by Tilly Delane
Fucking asshole.
Blinding anger rises in me for the millionth time in the last few hours.
I need to get out of here.
I step into the revolving tinted glass door and a couple of seconds later it spits me out onto the street in the glaring midday sun. There is a moment of total disorientation when I try to consolidate the hours that have passed since we called the police with the day before me.
I yawn.
I’m so fucking exhausted it’s unreal. I haven’t felt like this since my time in ER.
And I’m starving.
My stomach growls at the idea of eating itself.
I look up and down the road, but there is nothing here other than residential houses for as far as the eye can see. Diagonally opposite, on the other side of the road, a sign outside one of the houses advertises it as a Quaker Meeting House and for a moment I am tempted to knock on their door. Ask them for a bowl of oatmeal. I’m that hungry. Nausea makes my head go woozy for a moment and I shut my eyes.
Where the fuck is Rowan?
Halfway through the thought, a horn honks as a car approaches. I open my eyes again, only to see Alan’s SUV pull up next to me, Silas riding shotgun. The back door opens and Rowan folds himself out of the car. He comes to my side just in time to steady me.
“Whoa, hey there, beautiful lady. Feeling a bit wobbly?”
I nod as I lean into his hug.
He smells like home and safety and Rowan.
And like burger.
He definitely smells like burger and fries.
I step back in the hug, swallowing.
“You went for food?”
He nods, his hands still firmly on my hips.
“Yeah, they said you’d be a while longer, so we went to get some food. You hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Well, hop in then. I hope you like a good old-fashioned cheeseburger,” he says, grinning. “’Cause that’s what I got you.”
I take a moment before I follow my instincts to dash into the vehicle like an alley cat in search of scraps and stare into his eyes.
“I think I love you,” I tell him.
Because I do. I think. I still don’t really know what that means but, actually, I don’t care any longer. I do know I want this man. By my side. In my bed. In my heart. Inside of me. Not just for now but for always.
He grins.
“Yeah, yeah that’s what they all say when you bring them food.”
Then he turns serious, more serious than I’ve ever seen him. He leans down to plant a sweet, gentle kiss on my lips. Totally not a Rowan kiss, yet entirely him. I can feel his smile as he mumbles against my mouth.
“Glad you realised.”
He holds me firm when I want to step back and slap him.
“I think I love you, too,” he adds, seriously.
Then he laughs, steps out of our embrace, turns me in the direction of the open car door and slaps my butt.
“Go eat, woman.”
Diego
“Drinks are on me,” I say as we pile into my bar, The Cockatoo.
It’s such a shite name, but I’m stuck with it. It’s too successful to change anything. Cocktail drinkers like naff crap like that.
“I bloody well hope so,” Rowan answers, and walks straight to the bar, plonking his butt onto my bar stool.
People in this town have been dropped for less.
This fucker, though, walks in a cloud of protection he isn’t even aware of. Normally, I don’t give a fuck about family connections, but Rowan is the brother of my best friend and that counts for shit in my head.
Said best friend, also blissfully unaware of his status in my life, trails behind, waiting for their women to return from the loo, where Raven and Grace made their first pit stop when we walked in.
Silas is like that.
Old-fashioned British gentleman through and through. Women are seated first and all that.
Mind, if I’d had Sheena as my mum, I would probably have turned out the same.
Instead, I had my mother.
Who never ever forgave me for eating my twin.
Yeah, no shit.
Oleandra Benson’s, my beautiful but dumb as shit mother's, first and only pregnancy was marred by the fact that initially there were two heartbeats, but at twelve weeks, there was only one foetus left. They call it vanishing twin syndrome. My mother calls it ‘the devil ate his sister’. In her head, my twin would have been the girl she longed for. A little dress-up doll with angelic hair and blue eyes. I got the blond hair but grey eyes and, God forbid, a penis.
Bitter much?
On the plus side, my mother giving me the middle name Diego, which means supplanter in her native tongue no less, provided me with a ready-made town moniker once I stepped up to the bar at eighteen, and took over the fledgling fight club my father had created.
It just sounds so much better than George.
