Saving from Monkeys (7 page)

"We're going out to Haze tonight," Abi skipped over to my bed and plonked herself down in front of me, putting a hand on my knee to show silent support over whatever was bugging me. "You should come."

"Haze?"
I repeated in astonishment even as I gave her hand an appreciative squeeze. "That wanky club that only knobs go to?"

Abi's eyes widened and she tilted her head slightly to the left where Jonah was standing idly, clearly working hard to redirect the blood from his penis to his head now sex was off the cards. For a moment I didn't
clock to what Abi was getting at, but then I remembered that Jonah’s dad owned a string of clubs, and it was highly likely Haze was one of them. Frankly, this did nothing more than solidify my point that it was for tossers, but for Abi's sake, I added, "And by knobs I clearly mean awesome people who are after superior entertainment in their evenings."

"Real smooth, Cinders," Jonah said sarcastically, but I could see that he wasn't angry and why should he be? As per every rich kid cliché in the book, there was no love l
ost between Jonah and his folks; I think it was the major point of bonding for him and Elliot. Speaking of whom...

"Will Smelliot be there?" I asked.

I could see from Abi's shifty demeanour that, yes, Elliot was going to be at Haze that night and Jonah confirmed it, saying, "Yeah, should be."

"Right then," I
got off the bed, filled with sudden purpose. "Yes, I will be coming tonight."

"You got that I said he
was
coming, yeah?" Jonah checked after sharing a startled look with Abi.

I nodded curtly, marching over to my chest of drawers and starting to rifle through it to find my best 'eviscerate Elliot' outfit. Over my shoulder I replied, "Yes, I got that. Your little buddy Elliot and I are going to have a nice little chat."

Aha! I pulled out a tight little red top in triumph. Red for anger, red for bloodshed, it was perfect.

"A nice little chat about what?"
Abigail's voice sounded faintly concerned, as well it might. I turned and fixed my eyes on hers, the top clutched tightly in my hand representing the total opposite of a white flag.

"Sex and grandmas."

----------

Elliot arrived earlier than usual at Haze.

He'd received a text from Jonah saying simply
Cinders on warpath
so maybe he should’ve spent a few more precious hours with his head before Rox bit it off, but he hadn't been able to stay away. He needed to know ASAP whether Rox was just on one of her regular, run of the mill warpaths, the type he'd weathered many times over the years, or whether it was
the
warpath, the one that was seriously going to screw everything up.

Usually on nights out at Haze Elliot went against the strict dress code just to piss Jonah's old man off. Not that ripped jeans and scuffed sandshoes paid
Mr Powlski back for all the missed rugby games and snide crap he'd given his son over the years about his weight, but it was something. That night, though, was different and, by the time he was ready, he looked like a walking poster boy for Haze in black jeans and a green designer t-shirt. Exactly what Rox hated. Sometimes it was like he didn't even have to try.

Earlier it might’ve been for him, but Haze wa
s already pumping when he arrived; noisy patrons spilling out of the queue round the block in a colourful snake. Elliot joined the line, ignoring, as he always did, Mr Powlski’s insistence that he could skip the queue.

Considering
how packed the place was, when he finally made it inside he thought he might have trouble spotting Rox, but she was the first person he saw, standing at the bar almost directly in front of him. He ducked to the side for a second and took the opportunity to check her out before she saw him.

Completely alone, she
stood out with her bright red top, tight jeans and decidedly fed up expression. She'd mussed up her hair, giving it that sexy bed head look, her rumpled curls instantly making him think of when he'd seen her with
real
bed hair, her lips puffy from kissing him and her naked body soft and warm against his. It was a good memory, but he pushed it aside almost immediately. One thing had become pretty damn clear over the past month, his punishment for not telling Rox what had happened that night was feeling like a pervert every time he pictured any of their time together.

Maybe that was one good thing that would come out of tonight, if she really had remembered what had happened
; those memories might stop coming with a guilt blow to the gut. Of course everything else would go to pot…

He pulled himself together and was just about to go over to Rox and get the ball rolling when he saw that someone had beaten him to it, or rather, her.
Haze might’ve been crowded, but Rox's scowl had managed to secure her a patch of the bar to herself; as Elliot watched, however, a big guy with dark curly hair sauntered over to impose himself on her solitude. And impose he did, pushing his muscular frame into her personal space until her small form was swamped.

