“In what way?” Kerry asks, peering over her glass at me.
“Do I need to put my hands over my ears?” Jules asks, “In case there’s TMI.”
“Get this,” I point at her, laughing, “the teacher knows text abbreviations. I’m impressed, miss.”
We all chuckle, high on girl time and mojito.
“Well,” I begin, “there won’t be an TMI’ing so don’t worry about that…” I aim my words at Jules. “…but let me just say this, Joe’s like this shiny penny, and Warrick’s this old battered one but with more character. Joe’s like a fresh bit of rain in springtime, Warrick’s like a thunderstorm in Scotland. She,” I point at Jules, “loves the experience in Warrick, whereas I love the innocence in Joe Jones. Maybe one day he won’t be so innocent, but hopefully we’ll still be good for one another…”
“He won’t be innocent for much longer with you around, you dirty cow,” Liza says, trying to defend herself when I reach out and try to mess her hair up.
“He’s so happy right now,” Jules says, “don’t think I’ve ever seen him happier in fact. You should hold onto that as tight as you can.”
“Here, here,” Liza says, raising a glass.
We all raise our glasses and I suggest, “To new beginnings. To rebirths. To friends.”
I’m looking at Liza when I say it and I can see clearly in her eyes, there’s new hope and longing there, a longing she’s been missing for quite some time now. A longing to reconnect with the man she loves, the man who pulled away for a while out of… confusion? I don’t know.
“Same again?” Kerry asks, and she and Babs open their purses to share the second round.
“Aye, aye, cap’ain,” I reply.
While those two are at the bar, Jules remarks, “Where did you get this top? I’d love to know.”
I smile into her eyes. Liza looks on knowingly. I rarely wear the things I make but tonight, this just felt right. I took a plain black t-shirt, sewed on some detail at the top to give it a tux collar, then sewed on some lacy arms. It’s what I like to do – I take tops I hate and make them into ones I love.
“I made it,” I tell her, feeling uncharacteristically sheepish.
“You sew? I didn’t know that.”
“She sews big style,” Liza offers, and I warn her with my eyes to behave.
“Could you make me one, I’d pay?”
I look at her accusingly. “What has Joe told you?”
She holds up her hands. “He’s in and out of the house, he hardly tells me anything. I’d just love the top. Being skinny up top, it’s nice to have something to adorn the bones with, right?”
I look at Jules and recognise how similar we are in looks. It’s a bit Oedipal but did Joe take a liking to me because of my similarity to his stepmother? I decide not. Jules has got a small stature in comparison to mine. I’ve got this butt I’m lugging round everywhere and a big mouth. Jules is so demure in comparison. In fact the comparison stops at our light hair and tallness. She has a ballerina face and I have a face full of mouth and eyes all squashed together because God made me tall but with an odd-shaped small face.
“I’ll make you something but you’re not having this.” It’s a compromise. “Too weird if we’re dating identical men and wearing identical clothes.”
“Surprise me, then!”
“I will…”
The other girls bring over the second jug and I see the wonder in Babs’ eyes, having had another little convo over yonder with the lad she likes. I hope it might turn into something for her, I really do.
IT’S LATE, I know that. Babs has been on her phone all night texting (sure she’ll regret that), Kerry’s necking some guy she met on the dance floor, Liza’s already gone home (missing her babies) and me and Jules are propping up the bar, not sure if it’s time to go home or not. We can’t decide.
We’ve ended up in The Piper as usual (well, usual for me, not Jules) and now we’re horribly drunk on mojitos, shots of rum and some foreign beer I want to call a dirty name, every time we order it.
“Shall we go?” Jules asks, but it sounds more like shull wi gooo.
“Nah, let’s stay. I wanna see how far Kerry’s gonna take this on the dance floor.”
“I’m drunk, need to go home. Warrick told me to ring him to take me home.”
“Should get a taxi and surprise him.”
“Nah, he’d be mad. Wants to come get me,” she says, slurring, a lot more drunk than me.
Well, I haven’t had as many shots as she, who said they tasted the best she’s ever had.
(I think she doesn’t get out much.)
“S’bin such a good night,” she says, holding her head up on her hands.
“Okay, I’m texting Warrick for you.”
I text him: Mrs Jones is waaaaay drunk. She needs picking up.
A few minutes pass before my phone buzzes: Coming.
She’s about ready to put her head on the counter and fall asleep when Warrick arrives, only fifteen minutes after I text him.
“Come on, Mrs Jones,” he says, peeling her off her stool.
“Awww, Warry’s here. Warry!” she shouts. “Comes get me. Isn’t he the best?” she says, squeezing his cheek.
“Good luck,” I tell Warrick.
I look across the room to see Babs still texting wildly on her phone, no doubt Trey or whatever his name was.
I look back to the dance floor and can’t see Kerry anywhere. She’d have had to come by me to get to the exit which lends me the idea that she’s gone in the other direction and taken herself and her new friend for a trip to the bathroom facilities. Once upon a time I’d have done the same. Fuelled by alcohol and hormones, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.
“Hetty?” I hear his voice and turn on my stool, faced with the enormous man that is Nate Ricci, half-Italian, promising doctor, former friend/boyfriend in the making.
