“Well, look what we have here,” a figure suddenly stepped out in front of me. “I’ve been waiting for a long time to catch up with you.”
It was Dave.
Before I had the chance to react he grabbed me and swung me towards the fire exit, and the impact forced the door open and sent me sprawling out into the alleyway at the side of the bar. I heard the door slam and looked up to see Dave and three of his goons looking down on me.
“You have been ducking me for a long time,” Dave said. “But now I have you just where I want you.”
I was completely trapped. Dave’s cronies had already moved into position to block my only exit from the alley as I got back to my feet. Why was this happening, now of all times? I made a run for it, hoping I could force my way past his friends, but they grabbed me and hurled me towards Dave who caught me square on the jaw with his fist. I hit the ground like a sack of potatoes.
“Get him up,” Dave said, and his three stooges dragged me to my feet. Dave grabbed hold of the top of my shirt and pulled his fist back. “I’m going to enjoy this,” he said in a menacing tone.
“Let him go,” a voice came from nowhere, but a voice I knew. Dave took a step back and looked to his right. “I said let him go.”
It was Rob. He glared at Dave, his fists clenched at his side.
“You’re outnumbered, mate,” Dave sneered. “You think you two can take on all four of us?” Dave sniggered.
“That’s why we’re here,” Ollie appeared, followed by Jack.
Dave looked at me, and then back at his friends. He nodded to them and the stooges released their grip, and I staggered towards my friends rubbing my swollen face. “This isn’t over,” Dave threatened me.
“Come on, Dan, let’s go,” Rob said. But I was tired of running. Just as I had to face Kelly, I knew I had to face Dave. I had to lay this ghost to rest and put this problem to bed.
“No,” I said turning around. “Let’s end this now.”
“Are you crazy?” Jack said. “Look at the size of him!”
“I’m not going to keep running,” I said to Jack before turning back to Dave. “You ready to do this?”
“My pleasure,” Dave smiled and stepped out to the middle of the alleyway. I was clearly the underdog but I just didn’t care anymore. So what if I took a beating? At least I would walk away with my pride.
There was just one small problem – I had no idea how to fight.
The last time I had even hit someone was in the playground when I was 12-years old, and that was because Duncan Valentine had tried stealing my yo-yo. I had smacked him in the nose and got detention for a week.
We circled each other before Dave took full advantage of my clear and apparent lack of arm-to-arm combat skills. He grabbed me in a headlock and squeezed so tight, I thought my head was going to pop off. I tried forcing him back, but he just laughed and threw me to the ground like a rag doll. I scrambled to my feet as my friends offered words of encouragement, but it was hopeless. I was a dead man.
“The power of the Warrior,” Ollie shouted at me. For a moment I wondered what the hell he was talking about. Who did he think I was? But then I remembered – WrestleRage!
I ran full-steam at Dave, taking him by surprise and hitting my very own version of a Warrior clothesline, catching my forearm across his throat. He coughed and staggered back. I had absolutely no chance of pressing him above my head so I opted for a fireman-carry style lift instead. I threw him over my shoulder and slammed him on to the concrete. I got to my feet and watched Dave writhing around on the floor. I took one step back and then launched myself at Dave, belly-flopping him!
I lay on top of him for a while, not really too sure what to do next. It wasn’t like I had a referee to make the three count. After a few seconds I decided to get to my feet. The problem was Dave also started getting to his feet. He didn’t do it with quite as much gusto as Flex Bruiser had done, but it was clear he was on the road to recovery.
“Get him,” Jack shouted as I threw my best punch. Unfortunately my aim was completely off, and my fist bounced off his shoulder. Dave laughed as I attempted a second punch, merely side stepping out of the way. He even gave me a Bruiser-style finger wave to let me know I was really in trouble and crashed a hard blow into the side of my face. And another. And another!
Dazed, I fell towards Dave who grabbed me by the arm and threw me into the wall. I bounced off the brick concrete and crashed to the floor. I could hear my friends urging me to get up as Dave circled me, victorious. I had put up a good fight, but I knew I was beaten.
But Dave wasn’t finished with me yet. It wasn’t enough for him to win the fight, he wanted to seriously hurt me. I heard the blood-curdling scream from my friends first and in what seemed like slow motion I twisted my face to see Dave leap into the air and angle to bring his knee crashing down against my skull.
The last eight months flashed before my eyes; everything that I had gone through up until this point. I thought of Stacey and our break-up. I thought about my friends and how they had been at my side through the good times and the bad. And then I thought of Kelly, and how I would never get the chance to tell her how I really felt.
I couldn’t let that happen. I wouldn’t let that happen.
Summoning every last ounce of strength and energy left in my body, I managed to roll clear at the last second, just like the Warrior had evaded Bruiser’s Knee Drop that night at New York's Madison Square Garden. There was a terrible crack as Dave’s knee crashed against the concrete floor. I bounced off the wall and hit Dave with another big splash. This time Ollie jumped to the floor and counted – one... two... three!
