Sympathy for the Devil (12 page)

       I walked out, coat over my arm, and headed for the tube station. I was so thick. Why would the pure evil that was Pierce Callun behave any better because he had in fact sucked my tits? I was halfway down the road before he caught up with me.

       “I tipped him, okay?” He nudged me with the bottle of champagne. “Come on, let’s go sit somewhere.”

       “I don’t want to.”

       Pierce brought me to a screeching halt and I nervously looked up at him. I was afraid he’d do a
True Blood
on me and I wouldn’t remember anything but waking up naked in his bed covered in bite marks.

       “Then what was the whole ‘let’s give us a go’ for?” he asked. “Some bet round halls?”

       “I’m not like that, and the mere fact you even suggested that I would, really pisses me off.”

       “What do you want from me then?” he demanded. “I’m not Rick. I’m not going to do as Mummy tells me.”

       “Don’t you ever stop and think how you make other people feel?” I asked him sadly. “The waiter, that silly, ignorant girl, me. What did any of us do to deserve that?”

       “Stop being so dramatic. I hardly tortured them.”

       “So you think the way you behave is acceptable?”

       His eyes fixed on me coldly. “You don’t like it, you can leave. If that’s all?” He turned to the road and looked out for a taxi. He burst out suddenly, “You said you weren’t going to judge me.”

       “But you’ve done nothing that you wouldn’t do for your dimbos!” I reminded him. “Look, we’ve got insane chemistry, fine. But… we’re so different. No.” I stopped him before he could argue. “You think I’m a sanctimonious bitch and I think you’re a raging, motherfucking brat. We’d kill each other inside a week.”

       He looked at me for a still moment, the blue in his eyes darkening. I hadn’t upset him. It wasn’t possible. It would be like trying to hurt a street lamp. Pierce snorted as a taxi rolled over to him.

       “You’re about as open-minded as an extremist. If it makes you feel better about getting naked with me, you were just there. You could have been anyone. And tonight, you were. See you around, Cari.”

       He got into the taxi and without a backwards glance or even a thought about how the hell I would get home, he left. I carried on walking and felt my feet begin to pinch. A taxi pulled up to me. “Sorry, I’m getting the tube.”

       “Are you Cari?” the driver asked me.

       “Yeah.”
The hell?

       “A Mr. Pierce Callun sent someone to pick you up and make sure you got back home safe. All paid for. Jump in.”

      
Oh,
lord
, I thought to myself. Way to make a girl feel like a cow. But I was right. And in a way so was he. Rick had been easy to manage because he didn’t like fighting with me. Pierce would fight with me until he drew blood then advertise his victory on a prime-time TV spot. “
Now, you can get one over on Cari Collins with these few words…
”

       I did want him to behave better, and I did want him to change. Because the way he was now, having sex with him would be part way between pity and a social experiment to see if evil carries in semen.

       “All right back there?”

       “Not really.”

       “Can’t have been all that bad. Nice of your boyfriend to sort you out for the journey home.”

       “He’s not my boyfriend,” I admitted.

       “Who is he then?”

       “Someone who thinks I’m Jerry to his Tom. I don’t want to be chased like that, just for the game.”

       “I’ve been a driver for twenty years, and I can count on one hand the number of times this has happened. Do game players do that?”

       I felt my throat thicken with tears at what felt like a completely lost opportunity. “They do if they want you to believe they’re someone else.”

       West on his best behaviour didn’t hold a candle to the West who knelt in front of me in the middle of a bar and proposed. I missed that West. The West of only a few months ago. The one who looked at me and didn’t see my past history. The one who didn’t think I’d be bouncing on another man’s meat stick if he turned his head for one second.

       That awful May Bank holiday, I’d jumped off the Victoria line and headed straight back for the club. Ben was outside as if he was leaving as well.

       “What happened?” he asked, as soon as he saw me.

       I shrugged helplessly. “I…Do you want to go somewhere?”

       “Course. Do you want to get the bus to Clapham? I’m starving suddenly.”

       Ignoring the drizzle, we jogged to the nearest bus stop and jumped on the bus to take us to the high street. We walked to what used to be our favourite beer bar and ordered two hefty pints of German lager. As soon as we sat down, I blurted apologies, as Ben’s eyes held little but pity. “He’s not normally like that,” I promised. “We get on, really…”

       Ben put a hand on top of mine. “You don’t have to. I know you, remember?”

       The tears came from nowhere. “He doesn’t understand.”