My dad and his Britain First bollocks. I hate nationalists. Especially ones that marry a Spanish girl. Especially ones that get the Saint George’s cross tattooed on their chest. That’s Saint George as in that Roman soldier, who was born in Turkey to Syrian parents, killed in Palestine and buried in Israel, and who never set foot on the British Isles.
Fucking brain-dead idiot.
He was well pissed off when I started calling myself Diego.
Apparently, that’s not respecting my English heritage.
But eventually, even his two brain cells had to admit that it’s a great name.
And at the end of the day, it’s all about image.
Even ‘keepin’ it real’ is just a fucking illusion.
A hearty slap on the back wakes me from mulling shit in my head.
“You coming, boss?” Silas asks as he and the women move past me to join Rowan at the bar.
I hate that he calls me that, even in jest. He might still be on my payroll as a bouncer, but he’s my friend for fuck’s sake.
The few decent childhood memories I have, all have Silas in them. They’re usually of us, sitting on the threadbare carpet in Sheena’s old house on Albion Hill, watching Tarantino films, eating microwave popcorn and feeling like the shit because we were watching over 18s.
Little did I know then that I’d grow up to be in a fucking Tarantino film. I was still young enough then to think my father was a decent, if a little shady, guy. Oh, sweet innocent little George, where art thou?
I love that in my head I can have thoughts like that, and nobody asks me how to fucking spell that shit. Because that’s another one of the major disappointments I am to my mother. I can’t spell for love nor money. In either Spanish or English. My Spanish is atrocious anyway, but I’m majorly dyslexic in whatever language you chuck at me. Doesn’t affect my brain for numbers, though. On the contrary, I’m fucking shit hot with numbers. Much to my father’s delight.
But I really don’t want to spoil the last evening that these guys in front of me and I are going to be together for in a long while by thinking about that cunt. So I snap out of it and follow the others to the bar, where Grace is already arguing with one of the Kellies, who is serving today.
“What the fuck do you mean, you don’t know what a Blood and Sand is?” Grace growls at her then turns to me. “Your bar staff is shit, George.”
I see Kelly’s eyes grow wide at the fact that Grace dares to call me by what is basically my dad’s name. Nobody around here would ever dream of doing that, but these guys, this small round of people, they do. It pisses me right the fuck off, but I let them anyway.
I take off my suit jacket, hang it on a hook below the bar, take the cufflinks out of my cuffs, slip them in my waistcoat pocket, and roll up my sleeves before I deign to shrug at Grace.
“You want a cocktail they don’t know, you go make it yourself,” I tell her.
Grace’s eyes spark up. She used to work at a bar in a hotel in Washington D.C., where she is from, and she’s fucking great at cocktails. I’ve been trying to get
her to work here for weeks now, but she doesn’t want to. I’ll grind her down eventually.
She swans behind the bar and starts doing her thing.
“You can go, serve the other customers, Kelly,” I dismiss my bartender. “Grace’ll take care of us tonight.”
“Damn right, I will,” Grace says as Kelly huffs off.
“I’ll have a...” Raven starts, but Grace cuts her short with a gesture.
“I’ll decide what people are having.”
“Ok,” Raven says, reluctantly.
I have only known her for a few days, but she has issues handing over control, that’s crystal clear.
“But I don’t want to be hung over on the plane,” she tells Grace.
“Ditto,” Rowan says, nonchalantly, as if he flew all the fucking time.
Silas and I shoot each other a look. We know for a fact that tomorrow is the first time Rowan’s ever getting on a plane. And he’s shitting bricks. But we let him have his bullshit.
“You’re not getting on a plane until tomorrow evening,” Grace answers with raised eyebrows. “That’s eight hours to get rat-assed, eight hours to sleep, eight hours to get over your hangover. You’ll be fine.”
She puts the first cocktail she’s made in front of Raven.
“Try that. If you don’t like it, pass it back to me. Waste not, want not, as my mum used to say.”
Raven takes one sip then puts a protective arm around her drink.
“Nope, that’s mine,” she states, and keeps sipping as if it were a religious duty.
Grace laughs and looks at Rowan through eyes like slits.
