Chapter One.
Ashley.
I allowed my bare, left elbow to rest on the bar, obviously after checking the bar tender had ensured the surface was dry, then blew out in abject boredom, and looked around the almost silent room wondering why in God’s name I was there. Camlyn my bestie, who can somehow always read my mind, tilted her head to one side with raised eyebrows as she faced me, as if to say “go on then, what’s wrong?” It didn’t stop her moving as if music was playing generally though, rather than just playing in her head.
“What are we doing here in this dive Cam. Why don’t we just go to one of the usual haunts, meet the others there and maybe enjoy ourselves a bit? This place is a time waster.”
Cam forced a smile because it wasn’t the first Friday night that I’d asked that question. “You know full well Ash. Taylor insists we meet here, then we catch up on all the goss from the week, and only when the air is clear and we all know where we stand, which is together, do we delve into the shadowy areas of town where the music is too loud for us to communicate without shouting, and the beautiful young men find it hard to see that we are all thirty something and looking to maybe catch a relationship. In that atmosphere you wouldn’t want to be shouting to the other girls about how you kicked shit-head out now, would you.”
I took a sip of a very ordinary white wine, wondering if I really wanted to relive a blow by blow account of Brad leaving. “His name was Brad, as you well know, not shit-head, and I didn’t kick him out he left.” I tried to make my voice sound ordinary, with no warble, and not as if I missed him which, to be honest, was something I was still trying to work out in my head. Did I still love him or had I just got used to a bloke being there and now there was a hole in my life?
“You’re talking to Camlyn Watson here Ashley my girl.” Cam placed her clenched fists on her hips to show that she only ever called me by my full name of Ashley when she wanted to emphasise something. “He left with that schoolgirl - don’t look at me like that I know she’s in college but that still makes her too young for him - and how long do you think it would have taken before one of our merry band of nine found out about shit-head and the schoolgirl being at that party together and then you would have kicked him out? Him leaving was a short cut, saved time, helped you out.”
Cam unclenched her fist to reveal the shot glass she’d been cradling there and I put my wine down on the bar as if I might abandon it and didn’t care if I did. “That’s my point Cam. Getting into a noisy atmosphere with the chance to let myself go a bit would be great for my head and maybe take my mind off things, instead of standing here waiting for the others to come with everyone telling me how much they’ve never liked Brad anyway and then hoping we don’t get back together in case they all look like fools. Let’s just take all that for granted and move on. Oh, here they come. They must have travelled together.”
My gang walked in, almost doubling the bar’s population and looking as if they were dressed to kill, which was just a little bit out of sync with the bar we were in. Emily and Joanne had gone for the short skirt lowish top look, Sarah and Hannah had obviously discussed things before dressing and gone for their usual tits-out look to display their best assets to any prospective males, and Sam and Taylor, both in relationships, had chosen boring trouser suit combos as if they’d been dressed by their foreign and extremely dominant husbands. It was Sam’s husband who insisted she be covered up if she was going out, which put the rest of us off marriage. There was no need to look at what Alexis was wearing because ripped jeans and a tee shirt designated her as the weirdo of the group, the one who always wanted to be different and look different. Okay, my black mini-dress was brave for me but I’m not a ripped jeans sort of girl and could never wear a tee advertising bubble-gum like Alexis had.
Taylor spoke first which was no surprise. “How you feeling Ash? Like your hair by the way. A black bob suits you.”
I picked up my wine again before answering, only half surprised that it was still there and hadn’t been cleared up. “I’m feeling that the atmosphere is crap here, this pathetic wine has gone warm and I can’t wait to move on. Oh, and my hair has been like this for about a month, reverse bob, shorter at the back.”
“Not what I meant and you know it,” Taylor sounded as if she wanted some juicy details. “Anyway, shots are half price here before we move on.”
“Nothing much to report really.” I finally gave in to her, noticing heads looking towards me with interest as my voice went all monotone. “I got home from work, he was packing a case, I asked him what was happening, he told me he was leaving, there was no shouting, we agreed that things had gone stale and the apartment was mine, so it was a clean break. It’s not as if we were married or had kids, so the best of luck to him.”