I’d done it! I had defeated Goliath. I was a warrior after all. My friends hoisted me up on to their shoulders as Dave’s stooges could do nothing but try to comfort their fallen friend who was howling in pain, clutching his right knee. They carried me to the end of the alley. There was a new champion in town. I jumped down from their shoulders. “How did you know I'd be here?”
“I just had a feeling you'd do the right thing,” Rob said.
“Thanks, mate,” I said embracing my best friend in a complete unashamed display of bromance.
It was time to make things right. I led the boys around the corner to make our way back towards the pub entrance. Nothing could stop me now.
“Thanks for tonight, guys, I’ll miss you,” I heard a voice say that I knew all too well. Kelly was hugging her friends and climbed into the back seat of a taxi just 30 yards from where I stood. I tried calling out to her and ran towards the taxi, but Rob grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back.
“Wait, you don’t want Kelly to see you like this,” Rob said pointing towards my bloodied and swollen face.
I watched Kelly’s taxi disappear into the night, hoping that I hadn’t missed my chance. Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough.
Chapter 24: The Betrayal
Sunday, September 13 - 10.47am
Drought Clock: 255 days, 19 hours, 26 minutes
Jack slumped onto the sofa, holding his head in his hands. His rucksack was on the floor to his left, with just enough clothes to keep him going for the next week.
“I can’t believe this has happened to me,” he said looking at me through his fingers.
“I take it you told Anna?” I asked, bringing him a cup of tea.
“My plan was to get down to the clinic, get treated, and get the all clear before she had a chance to find out,” Jack said taking a sip of his hot tea and placing it on the table. “I thought I could then avoid sex with her for a couple of weeks and then suggest to Anna we both get ourselves checked out. You know, just so we knew we were both clean. I would obviously be given a clean bill of health, but the doc would tell her she has a dose. I could play the nice guy – tell her I’d stand by her even though she had obviously cheated on me.”
“Please tell me you are not going to do that,” I interrupted. I had laughed off a lot of despicable things Jack had done to that poor gir
l over the years but making her think she was the one who had brought an STD into the relationship was crossing the line.
“Not exactly,” Jack said. “When I got back last night she was sitting in the living room and a real terrible sense of guilt came over me. I knew I had to come clean; she deserved that at least. As soon as I told her I had chlamydia she burst into tears and started to apologise.”
“Apologise?” I said baffled.
“Yes, apologise,” Jack said sharply. “She said she couldn’t be certain where she had picked it up from.”
“Where she had picked it up from?” I said even more surprised this time.
“Yes, where she picked it up from,” Jack said angrily. “What is there an echo in here or something?”
I apologised and told him to continue.
“She confessed that she had been having an affair with some guy called Neil. But she also had a fling with the milkman a couple of weeks back. Then there was her ex Greg who she had done stuff with in the last month.”
I sat open-mouthed as Jack listed the guys Anna had confessed to sleeping with. It was unbelievable. All the time Jack had been sleeping around behind her back, she had been doing exactly the same thing to him. I couldn’t work out if Jack was pissed off because Anna had cheated on him, or because she had been getting more action than him by the sounds of it.
“Can you believe the audacity of the woman? To cheat on me?” Jack said looking completely mystified. “Anyway, thanks for letting me stay a few days so I can get my head straight.” Jack said nodding towards the rucksack.
“No problem, mate.”
I had never seen Jack like this before. He looked dishevelled. He resembled what I can only imagine Jimmy Krankie would look like the morning after drinking a whole bottle of Sambuca. He was putting on a brave face, but I could see how much Anna’s confession had taken out of him.
“You’ll sort things out,” I said. It was a lie, but sometimes you say the things you think people want to hear.
“Nah,” Jack said shaking his head and sitting back into the armchair, staring at the ceiling. “Not this time. She has really crossed the line. I can’t trust her now can I?”
“I guess not,” I responded having to bite my lip about the whole trust issue.
“The truth is mate,” Jack said sitting forward, “all those times I cheated on Anna, all that meaningless drunken sex I had behind her back, it didn’t mean a thing. Not really. I can see now it was nothing more than a stupid ego trip.”
Jack bowed his head. I was worried he was going to cry. It’s bad enough when a girl cries, but this was a bloke. What do you do in a situation like this? Is it okay to put your arm around him or is that just too weird? And what do you say? Getting a tissue and wiping the tears from his cheek was definitely not an option. There is only so far a man will go for his friends. My plan was to watch in silence until he was all cried out. Maybe I would offer him a beer. After all, that always did the trick in all other moments of sadness in a man’s life.
England have just been knocked out of the World Cup. Let’s get another round in.
My son told me he likes playing with Barbie more than Action Man. We’d better get you a drink.
My uncle passed away last week. I hope they have beer at the wake.
At least when a girl cries, you know where you stand. Whether she is genuinely upset about something, or emotionally blackmailing you, you still feel the need to comfort her. But a man crying? It is unheard of. Girls cry in front of their friends all the time, and they will rally around her to make sure she is okay. But if a bloke cries then he is on his own, I’m afraid. The only time it is okay for a man to cry is if his football team has lost in the FA Cup Final, or when she is using her teeth.
