Hang on, what?
"I get that it seems like a timesaver," he interrupted coldly, "but actually, if you want me to have any idea what you're talking about, you really need to bring me in at the start of an argument."
Typically, she was undeterred and acted like he hadn't spoken at all as she hit him with, "She's obviously into you, but she's just a kid!"
"Who?" He asked, genuinely bemused by the angle she was coming at him. "Millie?"
That seemed to draw her up short for the briefest moment before she snapped, "Millie? Who the hell is Millie?"
"She's-" he stopped abruptly, catching himself. "No, who are you talking about?"
"Livvy, obviously."
"Livvy? Taylor's girlfriend?" He looked across the bar at the person in question, the one who was currently leaning against his workmate's side and quietly sipping on her drink. "What are you talking about? She's into me?"
He turned back to Lara to see that she had followed his gaze, and that her usually plush lips were pulling flat into a thin line. "No," she ground out after a few seconds, "apparently not."
She was clearly discomfited, something he rarely got to see. Lara sexy, he got. Lara angry, he got a lot more. Lara uncomfortable? Not so much. To be honest, he enjoyed watching it, although his enjoyment was doomed to be short-lived as she stepped back, muttering, "Ignore what I just said."
With no more explanation than that, she span from him and walked off. For a split second he just stood there and watched her go, then, with a start, he came back to himself and started after her.
She was out of her mind if she thought she was getting off that easy.
Chapter 6 – A Pyre of Wanton Flames
Fletch had followed me; I could feel him against my bare shoulders as heavy and real as if he had his hands firmly planted on them.
Well of course he'd followed me. I'd cracked myself open in front of him, just slightly, and he wanted to jam a crowbar in the gap and see what else was on offer. I knew this because I would've wanted to do the exact same thing in his position.
I'd been so stupid jumping to the conclusion that he was Livvy's boyfriend; two seconds thought and I would've realised how unlikely that was, but that wasn't what stung the most. The point was that, even if he had been Livvy's boyfriend, it shouldn't have stuck a lit firecracker up my arse and made me march over for an explanation. I hadn't just humiliated myself to Fletch, I'd humiliated myself to me.
Knowing I was being hunted down for a further prodding of that humiliation, I did what any self-respecting woman would do under the circumstances; I headed through the crowd for the loos. Big Blue bounced against my hip as I went, helping to clear the path, but I was too late.
Fletcher was nobody's fool, and the sign for the ladies' had barely come into view when he rounded me, cutting off my escape.
One of these days I would figure out what it was about the two of us that meant that, even in a room full of people, we could become so totally isolated, and then I'd make it stop. For now, however, Fletch and I might as well have been alone such was his ability to draw me into his bubble and shut out everything and everyone else.
"So, the 'ignoring what you said' deal, how far back can I take that?" He asked, opening the proceedings, and I concentrated hard on the smooth weight of the glass still clutched in my hand rather than the dry humour he was using at my expense.
"It's very much a 'last five minutes' thing," I replied curtly. "Don't worry, all the times I've called you a self-righteous prick still stand."
"What a relief." The edge was taken off his sarcasm as he caught the eye of someone across the room and raised a hand in greeting, sending over the sort of easy smile I'd never been on the receiving end of.
I tried to take advantage of this lack of focus, by sliding a step closer to the bathroom, but that just took me closer to Fletch, a point he seemed to take particular note of as he returned his attention to me.
I refused to step back again, and it seemed he wasn't going to shift either, so there we were, uncomfortably close, but too stuck by our pride to do anything about it.
I knew coming tonight would be a bad idea.
"So, go on then," his voice was softer now we were closer, but still laced with genuine amusement at my obvious stuff-up, "we both know I'm not going to let this go. What was that crap about me being more experienced than Livvy?"
It was one of those rare moments where I was crosser at myself than I was at him, I couldn't believe one mad moment of thinking he was dating Livvy had led me to practically outing her to him. If there was one person I made a point of keeping my good deeds private from it was him, and I was raging at my lapse. In a way this helped as I ground out, "None of your business."