Rox looked up in surprise at this sudden invasion, her green eyes looking over this random for some familiarity and then, obviously seeing none, glazing over with polite disinterest.

"Girls with arses like yours shouldn't have to buy their own drinks." That was the stranger's opening gambit and Elliot froze, something between a laugh and a snarl stuck in his throat.

Rox went similarly still and then stared up at him incredulously. "Um...wow," she said, although Elliot had to
move in closer and concentrate on her lips to work out what she was saying over the music blasting up from the dance-floor downstairs. "I didn't realise I could use my arse as currency. I used the Australian dollar to buy my drink,” she nodded at the glass on the bar in front of her, “and that seemed to work alright, though."

The guy hitting on her obviously hadn't been expecting that reply and
, for a moment, he seemed to be at a loss as to what to say in response. Unfortunately he soon recovered and, clearly thinking he was some sort of witty genius, replied, "I'll buy you a drink then and you can pay me back in arse currency later."

Rox
choked, her face a picture of horror. "Thanks, but no, I'm good. I can get my own drinks."

"So you want to just skip straight to the arse stuff then?"
The guy clapped a hand onto the area in question and she reared back as Elliot made exactly the same move forward towards them.

Rox wasn't some damsel in distress, and he knew she wouldn't thank him for getting involved, but everything in him said that the time for
hanging back had passed. A line had been crossed.

Unaware of the incoming rescue mission,
however, he saw Rox take control of the situation herself, pushing the stranger away and saying steadily, "I said
no
thank you. Hands off."

Elliot lost sight of her for a moment as a mob of people pushed forward to the bar, and by the time he'd thrust his way through, the dickhead had been put in his place and was turning away.

"Careful with that one, mate," he grimaced, in what he clearly thought was a 'bros before hos' kind of mateship as he saw Elliot approaching. "Someone should put a 'beware of the dog' sign on her, you know?"

"Piss off," Elliot spat, shoving past him.

Rox looked up in apprehension as he came up beside her, clearly thinking the other guy had returned. He caught the spark of relief in her eyes as she saw it was him, but then she remembered herself and thunked her head down onto the bar.

"You right?" He touched her elbow lightly making her swiftly lift her head and shift her arm deliberately away from his concerned contact.

"You saw that did you? Unbelievable!" She lifted up her glass and then slammed it down on the counter in front of her with a loud bang. "The drinks here cost twice as much as they do at the uni bar, but the arseholes are exactly the same calibre, where's the fairness in that?"

"You said arseholes," convinced that she was in no way traumatised by her recent encounter with the lowest form of Haze's
clientele, Elliot leant back against the bar next to her. "Very impressive. What happened to monkey?"

"It went militant," she said viciously. "Someone grabbed its arse."

He laughed and then held his hand out to get the attention of the bartender. The guy recognised him and a few seconds later his beer of choice was slid along the bar to him.

"Well
, that was a typically disgusting display of entitlement," Rox remarked as he lifted the bottle to his lips. "Took me about half an hour to get my drink."

"Maybe you should have paid in arse currency," Elliot suggested with a wicked smile. "I hear that gets you good results around here."

She looked at him, and for a split second, he thought she was going to crack and laugh, but then the moment passed and she glared at him instead.

"Being hit on by some creepy random is all your fault by the way," she said, sucking an ice cube into her mouth and then crunching it angrily.

"Of course it is," he said sardonically even as he scanned the room to make sure the 'creepy random' had well and truly moved on. As he confirmed that he had, he saw a couple pressed against each other against the far wall. Considering the size of one of them, this was almost certainly Jonah and Abi. Well, that explained why Rox had been on her own.

"It is!" She insisted, stabbing her straw into the bottom of the
tumbler. "There is no way I would've come to this stupid place if it wasn't for you."

She joined him in looking around, although her gaze was rather more pointed and he couldn't help but see what she was getting at. The long bar they were at curved around taking up most of the space at ground level, but there was a large dance-floor in the basement. You could hear the music thumping and throbbing through the bar, kind of like having a permanent headache. Everything was chrome and hard red plastic
; the kind of place where if you fell, you fell hard.

