to know what happened. I was the one who got him going, I basically tied myself to a stick and dangled myself in front of him."
I remembered clearly the way Fletch had whispered ‘how do you always manage to do this?’ just before we'd sealed the deal. He'd certainly been pretty clear on where the blame from that night lay, why was Merry being so slow on the uptake?
It was her turn to roll her eyes, a dismissive move that made me bristle, although not as much as the way she drawled, "Because God forbid anything not be your fault."
Obviously seeing my hackles rising, Merry stopped for a moment to wipe a napkin across her mouth before she continued more gently, "Look, I know the two of you have off the charts chemistry, but come on. You didn't make Fletch do anything he didn't want to do; he made the same choice you did."
My brain scrambled to find an answer to that and I grimaced as nothing immediately presented itself.
"Oh, La-La, your face!" Merry suddenly reached across and grabbed my hand. Holding it tightly, as she probably knew my instinctive reaction had been to snatch my fingers back, she smiled sympathetically. "You blow my mind. You're the toughest, coolest person I know and then Fletch is brought up and you're suddenly as useless as the rest of us."
I hated that, but as I released my hand from her grip and sat back in the wicker chair, I realised it at least proved one thing. Fletch was right, it, us, wasn't working. If Merry could see through me to him so easily, trying to ignore it, trying to avoid each other, was just a waste of our time. And I detested time wasting.
"Hey, pretty girl."
A familiar voice suddenly called out from the door of the café and I looked up to see one of the devils we'd been speaking of, Daz, approaching the table. More proof, had I needed it, that there was no escaping the cult of Fletch. It was his point, I guess, that, if we were destined to keep moving in each other's circles and having these interactions, that we might as well get something a bit more enjoyable out of them.
"Geez, Daz, not in front of Merry." I dragged my thoughts away from Fletch for a moment and forced myself to pretend Daz had been talking to me. I noted the subsequent frown between his eyebrows out of habit, but without any of my customary enjoyment. I had bigger fish to fry.
"Hey, sweetie," Merry ignored my shit-stirring and leant up to kiss her boyfriend, an action that I found myself observing with more intensity than was probably warranted.
It looked like such an easy move, though; she lifted herself up to him with an openness that just about knocked me off my chair. She had to be so sure that he'd reciprocate, that Daz would accept her offer of affection. It was mad, a power play that she didn't seem to get the significance of. I saw it, though. I got it and, had Fletch been there, I knew that he would've too.
Right then.
"Where's Fletch?" I got to my feet in one sudden move, my chair making a loud scraping noise against the floorboards.
Merry and Daz both stared at me; Merry's gaze tinged with amusement, Daz's with suspicion.
"Why?" He asked and I scowled. I was just opening my mouth to deliver my oft-quoted 'none of your business' line when Merry got in first.
"He's at home, isn't he?" She looked at Daz and something in his expression must have confirmed her words because she snatched up the pen I had lying across Big Blue and scribbled '7/10 Yolinda Grove' across the corner of my notebook.
"Off you go then," she said with satisfaction. "Give him hell."
I snatched up my stuff and strode out of the café, vaguely hearing Daz growl to his girlfriend, "If there's blood all over the walls when I get home, I'm sending you the cleaning bill."
~*~
Yolinda Grove was not too far from the café, a wide, uninspiring street with none of the tree-lined connotations 'grove' suggested. Being so near the uni there were no parking spots left on the street so I was forced to pull into the car park for number 10 and slot my car into a 'visitors' spot, a move that filled me with unease. It was a formal recognition of what was happening; here I was, 'visiting' Fletch, and I had the park to prove it.
I shook off the crawly feeling and, locking Big Blue in the boot, climbed out to stand and eye off the block of flats. It was a solid rectangular building made out of what must have, originally, been white breezeblocks. Now, though, they were stained an intriguing array of colours ranging from vomit yellow to I-don't-even-want-to-know brown. Ah student digs, always so delightful.
Approaching the building I saw that number 7 was a basement flat and followed a peeling sign round the corner to a moss covered set of steps leading down to a faded red door. I knew hesitation would be my undoing, so I didn't let myself do it, instead picking my way carefully down and rapping my knuckles hard against the door.
I would wait five seconds, I told myself, no more, no less and then I'd… The door opened.
Oh for God's sake, he was wearing white! Fletch in any other colour was annoyingly attractive, in white he skipped straight past attractive to knock-you-out hot. It broadened his already impressive shoulders, highlighted his golden surf tan and matched the white of his teeth like he was in a mouthwash commercial.
He didn't look particularly surprised to see me and I told myself that this was because Daz had already called to give him the heads up that I was coming. It was either that or admit that my actions, to Fletch at least, were entirely predictable.
"I want my boots back," I said shortly and Fletch's lips took the tiniest curl upwards before he asked, his voice a mockery of cluelessness,
"Meaning?"
I glared at him. Of course, he wanted me to say it. Prick.
"We do it," I explained flatly. "We get whatever this is," and I gestured at the space between us crossly, "out of our systems."
He flexed his shoulders slightly, a move that made my mouth go dry, and said, “Fine."
"It's not anything more than that," I was quick to add, in case he thought I was agreeing to something else entirely. "It's just a way of, like you said, using the stuff we can't avoid to our advantage."
His expression was neutral as he said again, "Fine."
I frowned. I'd expected him to show a bit more enthusiasm, it was his suggestion after all. "You
stay you and I stay me, nothing changes on that front," I continued in the face of his apparent disinterest.
He leant back against the doorjamb, his gaze steady on me as he said again, "Fine."
"And we keep out of each other's business."
"Fine."
My eyes narrowed, he was definitely taking the piss. "Are you broken?" I snapped.
"No, just making sure you've had your say." He crossed his arms, making his biceps round smoothly against the sleeves of his t-shirt.
"I don't need your help with that," I pointed out and he chuckled.
"No, you don't," he agreed. There were a couple of beats of silence and then, his smile widening, Fletch leant forward. "Babe, you came here for something, right?"
"Right," I agreed suspiciously.
"Well, now would be the time to collect."
He made a valid point; nothing good could come from us actually having a conversation.
"Doesn't happen often, Fletch," I muttered, taking a step forward and reaching up to curl a hand around the back of his neck and pull him down to me, "but when you're right, you're right."
----------
Half an hour or so later, satiated, skin glowing with sweat, Fletch rested between Lara's legs, her ankles crossed against the small of his back.
They'd barely made it to his room after she'd taken him up on his invitation, pressing a firm kiss against his mouth that made him harden instantly, almost painfully. Some distant part of him, however, had imagined Daz's reaction upon coming home and finding them going at it on the threshold, and he'd hitched Lara up and carried her to his room. Sweeping the papers and other crap off the desk just inside his door he'd lowered her to the cleared surface, unable to wait even the bare seconds it would've taken to get her to his bed.
After a full night and morning spent anticipating her response to his suggestion, he'd had to concentrate so he didn't lose it at her first touch. Similarly, she'd been taut in his arms, her skin singing with tension, but there was no doubting her commitment as her fingers scrabbled at his belt.
The Do-Gooder Page 15
