Like, an off-putting, mentally ill, long time. I waited for a little while to see if he would stop on his own, but when he was still at the eyes watering, gripping the bar for balance stage after a good minute or so, I had to intervene.
I reached forward with my hand and quickly flicked his ear as hard as I could, a trick I hadn't used since grade 7 when Ryan Hayes had been trying to kiss me on the overpass after school. It worked as well as it had then, with Elliot jumping and then immediately clapping a hand to the abused skin.
"Ow!" He complained and I plastered a fake contrite look on my face.
"Sorry, I thought you were hysterical."
"Don't people usually slap someone who's hysterical?" Obviously seeing the contemplative gleam in my eye he hastily added, "That wasn't a suggestion."
"Have you got yourself under control then?" I asked snarkily, seething at having my big reveal so thoroughly laughed off. "Your little crazy episode is over?"
"My little crazy episode?" He repeated disbelievingly. "Did you hear what you just said? Christ's sake, Rox, I've used a lot of excuses to get girls into bed over the years, but trust me on this one, my grandma has never been one of them."
I raised an eyebrow at the way he'd phrased it and he glared at me. "An excuse," he clarified. "She's never been one of the excuses."
To give myself time to answer, I picked up my drink, but instead of taking a sip, I chewed hard at the straw as I considered him.
I really wished in that moment that he was more of a stranger to me. If he was, then I could've claimed he was lying and gone on thinking I was right about what had happened the night I'd slept with him. I'd been so sure that was it! That I'd found out about Nan having had a stroke and when I'd gone over to his place to talk to him about it we'd drowned our sorrows in drink, he’d seen a good opportunity to make Nan happy and...
However we'd ended up in bed together, though, I knew now for sure that it hadn't happened the way I’d thought. Elliot had been too openly and honestly amused by the suggestion.
"Nan had just had her stroke when I came round though, right?" I asked, sure that my maths re the dates hadn't been off at least.
He sighed and then looked away from me and I followed his gaze up to where there was another mezzanine level with tables and chairs scattered around.
"Let's go upstairs," he suggested, turning back to look at me and, when I opened my mouth to protest that he was just avoiding my question, he rolled his eyes. "Come on, Rox, grandmas and strokes? We're being a real downer at the bar."
Looking around and realising that we were surrounded by a sea of people all pushing forward for drinks and easily able to eavesdrop, I gave in and nodded. The list of people who knew I'd slept with Elliot was already quite long enough for my liking; I didn't want it to grow any bigger.
He pushed himself away the counter and I picked up my glass and followed him through the press of people towards the stairs. He looked over his shoulder a couple of times to check that I was following him and I had the urge to duck down and disappear into the crowd, just to see what he'd do. Knowing Elliot he'd probably make a big scene and get some of the staff he seemed so chummy with to drag me out of hiding and back into his presence, so I didn't act on it. Besides, I really did want to see just how many answers I could get out of him when we were safely ensconced in the official 'conversation' area.
Haze was rubbish, but I had to admit the upstairs bit was a good idea. The thump, thump, thump of the music was diluted so you could clearly hear yourself think, and others talk, and the free chair opposite Elliot was comfy despite its self-consciously funky design. A quick glance around told me that most people were deeply involved in, mostly drunken, deep and meaningfuls so Elliot's and my conversation would take place in relative privacy.
"So," I said, as soon as we were settled, "you found out about Nan's stroke the night we had sex?"
"Have you considered going into journalism rather than business?" He asked, leaning his lithe body back in his chair and lifting a hand to acknowledge someone who had called a greeting to him from across the room. "You've certainly got the 'doggedly following a line of questioning' thing down."
"Yes, and your career as a white collar criminal will no doubt be a raging success judging by how well you've got the 'avoiding the dogged line of questioning' thing down," I snapped in reply. As I saw his eyes wandering away again, probably to fix on the chest area of some poor unfortunate girl, I leant forward and clicked my fingers loudly in his face. "Hey, pay attention!"
