He wriggled off the bed, and tucked Nixie against his chest.
“It’s all good, babe. I’m expert level at this point, you’ll see.”
Babe. He called me babe, and I didn’t want to let that word burrow into my chest, but it already had. Babe? If Ted had calledme that, I’d have chewed him a new one, but for some reason, from Rocket, it seemed natural. Oh god. Was he destroying my reactions to words that had always bothered me? Next he’d have me tolerating that awful C word, or the M word.
“You wanna get the door, babe?” I hadn’t even heard anyone knock, but I slithered off the bed, and headed over, opening it to the same guy who’d grudgingly let me in this evening.
“Beers,” he said, offering me a carrier bag of clanking bottles, which I set down right away, because there was also one of those cardboard trays filled with food containers. The smells wafting up from it tore a little moan from my throat, and the guy grinned, looking far friendlier than he had earlier tonight.
“I know right? There was a late night takeaway open, so I figured why not. I had to get some for myself when I caught a whiff of it. Hey, sorry about earlier. I didn’t know you were Rocket’s bird, or I’d have-”
“His what?”
“Oh shit,” Rocket cursed from behind me, as he deftly slipped in front of me, and grabbed the box.
“Thanks, Joey, now fuck off, yeah?”
“Rocket!”
He pushed the door closed, despite my objections and carried the box to the bed, catching Nixie on her way to investigate it, and setting her on the carpet. She yapped at him, and tried jumping at the bed, but let’s be honest, it was about three times taller than her at least, and never going to happen.
“Your bird?”
Rocket groaned as he straightened the bed covers, and set the beers out by the bed.
“He’s a dick, okay? He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
I swallowed hard, staying by the door.
“Have… do people think…”
Rocket abandoned the beers, which Nixie promptly started nosing at, and joined me by the door.
“I’ve never mentioned you to anyone here, that’s why he didn’t know a fucking thing, okay? I don’t talk about you, I wouldn’t talk about you, and I’m not disrespecting you. So can we sit the fuck down and eat? I’m starving.”
“Dickhead,” I muttered, pushing past him to head for the bed, but here’s the thing. His words should have comforted me, but instead they burned in my chest. He won’t talk about me. He ‘wouldn’t’ talk about me. Like I’m not worth mentioning? Like I’m nobody to him? This is why we women are fucked up, because this is the shit our brains do to us.
“Is there anywhere to wash my hands before I eat?”
Rocket groaned and dug out a bottle of hand sanitiser, tossing it at me.
“It’s hell on your skin, but it makes them clean, yeah? This is how people manage with a shared fucking bathroom. I swear to god, the other clubhouse? I could have ordered us up two amazing dinners from Tommy, and we’d have been able to sit at an actual table in my old room. Fuck this place.”
It didn’t sound like he liked the club at all sometimes, so why was he here?
“Why did you move to this club, if the other one was so much better?”
He groaned, passing me a container, which contained my tikka masala I’d hinted at wanting.
“Look, it was a great place until it wasn’t, and it was a whole bunch of shit at once. Bad relationship, bad seed in the club, and me needing a clean break.”
He snorted then, as I stared at him, absorbing his words, and biting back questions, because it wasn’t my business, was it?
“Irony, right? The bad seed now runs this club, but hell, I needed to be away from there, so I’m learning to tolerate the cu… asshole.”
His eyes dodged mine as he almost used the word I hate, but he actually chose to stop himself, and that meant more than he could imagine. Be married to an asshole who goes out of his way to use terms you hate, and you’ll realise that he was always just that. An asshole.
Three beers in, as we stared at old episodes of Friends, and laughed over the jokes we’ve apparently both loved for decades, I found my inhibitions slipping.