"Except clearly it is," he pressed, either not feeling my 'back off' vibe or, more likely, just ignoring it. "I don't see you attacking anyone else here."
"Give it time," I growled, thinking about how Merry and Stefano had pushed me into coming to O'Malley's and, therefore, into this.
He sighed, and I felt his breath brush against my collarbone, coaxing a wave of goosebumps to glide down my arms. As I tucked the offending limbs round behind me so he wouldn't see the effect he'd had, he made the whole thing worse by leaning in even closer and murmuring, "Give it up, babe, and just tell me."
It was payback for all the times I'd stuck my tits out at him, or sent him one of my secret little smiles. He knew exactly what the lowering of his voice and the wave of his fresh sea scent did to me and was using it as a weapon. Not having a bar of that, I pressed a finger to his forehead and firmly pushed him back.
"I get that your head is mainly filled with salt water, surfer boy," I said crisply, incredibly glad of the heels that put us at eyelevel, "so I'll make this simple. It's nothing. To do. With you."
He stared at me for one long moment, a look that felt like an x-ray, and then his whole demeanour changed and he finally took a couple of steps back. The room felt suddenly chilly.
"You've roped her into being one of your bloody good deed saps, haven't you?" He asked flatly. "Christ's sake, Lara, she's a nice girl, don't get her caught up in our bullshit."
"Excuse me?" I said incredulously, my head whirling at the sudden shift in his attitude and sure I'd not heard him right. "Our bullshit?"
He had the cheek to laugh then, a bitter, disbelieving laugh. "Really?" He asked. "You're going to play dumb with this?"
It occurred to me then that talking to Fletch was like coming into an art-house movie halfway through; there was plenty of drama and intense looks, but not a hell of a lot of anything that made any sort of sense.
"I'm not playing anything," I said through gritted teeth, "I have no idea what you're talking about. What I'm doing is for her, for Livvy, it's nothing to do with you or me or, God forbid, some imaginary us."
He shook his head, frustrated in a way that, to my mind, he had no right to be.
Alright. Enough.
"You got something to say, Fletch," I growled, tipping my head up for that little bit of extra height, "just say it."
"It's the same stuff I've been telling you for years. This 'good deed' stuff," and he actually had the cheek to roll his eyes, "isn't about your recipients, it's about you, always about you."
"And you?" I prompted, still waiting to see where he supposedly came into this.
"Yeah, because you know what?" He snapped. "This isn't high school anymore. No-one here should really give a root about us, they should've moved on. But, every time someone sees you doing your do-gooder crap they're reminded why you're doing it, and it's not just what you did they remember, it's what we did."
Oh, so that was his problem. The niggling and the pushing started to click into place and the look I sent him then was made up of the purest form of loathing.
"What's up, champ?" I asked in mock concern. "Having trouble owning up to what you did to Salida?"
To me that was my trump card and I expected him to fold, concede, back the hell off. Instead,
he levelled a long, quelling look at me, and his voice when he spoke was solid and steady.
"No, I cheated on her," he said, "I'm clear on that. I owned up to it, I apologised, and I dealt with it. Three years ago. But, that's not what I'm talking about."
Someone pushed past on their way to the loo, jostling my shoulder, but it would've taken a bulldozer mowing into us to break our locked gaze then.
"No?" I wanted to pull back, but I was stuck there as he murmured,
"You know it's not."
Don't push it, I ordered myself with a hint of desperation, let him have this one and just walk away. But I couldn't, I never could.
"Go on."
His jaw clenched and, for the first time in the conversation, he looked uneasy and hesitated before saying, "You don't need me to say it, Lara."
"Chickening out?"I asked archly, outwardly confident whilst inwardly I begged, don’t say it...
But, obviously baited, he did, and in sensational style, leaning back in close so that every poisonous word he uttered burnt against my skin.
