Those Other Women

by Nicola Moriarty

  Poppy didn’t need to read something like that – especially not when she was finally ready to move on from Garret. It would totally ruin her mood, and then who knew when she’d be up for it again? As much as Annalise wanted to reply to this Inga woman and lay into her, instead she jabbed at the screen until she’d deleted the message and then blocked the sender from the group. How the hell did she get wind of their group anyway?

  Once the message had been dealt with, Annalise had turned her attention back to Will. ‘I can tell you’re into her. You’ve been making eyes across the bar for the past ten minutes. Be a man and step up.’

  ‘How do you know I wasn’t making eyes at you?’

  ‘Forget about me. I’m not your type, trust me.’

  ‘Funny. You look a lot like my type to me.’

  Annalise couldn’t help but feel flattered. Her instincts were telling her to flirt. He was good-looking, the sort of guy she’d normally be happy to take to bed. Her body started to respond on its own. Her back arched ever so slightly. Her lower lip pouted.

  ‘Is that right?’ she said.

  Will grinned as his gaze roved across her body. But then a tiny voice at the back of her head spoke up. You were supposed to be doing this for Poppy.

  She stopped herself just in time.

  Once her work was complete, Annalise hung behind for a short time to keep an eye on Poppy and Will and make sure they were hitting it off. She grabbed a spot near the doorway and filled in time writing in her notebook, before soon calling it a night. She cornered a cute staff member as she was leaving, making him promise to pass on her message to Poppy. His knees almost buckled when she whispered it into his ear. Poor guy couldn’t have been any older than nineteen. He begged her for her number but she refused. He was too young even for her. She headed home, content in the knowledge that Poppy was finally going to get lucky.

  Annalise had had Poppy pegged from the moment she met her. Poppy was a good girl. A good girl who worked hard and followed the rules. She dressed like she was older than she was: neat trousers with the pleat down the front. Flat shoes. Plain beige blouses. Her features were ultra-pronounced. Her eyes, nose and mouth were all clustered together right in the centre of her face. Huddled, as though they were protecting one another from the elements. And then her forehead, cheeks and chin seemed to spread out from the features at the centre. She should have compensated with a fringe and maybe some layers around her face, but instead she accentuated the wide open space by pulling her hair back tightly – and she wore her hair the same way, every single day. As soon as she had the opportunity, Annalise would have to convince her to change that.

  Poppy was also great at her job. She had an incredible knack for knowing what things were about to go viral. ‘People think it happens organically,’ she told Annalise once, ‘and sometimes it does, but there’s also a formula. A constantly fluctuating formula, but still a formula. It’s art mixed with science mixed with psychology. It’s beautiful.’ She was a little bit tipsy at the time.

  When Garret had betrayed her, her pain had been obvious almost instantly. It was written all over her face. It was in the way her shoulders rounded. It was in the way the odd strand of hair started to creep out of her ponytail and fall across her face. It was in the lines that etched their way across her forehead and spidered out from her eyes. Annalise was hooked. She wanted to know more. She wanted to know what had happened to her and she wanted to save her.

  Karleen’s disloyalty meant Poppy had an opening for a new best friend, and Annalise’s relationships had been so shallow for so long that she supposed she was looking for a way to settle down a bit. Sometimes Annalise wondered if that was why she started to get carried away with Lawrence. Was she secretly after something more? She didn’t really think so. It was more that she just liked the way he always went down on her first.

  All it had taken for Annalise to draw Poppy in was one of her trademark flirty smiles – the type she’d usually reserve for a bloke she wanted to bang for the night, but she’d had a feeling a little bit of flirting would work on Poppy. Sometimes that’s what a new friendship between women was like – a touch of flirtatiousness. Mutual attraction. Didn’t have to be sexual. Could be if you wanted it to.

  The day that Annalise had told Poppy she’d join her soccer team was the same day that Annalise had first slept with Lawrence. It was only supposed to be a one-off, but somehow it hadn’t worked out that way. It had started when Lawrence watched the conversation between Annalise and Poppy. He’d been turned on by the way the two women were flirting with one another. He might have thought he was hiding the hard-on beneath his trousers, but Annalise had sensed it, and when Poppy had left the break room, she’d walked straight up to him until their faces were barely inches apart and whispered, ‘I know you want me,’ before turning on her heel and walking away without waiting for his reaction.

  He’d looked up her mobile number on the internal staff list and texted her within the hour.

  If Annalise was completely honest, this tactic didn’t work for her every time. Sometimes a man might find it too intimidating. Or she might have read them wrong, misinterpreted their desire. But mostly she was spot on. And Annalise knew she was good-looking. Not in the traditional, symmetrical features kind of way, but in the big lips, big eyes kind of way. They were almost too big – another fraction of a millimetre and she’d have a cartoon-like face, especially with such a small frame, the body of a twelve-year-old boy. But she knew how to make it all work for her. Catch her at certain angles and an onlooker might say she was an ugly red-headed duckling, but with the right lighting, the right hair, the right facial expressions, she knew she was hot as fuck. And it all came down to confidence anyway.