"So why are you here then?" He asked, leaning towards her and dropping his voice in a way that, he had on good authority, was sexy
as hell. "So desperate to see me again you'll go to any lengths?" It was juvenile, but there was something so entertaining in the way her jaw tightened and her cheeks darkened at his flirting.

"What is it with the losers that come here and personal space?" She put a small, pale hand on his shoulder and pushed him back before tilting her head up to look at him and letting him see just how properly mad she was.

"You suck, Sinclair," she said haughtily, "and the only reason I came here tonight was to tell you that I know what you did."

Ah, her feet had found the warpath.

He felt like he'd been kicked in the stomach, but he worked desperately hard on not showing how winded he felt. "If you finish that sentence with 'last summer' and pull out a butcher's hook I'm out of here," he said and she narrowed her eyes at him.

"You think you're funny," she emphasised each word by poking his shoulder with her finger, but before he could make some comment about who was invading whose personal space now, she pulled back. "But you're not and I see right through you."

"Yeah?" He asked.

"Yeah," she said firmly. "You-" she stopped as if she suddenly couldn't find the words.

"I...?" He prompted, taking a sip of his beer that he couldn't swallow past his clogged throat.

"You had sex with me because of your grandma," she said all in a rush, and the beer he hadn't been able to get down sprayed back out of his mouth and onto the polished bar top.

"I
what
?"

"You wanted to make Nan happy so you had sex with me, and that's what you've been hiding." Her piece said, she folded her arms and stared at him, waiting for his reaction to her big announcement.

He looked at her for one long moment and then burst out laughing.

Chapter 5
– The Years she Doesn’t Have and the Help

Elliot laughed for a really long time.

Like, an off-putting, mentally ill, long time. I waited for a little while to see if he would stop on his own, but when he was still at the eyes watering, gripping the bar for balance stage after a good minute or so, I had to intervene.

I reached forward with my hand and quickly flicked his ear as hard as I could, a trick I hadn't used since grade 7 when Ryan Hayes had been trying to kiss me on the overpass after school. It worked as well as it had then, with Elliot jumping and then immediately clapping a hand to the abused skin.

"Ow!" He complained and I plastered a fake contrite look on my face.

"Sorry, I thought you were hysterical."

"Don't people usually slap someone who's hysterical?" Obviously seeing the contemplative gleam in my eye he hastily added, "That wasn't a suggestion."

"Have you got yourself under control then?" I asked snarkily, seething at having my big reveal so thoroughly laughed off. "Your little crazy episode is over?"

"
My
little crazy episode?" He repeated disbelievingly. "Did you hear what you just said? Christ's sake, Rox, I've used a lot of excuses to get girls into bed over the years, but trust me on this one, my grandma has never been one of them."

I raised an eyebrow at the way he'd phrased
it and he glared at me. "An excuse," he clarified. "She's never been one of the excuses."

To give myself time to answer, I picked up my drink, but instead of taking a sip, I chewed hard at the straw as I considered him.

I really wished in that moment that he was more of a stranger to me. If he was, then I could've claimed he was lying and gone on thinking I was right about what had happened the night I'd slept with him. I'd been so sure that was it! That I'd found out about Nan having had a stroke and when I'd gone over to his place to talk to him about it we'd drowned our sorrows in drink, he’d seen a good opportunity to make Nan happy and...

However we'd ended up in bed together,
though, I knew now for sure that it hadn't happened the way I’d thought. Elliot had been too openly and honestly amused by the suggestion.

"Nan
had
just had her stroke when I came round though, right?" I asked, sure that my maths re the dates hadn't been off at least.

He sighed and then looked away from me and I followed his gaze up to where there was another mezzanine level with tables and chairs scattered around.

"Let's go upstairs," he suggested, turning back to look at me and, when I opened my mouth to protest that he was just avoiding my question, he rolled his eyes. "Come on, Rox, grandmas and strokes? We're being a real downer at the bar."

Looking around and realising that we were surrounded by a sea of people all pushing forward for drinks and easily able to eavesdrop
, I gave in and nodded. The list of people who knew I'd slept with Elliot was already quite long enough for my liking; I didn't want it to grow any bigger.