"Fine, you want me to...? Fine. Here it is, you and I both know we could've got over what we did to Salida years ago if we hadn't been doing it at the exact same time that Donny died."
He could've smacked me across the face and it would have hurt less.
"Oh my God, it's so intense over here!"
I was struggling to breathe, struggling even to stand, but in the next second Stefano's hand landed firmly in the small of my back, guiding me back upright and cutting through the moment with the swift finality of a guillotine.
"No, but seriously, check it out, I took a picture." Stefano whipped his phone up between us and, sure enough, there was a photo of Fletch and me, our heads bent closely together, tension written into every line of our bodies.
"I'm going to set it as my wallpaper," Stefano claimed in sing-songy enjoyment. "That way, every time I turn on, I'll get turned on, you see?"
I could see what he was doing, and I appreciated it, so I made an effort to rally and mutter, "I've worked hard at my degree, so it's a shame I won't graduate when I'm done for your murder."
"Don't be silly," Stefano rubbed my back, a sure congratulation on my speedy recovery, "if you ever indulge in your homicidal urges they'll never find the body. Right, Fletch?"
Without someone to hold him up, Fletcher seemed to be struggling to keep up with the Stefano-induced change in the mood and looked between us in genuine confusion.
"Mate, do I know you?" He asked slowly, obviously trying to make sense of the situation, only to be rewarded with a saucy wink and a seductive,
"Only in your sexually confused dreams." Stefano let that settle in for a moment and then chirped, "Right, well, I'm going to steal the lovely Lara away from you now, handsome. You can't monopolise her all night you know."
And then, with a firm hand, I found myself being steered away.
Despite myself, I turned back as Stefano propelled me forward and was just in time to see Fletch ball his right hand into a fist and slam it against his thigh.
I hope it hurt.
"There's sexual tension, babycakes, and then there's immolating yourself upon a pyre of wanton flames," Stefano murmured into my ear as we made our way through the crowd. "For your own health and safety I suggest you learn to distinguish the two. I won't always be around to save you. Here," he shoved me down into a seat at a free table and then clinked the glass in his hand against the one in mine. "Drink up."
It was good advice and I mechanically lifted the tumbler to my lips and took a pull. The strange duality of the cold of the ice and the warmth of the alcohol seared down my throat and I sat up a little straighter.
"Thanks," I said tersely, not looking at Stefano, but instead at my cherry red shoes. I took my confidence from their stylish lines and the way they expertly cupped my feet and so barely flinched at the sympathy in his tone when he replied,
"No worries, darling-heart."
I didn't do well with sympathy, it was too closely aligned to pity in my mind, so I was relieved for the second time that night when I forced myself to look up again and saw Livvy approaching. She arrived next to me, full of breathless excitement and with her hand firmly wrapped around the elbow of a gangly, blonde haired boy who bore an almost startling resemblance to a giraffe.
"Hi again!" The thrill in Livvy's voice indicated she’d apparently missed the Fletcher drama, for which I was incredibly thankful. "This is my boyfriend, Taylor, I told him he had to meet you."
"Hey, how's it going?" Taylor raised a hand as if to wave, then changed his mind midway through and scratched at his neck uncomfortably. My reputation obviously preceded me.
"Just awesomely, this is the best night ever." I made no attempt to hide my sarcasm, but whilst I heard Stefano quietly clear his throat in apparent censure, neither Livvy nor Taylor seemed to notice.
"Taylor works with Fletcher," Livvy revealed, a few paces behind the plot of the night. "That's how I knew who you were talking about earlier."
"Wow, fancy that."
I was in fine form at my most unpleasant, but Livvy and her paramour seemed unnervingly immune.
"You know Fletch?" Taylor was suddenly animated, grinning first down at Livvy and then across at me. "He's a good guy, hey? I don't know how many times he's saved my arse by taking my shifts at the centre. He's one of those guys you can go to whenever, you know?"
"Like a male version of you," Livvy chimed in and I stared at her in complete horror.