He sighed then, but stopped playing the mafia boss in his den act and sat forward with an expression that suggested he was actually going to talk to me properly.
"So you heard about Nan, then?"
"Clearly," I said through gritted teeth. "No thanks to you."
He actually had the cheek to look surprised at this. "I thought your mum would've told you."
"Yeah, well she thought that you would. Here's hoping there's never an axe-murderer after me and both you and Mum think the other one's going to warn me." I felt the fear and hurt from when I'd been on the phone with Nan suddenly swell up inside me, making me gasp out, "Seriously, what did you think? That I wouldn't care? That I wouldn't notice and then suddenly, years down the track, I might just happen to mention offhand that I hadn't seen Nan move on her left side for a while?"
Everyone else's conversations across the mezzanine level continued as normal, but there was suddenly a tense buzz in ours. Elliot had stiffened during my outburst, but he waited until I'd well and truly finished before he said simply, "She hasn't got years, Rox."
He might as well have punched me. I sat back in my chair with a whoosh of expelled breath and curled my arms across my stomach. So it was that bad.
"I didn't...I thought..." I stammered, finding myself incapable of forming a proper sentence after hearing something so awful.
"And, yeah, I had just found out when you came round," he continued before I had any time to regroup. "Hell, maybe that was part of it, I don't know. I was already drinking and then you were there and...but I didn't...we didn't... because of it." He took a big slug of his beer and I followed suit with my drink, unable to think of anything to say.
I’d never seen Elliot lost for words like that. In the past I'd only seen his emotional spectrum span calm and amused to vaguely irritated; detached in a 'you can't get to me' kind of way. That I'd clearly got to him that time gave me no sense of achievement.
He obviously misread my grimace of guilt as one of disbelief because he repeated, kind of angrily actually, "Nan didn't come into it."
"I believe you," I said truthfully, and then we lapsed into silence.
It took about two seconds for me to realise that us both having our mouths shut at the same time made me very uncomfortable. Sure, when Elliot talked it was like he was trying to prove it was possible to irritate someone to death, but now, in the aftermath of our awkwardly honest comments, it became blindingly obvious that him not saying anything was even worse. Irritating when he talked and more irritating when he didn't. What a talent this boy had.
I looked over to see whether the quiet was freaking him out as much as it was me, but I couldn't tell as his head was down, his floppy hair (stupid floppy hair, I reminded myself) hiding his expression. Ten to one that was on purpose.
"Even if you didn't do it, do me, to make Nan happy, you've got to admit she is," I burst out, not so much breaking the silence as punching it in the face and stealing its wallet. It worked, though, as Elliot lifted his dark eyes to mine and acknowledged my outburst with a slight quirk of his mouth.
"Yeah," some of the tension left his shoulders and he leant back, reactivating his 'too cool for school' shields. "I think she could only have been happier if I'd developed a debilitating drug addiction."
"Well, it's not too late," I said eagerly, glad to be back on normal ground with him. "I met a girl in the toilets earlier who offered to sell me something if you're interested."
"I mig
ht save my junkie days for Nan's next stroke." He tilted his drink towards me in a sort of salute. "It'll give me something to look forward to."
I was used to having moments of genuine shared emotion with Abi; to have that feeling of joint consciousness with my best friend was not unusual. What was unusual, however, was to catch flippin' Elliot Sinclair's eye and have this same feeling of complete understanding. But there it was. As we looked at each other, there was a fleeting moment where the dark humour slipped away and I saw that he felt what I did; a mind numbing terror that we were going to lose Nan.
I think we were both as genuinely astonished by this as the other. In fact, we were still looking at each other with faint expressions of 'WTF?' when there was a sudden booming shout of, "Sinclair, you bastard!"
Elliot and I both blinked, and, in the next second, three large bodies appeared next to our table. This sudden arrival forcibly reminded me that the impenetrable bubble Elliot and I had been enclosed in had been figurative rather than literal, and I felt suddenly embarrassed.