  After Annalise left Poppy and Will together at the pub, she summoned Lawrence to meet her for a late-night rendezvous of their own.

  Jess – Hey girls, would love to get some opinions on this short story I wrote this afternoon. Warning you now, it features explicit content – but then again, we’re all grown women, so I don’t see why anyone would have any issues with it. It’s up on my blog – link below. Looking forward to your thoughts.

  Viv – Wow Jess, just had a quick read. Very . . . detailed! Some great imagery in there.

  Annalise – HOLY SHIT!! Woman you are a serious deviant! In need of a cold shower after reading that. You kiss your mother with that mouth?!

  Bette – Not my cup of tea I’m afraid. But well done for giving it a crack.

  CHAPTER 10

  Annalise found that it happened every now and then. A bloke couldn’t accept that a woman was running the warehouse.

  Poppy had just headed back upstairs after getting her failed night with Will off her chest. Most of the delivery guys knew Annalise and, just like her staff, she had their respect, because she demanded it from them, she forced it out of them. The truth was, Annalise had actually lied on her resume to get this job. She loved being the boss of a bunch of men and she loved that some of them were in fact more qualified than she was. Besides, in her opinion, considering how many unqualified men held jobs above more capable women, Annalise was simply balancing the scales.

  It was the larger, beefier blokey-blokes who accepted her the most readily. They were the ones who were quickest to guess she was stronger than she looked. They were the ones who didn’t offer to lift the boxes down off the truck for her because ‘she wouldn’t want to break a nail, would she?’

  But it was inevitable that a man who didn’t so easily accept Annalise’s position would show up once in a while.

  The new delivery guy was weedy. A short, skinny man in a baseball cap with a pinched face and a dirty, dirty pornstar mo. As soon as he spotted Annalise walking out of the office towards him he started giving her the once-over. Eyes scanning up and down.

  ‘What have you got for me?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, I got plenty for you.’ He said it low and under his breath. Enough that he could pretend she wasn’t meant to hear it, but
loud enough that she could. Annalise glared at him and his tone switched.

  ‘You want to get your boss for me, love.’

  ‘I’m the boss down here, love. What’s the delivery?’

  He snorted. ‘No, sweetheart, I need the warehouse manager. Off you go and find him.’ He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and tapped the bottom to feed one out, and stuck it to his lower lip while he fished in his pocket for a lighter.

  There were days when Annalise was in the perfect frame of mind for someone like this. Days when she could say all the right things. When she could sass his arse from here to Far North Queensland and back. And there were other days – far less frequent ones, but they existed nonetheless – where she just wasn’t in the mood for this kind of shit.

  She stepped forward and snatched the cigarette out of his mouth. ‘I’m the fucking manager down here and there’s no smoking in my warehouse,’ she snapped.

  A couple of her staff were sitting on top of some crates having a smoko break just a few metres away and the delivery guy scowled as he reached out for his cigarette.

  ‘Oh yeah, and what are those boys doing over there? Playing the fucken flute? On the rag are you?’ he added, a glint in his eye as though he was pleased with his slight. ‘Gimme me ciggie back, sweetheart, before I start to get eye-rate.’

  Annalise squeezed her fist tight, crumbling the cigarette in her hand and letting the tobacco sprinkle to the concrete floor. She watched as his face hardened and his hands twitched by his side. He leaned in even closer.

  ‘You better stop playing, girl.’

  ‘Why?’ Annalise whispered. ‘You the type of man who likes to hit women? You the type of man who feels big if he can make a woman cry? The type of big man who only thinks a woman is worth anything if she’s on her knees?’

  She could feel the eyes of her staff on the two of them, watching as the hostility continued to grow. They knew Annalise liked to deal with dickheads like this on her own, but something about this guy was making the hairs on her arms stand up. She’d read once that goose bumps were a leftover reflex from when humans used to have fur all over their bodies. When you were scared and that fight or flight instinct started to kick in, the goose bumps caused the hairs all over your body to stand on end, to make you appear bigger to your attacker.

  His voice became a low growl. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are? I’m startin’ to think someone needs to pull you and that tight little arse of yours in line.’ As he spoke his arm snaked around her waist to grab at her backside and he squeezed, hard, fingernails digging into flesh. It was meant as a demonstration of dominance and it caused bile to rise up in her throat. In a flash her knee was up, striking him sharply in the balls. In the meantime, the warehouse guys had jumped to their feet and were on their way over to step in, but the bloke was already doubled over in pain by the time her would-be saviours were around her.

  ‘She’s fucken crazy,’ he gasped, his hands pressed between his legs as he looked around at the guys and waited for their sympathy.

  ‘She was easier on you than I would have been,’ said Bruce, one of the forklift drivers who was built like a boxer. ‘You all good?’ he added to Annalise.

  ‘Fine,’ she said.

  ‘I could have you up on assault charges,’ the driver said.

  Annalise looked around at the others. ‘You blokes see me assault this nice gentleman here?’ she asked.

  ‘Nope. Saw this grub put his hands on property that doesn’t belong to him though,’ said Bruce. The others all nodded in agreement.

