by Brigid Coady
She looked round the club. Seeing all the cracks in marriages and relationships that were developing in front of her, she thought of all the collateral damage. Somewhere there could be a little girl like her. She’d do something. She had to.
Not that they’d be grateful but she would help them maintain the façade of their marriages.
Turning back she stiffened her spine, ignored the slurping and spit, and tapped Maggie on the shoulder.
“Maggie!”
“She’s alright love, I’ll take care of her,” the rangy guy peeled his lips from Maggie briefly.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said.
She grasped Maggie’s shoulders and began to haul her off.
“Need a hand?” a familiar voice rumbled in her ear.
She stiffened.
“We’re fine thank you.”
“It doesn’t look fine,” he sounded amused.
“Why don’t you get back to Sophie?” she bit out nodding her head towards the pouting redhead by the bar trying to attract his attention by waving a bottle of beer she had obviously bought for him.
“Because I’m not keen on groupies no matter how long I’ve known them and I’d rather help you,” he replied.
“I don’t need your help, thank you.”
“Are you sure, Dickens? Or are you going to try and get your whole party moving and unsnogged all by yourself?” he gestured round the room.
It resembled the end of a school disco. Couples were scattered across the dance floor and perched on chairs, bodies were sealed together from lips to feet. She didn’t want to know what was happening in some of the darker corners.
It would be like herding cats.
Once she’d got one couple undone, they would have re-stuck by the time she had turned around to work on another. It was as if they were covered in hormonal Velcro.
“I don’t…” she faded.
She did. She needed help and he was the only volunteer.
Now if she could stop her own body from sealing itself to him like it wanted to, everything would be fine.
She stepped back and waved Jack forward.
“The most sensible thing you’ve done all night, Slow,” he whispered in her ear.
Jack tapped the rangy guy’s shoulder.
“Whaaaa…”
“Sorry mate but this lady needs to get home. Family emergency.”
“Family? Is Mel OK?”
Maggie’s lips unsealed themselves. Her maternal instincts overcame her oxytocin levels
“I think she’s looking a little peaky…” Edie lied.
Mel was actually outside the building, serenading the leaving club goers with Abba songs. Edie had escorted her there personally before coming back inside.
“I must go!” Maggie untangled herself after one last wet snog and wobbled out of the club.
Rangy guy stood, looking puzzled, his arms still in place as if Maggie was going to come back any minute.
“One down, five more to go. Shall we?” Jack gestured Edie in front of him and they went off to tackle the next couple.
With a few well-placed words in each bloke’s ear coupled with their shock at being spoken to by Jack Twist, each couple was successfully unstuck and the female halves were led out of the club with their belongings. They then staggered and slide drunkenly into the waiting taxis.
Jack gave the last girl a push into one of the cars and turned to face Edie.
She glared silently at him. Damn him for being so efficient. She should be thanking him, but being mad at him was safer. Maybe she had papered over some cracks in people's lives but it made her realise the chasms in her own. And standing next to Jack reminded her of what she didn't have, what she could've had.
Edie moved towards the last taxi, she should join the rest of hens and move far away from him. Reclaim some part of her shredded mind.
“You’re welcome,” Jack said.
She stopped.
She wanted to get in the cab, slam the door on him and pretend the last few hours hadn’t happened. Cut herself off from everything. But that was before last night.
The look on Tom’s face when she had shut him out swam in front of her; the ache in her chest came back. Should she try something different? Stop slamming the door on people? She looked at Jack, Tom's face fading into the past as she was faced with the present.
“Thank you,” she said stiffly.
“Is that all? No Long Slow Comfortable Screw? With or without the Wall?” he joked.
She should have slammed the door.
Men. They only thought about one thing; last night had made her soft. Made her think the unthinkable. She had always been clear-headed; she prided herself on it. She saw the truth of the world. And she was going to make a stand now. All the turmoil of the past few days churned up in her. She turned away from the cab. Well she would give him something…
“I’ll take a Long Slow Comfortable kiss?” Jack said, his hands up placating her. His shoulders raised and his head on one side.
She came closer; this is what she got for being nice. A guy thinking she was a pushover and only good enough for sex.
“A quick peck?” he asked.
“If you don’t cut it out all you’ll get is a short sharp clip round the ear!”
“I love it when you talk dirty,” he said.
This was pointless. He was deliberately winding her up. She took a deep breath; she’d just turn around, ignore him and leave.
Behind her a car door slammed and with a screech of tyres, the last cab pulled away.
“Hold on! Wait for me!” She twisted round and tried to run after it down the road.
Once again the heels hit back, she clipped them on the curb and would have fallen if a large hand hadn’t grabbed her arm.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
Edie’s eyes burned. Tears. No tears for years and in the space of twenty-four hours she had cried twice.
