Saving from Monkeys (8 page)

OK
, not going to lie, that one stung a bit. Their chortles reinforced that the comment had been meant as a joke and that they had absolutely no faith in the idea that I would ever be anything other than a cleaner. I hadn't used any of the 'domestic arts' in years, except to clean my own room, but their words still spoke right to all my fears about never escaping that life.

There was no way I was going to let
myself be bested, however, and I kept my voice disgustingly perky as I replied, "Oh us cleaners are always diplomats. Weren't you the one I spent half an hour negotiating with to put your pants back on when you were strutting your stuff outside Mrs Sinclair's study that time?"

"Probably," the other boys said in unison and, for a second, I saw the spark of their old friendship.

"It was the night after the championship," the unfortunate looking one shrugged. "It was a pants off kind of occasion."

"Speaking of the championship, where's our captain, oh captain?" The one I'd called Flopsy looked around. "Shouldn't be hard to spot him, he's about 100 metres taller and wider than everyone else here."

"Good luck with that," Elliot said stiffly. "He'll be shacked up somewhere with his girlfriend."

"Oh yeah?
We heard there was a chick in the picture." Cottontail laughed as if he doubted what he'd heard could be true. "What's she like?"

"She's
cool, good fun." Elliot could’ve just been being polite, but I didn't think so and I begrudgingly had to allocate him a couple of good guy points. It brought his score up to about -2,356.

"Hot?" Mopsy pressed and I smothered a smile at the twist of awkwardness on Elliot's face at having to make this judgement about his best friend's girlfriend.

"Yeah, definitely," he said, however, rising manfully to the occasion. -2,355.

"Well
, who would’ve figured? Old blubber whale scoring a hottie? She must be desperate." Cottontail laughed, the others joined in and everything about Elliot's body language suddenly screamed 'I'm going to punch you
so
hard.' This wasn't the kind of ribbing between mates that you'd expect; this was pointed nastiness from a bunch of cabbage for brains pricks.

Well
, I was done trying to smooth things over now. Knowing that the 'Whale' name was my fault didn't soften me towards them any, and I waited to see how Elliot would settle the point. I was just wondering whether I had the athletic prowess to do a tank roll to escape the ensuing violence when he suddenly got up, slamming his beer down on the table and holding a hand out to me.

"Come on, Rox, let's go dance," he said, in a mockery of a light voice. "You don't mind, do you guys?"

I could see that they
did
mind, the idea that their old friend wanted to abandon them to dance with the maid was making them look bemusedly between each other and start to posture menacingly. It was definitely time to leave.

Pointedly ignoring Elliot's outstretched hand, I nevertheless obediently got to my feet and went after him as, without another glance at his old teammates, he started to weave his way between the tables towards the stairs. Not liking finding myself just blindly following him again, I hastened my walk to come up next to him.

Flicking a quick look over, I saw that he was pretty much looking how I would have looked if someone had just said something mean about Abi. Uncomfortable at finding yet more common ground with him that night, I went on the offensive.

"I get that you wanted to escape your rubbish friends, but
was it absolutely necessary to drag me into it?" I complained, raising my voice in accordance with the increase in the thump of the music as we travelled closer to the dance floor. "Why didn't you just say you needed the loo or something?"

"What?" He looked down at me, his anger fading as he took on that familiar 'oh Rox is talking again, she's such an idiot' expression he liked to wear. "You wanted to be left alone with them?"

Ah, right…

"You make a valid point," I conceded reluctantly, squeezing in against his side as the crowd got thicker, but moving away as soon as I was able. "Still, we don't need to actually dance." This suddenly seemed very important. I'd come to this stupid club with the intention of clobbering Elliot with the truth as I saw it and then making a break for it. All this other stuff had so
not
been on the agenda.

"Chicken shit." Elliot tossed the words over at me so offhandedly that it actually took me a second to clock that he was talking about me.

"Excuse me?" I asked incredulously, wondering where the hell that comment had come from.
I'd
been the one facing up to his bully-boy mates after all.

"You're too scared to dance with me," he said cockily, clearly back to his conceited ways now his friends (ex-friends?) were being swallowed up by the crowd.

"Scared?" I asked crossly. "Where've you got that from?" Unfortunately the last word ended in an embarrassing squeak as we moved through a tight clump of people and he pressed his hand against the small of my back to guide me through them. I jumped at the contact and pushed him away. "Stop that!"

"You don't like me touching you," he repeated pointedly. "Ergo you're too chicken shit to dance with me."

The most annoying thing about Elliot, more annoying than his smirk, worse even than him not saying how I'd ended up sleeping with him, was how often he was right.

It took me longer than I would've liked to reply, but I finally did manage to find my voice to ask snootily, "Well, what does that tell you?"

We were descending the last of the steps down onto the bar level now and he raised his voice a little over the music to ask, "I don't know, what does it tell me?"

"That you weren't very good," I said promptly.

Heedless of the fact he was getting in people's way, Elliot stopped dead where he was and stared at me. "That I wasn't...
what
?"

"
Think about it," I knew I was treading on very dangerous ground now, but wasn't able to make myself back down, "we had sex and now I can't stand you touching me. It doesn't take a genius to make the connection." Something else occurred to me and I added facetiously, "Probably the only reason there were 3 condoms was because you needed 3 tries to get it right."