  Then Annalise heard footsteps and she turned around to see Lawrence walking swiftly towards them. He’d been texting her all morning, making crude jokes about last night and trying to get her to agree to another tryst this evening. She’d ignored them. She wasn’t doing it to be cruel, she was just trying to keep things low-key. He must have grown tired of waiting and decided to come and charm her face to face.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked.

  ‘This dickhead tried to give her shit,’ said Bruce.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Annalise said before Bruce could answer again. ‘Bruce, deal with this delivery for me, would you?’

  Annalise grabbed Lawrence by the hand and started leading him through the warehouse stacks, past the spot where she and Poppy had hidden out that morning and all the way to a rarely used back storeroom.

  ‘What happened?’ Lawrence asked again. ‘Did he try to hurt you? Do I need to do something about that guy?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Annalise replied. ‘It was nothing, I can take care of myself.’

  ‘So what exactly are you dragging me back here for?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Annalise asked as she pulled Lawrence into the storeroom, closed the door behind them and shoved some boxes up against the door.

  ‘Here?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, here,’ she replied.

  She knew it was weird to drag him away like that in the middle of the day, right in front of her staff when they could easily guess what she might be up to. Yes, it was her style to be sexually aggressive, but this was taking things one step further. All she knew was that the incident had put her on edge. She might have joked to the other guys that she had it all under control, she might have acted cool and calm and confident. She might have told them all she could take care of herself. But when that guy had invaded her space, for just a moment before he’d reached around to grope at her body, she’d thought he was about to do something else. And she’d seen another man’s face, in another time. She’d seen the back of a meaty hand as it was lifted into the air, watched it as it swung down towards her. And it felt like an injection of adrenalin had coursed through her body.

  Now Annalise was restless and full of pent-up energy and aggression, and Lawrence was going to help her let it all go.

  NOP MESSAGES

  Inbox

  Belinda Martin

  The concept for this group is horrible. You should all be ashamed of yourselves. Women are supposed to support one another and build one another up. Not tear each other down based on our life choices. I hope you all take a good, long, hard look in the mirror.

  CHAPTER 11

  Annalise was wishing she had more vodka to get her through this crappy Christmas movie when her phone buzzed. She saw that it was another message to the NOP admin account. On her right, Poppy was looking at her phone as well. She tensed up and waited. But Poppy didn’t open the message, she ignored it. Annalise pretended she needed to go to the bathroom and crept out of the cinema to take a proper look.

  She found a seat in the foyer and checked it out. It was more of the same, but this time, some chick named Belinda had got wind of the group.

  Once again, Annalise decided to go with delete and block. There was absolutely nothing wrong with NOP. Nothing wrong with what they were doing or saying. But how did yet another woman know about them? And why did these women all think NOP was so awful? It must have been due to their steadily increasing member numbers. The more members they had, the more chance there was of some woman joining NOP and spilling the group’s secrets to a friend or a co-worker – maybe just for the fun of sharing some juicy gossip about the new, exclusive Facebook group. But how could she figure out where the leaks were springing from?

  She put her phone away and headed back into the theatre to join Poppy for the remainder of the movie. At least the good news was that her friend still had no idea anyone was out there taking issue with NOP. And Annalise planned on keeping it that way.

  * * *

  Let’s hook up tonight.

  It was the following afternoon and the text message came through as Annalise was finishing up her work for the day. There were a few things that bothered Annalise about it. Number one – she usually instigated things with Lawrence. Number two – there was no question mark on the end of the message. She didn’t like that he was trying to be all ‘commanding’. There was only room for
one alpha in this . . . well, you couldn’t call it a relationship. In this . . . whatever this thing was. Anyway, the point was, they’d clearly established the fact that she was the one calling the shots. And number three – it was pretty damn presumptuous of him to assume she didn’t already have plans this late in the day. Insulting actually. Oh, and one more thing – he was right upstairs in the office; he could have walked downstairs and asked her in person.

  She had her ‘read’ receipts on, which meant he’d know she’d seen the message. So Annalise purposely sat on it for a good ten to fifteen minutes, letting him sweat. Eventually she typed back a single-word message.

  Doubtful.

  His reply came back instantly.

  Why doubtful? You know you want me.

  She sent him an emoji of a face yawning.

  Seconds later he sent a string of emojis: a red heart, a hand with the index finger pointing sideways, and then another hand making a circle shape followed by two more hearts.

  The message was more than clear.

  Keep it classy would you? She flicked back.

  Classy is boring. Blatant innuendo way better. Want a lift home?

  Poppy gave her a lift home when she could, but she often worked late and Annalise didn’t always want to hang around waiting for her, which meant taking public transport. She had to admit that tonight she wasn’t particularly looking forward to heading to the train station and being crammed onto the busy platform with all the sweaty business suits.

  You can give me a lift. But not saying you can come in.

  Oh you’ll want me to cum in.

  She sent back a ‘sick’ green emoji face.

  He responded with a laughing emoji.

  Dammit. Annalise knew it: he had her. She was flirting with him and she was going to take him home and screw him, and that meant he was going to have all the power.