Hannah, who was in the middle of ordering drinks so had obviously ignored my plea to move on, went into her usual psychiatrist mode, even though she works in the office area of a supermarket. “Seems to me like you’re not accepting things yet and need to ditch the wine and join us all on shots. We’ll get you a bloke tonight and make sure he’s better than shit-head. Yours is a lemon-drop, yeah?”
My face must have looked indignant. “Did you all call him that behind my back? Brad was good to me while things lasted. Maybe it was both our faults that things went stale. You know, pressure of work, me hating my tedious job, no time for ourselves, money tight all the time.”
Sarah, who speaks her mind with absolutely no attached filters looked surprised. “Didn’t you call him shit-head Ash? I thought everyone did. To be honest I thought he was a stop gap for you while you found someone decent and that’s why you eventually kicked him out. Anyway, when all the mobiles started ringing with your news that’s what I guessed.”
“Look, everyone.” My voice was slightly raised with frustrated anger, reminding me that Cam had said that these chats would be difficult in a busy and noisy bar. “I did not kick Brad out and I never called him shit-head and I didn’t realise that you all did. I was in love with him and maybe I still am, maybe, slightly, so no, I do not want your help in fixing me up with a bloke tonight, thank you very much. My plan is to enjoy myself while staying relatively sober and single, maybe just getting stupid drunk, and then be able to get a cab home and sleep. I have a busy day planned for tomorrow which will involve not having too much of a hangover, gathering up anything that relates to Brad, bagging it all up, placing it in the shed, informing him of its whereabouts , getting the locks changed on my apartment and maybe having a good cry while feeling sorry for myself. I can’t see any bloke wanting to share that day with me.”
Joanne gave a dirty laugh but often did. “Who is talking about the daytime tomorrow girl. Back to his, or back to yours, do the biz, then your cab home or a cab for him and do all your packing tomorrow without the tears and with a smile on your face. You are single remember.”
“Thanks Jess,” my voice I know sounded sarcastic. “I knew you would be the one to understand that I’m not quite ready for a relationship just now, it being three days since the last one finished.” The lemon-drop hit the back of my throat as if it was waking it out os slumber after being put to sleep by the white wine. Maybe it tasted too nice, even more-ish.
Jess looked genuinely puzzled. “Relationship? I thought I just described a one night stand with no ties.”
“I need the loo before we move on,” I told them all generally. “So you can all talk about me while I’m in there, and when I get back, because there is no more discussion to be had about me and my lack of a need to be out of the frying pan and into the fire, can we please go somewhere with at the very least some music to move to?”
Nobody followed me to the toilets luckily, allowing me to sit and contemplate the fact that I didn’t really want to go. That is I didn’t really want to go with respect to urinating and that my bladder could easily take more than half a glass of rubbish wine and a shot, and also to contemplate the fact that I didn’t really want to go in relation to being anywhere else and moving on. I knew I’d been forced to go out clubbing and the girls would never accept me leaving them to go home alone now. Their hearts were in the right place and they were probably right about me getting out and not sitting at home feeling sorry for myself, so I couldn’t blame them for that.
I didn’t think I’d been sat very long but Cam’s voice asking the toilet area generally “are you alright” produced a flush of nothing in particular and also produced me.
Cam was smiling. “I’ve convinced them to move on. That new club that opened last month. Sam and Taylor went there last Saturday with hubbies in tow and said it was okay and probably good for a Friday girlie night. Like you said, you and Brad weren’t married. Imagine being married to an Eastern European and having to wear trousers to go out like those two. There must be an upside to their marriages but I don’t know what it is.”
It has always been a problem, us being nine women together, because wherever we went it involved two taxis. Some larger taxis took six passengers, others four so there was no logical way to split costs. Years ago there used to be friendly discussions over who would travel in each cab, splitting by four costing each of us more than splitting by five. These days the four and the five are always the same girls and we chip into a kitty to fork out for the two cabs, like the sensible adults that we are not.
We arrived at the said club and walked straight in, there being no queue, and that did not bode well and gave me something else to grumble about, except I couldn’t grumble, it being me that had insisted on moving on.
“It’s early,” Taylor defended her club choice. “I did say we should have stayed in the last place for some more shots.”