"You can't come to me whenever," I said shrilly, "don't even think about it. And I am nothing like Fletcher."
"Lara-" Stefano started to say, but where Livvy's appearance had originally calmed me, the suggestion that I was anything like Fletcher was pulling at my loose threads and I was starting to unravel.
"Excuse me." I stood abruptly and set the drink in my hand down onto the table with a loud click. Stefano half rose, but I dodged his consideration and then, for the second time that evening, I made for the toilet. There wasn't going to be any stopping me this time, though.
Say what you like about O'Malleys, but I was able to barge straight into the bathroom without having to queue for which I was indescribably grateful. I headed for a free cubicle, slamming and locking the door after me and then flipping down the lid of the toilet and dropping onto it. I could feel my shoulders rising and falling with the urgency of my breathing, but knew it had nothing to do with my headlong flight from the table.
It was only Fletch who could unsettle me to the point of hiding in the bathroom like a bullied school girl, but this singularity didn't make it any better.
If I'd thought I was upset at his mention of Donny the previous week, it was nothing compared to the soul crushing Fletch had accomplished that night. Most days I pretended my brother had never existed, every single day I pretended I hadn't left him and my mum alone when it most mattered.
Overwhelmed, I reached for my phone and scrabbled against the touch pad, accessing my message bank so my mum's panicked voice from three years ago filled my ear. It was masochistic, painful, completely self-destructive...and the only thing that pushed me back to the surface in the moments I felt like I was drowning.
Where are you? Where...? God, he's died, Lara, he's gone and I was the only one here with him. He would've wanted...Come home, Lara. Now.
One listen was all it ever took to get me back on track.
Blinking rapidly, I swapped my phone for a pen and pulled Big Ben out of my bag, flicking to the back pages.
People, guys especially, seemed strangely offended by my insistence on using actual physical pen and paper rather than some fancy gadget, but they didn't see the catharsis it offered. Pressing buttons on a touch screen had nothing on the scoring out of ink on paper.
And so it was, in my final step to recovery from what Fletch had said, the truth that I tried never to face head-on, I allowed my spite to pour out. I couldn't have said exactly what I wrote, I never re-read my rants, but the gen
eral gist was thus:
Fletcher Townsend is a cruel, self-righteous coward. He's just like his son-of-a-bitch father and, were I his mother, I would've left years ago rather than see the kind of pathetic waste of space my son grew up to be. He has no idea what’s going on with his sister, too busy surfing and having a good time to give a damn about what she’s going through. All of his posturing about being a good friend to Donny was really about trying to get with me or at me. Donny died without us and it was Fletcher's fault.
And that was just the start of it. Not pretty, but to be fair, also not for anyone but me.
Once I was done I'd filled almost an entire page with hate and I could breathe again.
"La-La?"
And just in time too, it seemed, as Merry's voice suddenly echoed in the tiled room.
I did a quick wipe over my face to make sure no traitorous salt water had strayed down my cheeks and then stood. I flushed the toilet for effect, shoved Big Blue back in my bag and then exited the cubicle to meet Merry's concern head on.
"Hello," I said with a good approximation of my usual tone. "Stalking me into the toilets, now? Bit full on, even for you, don't you think?"
I turned on the tap and washed my hands, focusing on this activity rather than her eyebrows raised in obvious scepticism of my calculated front.
"Give it up, La-La," she sighed. "Stefano told me that you and Fletch had a run-in, and I know how much those freak you out."
"So you rushed into this cess-pit of strange smells and sticky patches in the hopes of finding me collapsed and wailing?" I grabbed some paper towel and dried my hands noisily. "Very noble of you, but as you can see, I'm fine."
Regardless of the less than sterile conditions, Merry leant against the sinks and fixed me with a no-nonsense stare as she said, "Oh sure, I can see you're your usual jolly self."
"Smile and the world smiles with you." I bared my teeth at her in an estimate of a grin and she tutted before turning solemn again.
The Do-Gooder Page 7