‘Thank you, I’ll get my own,’ I say.
It makes no real difference. The ‘gentleman’ is fixated on Amanda, who already has him wrapped around her finger like her auburn hair as she twists it, flashing her most flirtatious smile, her green, silk blouse making her skin dazzle.
‘We’ll take two cosmopolitans.’
Her wish is granted. We wait by a pillar close enough for me to watch the bartender make my cocktail and to witness it being carried to me un-tampered.
‘Would you relax? We’ll talk to him for five then he’ll find a pretty blonde and leave us to enjoy our drinks,’ Amanda says in her usual carefree way.
He doesn’t leave us in five minutes. They never do. Amanda has a way of completely mesmerising men. In a bid to be polite, I talk to his friend, whose name is drowned out by the guitars of Oasis’s ‘Roll with It.’ Feigning interest in his alleged mansion, complete with a ping-pong machine and full Sky package, is a struggle. When I ask his name for the third time after ten minutes of listening to his mindless dribble, he seems to take the hint and excuses himself to use the gents’.
Amanda glares at me over the shoulder of Mr Cosmopolitan but laughs when I raise my arms to my sides and shrug.
‘Drink?’ I shout in Amanda’s direction, taking care not to appear to offer a drink to her suitor.
‘Please. I’ll come to the bar with you!’
And that is how she does it. Amanda slips out of Mr Cosmopolitan’s arm around her waist and she’ll never speak to him again.
‘My round, since you got the last ones,’ I joke.
As our number of cocktails increases, the number of suits in the bar decreases and there’s space for us to hop on two bar stools at a table.
‘These shoes are made for sitting under a desk,’ I say, bending to rub my ankles.
‘Tell me about it. Another?’ Amanda asks, nodding towards my nearly empty cocktail glass.
‘I’m not sure I can. Four on an empty stomach might be my limit. Do you want to get some food?’
‘Can we have another if we eat?’
‘Deal.’ I tip my head back slightly to drain the last sip from my glass.
It happens in slow motion, one drop of reality at a time. Gregory shakes hands with the doorman first, then Williams does the same. Gregory looks as fiercely intense as he does at work but Williams looks comfortable and smiles, a rogue strand of sandy blond decorating his forehead.
‘Shit!’ I whisper, almost to myself but Amanda catches it.
‘What?’ She follows my gaze. ‘Oh, shit indeed, he is N-I-C-E, nice!’
He is. His intensity adds to his mystery. He looks confident and self-assured, arrogant even, as he makes his way through the bar, his magnetism attracting looks from both men and women. The neat fit of his straight-cut, indigo jeans, soft blue jumper and navy blazer make him look effortlessly well-groomed and wealthy. His slick, dark hair is so perfectly, purposefully cool, I want to pull my fingers straight through it. An irrational need to have him pangs between my legs.
‘We have to leave,’ I demand.
‘What? Why? The party’s just getting started. Mr Every-Woman-Has-To-Try-This-Just-Once has just walked in.’
‘Amanda, that’s the bazillionaire CEO!’ I say through my teeth, conscious that Gregory and Williams are walking in our general direction.
‘Nooo! Really? I can see why you find him so, how did you put it? Interesting. I’d like to see what’s under that jumper. Look at those shoulders. Swimmer. Must be.’
‘Amanda. Stop it! I’m well on my way to drunk. I can’t speak to him and I really can’t see him like that, at all, ever, not when I’ve had a drink anyway,’ I babble. Who am I kidding? I’d love to imagine him all over me.
‘Wow, listen to you, you’re a wreck. I can see why. I love a man who can wear red.’
‘Red? Oh, you mean Williams. That’s his sidekick. No, Gregory, erm, the CEO, is the other one.’
‘Then I’m free to tantalise the tastebuds of the messy blond?’ Amanda asks, her attempt at sultry disguised in a cocktail-fuelled slur.
‘Yes,’ I say, relieved. ‘No. No, you can’t. They’re clients. Both of them.’