Looking up gingerly, I recognised the newcomers as three of Elliot and Jonah's old rugby mates. To a man they had thick necks, bulging biceps and a brutishly surprised look on their face as they swung their gaze from Elliot to me. Oh, this night just got better and better…
"Bloody hell," one of them barked, "that's not Cinders, is it?"
"Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail." I nodded at them each in turn, having followed their example with me and never bothered to learn their actual names.
"It is!" The ugliest of the three, patted my shoulder with a big, meaty hand and grinned toothily across at Elliot. "Since when do we drink with the help, Sinclair?"
And there it was. The kind of comment I'd managed to avoid since coming to uni, but which had characterised any time spent with Elliot and his mates in the past. It had taken them less than ten seconds.
"Fairly sure you're not, Henderson," Elliot said flatly and I looked across at him sharply.
I could see that his old friends were as taken aback by his unfriendly tone as I was and I wondered what I'd unwittingly ended up in the middle of. Trouble in rich boy paradise?
"What? You're not going to invite us to sit down?" One of the others asked after an awkward pause, maintaining his jovial tone, but only just as Elliot continued to make no move to welcome them.
"Cinders is probably scared we'll tip over our drinks and she'll have to clean them up," the shortest one guffawed and the other two joined in like he was the height of amusement as opposed to just plain old repellent.
I ignored them, instead watching with mounting confusion as Elliot's expression hardened. What was up with him?
And then, for the first time, I actually properly considered what his life was like now he was at uni. I'd just sort of assumed that it'd be the same as it was when he lived at home; that he'd be doing the same idiotic things with the same idiotic friends, but I reluctantly acknowledged just how unfair that was. My life had changed completely when I came to uni, why couldn't his have to?
It certainly seemed that he didn't have much to do with these guys anymore, a thought reinforced as he said, "You tip over your drinks, you'll be ones cleaning it up." His tone was grim and the mood shifted abruptly from 'boys against girl' to 'boys against boy' which, from my perspective, was not actually an improvement.
I was used to Elliot's friends' patronising comments and, mostly, they just flowed on past me. I couldn't remember Elliot being too bothered about the things they'd said to me growing up, but he certainly looked bothered now.
His change of heart was something I wanted to commit some time to thinking about, but there were other considerations that demanded more prompt attention. Namely the hulks next to us whose trunk-like necks actually seemed to be swelling with outrage the more they thought about their erstwhile friend's dismissive treatment of them.
I really, really didn't want things to get to that stupid, macho stage that made nights out such a pain so I kicked Elliot's shin under the table to turn his scowl away from them and onto me. Then I sat up straighter and said, in my best ditzy, admiring voice, "Didn't you guys win the school championship in rugby? Maybe pretend your drinks are rugby balls and try not to fumble them then we'll all be happy."
It turned out I wasn't very good at the 'ditzy, admiring' stuff and my words came out sounding pretty sarcastic, but it looked like only Elliot had noticed.
"That's good thinking." I found myself being patted again and, although I tried to smile at the perpetrator, I was fairly sure I'd just bared my teeth. "Hey, maybe you should give up the domestic arts to be a diplomat."
OK, not going to lie, that one stung a bit. Their chortles reinforced that the comment had been meant as a joke and that they had absolutely no faith in the idea that I would ever be anything other than a cleaner. I hadn't used any of the 'domestic arts' in years, except to clean my own room, but their words still spoke right to all my fears about never escaping that life.
There was no way I was going to let myself be bested, however, and I kept my voice disgustingly perky as I replied, "Oh us cleaners are always diplomats. Weren't you the one I spent half an hour negotiating with to put your pants back on when you were strutting your stuff outside Mrs Sinclair's study that time?"
"Probably," the other boys said in unison and, for a second, I saw the spark of their old friendship.
"It was the night after the championship," the unfortunate looking one shrugged. "It was a pants off kind of occasion."
