Dirty Bad Strangers

by Jade West

  “Shit, Gem,” Tessa soothed. “What do you want to do?”

  The answer was simple. Blindingly simple.

  “I want to go fucking home.”

  ***

  Chapter Twenty

  Gemma

  Chelsea stomped on ahead as though I’d taken a shit in her handbag. Her extensions swished like a cat’s tail, shoulders rigid as I lagged behind. Tessa stayed by my side, uttering the occasional tut at Chelsea’s dramatics, but little else. She disappeared into the kitchen as soon as we were through the door, leaving me to face the jealous wrath of the blonde-haired monster.

  “He was here?! Jason fucking Redfern was here, with you? My fucking God. I can’t believe this is happening to me.”

  “How is this happening to you? I met a guy on chatline, I met up with him, I fell in crazy deep with some stranger I’ve never seen. Nothing’s happening to you, Chelsea.” I dropped myself onto the sofa, tensing against the inevitable ache. Sore pussy, sore ass, sore fucking everything. “This is a horrible nightmare.”

  She paced the room. “Sure it is. I bet you’re happy now, aren’t you? Make you feel good, does it? Snaring my hot footballer? Stealing him from under my nose?”

  I couldn’t help but gawp at her. “I didn’t steal him from you, he wasn’t even yours to begin with, you just jumped on him in a shitty club and lied to the papers.”

  “You knew I wanted him!”

  “I can’t believe this. I’ve just found out that the guy I’m seeing is some famous footballer, married to a bloody girl-band singer, and you’re trying to make this about you! I really like him, Chelsea, don’t you get it? I really fucking like him. Not for a ticket to free handbags, and designer bloody clothes, and front row seats and my face on the news, I actually like him.”

  “Well congratu-fucking-lations, Gemma. I hope you’re really fucking happy together.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Tears. Jesus Christ. I watched her pouty lip tremble. “It should be me and Jason Redfern. Me as the footballer’s wife. Me on the front covers. Not you.”

  “Yeah, I get it. I’m fat and ugly and ginger and no fucking good for anything. Piss off, Chelsea.”

  She didn’t even pretend to disagree. “You must have known it was him. It must have been obvious.”

  “Of course it wasn’t fucking obvious. You think I’d have thought for one second it would be some famous guy at the end of the line? Some famous guy in my flat? In Blackfriars?”

  “He’s so fit, Gemma, you must have known! He’s Jason fucking Redfern!”

  “Lots of people are toned, Chelsea, they aren’t all Premier League fucking footballers!”

  “Not that toned. Nobody is that toned.”

  I shrugged. “I thought he drove a Land Rover, worked for a haulage company...”

  “Nice surprise, then, isn’t it?” she spat. “It’s a fucking Range Rover by the way. He drives an R8, too, and an Aston fucking Martin. He has a twelve bedroom fucking mansion in Surrey, and he’s captained the England squad for the past six fucking years, Gemma. He’s hot, he’s loaded, he’s fucking perfect! He’s JASON FUCKING REDFERN!”

  My stomach lurched. “I don’t want any of it. Just him.”

  She laughed a spiteful laugh. “If you say so.”

  “I DO!”

  Tessa picked the right time to return with the coffees. I sipped mine with my eyes closed, fighting the need to vomit while Tessa tried to smooth Chelsea’s ruffled feathers. I blanked it all out, past caring what the hell either of them thought. I could still feel his touch on me, in me. My dirty bad stranger, my lover in the half light. Why couldn’t he just be a trucker? A trucker would have been fine. A trucker would have been great. Not a football player, please God no.

  “Earth to Gemma! Hello!”

  I groaned at Chelsea’s determination to keep harping on. “What?”

  “You and him, is it serious? Do you love him?”

  I nearly spat my coffee. “Love?! I’m not even sure what being in love feels like.” An icky feeling, I assumed, with a violin accompaniment. Not the kind of flutters he gave me. Hot flutters, dirty, hot, needy flutters. “I like him. More than I’ve ever liked anyone else. Much more.”

  “It’s a low bar,” Tessa said. “Seeing as you only normally screw once and run away.”