       “If he’s known you for more than a few weeks, he should know what you’re like. But why didn’t you tell him?”

       “I don’t know,” I replied with a helpless shrug. “Seems a bit pointless now. He thinks the worst.”

       Ben pushed the menu in front of me. I wish West understood that I happened to get on with boys. For such a long time, my only friend had been my dad, and for all her girlishness, Cari had grown up with brothers and, after her health scare, had more masculine characteristics than the average female. Boys didn’t put the same pressures on me. I could just talk and feel comfortable in whatever getup I wore and I didn’t feel judged. Okay, so me and Ben stepped over some boundaries. The thing West didn’t understand was how lonely being with James had made me feel. All the time. And now he was doing the same thing to me.

       Ben wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. I’d missed him, closing my eyes to enjoy the familiar scent of him. “You’re not a bad person, Curtis. You’re as far from bad as bad can be. Do you want a burger?”

       “Oh, my God, yes.”

       We ordered some food and finally fell back into step. Ben told me more about his travels in India, witnessing the incredible architecture, the scope of the country, from jungle to mountain, the trains and the roads. Mostly he complained about missing chips. Proper British chips.

       “So, I was in the loo, having the most explosive diarrhoea I’d ever had in my life, and the manager was knocking on the door, asking me if I was checking out because he had another sick student who wanted to check in.”

       “Grim!” I laughed. “Delhi belly is the curse.”

       He stole one of my chips. “You said you were going to come with me.”

       I said a lot of things. “Shoulda, coulda, woulda. All done now.”

       “Never,” he prompted. “When you finish your course, what’s stopping you from packing a rucksack and going for it? I was thinking about South America. You’re not a high-maintenance girl, you’d be happy in a bikini and shorts, with dry shampoo and a blunt razor.”

       “Maybe I’ve changed… With all that loan money, and I’ve discovered salons.”

       “Have you?” He looked so horrified I caved in to giggles.

       “Silly.”

       I’d imagined it though. Going away with Ben. In my darker days, when I’d curled into bed in tears while my phone beeped with abusive messages from James and his other friends, I’d thought about being with Ben in India. Sitting on the crowded train to the countryside, wearing a tunic top, shorts and flip flops, resting on Ben’s side and reading a sun-bleached copy of Sir Alex Ferguson’s biography. Those times I could almost feel the sun on my face. The scratchy whiskers of Ben’s stubble on my cheek. The rasp of the pages beneath my fingertips.

       “You should have come with me,” he repeated. “They stopped, didn’t they?”

       “Only after my dad threatened to beat their heads in with the fire axe we’ve got in the
Park and Goose
. He called each and every one of their parents and told them what their ‘kids’ were trying to do to me.”

       “I didn’t know that would happen, Toni.” He only ever said my name when he was deadly serious. “I was the idiot who fell for you. And those feelings haven’t gone away. They never did. I don’t think they ever will.”

       Oh, hell. I couldn’t look at him. I refused. It was validation for everything I’d been through. That at the very least, it hadn’t been just a fling. He truly had cared about me. Shame he was four months too late. “I’m with West,” I mumbled.

       Ben gripped my hand. “That’s not really a reply.”

       “It’s the only one I’ve got.” I shrugged. “Right now.”

       We finished our food in an awkward silence and when the bill came, Ben took it and paid, waving away my protests. “I can’t take money from a teary girl. Come on.”

       He took my hand and pulled me to my feet. I felt reluctant to go home. After all, what would I be facing but more accusations? Rather than get on the tube and make my way home, I headed towards a bar, where music pumped loudly onto the street.

       “Let’s go!” I called behind me.

       “I’m not paying to get inside somewhere like that. Do you know how far ten pounds would get you in India?”

       “Face. Bothered,” I challenged, sending the bouncer a charming smile rather than queuing. We were ushered inside for pure bravado, I suspected, and within fifteen minutes, we had drinks and were dancing like maniacs to Calvin Harris. Somewhere between Aviici and a Rita Ora remix, I lost my drink and Ben had replaced his drink with a handful of my waist. It felt normal. The moment our eyes connected as we sang the lyrics to the song, I was back to feeling myself.

       “Missed you!” he yelled over the music.

       I hugged him so tightly, I felt the bones of his shoulders digging into my arms. His lips touched my neck; at the same time, his hand swept over my spine. We stayed just like that, swaying to the music instead of dancing. He lifted his head slowly, the strobe lights flickering over his face.

