(Author's note - This is a 90% non-erotic story. The only erotic scene has been submitted separately as the short story "alone at last".)
It was April. It was raining. It was hardly a surprise.
The weekend had started well: boy had met girl and the Friday night alchemy that turns alcohol into meaningless sex had just begun when the spell, or rather a Budweiser bottle, was broken by a not-quite-ex-boyfriend who mistook me for the villain in the tragedy that passed for his love life. I was in no fit state to explain that I only had a walk on part in the last act so resorted to a more direct, if somewhat clichéd, response. In short, I head-butted him.
Friday night went down hill rapidly from there. I won the fight with the ex but lost the subsequent melee with the bouncers, then spent four uncomfortable hours sobering up in the clinically unsympathetic atmosphere of the casualty unit in Endell Street, waiting for someone to stitch up my eyebrow.
It was little wonder it was raining. Any half-decent scriptwriter would have included that detail in such a scene. It was another cliché. I had been beaten up, dumped, ignored for half the night by the cast of Casualty & generally abused by the whole fucking planet, so why shouldn't the weather stick the metaphorical boot in too?
I walked the five miles home. Two reasons: I had no chance of getting a taxi to pick me up in the mess I was in, but also, I had a perverse desire to prolong my self-pity. So I walked home &, about 4 a.m., crashed out, intent on sleeping through the rest of the weekend. That way it couldn't get any worse, right? Wrong. It can always get worse.
I was rudely awakened early on Saturday when Steve came round to use my washing machine. He has my spare keys so he let himself in, but if you knew Steve you'd know that if you want to sleep while he's in the building, you've got no hope unless he's comatose first.
"Morning Mate! Coffee?" he shouted as he walked past the bedroom door, casually slapping it first, to be assured of my full attention.
Any response I might ordinarily have made would have been truncated to one syllable as Steve found the power button on the hi-fi. No one should have to listen to U2 first thing in the morning. It says so in the Geneva Convention - doesn't it? Well, if it doesn't, I can make a bloody good case for getting it added. Not that it'd make a blind bit of difference - Steve hasn't heard of the Geneva Convention, let alone read it.
I was lying on my bed of pain, mentally calling down maledictions upon him, his parents & his parents' parents when Ste walked into the bedroom with a mug of coffee.
"Where's this bird then? ...Fuckin' hell! Is there still an eyeball in that socket?"
"You should have seen the other guy."
"I did. He didn't do that to you did he? I'm impressed."
"Thanks! And no, he didn't do this. I was worked over by a couple of steroid abusing penguins... And what d'you mean you've seen him? You were working last night."
"Yeah, well the kid you laid out is Charlie's brother."
"Charlie as in Charlie's Cars? Your boss?" This was not good.
"Nope. Charlie who's just done three for glassing a bloke who seven balled him at pool. Charlie who came down the dispatch office at two in the morning with what was left of his kid brother. That Charlie."
"Shit! Tell me you're winding me up, please." This was worse.
"Relax. He's on parole. He's not goin' to want to go back in for doing you over. Besides, he figures Martin - that's his kid brother's name by the way, in case you're interested - he figures Martin's big enough to fight his own battles and that this is strictly between you two."
"Great! So all I've got to worry about now is Psycho junior coming after me with a grudge & a role model that glasses people who beat him at pool. It's obviously escaped your notice but he caught me playing tongue hockey with his girlfriend. That's a little more serious than a game of pool, don't you think?"
"Hey! Don't kill the messenger! I'm just telling you what Charlie said."
"You're right. I'm sorry."
"No problem. Coffee's cold though. Hand it here and I'll zap it. I could do with a top-up myself."
"'s alright, but turn that bloody music off on your way past."
"Suit yourself. Tell you what, get dressed while I have another coffee, then we'll have breakfast at Sal's café. My treat."
"Sold."
I really wasn't feeling up to it, but Steve was offering to pay, an event as unlikely as a confirmed Elvis sighting. Steve's wallet saw daylight less often than Count Dracula. I would have crawled from my death-bed to take up an offer like that, so I got up, painfully.
In the Lounge, the answerphone was blinking. I hit the playback button.
".....Hi... It's Shana....from the bar last night?.....I was just calling to make sure you were OK.....We, well we kind of got separated and ..... anyway.....call me, OK? My number's 245 5188.....got to go now....Bye."
"Oh yeah! I forgot to tell you. That girl you were fighting over..."
"I wasn't fighting over her! I was just defending myself."
"Whatever. She came looking for you, so I gave her your number."
"You did what?"
"Now don't go off the deep end again. She was really upset, mainly because she didn't know what had happened to you. Anyway, she's cute, and how many girls have shown that much interest in you recently? The sympathy factor should be good for a shag at least."
"Don't you think the fact that Charlie's brother thinks he has a claim on her might put the dampers on things just a little bit?"
"Not really. He's only home for Easter. Next week he's back at college in York. She dumped him before Xmas but it hasn't sunk in yet. Trust me, he'll be laid up for most of the week, you saw to that, then he'll be gone. Forget about it."
"How come you know so much about all this? Who died and left you a crystal ball? And how come she knew to ask you about me?" I was very confused.
"Gianni was working the bar last night. Yes? She noticed you seemed to know each other so she asked him where you'd have gone – Ah, light dawns! Gianni didn't know the bouncers had hospitalised you so he told her what he did know. Namely that your best friend, Steve – that's me – works for Charlie's Cars. With me so far? Good, now pay attention, this is the complicated bit. When she came to the dispatch office looking for someone called Steve, I was there! She told me the whole story. So you see Grasshopper, its not what the Sage knows but who knows that he knows that counts."
"Steve, you're priceless. I had been contemplating killing you, but for that, I'll let you live a while longer."
"Gee, thanks! Can we get breakfast now? I'm starving."
A couple of thousand calories of bacon, eggs and assorted fried things made the world seem a fit place to live in again. Steve helped too. It's hard to stay down around someone as exuberantly cheerful as him. I tried to stay miserable but, by the time I got down to chasing the last two baked beans around my plate, Steve's non-stop banter had worn down my defences and, painful though it was, I smirked at his latest tasteless joke.
"That's more like it. Boy! You're a tough audience this morning."
"Yeah, well I've got a fair bit on my mind."
"When you goin' to call her then?" Steve threw a hand grenade into the conversation.
"What? Oh, you mean Shana. I'm not. I've had enough grief over her already."