  “I don’t run. I just never want to see them again. He’s different.”

  “Of course he’s fucking different!” Chelsea snapped. “He’s Jason Redfern. You can’t be with him, Gemma. Chatline chubby snares football hunk, read all about it. The papers will tear you a new asshole, they’ll rip you to pieces!”

  I had a pretty good idea what that would feel like... “Well, I guess I should message him, then. Tell him I know I’m too fat and ugly, now that I know he’s a Premier League superstar. Maybe I could set you up? Get him round here for a candlelight meal, just you and him. Maybe you can bag him this time. Maybe he’ll realise he really does need a new footballer’s wife.”

  Chelsea’s eyes flew wide. “Are you being serious?”

  Tessa slapped her arm. “Of course she’s not being serious! Jesus, will you stop being such a bitch?”

  “I’m not being a bitch. I’m hurt,” she said. “Betrayed and humiliated.”

  “How the fuck can you feel betrayed?” I said. “Nobody did anything to you.”

  “It hurts, Gemma! You’re standing on my dreams!”

  “You’re welcome to them,” I hissed. “I don’t want them! I just want the man I’ve been seeing, without all the celebrity shit that comes along with him.”

  “You’re fucked, then!” Chelsea said. “You’ll just have to call the whole thing off and find some other pervert to play dress-up games with you.”

  “You’d like that wouldn’t you? That’s so typical of you, Chelsea, you’ve always been the same.”

  “Time out!” Tessa snapped. “We’re supposed to be on the same fucking team here, no pun intended.”

  Both Chelsea and I rolled our eyes. I took out my phone, contemplated sending a message before I realised I hadn’t a clue what to say. I was aching, sore, tired and reeling. My hands were shaking around my coffee mug, head spinning.

  “I’m going to bed,” I said. “I need some sleep.”

  “It’s not even teatime,” Chelsea said. “We haven’t sorted any of this crap out.”

  “There’s nothing to sort out. It’s my crap, I’ll deal with it.”

  “And call it off? With him?” Her mouth pursed in that mean little line again.

  Thoughts piled in. Thoughts of cameras, and journalists, and a sea full of bitches like the ones in the queue at Kings. Bitches like Chelsea. Bitches like his wife, most likely. His wife.

  An impossible, stupid fantasy. An impossible situation.

  But it hurt. Oh, God, it hurt.

  “What choice do I have?” I snapped, battling back tears behind the anger. “Like you said, I couldn’t possibly be with someone like him, and even if I could, I’m not you, Chelsea, I don’t want that shit. I don’t want any of it!”

  I lay on my bed, rooting around my brain for sensible Gemma. The Gemma who doesn’t get emotionally involved and definitely doesn’t want a relationship. If she was in there she was hiding, crouched amongst the beautifully filthy memories of my time with my Jason. I couldn’t shake them off, couldn’t shake him off. I rolled over to grab my laptop. Maybe Google would help bring sensible Gemma back.

  Jason Redfern news. I pressed Enter.

  Liverpool win sees Redfern all set for another season.

  Redfern tops the polls as England’s favourite defender.

  Victory for Redferns as cheating lies come to light.

  April Redfern wears Armani. Shrugs off cheating rumours.

  A decade of April and Jason. Why England is Redfern crazy.

  I was fucking Redfern crazy.

  April Redfern was gorgeous. Ridiculously gorgeous, in fact. She smiled out from every article, a shining beacon of perfect teeth and perfect
hair. A perfect body, too. Chelsea had a point, what did a guy like him see in someone like me?

  I flicked through an album of photos on some shitty entertainment website. April smiled at Jason like he was the only man in the universe. Every photo showed the same adoration, the same perfect smile. My heart dropped. Jason Redfern was as beautiful as his wife. Not in a model way, like the bronzed Adonis you’d find on an underwear advert. Jason was rugged, more human somehow. His eyes were dark and serious, his mouth often pitted in an expression just short of a scowl. He seemed like a guy with the weight of the world on his shoulders, not the Jason I knew, with the dirty, careless laugh at the end of the line.

