The bar is empty, the venue falling silent a little over half an hour ago.
Humidity hangs in the air to the point that it can almost be tasted glancing over to the main entrance the windows are misted with condensation from the heat within the building compared to the cold dark January night that lays outside.
I look up to Stevie as I hear her heeled footsteps approach. As we catch one another's eyes we don't speak and just offer a simple nod of recognition.
"Agreed," I quietly state.
"No arguments from me," Steve quietly offers by way of response as he stands the other side of the expanse of now disinfected bar from me.
The heeled footsteps grow closer as we both turn to face her as she steps across hard wooden floorboards of the bars floor, heading towards us but with no genuine idea what it is that she heads towards.
The petite blonde had been one of three females in a group of eight, who spent most of the night crowded into a booth in the far corner of the main room since much earlier in the evening. An untypical Friday night drift from the workplace into the City for a night to wind down at the end of a busy week.
In truth she'd not been the girl to catch my eye from the group, her colleague had been far more attractive, dressed better and looking far more alluring in many ways. In truth she was incomparable to the skinny little blonde in the blue loose-fitting dress that now stood before us.
"I... I guess I should get going" she offered on a quiet little voice pushing slightly wavy shoulder length blonde hair behind her ear. "I don't want to outstay my welcome."
"My guess is that someone else stole that taxi of yours," Steve offers without looking up while wiping a smear, that I fail to spot, from the surface of the bar.
"I was trying to call them... the taxi company..." The petite little blonde holds up a blank screen phone, "...Now my batteries dead."
"You're not having much luck, are you?" I keep the smirk from my face as her further predicament only plays into the plans Steve and I had discussed on hushed tones while she'd headed to the ladies restroom.
"You're telling me." She offers clearly exasperated. "I can't even get in touch with my friends now."
My mind flashes to her far more attractive friend once again as I take a step towards the bar stool over which her little navy denim jacket is draped. I consider enquiring further about her but realise to leverage such a conversation would not be easy. The more I consider the petite blonde and think of her colleague and the tight dark red dress she'd been sporting the more, however, I'm convinced that I've seen them both in the bar on previous Friday nights. The two of them with same group of friends come colleagues that she'd let disappear on their separate ways home, dispersing only to leave her to catch a pre booked taxi to a rural location nearly 25 miles from the City. A Taxi that had never arrived.
Picking up the denim jacket I hand it to her, casting my eyes over her tiny frame in the wrap around navy dress that contains a subtle darker shade of navy detail, that in the dim light I can't discern but concur might be a floral print.
"You've very few options," I offer looking to my watch as if to press the point, while I hand her the jacket, noting it's a little after two thirty in the morning. "Taxis will be few and far between... chances are they'll be unlicensed and unsafe .... Don't think you'll be able to find a hotel this late on short notice... and well any local friends aren't an option now."
"I know... I know." she offers a little flustered slipping the jacket over her upper body.
"We're not heartless bastards though are we Steve?" I offer looking to my brother.
"I dunno," is Steve's ignorant and ill-judged response for which I could throttle him, but for which I don't even offer him a sneer in response.
"We're not..." I continue "...it's entirely up to you... if you're comfortable I mean".
Deliberately I struggle to offer up the words, so as to try and appear sincere to her.
"We've ...well we've a spare bed at ours we can offer as opposed to turfing you out on the streets... We only live the other side of the City."
Noting Steve look up towards her as I make my offer. Watching her hazel eyes framed by heavy dusky pink and purple eyeshadow glance from me to Steve and then back to me.
"I... I wouldn't want to impose." she timidly offers.
"It would be no inconvenience to us" I state back, trying not to glance up her thin black nylon clad legs as I speak.
**********
Sat on the three seater sofa a little after three thirty in the morning I watch her.
Gemma, Gemma who's surname I can't even recall now. With her hair now pulled back into a pony tails she kneels before the glass topped coffee table as her head smoothly rolls from left to right as she inhales a thick line of cocaine from the surface of the table.
The class A drugs part of a batch that Steve and I had recently confiscated from a Weasley faced baseball cap wearing little shit under false pretences, having spotted him pushing the little packets of drugs in the bar a few weeks previous. I can't stand the stuff, or any drugs for that matter given how they either dull or over heighten the senses and only ultimately rot the brain. I've inhaled a line of the cocaine tonight to serve a purpose, to lure Gemma in. It's not really my style.
Glancing to Steve who sits opposite her in the single seat sofa as he lights up his second heavily loaded cannabis spliff he offers me a knowing smirk.
"Shit," Gemma offers dropping the rolled note on the table as she no doubt feels the burn of the drugs in her nasal passage. "Oh fucking... of fuck that stuffs strong."
"Here..." I offer passing her a glass of nearly neat vodka, "... this'll help with the taste in the back of your mouth."
Gemma grasps the glass and sinks back the potent clear liquid. Coughing and spluttering as she does.
"It's this that's supposed to make you choke" Steve states while leaning forward and offering the orange glowing tipped hand rolled cigarette to her,
