‘Then you need either a head doctor, a sex therapist, or maybe a yoni massage.’
‘I’d like to say thanks for your help, but well, you haven’t helped.’
‘Have you spoken to Flynn about it?’
‘What?’ I say in the tone ofyou must be mad.‘What possible help could he be?’
‘I’m just putting it out there, not judging or making any predictions, but you were all for murdering Mac. And Flynn, well, he was looking at you much more intensely than Hills and cake boy out there.’
‘I literally have no idea what you just said.’
‘Some things happen for a reason. Maybe your reason forcomingis Flynn.’
Is it me, or is she speaking Swahili?
Chapter 18
FLYNN
‘You’re quiet today.’
‘What?’ Monday afternoon, Keir stands at the end of my desk wearing an expression I’ve seen plenty times before, though never directed at me.
‘You look like you’ve lost a fiver and found a pound.’
‘Sorry, I was miles away.’ I take my glasses off and pinch the ache at the top of my nose, considering how my thoughts are really only figurative miles away as my mind slips to yesterday and The Drunken Duck. I’d always turned Keir down in the past when he’d invited me to lunch after a game. Both our teams play out of the same sports complex, and yesterday, we were down for a friendly game, a preseason warm-up. A friendly game that left me with this amazing black eye.In the past, I’ve always favoured winding down with a few beers with the lads over a meal with my boss and his mates, their wives, and families. Until yesterday.
Chastity. She’s on my mind more than is healthy, and I think I’m kidding myself when I say it’s because she’s gottittyin her name. My interest in her was always genuine—I love the way she doesn’t take any shit, pushing right back at me, meeting my nonsense toe to toe. If I’m honest, there was also that initial fantasy thing. Like my dad’s joke that his dream woman was a nymphomaniac with her own pub, mine turned out to be this sweet-looking pornographer. And now she’s pretty much all I can think about.
She looked less than impressed that I’d turned up yesterday which, at least initially, dialled my enjoyment up to a nine. Then she’d refused to look at me, and I’ll admit, that left me feeling uncomfortable. As if I’d encroached on her turf. As if she didn’t want me there. I felt about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit, and the experience was about as pleasant. I began to question my read on her when faced with the waves of her almost visceral dislike. I needed to get out of there, and I needed to do it quick and began formulating a way to get myself out of a full meal situation where the woman I wanted wouldn’t even look at me. Fuck if that didn’t hurt—the longer she ignored me, the larger the twisting feeling her disregard created in my chest. Then she seemed to decide ignoring me wasn’t enough. She had to take the piss out of my sunglasses, so I took the fuckers off.
Never in a million years—a hundred million years—would I have anticipated her reaction. Man, I thought she was going to cry for a minute, and she strikes me as the kind of woman who’d rather poke pins in her eyes to explain the flow rather than admit to crying in public. I mean, it wasn’t that bad. It looks a bit funky today, and all the fucking colours of the bruise rainbow, but yesterday, it was just a bit swollen. Red and angry looking. Okay, I looked a bit like Shrek. She raised her hand as though to touch it or maybe touch me. I like to think she was going to hug me, hug away the ache. But then she’d caught herself, her hand retracting before anyone else at the table realised. But I saw. Saw the intention behind the movement. Saw the meaning behind her words. She fuckingcares. Cares for more than the thing I have in my pants, constantly hard for her. And that twisting ache in my chest? Fuck my life, it grew tenfold. What would it be like to have her? I mean, really have her? Not just for a roll around her bed or a call now and again.
And then later, at the playground, I caught her looking at me when she thought I was preoccupied, and I got an honest look at her. For a moment, she wasn’t hiding behind a façade of ambivalence or scorn. What I saw was stripped down and true. She’s interested. And she seesme.
‘Have those stupid glasses started to give you headaches?’
I glance down at the black-framed eye glasses lying on my desk next to Keir’s Mont Blanc pen. ‘Glasses stop headaches, not create them.’
‘Not if you’re wearing them only as a fashion statement. Also, they don’t make you Superman.’
‘What the fuck are you on?’ I sit back in my chair, letting him enjoy his little rant. ‘Because whatever it is, keep taking the pills, mate.’
‘Can you strip to your skivvies in a telephone box?’
‘Why? Do you wanna watch?’
‘Vain fuckin’ baw bag.’
‘I’ve got a prescription,’ I drawl.
‘Aye, a prescription from the pretty optometrist who said they made your eyes look even bluer.’ The latter he delivers several octaves higher than his usual range with a comical fluttering of his lashes.
‘Doctors don’t lie. Even the pretty eye doctor ones.’
‘Get tae’fuck.’ He half laughs, throwing up his arms. ‘She was lying, anyway. You’re so ugly the dog closes his eyes when he humps your leg.’
‘Who the fuck pays three hundred quid for glasses they don’t need?’