“Now, what to make for you? Hmm. Maybe I’ll create something specifically for you. Let’s call it the First Time Traveller, shall we?”
Trust Grace to take the piss where Silas and I don’t dare.
Those guys really lucked out with their women.
Am I envious?
Maybe a little.
But I don’t really have time for all that mushy shit right now. And it’s not like I can’t get my dick serviced any time I like. I could go up to Kelly right this minute, snap my fingers and say, ‘Upstairs, now!’ And she’d follow like a good little lamb and let me fuck her any which way I’d please.
They all do.
I’m not an idiot, though, I know they have no interest in me. They want Diego. The danger and the purse.
What they get is a piece of meat between their legs, an orgasm or two and the cab fare home. Depending on my mood, they don’t even get the orgasm. I don’t really give a shit if they get off or not. I learned the hard way that if I do the gentlemanly thing and make them come before I do, they become clingy. I don’t like clingy. It’s a ballache.
But all of that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t give my eye-teeth for being looked at the way Grace looks at Silas right now or kissed the way Raven is kissing Rowan right now, with all she’s got, giving him a thorough taste of her cocktail. My dick starts stirring, just because the two of them are fucking hot to look at.
Live porn to the left, true romance to the right.
None of that is on the cards for me, though. Not now, and probably not ever.
A ruckus at the door grabs my attention, just as Grace puts a suspiciously green drink in front of me.
“What’s the green shit in there?” I ask her, only half paying attention because one of the bouncers at the door is waving me over.
“Absinth,” she answers with a smirk. “The devil drinks Absinth.”
“Cheers,” I say sarcastically, before I leave them to see what’s happening at the door.
“Sorry to interrupt, boss,” Arlo, the doorman, says as soon as I approach. “But there is a girl outside, insists you know her and that she is allowed in, but she hasn’t got any ID and she looks like she’s about twelve.”
I nod and put a hand on his arm. I like this guy. He lost his hearing in one ear in a league fight to Silas and now wears a fuck ugly hearing aid, but he never even thought of ratting on us and is still genuinely pleased to see Silas when they meet. I like the ones that take responsibility for their own decisions. Can’t stand whiners and blamers.
“No sweat, Arlo,” I tell him. “I appreciate the caution.”
Then I step through the door and look at the Polish pixie on the step outside.
I don’t blame Arlo for not letting Kalina in. She doesn’t look twelve, but she doesn’t look her age either. She’s eighteen, nearly nineteen. Her birthday is in a few weeks, as I found out yesterday when Sheena told me that she’s planning a trip to London for the occasion and asked if she could count me in on the theatre tickets. So now I’m going to go see a musical for the first ─ and hopefully last ─ time in my life. Shoot me now.
“Finally!” Kalina huffs when she sees me, and I have to suppress a smile.
She isn’t doing the age thing any favours by wearing denim dungarees and leaving her face makeup-free below her ultra-short pixie cut.
The first time I ever saw her she looked very, very different.
She was wearing a black and green skin-tight, very short sequin dress, six-inch heels, heavy makeup and a choker.
I will never forget that image.
How could I?
I’ve wanked over the memory a hundred times since.
It fucks with my brain when I try to merge the vision in front of me with the girl from that day. It makes me feel dirty, and not in a good way. Especially since I like the girl in front of me almost more than the sequinned jailbait siren.
I’m a fucking pervert.
“She’s cool,” I say to Arlo, and I can tell he is suppressing a look of surprise when I offer Kalina my arm.
She grins triumphantly at him as we walk past. I look down at her tiny frame and I catch a glimpse of the fact that she is wearing nothing under her dungarees other than a black bra.
She’s not even a B-cup, but my dick springs to attention.
There is a special hell for people like me.
I remind myself that she’s all wrong.
Not just the age thing.
I like my women with curves. Big tits, big ass. And long hair I can wrap around my fist. Grace would fit the picture, if she were a brunette. And if she wasn’t with Silas, and if she wasn’t so damn Grace. Raven, too. If she wasn’t...and so on.
But this thin, boyish thing on my arm? Not in a million years. Not even if I wasn’t seven years older than her.