  I sighed aloud, maybe that’s what I wanted to see. Maybe I wanted to see the unhappiness, the validation of his we hate each other story. Jason and April Redfern sure didn’t look like they hated each other.

  I clicked on a news story from weeks earlier. Burlesque night. Jason held tight onto April’s hand as they made their way through waiting journalists for their restaurant date night. He’d taken her to dinner, then left to stalk me outside Explicit. Make sense of that one, Sherlock.

  I jumped as my phone buzzed, heart pounding.

  Jason: Last night was perfect, dirty girl. You were perfect. Tomorrow night, no blindfold. I hope you’re ready. x

  A kiss. He typed me a fucking kiss. My heart nearly stopped. No fucking blindfold? I typed a reply at least three times before I opted for ignorance.

  As ready as I’ll ever be. What time? xx

  I stared at his picture as I waited for a response, one of him mid-action on the football field, hair wild as he came in hard for a tackle. How on earth could he be that man?

  Jason: 7 p.m. Just like the first time, dirty girl. Door unlocked, only this time you’ll be waiting with your eyes open. I mean it, Gemma. I want you to know me. x

  My thumb hovered over the call button. One simple call. Are you really Jason Redfern, Jason? Are you? I wimped out enough to type an ok.

  An online football encyclopaedia was my next stop.

  Full name: Jason Robert Redfern

  Age: 33

  Place of Birth: Barking, London, England

  Height 1.87m

  Playing position: Defender

  Current team: Kensington Rangers. 2005-current. 423 appearances.

  National team: England. 2006–current. 78 Appearances.

  I read all about my dirty bad stranger, and it was quite a read. The article didn’t skim any details of his rise to the top of the ladder. Signed for Tottenham United as a youth player at thirteen, he’d looked all set to break the Premier League as an early star. But Tottenham had dropped him from the squad at eighteen, after only two appearances in the first team. Change of manager, apparently. I clicked through to some early references, telling the sad story of Jason’s dad’s death the following summer, and then a slow tale of triumph against the odds as Jason made his career in the lower divisions, clawing his way up the ranks until he was signed by Kensington at twenty-two.

  Older pictures of Jason showed the same serious eyes, the same heavy brows of someone determined to prove their worth. He was unstoppable, a demon on studded wings, so they called him. He looked like it, too.

  Then came the personal history. His marriage to Cherry Electric singer, April, to the backdrop of champagne and glossy magazine deals. Their perfect celebrity pairing, all smiles and celebrity endorsements and personal appearances.

  And then scandal.

  My breath hitched.

  Another kiss and tell, years earlier. A woman called Serena, professing how Jason’s interest in perverted sex led her to dogging sites and seedy hotel rooms, where he paid her to have sex with other men.

  His PR team had come out fighting hard, and there was no real evidence. She seemed to disappear from the media without trace, bar an appearance in some z-list cookery programme a few years later, but there were whispers. Whispers of drink and gambling and perversion. Whispers of expensive call girls and bad investments. Whispers of affairs.

  Yet still the Redferns smiled pretty for the cameras, and still the country loved them for it.

  Maybe this was his modus operandi. Maybe there were a hundred chatline girls out there, just like me.

  The thought made me run cold.

  Finally, I checked out the response to Chelsea’s tall tales. It wasn’t pretty. Cherry Electric die-hards were baying for blood, calling Chelsea every name under the sun and then some. They’d picked out photos of her looking less than her best, and lined them up against April Redfern looking far, far from her worst. The result was a bitchfest. A spiteful, hate-filled outpouring of venom, slating everything from Chelsea’s hair, to her willowy body, to her teeth and even her shade of foundation. Crazy. She could be an idiot, for sure, but she was a pretty idiot. For a moment I felt sorry enough for her to go back outside and make amends, but it passed quickly. She’d done more than enough bitching in my direction for one evening.

  I tried to brush the social media tirades aside, but my stomach didn’t rest easy. That could be me. It could easily be me, except the hate would be ten times worse. I couldn’t even imagine my worst picture up alongside April Redfern’s best. The keyboard warriors wouldn’t even be hating, they’d be laughing too hard. And then they’d dig, trowelling up my personal history, my chatline job, my poor family back in Hatfield. His, too. They’d drag Jason through the mud all over again, maybe even Serena would seize another reality TV job on the back of it.