“How are you?”
“Good,” he says, “and you?”
“Great. I didn’t spot you… been hiding in a corner all night?”
He grins, his eyes crinkling slightly at the corners. He’s older than me and if I had to guess, I’d say twenty-six. He had a gap year and I don’t know for sure, but I’m thinking doctor training lasts years longer than other training.
“I was having a drink around the corner and someone texted me to say you were here alone, so I thought…”
I doubt he thought anything, probably just his trousers doing all the talking…
“I’m not alone,” I retort, “Babs is ensconced in sex text, Kerry’s shagging a new friend in the toilets and I’ve been out tonight to support a friend who’s now gone back home to her husband. End of.”
He looks somewhat confused. “But you’re sat alone?”
“I am. I’m just taking a few minutes to think. That a crime?”
“Not the woman I knew, that’s for sure.”
“Well things change.”
“Yeah…” He toes the floor. “I heard you’re going out with a footballer. So I’ve heard… anyway…”
“So you care who I’m going out with? I’m flattered.”
Two can play at this game. If he would’ve stopped being so vague at the time…
“I guess I had my chance and blew it, eh?”
“Save the reverse psychology for someone who hasn’t heard it all before, Nate.”
“If you think a footballer could give you more than I could, then go for it. Just saying…”
He has guts to face up to me like this, that’s for sure. I want to tell him that all he was to me back then was a distraction, maybe even a chance to harm myself like I used to, but now he’s here and acting like this – I see that he’s the type who only wants what he can’t have.
“What can I say? He knows what I like and how I like it. He doesn’t fuck about.”
“Unlike me?” He sounds sort of wounded now, like I just cut him.
“Listen. With Joe, it just happened. And if you want to bran
d him the same as other footballers, go ahead. He’s not the same, I know it.”
He stuffs his hands in his pockets. “That’s it then?”
I turn towards the bar and away from him. “You’ll realise one day Nate, that when someone comes along with the same needs as you, you don’t fuck about playing mind games, you just make each moment count. You didn’t make each moment count when you, and I loosely quote, tried to romance me. You wanted to feel me out before you let me dig my nails in. Well love isn’t like that. Love isn’t suspicious or wary from the off.”
“Maybe I got hurt in the past, okay?”
“And for that I’m sorry–”
“Yeah, well… I’m sorry, too. I’ll leave you alone now. Have a nice life, Hetty.”
Nate leaves me wondering… but I can’t turn back time. It’s something none of us can do.
I wish I could honestly say there’s no unfinished business here but there is. Once upon a time I really liked him.
Babs saunters over with her phone in hand. “Hey, was that Nate? Was he giving you grief?”
“A little bit.”
“Forget him Het, just a waster. Listen…”
“Go,” I tell her. “I’ll make sure Kerry exits in one piece, or at least two pieces.” Her and her clothes.
She laughs. “Text you the gory deets tomorrow, my little pumpkin.”
“Ewww, save them babes. I have enough goriness of my own to deal with.”
We hug and she sashays back out, obviously with plans to go and meet that guy. Reckon he’ll be clocking off right about now.
I turn my back to the crowds and nurse my drink, a shot of god knows what. When hands slide up my arms, I pray to god they’re his and not Nate’s. I’m weighing up what I’ll do if it is Nate when Joe whispers in my ear, “Are you drunk?”
“Yes, but not enough.”
I twirl off my stool and launch into his arms, my legs around his waist.
Everything feels good again now I can see him once more. He’s holding me safely in his arms and asks, “Wanna go back to yours and have wild monkey sex?”
“Why Joseph, would a simple girl like me agree to such depravity?” My American South accent cracks him up.
“Come on, then.”
“Oh… I need to make sure Kerry’s okay. Last seen heading to the loos with a random bloke.”
“Check it out then, I’ll wait here.”
I leave him at the bar, watching as he lifts my half-drunk drink to his nostrils, his nose wrinkling at the acidic smell of it.
“Kezza, where you at, girl?”
She and the random emerge, her face smeared, her clothes not exactly how they were earlier.
“We’re getting a taxi, Het. See you on the other side.”
Okay then…
And this was supposed to be a quiet Wednesday night out to help a friend with her marriage troubles.
I walk back to Joe and find him with a different expression on his face. Something’s wrong.
“What’s that look for?” I ask.
“Nothing.” He’s shutting down, I know it.
“No, tell me. I’ve never seen you look so angry.”
“It’s nothing, come on.”
He grabs my elbow but a little rougher than usual. What happened between me going to check on Kerry and coming back? I can’t have left him alone for more than a minute.
We climb into my car, Joe at the wheel, and when he starts driving it’s with much more application of the gas than usual.
We skid to a halt outside my house and I grab his t-shirt to stop him leaving the vehicle.
“You are coming nowhere the fuck near my house until you tell me what transpired in there.”
“Forget it,” he demands.
“Joseph, you will tell me.”
“I’ll walk home, Het. I swear you won’t push me on this.”
“I will.”
