now that the look has been exchanged he’s changing tack.
Or at least, I imagine something like that until his gaze slides over me, inch by inch, and that chocolate-box voice drops an octave lower.
‘That jersey is very …’ he starts, but I’m just left to imagine the rest.
Tight
, I think, he wants to say
tight
. If that’s true it only leaves me with one option: he really is staring at my tits. Oh Lord, I think he’s actually staring at my tits, and it’s making my face red and my body go all hot and cold, to the point where I’m actually relieved when Brandon blurts out: ‘OK, well, if she can’t stay for the party she can’t stay for the party. Nothing to do about that! Oh, by the way, Ty, I really need to talk to you in the back about some … thing.’
Even if those ramblings kind of sound like he hates me.
‘Yeah, really, guys, you go ahead and talk about your … thing. I’m just going to head back,’ I say, and I swear, I come
this
close to escape. This close, before Tyler runs a hand around my shoulders and leans in far too close, to murmur in my ear.
‘Oh no, we wouldn’t hear of it,’ he tells me, while my spine turns to jelly and slides right out of my body. I know what’s going to happen here, before it actually does. ‘You just take my credit card and see Marie at Ebe, she’ll take care of you. And then when you come back we can all have a real talk, about old times. What do you say?’
I say a million different things, in my head – mostly about how smoothly arrogant he now seems, and how awkward this all is, and how bizarrely aroused I feel. But, of course, I don’t voice any of them. It’s impossible to voice any of them when Tyler’s practically kissing the side of my face and Brandon’s looking at me with these big, kind of shocked eyes.
So instead I just go with the safest option: ‘OK.’
* * *
I think, in all honesty, that I intend to get in my car and drive back to Hollingdale without a second thought. And yet somehow I find myself going to this annoyingly pretentious boutique Tyler mentioned, and, sure enough a woman called Marie does help me out – as though he’s done this a thousand times before for a million different women, and all of them fit into these tiny, drafty clothes far better than I do.
I have to come away with a dress that’s more akin to a jumper, in truth, because everything makes me look like some obscene whore of Babylon. And as I drive back to the bar I can’t help wondering if he knew that. He knew everything would cling to my enormous breasts and skim somewhere just shy of my vagina. He knew, and sent me there anyway like some more terrible version of
Pretty Woman
.
I can hardly bring myself to walk back into the bar, and not just because of the sluttish glimpse I catch of myself in the slick black exterior. The place is packed, and pushing through the crowd in a dress that’s continually threatening to show my gauche panties is not a fun time for me.
Someone fondles my ass, I think – though it could just as easily be a wayward bar stool, brushing against me in the dark. I’m so oversensitised and on the edge of God knows what that I can’t tell the difference, and by the time I get over to the table of honour I think it’s showing.
My face is flushed, my hair is in disarray and, worst of all, my nipples are stiff and poking through the material. I know they are, without looking, because every single move I make flags it up and, even if it didn’t, Tyler’s eyes immediately shift downwards to the offending articles.
I want to die. Oh God, please just let me die. I’m sorry for what I said earlier, about wanting to get through this alive. I don’t at all.
‘Maisie!’ Tyler says, and I can tell he’s had a couple. Not enough to make him drunk, of course, but he’s relaxed back against the booth he’s in, and he’s spread both his arms around the girls on either side of him.
Plus he’s just shouted my name. There’s
Major Dick Winters, Colonel Cole C. Kingseed
George R. R. Martin, Gardner Dozois