Well she wouldn’t cry. No, she wouldn’t. And she definitely wouldn’t cry in front of him.
Ever since bloody Jessica had arrived in her room nothing had gone to plan. And she liked her plans. Instead, she was floundering around and knee deep in wedding stuff. Wasn’t all this haunting supposed to get her away from tacky nights out?
“ARGHHHHH!” she threw back her head and screamed to the sky.
“You OK?” Jack asked from behind her.
Would he stop being nice and funny? How rude did she have to be before he would leave her alone? Before everyone would leave her alone.
“I am perfectly fine. Thank you. But I would be even better if I was currently in a cab on the way to the house,” she said.
How was she supposed to get home now? The street was deserted; not a taxi in sight.
“Well you can’t blame the girls, it did look like you were heading towards me for some hot and heavy action…” he said.
There were times, and now was one of them, that Edie wished she had taken criminal law. Then she would know a really good barrister who could defend her for justifiable homicide. How could one person make her feel so angry and so turned on all at the same time?
She growled in the back of her throat and clenched her fists, trying not to go for Jack. But whether to kill him or kiss him, she didn't know.
“From behind, of course. Not from the front. No, from the front they would never have left me alone with you. They would have feared for my health," he said.
“Don’t you ever shut up?”
She couldn’t think when he joked like that. Or when he looked at her like that, as if he saw through the mask to the real Edie.
Edie stamped her foot in frustration and fear, forgot about the damn torture shoes again and toppled into his arms.
He smiled crookedly down at her and in the dark she thought she saw his pupils widen.
“I’m pretty quiet when I do this.”
And he bent his head and kissed her.
What the…
Edie’s mind
went momentarily blank.
And then her body was full of sensations that her head tried to keep up with.
His lips were soft but strong, hot but cool.
The contradictions of the kiss echoed Edie’s confusion. She was quivering with anger and desire. She desperately wanted to sink into his arms, sink into this kiss, lose herself in it but she also wanted to run away. Far away. Somewhere safe. But then she felt safe here. There were goose bumps on her arms but her skin was on fire.
Edie hadn’t been kissed like this since… Tom? But had Tom’s kisses ever been like this? Yesterday she thought she hadn’t remembered Tom’s kisses, then last night they had come flooding back. But now… now they were receding overwhelmed by the kisses of this man. Tom faded like an old Polaroid, two dimensional and bleeding colour. Jack’s kisses were three dimensional, high definition and here.
Jack moved his mouth against hers. He stroked her lips with his tongue.
Tom who?
She wanted to open up and show herself to Jack, she hadn’t felt like this… ever? She loosened her hold on the reins of her heart; she wanted to let go, to fall deeper.
And then her hair was ruffled by a breeze that seemed to come from nowhere. It blew Jack’s scent away and brought with it the faint smell of jasmine and sweet pea. It was the scent of weddings and first love, of innocence and hope. It was the fragrance of new beginnings. It was the perfume of Weddings Past.
She froze.
It was one thing to be haunted by ghosts when you slept, but it smelt like they were interfering in the real world as well.
She tightened her hold on the reins that she had almost let run through her fingers. There was no falling here. Was she being manipulated? Was this real?
She wrenched her lips from his and pushed away from him, all the time her hormones screaming to let this carry on. Her hands shaking, she pushed them through her hair to stop from reaching for him again.
“I think I prefer you talking,” she said.
She couldn’t help her tongue licking her lips, tasting him, testing the swollen feel of them.
Jack wasn’t smiling any more; he stood with his hands on hips, glaring at her.
“Dear God, woman don’t you ever have a good word to say about anyone?”
The shaft hit true. She didn’t, but then why should she? It wasn’t as if anyone had anything good to say about her any more.
A small voice asked her, and whose fault is that? She hoped the voice was in her head, she hoped it was her rarely present conscience. If it was some spiritual manifestation then she was indeed ready for the men in white coats to take her away.
Now she was no longer plastered against him, she shivered. It wasn’t only from the cool evening air.
“I need a cab,” she said, dodging his question.
“I’ll drive you,” he replied.
“There’s no need, I’ll get a cab,” she said.
“There is every need! One: you can’t walk in those ridiculous heels.”
He ticked off the reasons on his fingers.
“Two: your bag went with the rest of the hens in the taxi,” he paused and stared hard at her unsmiling. “Three: you are way too sexy to be wandering round Bath on your own in that dress.”
He thought she was sexy?
She hadn’t been called sexy since Tom. He said it when they lived together, when they were curled up in bed, she in her old pyjamas, or when she'd dressed up for a night out and she definitely hadn’t been sexy near the end. The disappearance of her bag was less important… she was sexy. Jack Twist said so.
Although at this precise point in time he was looking at her like he wanted to shake her rather than kiss her.
“Will you have some sense and let someone help you?”
It was her only option. It could be worse, she thought.