"Un-fucking
-believable," he breathed and I knew straight away that I'd made a big error in judgement. Unprovoked Elliot was bad enough, and now I'd gone and prodded him with a big pointy stick. Metaphorically obviously, although if I'd
had
a big pointy stick...

"Dare you to dance with me then."

It took me a second to realise what he'd said, distracted as I was with the acknowledgement of my own daring. When I did get it, I rolled my eyes at the weak ploy.

"Come on, Sinclair," I said
, almost disappointed by his poor form. "I'm not a boy. That kind of 'I dare you' stuff doesn't work on me."

"Because you're too chicken shit."
His expression changed to one of faux sympathy and my eyes narrowed as he said, "It's OK, though. I guess if you're genuinely too scared about what your body's reaction to me will give away-"

OK
, so maybe that stuff
did
work on me. I couldn’t stand the implication of what he was saying and found myself snapping, "
Fine
, I'll dance with you!"

I clapped a han
d up to my mouth in horror as he started to laugh and I knew that I'd just risen well and truly to his bait.

"You only asked me to dance to get away from those idiots, didn't you?" I sighed. "You never had any intention of actually doing it."

He nodded, and then leant in to say cheerfully, "But we can dance together if you're really that desperate to."

"I'd rather gnaw both my arms off," I said, furious at myself for so pathetically biting the hook he'd dangled in front of me, "but thanks for the offer."

I wanted to get the hell out of Haze, that was my prevailing thought as I turned away from Elliot and went to march off. Every pre-conceived notion I'd had about the place had been spot on. It
was
a wanky club that only knobs went to and I was sick of every last one of them. I'd been harassed, insulted and teased and I'd had enough.

Unfortunately, as per usual, Elliot had other ideas and I'd barely taken a couple of steps before I heard him say,
"Look out."

Then his hands were on my waist and he'd spun me off course until my back bumped up against the wall. I yelped in surprise, my stomach swooping uncomfortably as the room span and our bodies momentarily pressed together.

God, he was the absolute limit! What in the name of all the monkeys in the jungle did he want now?

I was about to demand that he got his hands the hell off me, but the words caught in my throat as I looked up to see that his head was tilting down as if, oh God, as if...

----------

Roxanne Mapley thought he was going to kiss her.

Elliot allowed himself a split second to consider that. He hadn't been going to at all. He'd just seen the 'arse currency' guy from before, turned her out of his line of sight and had been leaning down to tell her so. After dealing with his dickhead old teammates and then goading her with the dancing thing, he thought he'd cut her a break and spare her from having to deal with
that
tosser again.

Now that she was looking at him, though, her eyes shining in the low light and her chin slightly tilted upwards, he wondered what she'd do if he followed through on her expectation and pashed her right there.

No dice, he told himself firmly a second later. She was already more trouble than she was worth and she didn't even remember their kisses from before. The last thing he needed was her getting all weird about ones she
could
remember.

"Right, we're even," he said instead, making her jerk a little bit in surprise. "I didn't tell you about Nan, but I've just saved you from Mr 'Skip Straight to the Arse Stuff'."

It took her another moment to really connect what he was saying, but he saw the moment she did because she blushed again. She did that a lot.

"That
doesn't
make us even," she said bouncing back quickly, her voice firm. "I've already proven that I can deal with him just fine on my own. Plus," she pressed up onto her tiptoes to peer over his shoulder and then subsided down into his shadow again, "Mr 'Skip Straight to the Arse Stuff' has got some serious muscles on him. Maybe he wasn't such a bad option after all, he certainly couldn't be any worse than you clearly were."

She must have been exhausted working so damn hard at hiding her attraction to him and he really didn't know why she bothered. You didn't see him getting that worked up over it. She was pretty
alright looking, they'd had a good time when they'd been together (not that she remembered), he didn't have any issue acknowledging that, so what was her problem?

He rolled his eyes, but allowed
himself to play along, saying, "You know what they say about guys with muscles like that, though." When she looked at him blankly he held up the little finger of his right hand and waggled it back and forth in her face. He could see that she was working desperately hard not to be amused, but he kept up his pinkie dance until she finally cracked and burst out laughing.

And that was how Jonah and Abi found them, him pressing her up against the wall, Rox's laughter making him smile in return.

"
Rox
?"

They both turned to see Abi looking wildly between them in confusion. Obviously clocking to what her friend was seeing, Rox batted her hands against Elliot's chest
, exclaiming, "Off! Get off!"

He obligingly took a couple of steps back, but Abi was still looking like she'd seen them doing something much,
much
kinkier than just laughing together over another man's small penis.

"What the…?" She
asked, her husky voice slightly higher than usual and all kinds of confused sounding.

"Let's do the girly bathroom thing," Rox grabbed her friend's hand and Abi only had time to send Jonah a significant look before she was dragged away. Elliot watched the two of them practically run off, their mouths moving at a million miles an hour
, and wondered how the hell they were keeping track of what the other was saying.

In contrast, he and Jonah simply nodded at each other and ambled in comfortable silence towards the bar. Only once they had fresh drinks in their hands and had secured themselves a couple of bar stools did Jonah say,
"I thought Cinders was going to rip you a new one tonight, but you were looking pretty cosy back there."

"You know me,"
Elliot eyed his friend over the neck of his bottle, "I have a way with the ladies."

"Not
that
lady you don't," Jonah objected.

Undoubtedly true, but so what? Elliot stared at his best
mate until he looked away shiftily, and then made the connection with the look Abi had sent her boyfriend before she left.