“Dan, can I ask you something?” Jack said, lifting his head.
“Of course you can, shoot,” I said, while at the same time glancing towards the nearest exit in case I had to make a break for it at the first sign of any tears.
Jack took a deep breath. “You got any porn?”
I shook my head and sighed. Technically I wasn’t lying. I didn’t own any porn, but the internet is a wonderful thing. Hey, it had been nearly nine months. But I was uncomfortable watching porn in the presence of another man. I normally like to view porn on my own, for obvious reasons. Besides, Jack was the type of guy who would commentate the whole way through how he would ruin the girl on screen. One time around Ollie’s he disappeared halfway through Schindler's Fist only to return and proudly announce how he had just “stroked one off” in the bathroom. I wasn’t prepared to put my bathroom through that kind of horror.
“I guess I’m in the same boat as you now,” Jack said. “The search for the woman of my dreams starts again.”
“I guess so,” I said. “Although where you are going to find a Harley Davidson riding, triple-breasted woman who urinates Jack Daniels is beyond me.”
Jack laughed. “Talking of dream women, what are you going to do about Kelly?”
“I honestly don’t know,” I said. The decision to go to her last night was made at the last minute so I didn’t have time to think about it. I had spent the whole night thinking about nothing else but what I was going to say to her today. I couldn’t sleep. “Do you think I’m doing the right thing?”
“Dan, listen to me carefully,” Jack said joining me on the couch. “You never truly know what you have got until it’s gone.” Jack looked at me square in the eyes. “If I could go back and change everything, I would. Don’t make the same mistake as me.”
This was amazing; it was such a poignant moment. Jack – the happy-go-lucky cockney who never took life too seriously – offering me a heartfelt piece of advice. I got a lump in my throat and turned away. How awkward would it be if I started to cry? I could see Jack eyeing up the exits.
“Do you really mean that?” I asked. “You would go back and change everything?”
Jack paused. He sat back in his chair and looked towards the window. He looked back at me. It took an age for him to answer.
“Of course I don’t bloody mean that,” he said in that cockney twang of his. “I’d still bang everything with a pulse. If anything, I would go back and do it all again!” Jack chuckled to himself.
I laughed with him, but already my mind started to wander. Kelly was leaving tomorrow. I knew there was no chance of anything happening between us. But that feeling continued to nag away in the back of my mind, like a termite eating its way through my conscience. How many times was I going to convince myself that going to Kelly was a bad idea when everything inside of me screamed the complete opposite?
“I need to go and tell Kelly how I feel,” I said out loud.
“That’s the spirit,” Jack said waving his clenched fist at me like Andy Murray does after winning a set of tennis. “Go and get involved, my son!”
I grabbed my trainers and pulled them on without even untying the laces. I struggled with one of the arms of my jacket, leaving me chasing the armless sleeve like a dog chasing his tail. I snatched the keys off the table and bolted towards the door.
“Dan, before you go,” Jack called out to me. He stood from the chair. I could tell he was trying to search for the right words; profound words I could take with me on this quest.
“Are you sure you don’t have any porn?”
I slammed the door behind me.
*
This was it. No going back now. Sometimes a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. This wasn’t just about sex. Kelly was everything I could have hoped for in a girl. She was smart, funny, and easy going. It was a huge bonus that she had big boobs. Okay, so it was a little bit about sex. I didn’t expect Kelly to drop everything and stay in Balham and live happily ever after, but I didn’t want her to go with the way I had left things.
Against my better judgement, I had acted like a complete twat, especially on her last day at work. I had tried pretending that it was no big deal – like I wasn’t that bothered she was leaving. E
ven Pete Crowford the IT geek had made more of a fuss over her than I did. All I offered was a lacklustre hug and wished her the best. Even if she slammed the door on my face, at least she could go away safe in the knowledge that I cared for her.
As I turned the corner of her street I felt like I was actually turning a corner in my life. Things were going to be okay. Kelly would understand. She was not the type of girl to hold a grudge.
But nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to face. Like a violent blow to the stomach, my first reaction to what I had just seen forced me to jerk backwards. The vision left me frozen, numb even. In a split second my entire body shivered with shock. What the hell had I just seen? Was it real or was my mind playing tricks on me? I quickly stepped out of sight to try and compose myself. I felt like I had been hit with a sledgehammer. My stomach churned like I was going to throw up. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I would never have believed it.
What I had just witnessed was Kelly opening her door, standing in her dressing gown. And she wasn’t alone. Like someone with impaired vision, it took my eyes a moment to adjust, but it didn’t take long for me to make out the figure exiting her flat was male. On the face of it, I had no right to judge. Kelly was a free agent and I had no one else to blame for missing my chance but me.
But this was different.
I was too far away to work out what they were saying to each other as they said their goodbyes, but I was near enough to recognise that face. It was a face I’d known since I was six-years-old.
It was Rob who had walked out of her flat. It was Rob who now kissed her on the cheek, and held on to her hand. Kelly hugged him, and my heart ached as their body language told me everything I needed to know.
The Drought (The hilarious laugh-out loud comedy about dating disasters!) Page 26