“OK, but no mauling me,” she said.
“Honestly the whole mauling thing is looking more and more like an aberration,” he said. He gestured to a line of cars parked on the side of the road across from the club.
Walking towards a low-slung sports car, she snorted to herself. Typical boy’s toy. She stopped near the passenger door and was surprised when Jack carried on past it to a dusty Golf.
“I’m too tall to fit in one of those sports cars very easily,” he grinned at her as if he knew what she’d been thinking. “Had one and almost gave myself a hernia every time I got in and out.”
Another point in Twist’s favour; not that she was keeping score.
Damn.
Jack held open the passenger door. Edie slide into the car making sure her legs were together and her skirt kept decent. Jack still looked appreciatively down at the large expanse of leg she showed as she swung them inside. The leather seat was cool against her bare back.
Jack closed the door and walked round the front of the car. She watched the way he strode to his door and in the beam of the streetlight, he looked like the stranger he was. Not the man she had just been kissing. She absently touched her fingers to her lips.
He took up too much space, she thought as he got in the car. His shoulders were wider than the seat. His legs, long and muscular, were close enough to touch.
“So where to?” he said as he turned the engine on.
Edie told him the name of the house they had rented and the road.
“Very nice,” he commented as the car pulled away and started wending its way out of the city.
“I take it you come from round here?” she asked.
Not that she was interested, or usually did small talk. It was just that silence with Jack seemed more dangerous. Talking broke the tension.
“This is where I started my rugby career,” he said.
“Rugby?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’ve been doing instead of working at the law firm. I turned professional and now I’ve retired from the firm,” he speeded over the bridge out of the city.
A professional rugby player?
Edie looked at him out of the corner of her eye. That explained the size and the scars. It also explained Sophie being a groupie.
Twist? Edie turned his name over in her mind. An elusive memory came to her. Two years ago, the papers had been plastered with his face snarling in triumph as he crossed the goal line in the finals of the Rugby World Cup. She remembered being annoyed by the whole kerfuffle as it had kept any serious news off the front page for days.
She opened her mouth to say something, and closed it. Small talk had deserted her.
They lapsed into silence. The lights of the city flickered through the windows, highlighting his hands as they changed gear, the white traces of scars. And then they were in the dark country and she was blind except for the hedgerows that flicked past in the headlights. The only sound was their breathing and the whirr of the wheels on the tarmac.
But she could feel him next to her. Could feel every breath he took. And burning her back as it leant against the leather, was the place where his little finger had stroked her as he’d held her. She licked her lips. She could still taste him.
The spot over her heart jabbed her.
What was stopping her from kissing him again? On her terms; not his or any ghost who was not above pushing them together. The fizz and flip was back. Maybe it was because she was taken by surprise the first time and she’d invented the scent to get back some control? But if she were in control when they kissed again, what was stopping her?
She didn’t remember the drive being this long. Would he just hurry up!
And then they were there. The headlights picked out the gateposts and then the hedges that curved round the small circular drive in front of the neo-Georgian house.
Lights blazed from each of the downstairs windows and the upstairs ones too.
“Looks like the party is still going on. Want me to come and check for any stray men who might have snuck their way in?” he asked as the car came to a stop in the soft gravel of the drive.
“No.” she said quickly.<
br />
They sat in silence again, the engine idling.
Edie’s hand was on the door handle. She should say something. Say thank you and good night. Shut the door on him and walk away. Never looking back.
Or she could lean in for another kiss. On her terms this time. Prove to herself that she could reach out; prove that she could stay in control. And maybe show some interfering ghosts that she was taking a step in the right direction.
She could do this.
Taking a deep breath, she licked her lips and turned towards Jack. She put her hand out to grab him and went in for the kill.
Chapter 9
“Well goodnight then,” Jack said as he shook the hand that she had put out. The hand she was going to use to grab him and pull him down for a kiss.
Her face heated. The jab above her heart became an ache. Fizz and flipping flopped.
That first kiss had just been a pity kiss then.
And people wondered why she didn’t do love and stuff. She didn’t because for her it meant involving men and, she decided, they were all freaks. Ms Satis was right; men weren’t worth it.
“Goodnight.” she said and she pushed open the door of the car and stumbled rather than marched round on the gravel to the front door.
“Oh and Edie…” Jack had wound down the window.
She stopped with one hand on the front door.
“Next time we kiss it’ll be because you want to and not because you need to prove it to someone.”
The gravel crunched under the tyres as he drove off.
She’d prove something to him all right. She would prove to him just how much she didn’t want to kiss him again.
She pushed open the door and was hit by the noise of Abba coming from the living room and was soon swamped by the drunken hens.
“So did you kiss him?” Mel asked.
Edie ignored her and went to bed.
“I feel like death!” Mel groaned as she stuck her head under the pillow trying to hide from the sun.