He pushed himself away the counter and I picked up my glass and followed him through the press of people towards the stairs. He looked over his shoulder a couple of times to check that I was following him and I had the urge to duck down and disappear into the crowd, just to see what he'd do. Knowing Elliot he'd probably make a big scene and get some of the staff he seemed so chummy with to drag me out of hiding and back into his presence, so I didn't act on it. Besides, I really did want to see just how many answers I could get out of him when we were safely ensconced in the official 'conversation' area.

Haze was rubbish, but I had to admit the upstairs bit was a good idea. The thump, thump, thump of the music was diluted so you could clearly hear yourself think, and others talk, and the free chair opposite Elliot was comfy despite its self-consciously funky design. A quick glance around told me that most people were deeply involved in, mostly drunken, deep and meaningfuls so Elliot's and my conversation would take place in relative privacy.

"So," I said, as soon as we were settled, "you found out about Nan's stroke the night we had sex?"

"Have you considered going into journalism rather than business?" He asked, leaning his lithe body back in his chair and lifting a hand to acknowledge someone who had called a greeting to him from across the room. "You've certainly got the 'doggedly following a line of questioning' thing down."

"Yes, and your career as a white collar criminal will
no doubt be a raging success judging by how well you've got the '
avoiding
the dogged line of questioning' thing down," I snapped in reply. As I saw his eyes wandering away again, probably to fix on the chest area of some poor unfortunate girl, I leant forward and clicked my fingers loudly in his face. "Hey, pay attention!"

He sighed then, but stopped playing the mafia boss in his den act and sat forward with an expression that suggested he was actually going to talk to me properly.

"So you heard about Nan, then?"

"Clearly," I said through gritted teeth. "No thanks to you."

He actually had the cheek to look surprised at this. "I thought your mum would've told you."

"Yeah, well she thought that
you
would. Here's hoping there's never an axe-murderer after me and both you and Mum think the other one's going to warn me." I felt the fear and hurt from when I'd been on the phone with Nan suddenly swell up inside me, making me gasp out, "Seriously, what did you think? That I wouldn't care? That I wouldn't notice and then suddenly, years down the track, I might just happen to mention offhand that I hadn't seen Nan move on her left side for a while?"

Everyone else's conversations across the mezzanine level continued as normal, but there was suddenly a tense buzz in ours.
Elliot had stiffened during my outburst, but he waited until I'd well and truly finished before he said simply, "She hasn't got years, Rox."

He might as well have punched me.
I sat back in my chair with a whoosh of expelled breath and curled my arms across my stomach. So it was that bad.

"I didn't...I thought..." I stammered, finding myself incapable of forming a proper sentence after hearing something so awful.

"And, yeah, I
had
just found out when you came round," he continued before I had any time to regroup. "Hell, maybe that was part of it, I don't know. I was already drinking and then you were there and...but I didn't...we didn't...
because
of it." He took a big slug of his beer and I followed suit with my drink, unable to think of anything to say.

I’
d never seen Elliot lost for words like that. In the past I'd only seen his emotional spectrum span calm and amused to vaguely irritated; detached in a 'you can't get to me' kind of way. That I'd clearly got to him that time gave me no sense of achievement.

He obviously misread my grimace of guilt as one of disbelief because he
repeated, kind of angrily actually, "Nan didn't come into it."

"I believe you," I said truthfully, and then we lapsed into silence.

It took about two seconds for me to realise that us both having our mouths shut at the same time made me very uncomfortable. Sure, when Elliot talked it was like he was trying to prove it was possible to irritate someone to death, but now, in the aftermath of our awkwardly honest comments, it became blindingly obvious that him
not
saying anything was even worse. Irritating when he talked and
more
irritating when he didn't. What a talent this boy had.

I looked over to see whether the quiet was freaking him out as much as it was me, but I couldn't tell as his head was down, his floppy hair (
stupid
floppy hair, I reminded myself) hiding his expression. Ten to one that was on purpose.

"Even if you didn't do it, do
me
, to make Nan happy, you've got to admit she is," I burst out, not so much breaking the silence as punching it in the face and stealing its wallet. It worked, though, as Elliot lifted his dark eyes to mine and acknowledged my outburst with a slight quirk of his mouth.

"Yeah," some of the tension left his shoulders and he leant back, reactivating his 'too cool for school' shields. "I think she could only have been happier if I'd developed a debilitating drug addiction."