He cracks his knuckles several times and huffs, “Some guy… tall, Italian looking, he came over and said you were coming on to him earlier. He said one bro to another–”
“You have to know that’s a lie!” I scream, my outburst shocking, even to me. “He’s someone I used to date. Never shagged, thank god. He was all over the place. He’s that guy I told you about, remember?”
“He’s older and way better looking than me, you can’t deny that, can you?”
I shake my head, breathing deeply. “He came up to me tonight with all that swagger and I turned him away. He doesn’t interest me. If you go back and look at the security cameras, you’ll see I did that. Ask Babs as well, she asked me if he’d been giving me grief, she saw me turn him away. I don’t care about him in the way I care about you. He was so fucked in the head. He more or less said someone had done a number on him. He has multiple trust issues, believe me. I don’t need someone like that in my life, I need you dammit.”
Joe launches himself at me from his side of the car, filling my mouth with his tongue, his lips sealing over mine instantly, all my anxiety gone the moment he shows me how much he wants me. I need him to want me. I need a man to want me all the time and to mean it, too.
I grab his shoulders while he reaches for my breast, squeezing me in his palm.
I yank my lips free and tip my head back, his mouth going to my throat instead. “I’m so in love with you, Joe. Take me inside.”
“You’re in love with little old me?” he asks, his eyes shining as I look down and into them.
It occurs I’ve never said those words before. We’ve said I love you a million times each, but now I’m actually in love with him, to the point where I can’t remember any before him, and the only thing I know is that I want more and more of him.
“Yes, I’m in love with you.”
“Took your time, didn’t you?” he grins. “I fell the moment you whispered my name, hook, line and sinker.”
“Maybe I’m just deeper than you, stud.”
“Maybe…” He laughs.
We leave the car in a hurry and I get the door open somehow.
“Just beware, I’m a different lover with all this drink in me,” I warn, as I rip off his t-shirt and let him similarly disrobe me.
“Bring it.”
I push him against a wall, shirtless and take to my knees.
Popping the button fly on his jeans within a second, I fetch out his delicious manhood and swipe a lick from root to tip.
“My life’s awful,” he moans, his hands on the back of my head.
“So… is,” I complain, my voice muffled as I drink him deeper.
When he’s rock solid in my mouth he grabs me roughly, yanks me up and throws me over the sofa arm. Gradually we’ve learnt to trust one another and we know what we both want. Joe knows I love it when he’s a little bit rough. Not too much. Just a bit what I call demanding.
He yanks up my skirt, almost tears my knickers off and pushes straight inside me.
“Ahh!!”
“You like that, Henrietta?”
I can feel every, glorious inch of him like this, throbbing and hot, so tightly wedged inside me. He’s reaching round to play with my clit and moisten me some more when I decide something. But I’ll tell him later. Right now I want to be fucked.
“I love that, Joe. Don’t stop. I love you.”
I don’t know myself as he grabs a hold of my hips and fucks me ruthlessly, the slapping of our bodies amazing.
I suck in breath, holding on for dear life when he makes my legs shake from ankle to hipbone. He rushes into me soon after and collapses onto my back.
“Move in with me,” I whisper.
“Okay. If you’re sure?”
“Sure.”
He collects my breasts in his hands, the breasts he freed while he was fucking me. As he’s massaging them, he says, “I can go again.”
“Me, too. On here this time?”
“Go on then, twist my arm.”
We peel off all our clothes and lie on the sofa together naked, side by side. I have my le
g wrapped right over him and he’s gripping my bottom as he prepares to slide back inside me.
“Oh, I didn’t tell you,” he says, a sparkle in his eyes, “I think my dad spoke to that rhino you hate.”
I look at Joe and know the truth instantly. “Why does that not surprise me? Angel in disguise that father of yours.”
“Well I’m no angel,” he says, tugging my bum hard so I land heavily on all of him.
I grasp his neck, not sure if I’m delighted or mortally wounded. The former, I decide.
“Amen.”
I THINK I’M alive. Yes. I’m definitely alive. His arms are tight around me. It’s not the bed though. A sharp scissoring pain cuts across my skull and I remember. I drank quite a lot last night! And then I shagged a lot last night, evidenced by the way I’m now finding myself having slept on the sofa.
“Joe…?”
“What?” he asks in an annoyed tone.
“Why didn’t we make it to bed?”
“You did something to me with your hand. I couldn’t walk after that.”
“What the shit did I do?”
“Don’t know. You called it wanktric massage.”
“Ah, tantric.” I once watched a YouTube video… many, many years ago now, of course.
“I don’t think I can move,” he mumbles, “you were absolutely wild after the second go. You made me do all sorts.”
I snigger. “As if you’re complaining?”
“I’ve got a try-out next week and I’m aching all over, of course I’m complaining!”
“I think you should be thanking me. I gave you the best workout of your life last night. Your stamina will be much improved.”
I try to move but my head hurts and not only that, his arms are pinioned around me. I roll the other way to face him and discover his eyes scrunched tight shut, a look of overall exhaustion about his face and demeanour.
“He’s not better looking than you,” I tell Joe, recalling last night’s little fight.
“Sure that’s not the drink still talking?”
“No.”
Hetty: An Angel Avenue Spin-Off Page 16