You’re going to skip the party?’
Such an elegant choice of words from him, truly. Skip instead of anything less loaded, like not able to make or maybe even miss. Skip suggests I’m running out on them; that I’m a flake who can’t hold my shit together – and I’m pretty sure he knows that.
The years have only made him stronger, smoother, better. I bet he could talk Mother Teresa into a gangbang with very little effort at all. Despite the fact that she’s been dead for God knows how long.
‘Well, I’m really not dressed for a –’ I start, but he anticipates that, too. He anticipates it before I’ve even finished talking, and he does it in a way that makes me simultaneously angry and ready to faint on a chaise longue.
‘Here, take my credit card. Get yourself something,’ he says, just like that. As though he’s James Bond or Aristotle Onassis or some other smooth sort of character that I can’t even think of, because seriously no one is like this. And it’s not just me that thinks so because once the offer is made Brandon gives him such a look.
I think he actually starts to tell him don’t, too, but after another shared and silent exchange that I’m not a part of, Brandon glances away, defeated. And all of Tyler’s three-hundred-watt attention is back on me again.
‘Of course, I think you look fine as you are,’ he says, and I wonder if it’s in response to that expression of Brandon’s. Like maybe he was teasing me and Brandon knew it, and now that the look has been exchanged he’s changing tack.
Or at least, I imagine something like that until his gaze slides over me, inch by inch, and that chocolate-box voice drops an octave lower.
‘That jersey is very …’ he starts, but I’m just left to imagine the rest.
Tight, I think, he wants to say tight. If that’s true it only leaves me with one option: he really is staring at my tits. Oh Lord, I think he’s actually staring at my tits, and it’s making my face red and my body go all hot and cold, to the point where I’m actually relieved when Brandon blurts out: ‘OK, well, if she can’t stay for the party she can’t stay for the party. Nothing to do about that! Oh, by the way, Ty, I really need to talk to you in the back about some … thing.’
Even if those ramblings kind of sound like he hates me.
‘Yeah, really, guys, you go ahead and talk about your … thing. I’m just going to head back,’ I say, and I swear, I come this close to escape. This close, before Tyler runs a hand around my shoulders and leans in far too close, to murmur in my ear.
‘Oh no, we wouldn’t hear of it,’ he tells me, while my spine turns to jelly and slides right out of my body. I know what’s going to happen here, before it actually does. ‘You just take my credit card and see Marie at Ebe, she’ll take care of you. And then when you come back we can all have a real talk, about old times. What do you say?’
I say a million different things, in my head – mostly about how smoothly arrogant he now seems, and how awkward this all is, and how bizarrely aroused I feel. But, of course, I don’t voice any of them. It’s impossible to voice any of them when Tyler’s practically kissing the side of my face and Brandon’s looking at me with these big, kind of shocked eyes.
So instead I just go with the safest option: ‘OK.’
* * *
I think, in all honesty, that I intend to get in my car and drive back to Hollingdale without a second thought. And yet somehow I find myself going to this annoyingly pretentious boutique Tyler mentioned, and, sure enough a woman called Marie does help me out – as though he’s done this a thousand times before for a million different women, and all of them fit into these tiny, drafty clothes far better than I do.
I have to come away with a dress that’s more akin to a jumper, in truth, because everything makes me look like some obscene whore of Babylon. And as I drive back to the bar I can’t help wondering if he knew that. He knew everything would cling to my enormous breasts and skim somewhere just shy of my vagina. He knew, and sent me there anyway like some more terrible version of Pretty Woman.
I can hardly bring myself to walk back into the bar, and not just because of the sluttish glimpse I catch of myself in the slick black exterior. The place is packed, and pushing through the crowd in a dress that’s continually threatening to show my gauche panties is not a fun time for me.
Someone fondles my ass, I think – though it could just as easily be a wayward bar stool, brushing against me in the dark. I’m so oversensitised and on the edge of God knows what that I can’t tell the difference, and by the time I get over to the table of honour I think it’s showing.
My face is flushed, my hair is in disarray and, worst of all, my nipples are stiff and poking through the material. I know they are, without looking, because every single move I make flags it up and, even if it didn’t, Tyler’s eyes immediately shift downwards to the offending articles.
I want to die. Oh God, please just let me die. I’m sorry for what I said earlier, about wanting to get through this alive. I don’t at all.
‘Maisie!’ Tyler says, and I can tell he’s had a couple. Not enough to make him drunk, of course, but he’s relaxed back against the booth he’s in, and he’s spread both his arms around the girls on either side of him.
Plus he’s just shouted my name. There’s a clue, right there.
‘Have a seat,’ he tells me, but here’s the thing: there’s not a seat to have. The whole horseshoe shape of the booth has been filled with people I don’t know at all, right down to my once-were-best-friends, Brandon and Tyler. They’re just as unfamiliar as anything else in this place, now that the former’s got a beer and the latter’s got a Scotch, and they’re both just staring at me in equally uncomfortable ways.
Tyler looks as though he’d like to hunt me down, on the Serengeti. Brandon looks as though I just sprouted a third arm, and am about to batter him with it.
‘Oh no, really – there’s not room,’ I manage, but it’s hard to, with those dark eyes trained resolutely on the side of my face. I can tell without glancing at him that he wants to check out what Tyler’s obviously checking out, but Brandon was never like that. He’d never just go for anything.
Tyler had to do it for him, always.
‘Sure there is,’ Tyler says, before adding the very worst thing he possibly could. Worse than Suck my cock, worse than Get those clothes off – because of course, I could get out of orders like those. I’d be completely justified in slapping his handsome face, the moment he said them to me.
But I can’t get out of: ‘Just sit in Brandon’s lap.’
It’s just too innocent, out there on its own, devoid of consequences. All of these staring, giggling girls would think I was an absolute maniac if I acted offended over so slight a thing. One of them is practically in Brandon’s lap, as it is, and she has to vacate when I fumble my way over to him.
And, oh, she gives me such a look as I sit down. Clearly, she was happy where she was, with one leg hooked over Brandon’s and one boob almost in his face. I want to tell her that we can trade back if she wants. I’ll sit where she is, next to a guy whose name turns out to be Patrick, and she can make Brandon incredibly uncomfortable to her heart’s content.
Because he obviously is – uncomfortable, I mean. I try to perch on the very edges of his knees, but I can feel how rigid he’s gone, even so. And though he seems determined to put his hands somewhere normal – like maybe on my waist or my thighs – he can’t bring himself to do it. Those hands hover around one place and then another, never quite settling, before they finally find their place somewhere weird.
Like behind his head.
Without even glancing back, I know how he’ll look. He’s turned himself into a tourist, relaxing on an imaginary beach. All he needs is a parasol and a book and none