"Speaking of the championship, where's our captain, oh captain?" The one I'd called Flopsy looked around. "Shouldn't be hard to spot him, he's about 100 metres taller and wider than everyone else here."
"Good luck with that," Elliot said stiffly. "He'll be shacked up somewhere with his girlfriend."
"Oh yeah? We heard there was a chick in the picture." Cottontail laughed as if he doubted what he'd heard could be true. "What's she like?"
"She's cool, good fun." Elliot could’ve just been being polite, but I didn't think so and I begrudgingly had to allocate him a couple of good guy points. It brought his score up to about -2,356.
"Hot?" Mopsy pressed and I smothered a smile at the twist of awkwardness on Elliot's face at having to make this judgement about his best friend's girlfriend.
"Yeah, definitely," he said, however, rising manfully to the occasion. -2,355.
"Well, who would’ve figured? Old blubber whale scoring a hottie? She must be desperate." Cottontail laughed, the others joined in and everything about Elliot's body language suddenly screamed 'I'm going to punch you so hard.' This wasn't the kind of ribbing between mates that you'd expect; this was pointed nastiness from a bunch of cabbage for brains pricks.
Well, I was done trying to smooth things over now. Knowing that the 'Whale' name was my fault didn't soften me towards them any, and I waited to see how Elliot would settle the point. I was just wondering whether I had the athletic prowess to do a tank roll to escape the ensuing violence when he suddenly got up, slamming his beer down on the table and holding a hand out to me.
"Come on, Rox, let's go dance," he said, in a mockery of a light voice. "You don't mind, do you guys?"
I could see that they did mind, the idea that their old friend wanted to abandon them to dance with the maid was making them look bemusedly between each other and start to posture menacingly. It was definitely time to leave.
Pointedly ignoring Elliot's outstretched hand, I nevertheless obediently got to my feet and went after him as, without another glance at his old teammates, he started to weave his way between the tables towards the stairs. Not liking finding myself just blindly following him again, I hastened my walk to come up next to him.
Flicking a quick look over, I saw that he was pretty much looking how I would have looked if someone had just said something mean about Abi. Uncomfortable at finding yet more common ground with him that night, I went on the offensive.
"I get that you wanted to escape your rubbish friends, but was
it absolutely necessary to drag me into it?" I complained, raising my voice in accordance with the increase in the thump of the music as we travelled closer to the dance floor. "Why didn't you just say you needed the loo or something?"
"What?" He looked down at me, his anger fading as he took on that familiar 'oh Rox is talking again, she's such an idiot' expression he liked to wear. "You wanted to be left alone with them?"
Ah, right…
"You make a valid point," I conceded reluctantly, squeezing in against his side as the crowd got thicker, but moving away as soon as I was able. "Still, we don't need to actually dance." This suddenly seemed very important. I'd come to this stupid club with the intention of clobbering Elliot with the truth as I saw it and then making a break for it. All this other stuff had so not been on the agenda.
"Chicken shit." Elliot tossed the words over at me so offhandedly that it actually took me a second to clock that he was talking about me.
"Excuse me?" I asked incredulously, wondering where the hell that comment had come from. I'd been the one facing up to his bully-boy mates after all.
"You're too scared to dance with me," he said cockily, clearly back to his conceited ways now his friends (ex-friends?) were being swallowed up by the crowd.
"Scared?" I asked crossly. "Where've you got that from?" Unfortunately the last word ended in an embarrassing squeak as we moved through a tight clump of people and he pressed his hand against the small of my back to guide me through them. I jumped at the contact and pushed him away. "Stop that!"
"You don't like me touching you," he repeated pointedly. "Ergo you're too chicken shit to dance with me."
The most annoying thing about Elliot, more annoying than his smirk, worse even than him not saying how I'd ended up sleeping with him, was how often he was right.
It took me longer than I would've liked to reply, but I finally did manage to find my voice to ask snootily, "Well, what does that tell you?"
We were descending the last of the steps down onto the bar level now and he raised his voice a little over the music to ask, "I don't know, what does it tell me?"
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