Surreptitious (London) Read Free Page A

Harper doesn’t hold her tongue?! Exhibit A ladies and gentlemen!! However, her reaction was exactly what I was looking for, so I drained the rest of my glass and stood up to leave. The walk was only about five to ten minutes from my place but in heels? No thanks!
    “Harp, babe, have you phoned a taxi? We’re all ready to go now” I asked, and she replied with the standard...
    “Yeah should be here any minute, we should just go down stairs and wait for it.”
    Outside my building, I was already regretting my decision to go with a short dress and heels rather than my usual skinny jeans and converse because damn it was fucking freezing!! I huddled closer to Jase and he put his arms around me to keep me warm, which really didn’t help, but it’s the thought that counts!!
    The taxi pulled up just outside the gates and I attempted a little run...well...shuffle...ok ok...I full on stumbled across the car-park, jumped in and we headed straight to the opening of the new club. Seeing as it was nearly half ten and we kinda figured the place would be heaving, for an opening night.
    Pulling up outside, I couldn’t help but feel ridiculously excited to see what it looked like inside. When it was called ‘Skank’ the place lived up to its name...and I mean it REALLY lived up to its name. Cheap drinks and decent music were the only things that kept us going there. Nothing’s cheap in London, and I might have had money, but Harp and Jase didn’t, so it suited us! But really, other than that there wasn’t anything else to get excited about. I mean, I’d walk in and immediately be accosted by sloppy drunk teenage boys (that likely weren’t even old enough to be out drinking, because the management really didn’t care whether you were eighteen or not) who really should stop drinking cheap shots because god knows what else would have given them the idea that I’d jump at the chance to take them back to my place?! I mean... really ?!
    It was decorated with beige wallpaper that had black swirls all over it - at a club?! - that I suppose at one point was in fashion, but seeing as most of it had been peeled off the walls and people thought it was a good idea to write all over it, it wasn’t much more than huge graffiti boards by the end.
    Even if you were the first person to walk in when it opened, it was advisable not to wear your best shoes there, because they really wouldn’t stay that way. Alcohol from YEARS of spillages was still left on the wooden floors and your feet would stick with every step. It really was that filthy! The tables were chipped, the lights were broken, and the toilets...well...we would only ever venture into them when we were seriously drunk! They were disgusting! I really don’t think they had a cleaner in the entire place...EVER.
    So yeah, I was definitely excited to see what the new owner had done with the place, I was in the second year of my interior design degree so it was exactly my game. I didn’t really wanna get my hopes up though being as I couldn’t imagine how much they could have actually changed it in the month it was closed. Then again, maybe other people knew something I didn’t because the line to get in wasn’t just long...it was seriously seriously long. I swear we were nearly half way back to my place (possibly a slight exaggeration) by the time we got to the end but I was curious by how many people were there, so there was no way I was not going in!
    After chatting shit for a good five minutes we were approached by a young guy, possibly Harp’s age...maybe 20-21? And I was all geared up to tell him to sling his hook being as we weren’t even inside the place and we were already going to be accosted, but then I stepped back to get a good look at him and he didn’t seem like he was exactly dressed for a night out. Black trousers that were pretty snug, black leather belt with a red bottle opener buckle and a fitted black shirt that had the top two buttons undone, seemed more like