She was generally ignored, well, I ignored her anyway, and even if we were still bar-propping, a shuffle to the music was appreciated and it was loud enough to not be able to have general conversation, only one to one comments. As the night went on, the shots took more and more of an effect on me, some of the girls were dancing but I was still sober enough to be thinking that it was a little early to announce that I was getting a cab home without the girls demanding that I stay. They had convinced me to join them on continuing to drink shots and if I’m honest, their intended cure was beginning to work.
“My round.” The slurred words came from Taylor who was clearly enjoying being away from hubby for the night. “Same again?” She shouted too loudly into my ear.
“Please Taylor. I’ll neck this one and help you with the other drinks.”
Taylor waved her hands about at one of the barmen in semaphore that indicated “I want to be served,” then eventually handed me my drink, then another before I could drink mine, and then another and she clearly believed I was an octopus and could carry nine drinks somehow while she did the biz with her credit card. She’d told me which was which but I lost the thread after the third one and wondered if the girls could tell they had the wrong drink or even care at this stage.
“Can I help you with those?”
The question came from a deep voice from behind me, maybe from Alexis doing a silly voice. I spun around too quickly, my brain had difficulty keeping up with the rest of my head and two large but firm and warm hands took me by my bare shoulders to steady me. Whoever it was moved his body back slightly to avoid the drinks I was almost spilling but his hands stayed firmly on my shoulders. I was staring at the chest of someone in a tight, white shirt that left nothing to the imagination with regard to the sculpted body it covered. I tried not to look up too quickly but when my head eventually reached his I could see his smile, his chiselled jawline and the jet black hair that had flopped down over his forehead. He was gorgeous, probably had a hundred women chasing after him and I stood no chance whatsoever, not that I was looking for a chance. Was I?
“No. I’m fine. That is I can manage thank you.” In my head we were a couple on a book cover, the desperate girl and the hunk, only he still had his shirt on and I, pathetically, was trying not to be an idiot by spilling all the drinks in my hands. If I hadn’t been lumbered with the drinks, I thought, I might just move that hair of his away from his eyes and back to where it should be, which would be an indication to everyone that he was mine.
Taylor chipped in and I should have expected it.
“Let him help Ash, you’ve already spilled a load.”
The reason that I didn’t turn around to tell Taylor to keep her nose out of things was because this man had hypnotic blue eyes that could not be ignored, or even let go of and I knew that by not turning to Taylor to answer her meant that I looked pathetic in the man’s eyes, but it did allow his hands to remain on my shoulders where I wanted them. Weird, I thought, how a girl can make decisions concerning her hands and her feet but not her shoulders, which may have indicated that I was more than tipsy.
“Ash,” he said in that deep voice again. “Please, I just wanted to help because you looked as if you were struggling.”
Before I knew it the so-called friends of mine had taken the drinks out of my hands and moved away somewhere where, no doubt, they couldn’t be seen but could follow everything that happened to me. Whoever took the last drink pushed me in the back even closer to Mister Adonis.
“Look,” I decided to start talking instead of just staring into those dreamy eyes like a cross between a love struck teenager and a puppy. “I appreciate your offer to help, which is not needed now, obviously, thanks to my friends, and I know you were only being kind and if that was it then that’s great, but it’s only fair to tell you that if anything else was on your mind then you have to know that I’ve just come out of a relationship and I’m having a break from men at the moment and also I never stop talking when I’m nervous and tend to do it in over long sentences and don’t breathe.”
“O-kay,” he dragged out. “I won’t propose marriage, us having black-haired blue-eyed babies, or anything similar at this point then, not even a friendship if you feel all men are bastards at the moment, but what about a quiet drink and a chat? You sound as if you could do with a chat and your friends seem to have left you without a drink.”
I was just about to say “yes, a drink and a chat about my hair being dyed, in the quiet area, then maybe a friendship, then propose to me tomorrow, and the baby thing might follow,” when I had to spin around yet again when I heard a too familiar voice.
“Didn’t take you long to get over me Ashley Beale. Or maybe you’ve been with this guy for a while and with me leaving you no longer needed to hide it.”
“Piss off Brad,” I snarled. Realising too late that I was not being very ladylike in front of tall, dark and dreamy. Then I added, “You never come here so please go to your usual club with your schoolgirl.” I knew she wasn’t a schoolgirl but my mates had loaded that gun for me and I also noticed that I didn’t deny being with the guy who wouldn’t really want little old me.