"Well, it's not too late," I said eagerly, glad to be back on normal ground with him. "I met a girl in the toilets earlier who offered to sell me something if you're interested."

"I might save my junkie days for Nan's next stroke." He tilted his drink towards me in a sort of salute. "It'll give me something to look forward to."

I was used to having moments of genuine shared emotion with Abi; to have that feeling of joint consciousness with my best friend was not unusual. What
was
unusual, however, was to catch flippin' Elliot Sinclair's eye and have this same feeling of complete understanding. But there it was. As we looked at each other, there was a fleeting moment where the dark humour slipped away and I saw that he felt what I did; a mind numbing terror that we were going to lose Nan.

I think we were both as genuinely astonished by this as the other. In fact, we were still looking at each other with faint expressions of 'WTF?' when there was a sudden booming shout of, "Sinclair, you
bastard!"

Elliot and I both blinked, and, in the next second, three large bodies appeared next to our table. This sudden arrival forcibly reminded me that the impenetrable bubble Elliot and I had been enclosed in had been figurative rather than literal, and I felt suddenly embarrassed.

Looking up gingerly, I recognised the newcomers as three of Elliot and Jonah's old rugby mates. To a man they had thick necks, bulging biceps and a brutishly surprised look on their face as they swung their gaze from Elliot to me. Oh, this night just got better and better…

"Bloody hell," one of them barked, "that's not Cinders, is it?"

"Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail." I nodded at them each in turn, having followed their example with me and never bothered to learn their actual names.

"It is!" The ugliest of the three, patted my shoulder with a big, meaty hand and grinned toothily across at Elliot. "Since when do we drink with the help, Sinclair?"

And there it was. The kind of comment I'd managed to avoid since coming to uni, but which had characterised any time spent with Elliot and his mates in the past. It had taken them less than ten seconds.

"Fairly sure you're not, Henderson," Elliot said flatly and I looked across at him sharply.

I could see that his old friends were as taken aback by his unfriendly tone as I was and I wondered what I'd unwittingly ended up in the middle of. Trouble in rich boy paradise?

"What? You're not going to invite us to sit down?" One of the others asked after an awkward pause, maintaining his jovial tone, but only just as Elliot continued to make no move to welcome them.

"Cinders is probably scared we'll tip over our drinks and she'll have to clean them up," the shortest one guffawed and the other two joined in like he was the height of amusement as opposed to just plain old repellent.

I ignored them, instead watching with mounting confusion as Elliot's expression hardened. What was up with him?

And then, for the first time, I actually properly considered what his life was like now he was at uni. I'd just sort of assumed that it'd be the same as it was when he lived at home; that he'd be doing the same idiotic things with the same idiotic friends, but I reluctantly acknowledged just how unfair that was. My life had changed completely when I came to uni, why couldn't his have to?

It certainly seemed that he didn't have much to do with these guys anymore, a thought reinforced as he said,
"You tip over your drinks, you'll be ones cleaning it up." His tone was grim and the mood shifted abruptly from 'boys against girl' to 'boys against boy' which, from my perspective, was not actually an improvement.

I was used to Elliot's friends' patronising comments and, mostly, they just flowed on past me. I couldn't remember Elliot being too bothered about the things they'd said to me growing up, but he certainly looked bothered now.

His change of heart was something I wanted to commit some time to thinking about, but there were other considerations that demanded more prompt attention. Namely the hulks next to us whose trunk-like necks actually seemed to be swelling with outrage the more they thought about their erstwhile friend's dismissive treatment of them.

I really, really didn't want things to get to that stupid, macho stage that made nights out such a pain so I kicked Elliot's shin under the table to turn his scowl away from them and onto me. Then I sat up straighter and said, in my best ditzy, admiring voice, "Didn't you guys win the school championship in rugby? Maybe pretend your drinks are rugby balls and try not to fumble them then we'll all be happy."

It turned out I wasn't very good at the 'ditzy, admiring' stuff and my words came out sounding pretty sarcastic, but it looked like only Elliot had noticed.

"That's good thinking." I found myself being patted again and, although I tried to smile at the perpetrator, I was fairly sure I'd just bared my teeth. "Hey, maybe you should give up the domestic arts to be a diplomat."