  That didn’t sting so hard as the thought of him smiling brightly for the camera and denying the whole sorry lot of it. Maybe he’d laugh with them.

  No, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t have the chance. The world would never know about this, not any of it.

  I’d make sure of it.

  Sensible Gemma was back in the driving seat.

  ***

  Jason

  I stared at the flowers on the passenger seat. Overkill? Most likely. I picked them up anyway. Steve was already waiting with his keys, a sly smirk on his face.

  “Fucking hell, mate. Roses? Jesus.”

  “Just trying to make a good impression.”

  He laughed as he threw me the keys. “Nothing says romance like flowers after a gangbang. You’ve got it bad, you soft twat. Never seen you like this before.” He looked me up and down. “Christ on a bike, you look like you’re ready to meet the fucking Queen.”

  “Yes, because everyone wears new jeans to meet her Royal Highness.”

  “Haircut?”

  “Fuck off, Steve. I haven’t had a fucking haircut.”

  He grinned his head off. “Hope she doesn’t faint on you.”

  “She can faint, just as long as she doesn’t call the Daily Bullshit hotline and sell me out straight afterwards.”

  “She might.”

  I smiled. “She won’t. Not my dirty girl.”

  “Hope you’re right.”

  So did I.

  I was used to nerves and adrenaline and pressure. Used to a million pairs of eyes on me, judging me, rooting for me, hating me. But this was something else. My heart was thumping as I pulled up outside my dirty girl’s flat. I checked my reflection in the rearview mirror, then ditched my shades. I couldn’t walk in there in a cap and sunglasses, not today. I looked around the yard to check for onlookers, but the place was dead as a dodo. It’d be safe, just a few paces. Roses or no roses? Shit. Did Gemma even like flowers? I guess I’d find out.

  The communal door was open, my path to her flat clear. I took a breath outside.

  Hi, I’m Jason.

  Hi, dirty girl, I’m your dirty bad stranger.

  Hi Gemma, pleased to meet you. I’m Jason Redfern, not quite the trucker you were expecting.

  I pushed the door open.

  Gemma was stood in the kitchen with her back to me. I saw her take a breath, heard the kettle boiling. Not quite the scenario I had in mind. I lingered with the stupid roses in front of me, uncharacteristically nervous. I should have c
harged in and taken her, spun her by the wrists and commanded her to look at the man who’d fucked her raw. I should have slapped her beautiful chubby arse and told her this was just the beginning, that the games would get a lot fucking better from here on in. But instead I stood mute, clutching those flowers like a stupid shield.

  “Hi Jason.” Her voice was so soft.

  “I was expecting you on your knees,” I said. “But I’ll have a coffee if you’re making one.”

  She turned to face me, and swayed for just a second, like someone had thumped her in the gut. “I wasn’t sure footballers were allowed coffee.”

  Shit. My face burned.

  “How long have you known?” God, her eyes, beautiful green eyes, and those freckles. Gemma Taylor was truly beautiful.

  “Only since yesterday. I saw you interviewed on TV. Thought you were in the bloody pub with me, stupid hey?”

  “I didn’t think you liked football.”

  “I don’t. I was out on a forced mission to reintroduce Chelsea to daylight. She’s been having a shitty time since she made up all that crap for the papers. But you know all about that, don’t you?” She smiled, but there was a sadness in it. “I really thought you were a trucker. I was so wrong.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  She gestured in my direction, her dainty little fingers dancing in the air. “Like you could ever disappoint. Look at you. Jesus, Jason, you’re fucking gorgeous. You’re a football star. A fucking pin-up.”

  “And a man, Gemma. My shit still stinks like the rest, you said so yourself, remember? On the phone? You said my shit would still stink, and it does. I bleed, and shit, and breathe and fuck, same as anyone else.”

  “You don’t fuck like anyone else.” Her beautiful cheeks bloomed. “I can’t believe I jabbered on about Chelsea and all that crap and you didn’t say a word. My idiot friend did that to you and I had absolutely no idea. I must have seemed a right moron.”