“This place is new Ashley dear,” he told me with sarcasm in his voice. “I have as much right to be here as you and your giggly little friends do.”
I got angry with him then but didn’t want to cause a scene and didn’t want the girls to come over and maybe make an even bigger scene so I decided on negotiation. “Look I’m here with my eight friends. We can’t all go just because you are here, so I’m asking nicely…”
I didn’t get a chance to finish my sentence because two hands slipped into my armpits that were thankfully shaved and well deodorised, and I was lifted into the air, turned and when my drunken head had worked out where I’d landed I was the other side of my new friend, facing away from him, back to back, and the deep voice was saying something to Brad. Whatever it was that was said it worked because Brad and his bit of stuff left immediately and I watched them to make sure as they walked up the stairway at the far side of the club.
“I owe you one,” I told the stranger without knowing what that actually meant. Obviously it doesn’t mean the next time he found himself arguing with his girlfriend, I’d be there to lift him out of the way and then to see her off.
“Ryan,” he told me.
“Sorry?”
“I owe you one Ryan. It’s my name. Do you know that when you’ve had a drink you think out loud? I don’t have a girlfriend and hardly ever argue with anyone, it’s not my style, so wouldn’t need you to see her off if she existed.”
I knew that my face was red. I could feel the redness travelling down my neck and onto my chest and felt that soon I would be red all over and looking like a beetroot. “I’ve had too much to drink, you’re right, and I need to go home,” I told him, as if I was either saying goodbye or inviting him to take me home but he already knew about my state of drunkenness. “But I’ll have to tell all my friends first that I’m going for a cab. Could you please see me to the taxi rank?”
He smiled to show me that the dimple in that square chin was matched by dimples in his cheeks and when you added those deep blue eyes into the equation it was impossible for a girl to concentrate on only one facet of his face. He was right and our babies definitely would have blue eyes and hopefully, his black hair. I shook my head to come out of my dream state.
“If it’s the eight girls over there in the shadows who haven’t taken their eyes off us since my first offer to help you, I think they already know that you’ll be leaving and if you told them you were leaving to get a cab alone they’d either murder you or not believe you. Am I right?”
“Pretty much so, yes, but I don’t know you and you could be an evil axe murderer and I don’t want to share a cab with an axe murderer. You’re very confident aren’t you.”
He looked confused and his thick eyebrows turned down to point to his nose adding yet another feature to stare at. Which I think I did.
“I’ll assume that was you talking Ash and not thinking out loud then. If I was an axe murderer I’d be a pretty poor one because I don’t have an axe or anywhere to hide one, and believe it or not I’m one of the least confident men around when it comes to talking to women.”
He opened his arms wide to prove to me the fact that there was no axe there and then I was staring at the arm muscles that had lifted me into the air earlier. I couldn’t be just a friend to this guy, I thought, because my eyes would be all over the place. I made sure to think that without saying it but it was hard. I also stifled the giggle that tried to come out about not being confident and that was harder.
“And anyway,” he continued, “I don’t drink and my car is quite close. I can drive you to your place, make sure you get in safely, I won’t ask if I can come in for coffee because you are off men, and if you think it advisable we can swap numbers. I’ll be able to ring you and ask you out for a meal, no axes, and if the number I ring is unobtainable I’ll know you’ve made it up and you didn’t want to see me again.”
Now I was stuck. I wanted to leave the club and go home but my friends wouldn’t allow that. The potential axe murderer had offered to take me home and had already proved that he could easily overpower me, or at least lift me into the air. Then, while trying to decide, I realised that all the way through his speech I’d been nodding like a nodding dog and seemed to be agreeing to everything he’d said. Before I knew it we were walking towards the staircase, the one that Brad plus one had left on and I heard a loud cheer in the background from eight girls who I knew would be waking up tomorrow and ringing me before they’d even had coffee. I knew that if I’d been sober I wouldn’t have left with Ryan. Was it Ryan that he’d told me? And that I was taking a huge risk, but to be honest, in the mood I was in, I fancied taking a huge risk in being driven home by this courteous man and I was half hoping that Brad and his young tart were still about somewhere to witness us leaving the club as a couple.