       I’d never be able to say who made the first move, only that we were kissing each other as if it were our last breath to do anything else. A niggle in the back of my head told me history always repeats itself, that I’d missed Ben as a friend more than a lover and last of all, reminded me about West.

       Ben pulled me out of the bar. “Do you want to come back to mine?”

       In the cold air of the early morning, sense prevailed. “I’ll go straight home. The night bus will drop me right outside halls.”

       He pushed his hands into his pockets and looked away. “I’m getting a cab anyway. I’ll drop you first.”

       “There’s nothing wrong with the night bus.” I tried to inject some humour into my voice. Once again, he and I had crossed a line. And I’d pay the consequences. “I’ll be fine.”

       “Will you?”

       I folded my arms and squinted into the distance. “I manage.”

       Ben slipped a hand around my biceps and pulled me into a waiting cab. “Let me see you home properly.”

       And he had. Innocently enough. No more kisses or inappropriate touching below the waist. Just a simple goodnight. As soon as I opened my door and tiptoed past a sleeping Amy, I caught the insistent vibration of a message on my phone. Lying down fully dressed on my bed, I opened the message. West. I replied after a moment. Nothing I said wasn’t true. He shouldn’t behave like that and expect me to retain any loyalty to him.

       On six hours’ sleep, I made my early morning lecture only to fall asleep halfway through. Good thing I sat at the back, or it would have been marginally embarrassing to do that within the lecturer’s line of sight. The short sleep didn’t make me the best candidate for an earnest conversation with my boyfriend about his weirdness. In light of recent behaviour, I could understand said weirdness.

       West had ordered food by the time I turned up. “I thought you might be hungry,” he explained as I sat down without kissing him in greeting. Even though I’d scrubbed Ben’s kisses from my mouth with my toothbrush, an exfoliator and cotton wool pad.

       “Yeah, starving. I skipped breakfast.”

       His eyes narrowed immediately. “Why? Where were you?”

       “Asleep. In my own bed. Alone.”

       West’s face filled with colour. “Of course. I mean, Pierce said the same thing.”

       “Why do you have to run every single opinion by him? Why is it so important for him to approve whatever you do?” I saw a weakness in him that ignited a disgust. God, I could barely look at him.

       “I don’t. He just said something that made sense.”

       “What?”

       “That I should back off.”

       “And yet, you’re not listening.” I pressed my fingertips to my forehead. “You’re smothering me. I can’t be around you at the moment.”

       West looked horrified. “Please don’t say that.”

       “When I tell you something isn’t right, you don’t accept it. But Pierce tells you something isn’t right, then you feel stupid because you should have known it from the start.”

       “You’re giving me reason not to trust you.” He lowered his voice, noting that people were beginning to look at us. “You didn’t tell me about what happened with your ex.”

       “Because it’s in the past. It’s got nothing to do with me and you.”
Until yesterday...

       “So Pierce shouldn’t have told me?”

       “No, it had nothing to do with him. And to be honest, it’s got nothing to do with you, either. I didn’t cheat on you.”

       “You’re hiding things from me.”

       “Are you surprised, when this is your reaction? Do you know what, I put up with so much abuse from James and his friends after we broke up. And I’d take that again, rather than this from you. He had a reason to be angry with me, to judge me, to want to know what I was doing and who I was with. You don’t. Not anymore.”

       I got to my feet and picked up my bag. West stood up as well, a frown on his face. “What do you mean by that?”

       “I’m not making you happy. So let’s leave it. Before we really do some damage.”

       Without giving him the chance to argue with me, I left him in the restaurant and walked back to halls. I could always see a finish line before anyone else. Pierce had won the game. He had his friend back. I’d return to the depths of whatever gutter he thought I’d come from. My dad had warned me.
Don’t jump into a relationship at the first opportunity. Be free. Enjoy yourself. A few people meet their soulmate at uni. The rest of us get lucky when we’ve sobered up.

       And I was still sodding hungry. What I needed was Thai dumplings. Yes. I rushed off to my favourite street food restaurant and had them package a large box and dipping sauce for myself. They threw in a salad. I’d think about eating it, if there was room after the dumplings. Scoffing them on the way back to halls, I ignored my ringing phone and went straight to my room. I didn’t feel like socialising with anyone. Although I hadn’t counted on Amy letting Ben into our room. He sat on a beanbag and he popped his head around a hefty book on Egyptian Hieroglyphics.

       “Amy tried calling you. She let me in.”