Revelry (Taint #1) (10 page)

“You don’t own anything else of hers?”

“A few pieces of jewellery.”
That I had to pawn to feed and clothe myself these last few weeks.
“The bank took anything worth any money. It’s not like she had an estate, and everything else was sold or donated. I didn’t think to keep anything else until it was too late.” I pause, letting out a deep breath. “I was going through some stuff.”

“What stuff?” he asks, his tone low and coaxing. It takes me a little by surprise.

“Just life stuff. You wouldn’t be interested.”
And I don’t really want to tell you
. It’s embarrassing enough.

“Try me.”

“Okay, well, I found my boyfriend of five years eating out our hot roommate.”

“Fucker,” he snaps, and the animosity in his tone startles me.

“He did fuck her, actually. Oh, did I mention she was a stripper?”

There’s silence from the other end. “You lived with a stripper?”

“Uh huh, a fact I learned only after he let her move in without consulting me.” I lie back on the table and stare at the grassy field around me, hating that he’s so easy to talk to about this. Processing those events, I find that the memory of Brad’s betrayal doesn’t sting quite as much as it once did. It’s hard to hold onto something that’s already dead. I just wish it hadn’t ended that way. I wasn’t in love with him anymore; he wasn’t in love with me. It had taken a while for me to figure that out, but what we’d had once upon a time deserved better than that. I deserved better.

“Why weren’t you there to veto that shit?” Coop asks, pulling me from my reverie.

“Because I spent the weekend at the hospital, seeing my grandmother through chemo.”

“Jesus Christ, your ex is really a douche.” He exhales loudly, as if he’s blowing out cigarette smoke. “I thought I had shit bad?”

“Nope, I’m pretty sure my life out-shits yours.” I sigh.
Like this day wasn’t depressing enough
. “So did you need me or something?”

“Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I’m starting to see that I do,” he whispers, and then practically shouts into the receiver, “I mean, food! The guys wanted Chinese food.”

I wait a beat, mostly just to get the hearing back in my ear after he deafened me, but also because I’m not really sure what to make of that. “And you couldn’t just order in?”

“No, they don’t do delivery.”

“A Chinese restaurant that doesn’t deliver?”

“Nope, they don’t. So we want Beef and Black Bean, Chicken and Cashew, Garlic Prawns, Honey Chicken, Spring Rolls.”

“Wait, let me get a pen.” I jump down off the table and walk back to my car, pulling out a Biro with practically no ink left and jot down the order on the back of an old receipt.

“Is that Ali?” Zed asks from the background.

Cooper must cover the phone with his hands because the sound is muffled when he says, “Yes, it’s Ali. Who the fuck else would I be talking to?”

“Tell her to get me like three boxes of fortune cookies. Oh and Dim Sim.”

Cooper sighs. “Did you get that?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“We need a Sweet and Sour Pork, three orders of Special Fried Rice, and get whatever you want.”

“Sure, because apparently the list you’ve given me isn’t quite big enough to feed an entire army, but it’ll do four boys in a band.”

“We’re gonna be here ’til late, so you may as well hang out and have a few drinks with us.”

“Yeah, okay,” I say, shoving the pen behind my ear and tucking the order into the glove box so I don’t lose it.

“Oh and, Ali,” Coop says, before I can hang up. “I booked your flight.”

“You what?” I ask, incredulous.

“See you in half an hour.”

“Cooper.” He hangs up the phone and I shout into the receiver. “Motherfucker!” I cringe and smile apologetically when the soccer mums all turn to glare at me.

S
ix hours later, I’m slightly tipsy on account of Zed and I doing shots all afternoon. Okay, so maybe tipsy is an understatement. I’m practically paralytic, and I’m whisked into a cab and headed for Zed’s home with the rest of the boys, Leif included. Though she scares me—more often than not—I kind of wish Deb was around. Most of the time they treat me like one of the boys, which I’m more than happy with, but all this testosterone, tattooed muscle and booze makes me think dangerous thoughts. Very, very dangerous thoughts, especially where Cooper is concerned.

I follow Zed into his Darlinghurst loft. It’s huge. The ultimate bachelor pad, decked out with a kitchen, matte black appliances, neon signs and a stripper pole in the middle of the lounge room. Deep red couches are arranged in a U shape around the pole, which sits on a glossy black podium lined with little red lights.

“You have a stripper pole?” I ask, staring at the shiny gold post in the centre of the room. It’s bolted to the ceiling, and it glints like something forbidden in the podium lights.

“Yup,” Zed says, as he hands me another drink. I don’t even look at what it is before I’ve downed it in one go. I’m sort of numb, so the burn just kind of permeates my chest with warm and fuzzy feelings.

“In your lounge room?” I ask.

“Yup.”

“Do you know any strippers?”

He sits down on the podium, sipping his beer. “No, it’s for me.”

I blink in surprise. “I’m sorry, what?”

“It’s how I work out. You wanna see?”

“Oh god, please no,” Levi says. “Every time we come here I leave with the vision of you mounting your giant gold pole seared into my retinas.”

“Pole dancing is one of the only sports that incorporates a head to toe work out.”

“Yeah, which head?” Leif says, licking the flimsy paper of the joint he’s just rolled and then lighting it up.

“You know, Zed, you could invite any one of our groupies back here to use this thing. You wouldn’t even need to throw money at them, and yet you use it all wrong. You’re using it wrong, man.” Levi accepts the spliff that Leif offers and brings it to his lips, sucking in a deep breath. I watch on, mesmerised at the way the paper burns. “It’s like somewhere along the way you lost your cock and grew a vagina.”

“I don’t know.” Zed shrugs. “I get plenty of pussy out of it.”

“How?” Ash asks.

“Pole dancing classes,” Zed says, as if it’s self-explanatory. The room erupts with laughter, but Zed just grins. “Don’t laugh. I’ve been going to that class every week for a year and I haven’t once come home alone.”

“Say what?” Levi says.

“I’m telling you, man, it’s the ultimate place to pick up bendy chicks.”

“Zed, I wanna see your pole,” I remark, and I may be just a little too drunk to let their ribbing affect me. “Oh shut up, I meant his dancing. Pass me the fucking joint.” I flop down on the long couch beside Cooper. Levi sits on my opposite side and hands me the joint. I haven’t smoked weed since uni—which I guess wasn’t really all that long ago, but I never had premium shit like this.

When I pull back on the joint, smoke burns my lungs, and my head spins until I exhale. I cough and splutter for a bit and then I hand it to Cooper. I try to ignore the buzz of electricity that shoots straight to my vagina when his fingers touch mine and his eyes meet my gaze. And here’s the dumb thing—I watch his mouth as he puts the joint to his lips. I watch those lips and I imagine what they would feel like on my body, and my stupid traitorous snatch pretty much floods my panties as if it’s trying to purge the earth of all things unholy. When I lift my gaze I discover Cooper is staring just as intently at me.

“Jesus Christ, would you two just fuck it out already?” Ash murmurs, snatching the smoke from Cooper. I glance at him, wondering why he seems so mad about Coop and I sharing a … okay I don’t really even know what the hell we were just sharing. A moment? No. That’s impossible, because we hate one another.

Zed Jumps up from the floor, where he was apparently doing push-ups. Something I might have enjoyed watching if my whorish Hoo-Hah hadn’t been plotting and scheming ways to get Cooper Ryan’s penis alone. Zed takes off his shirt and tosses it at me before unbuttoning his jeans and sliding them down his hips.

It’s not wrong that my mouth is hanging open, right
?

“Are you getting naked?” I slur. “Not that I mind, but like, is it necessary to take your clothes—”

Zed grins, stepping out of his jeans, and suddenly I don’t care that we’re in his lounge room and he’s preparing to wrap his big-arsed body around a pole for me because Zed’s standing on the podium in boxer briefs and his tattoos and nipple rings are on display and—

“Oh, wow, that’s … hmm.” I trail off, crossing my legs and squeezing my thighs together. “That’s hot.”

“Close your mouth, Red,” Levi says, “You’ll only encourage him.”

“Surprisingly, I’m really okay with that.”

Zed hits a button on the remote in his hands and the stereo explodes to life. I expect some kind of death metal music, but a song from what sounds like a Russian caravan filters out of the speakers, drowning the room with accordions, percussion, guitars and some gravel voiced singer who sounds like he chews cigarettes for breakfast. Zed tosses the remote onto the couch beside Ash and grabs the pole, starting out slow with a simple turn and then moving into a series of complicated positions that look as though they require a crap tonne of patience, practice and overall body strength.

“Holy fuck,” I say when the song comes to a close. “You have to teach me that.”

“Okay,” he says with a shrug.

“No, like right now.”

“Um …” He glances sheepishly at me and then at Cooper.

“For the love of god, Zed, teach the woman to pole dance,” Levi says, “while we sit here and watch.

“You gotta take your pants off. You need skin to grip the pole.

“Her skin could grip my pole any day,” Levi says, and I turn and give him the finger.

I smack my hands against Zed’s chest. “Let’s do this, Atwood.”

“Ali. You don’t have to do this,” Cooper says.

“I want to do this.” I grab the pole and swing around it the way Zed did moments before, only he made it look effortless and I about wrench my arm out of its socket with that one graceless move. I grunt and try again, only this time there’s a body in my way and I run smack bang into it. My nose stings and I blink away the tears pricking my eyes. “Ow.”