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“I don’t feel like we’re friends anymore.” Those words didn’t have enough impact; the urge to twist the knife was unstoppable. “In fact, I don’t even know if I like you.” For a second then, she saw it and there was nothing she wanted more in the whole wide world than to reel those words right back in: searing pain shot across his face before it went blank. Hard. Cold.
“Thanks a lot,” he said, so quietly she nearly missed it. He looked past her with the same stony, dismissive expression. “Anyway, you’re safe. Carts is coming to rescue you.”
* * *
“I’m so tempted to punch your lights out.”
Carts and Aaron had been silently watching the tail-lights of the Uber disappear. The Uber that Alice had insisted on ordering. Pleasant and impeccably polite to Carts, ignoring Aaron completely until it arrived, she’d hopped in the back and with one last glimpse of a tantalising slice of leg she was gone.
And now Carts’ eyes were gleaming with unmistakable fury. Well, bring it on. His night couldn’t get any worse, could it?
“Dare you to, mate.” Aaron backed away, holding the edges of his jacket open, exposing his shirt front. He thumped his belly. “How about here?” Jabbed a forefinger at his jutted jaw. “Or here?”
Carts had balled his hands into fists and was doing a weird backwards–forwards dance on his toes. “I’d go for your pretty-boy face. Mess it up. That’d stop you.”
“Stop me from what?”
“Hurting any more women.”
Aaron dropped his arms. “For Christ’s sake, Carts, would you at least hear my side of things?”
“Your bullshit, you mean?” Carts’ eyes bulged over the top of his knuckles. “What were you up to with that chick? Why didn’t you come to the quiz night?”
“It’s complicated,” Aaron said.
“Yeah, you’re right about that.”
“If you stop dancing around like you’re practising for a freakin’ Celtic dance competition, I’ll tell you.”
Carts’ feet slowed, he dropped his arms, hands fisted at his sides. “Okay, I’m giving you a chance,” he conceded. “But this better be fucking good.”
Aaron sighed, thrust his hands in his pockets. “I was fully intending to come—you know, to the quiz thing—but I had this report to finish for tomorrow, which I was trying to get tied up, and then I heard Archie come into the office with Lauren.”
“Who’s Lauren?”
“His P.A. The woman you saw me sitting with at the bar. So, I just put my head down and tried not to notice until suddenly there’s all this screaming. And obviously I had to go and check it out, because you can’t not, right? And when I do, there’s Miranda hitting Archie over the head with her handbag, screaming obscenities.”
“Who’s Miranda?”
“His wife.”
“Christ.”
“Exactly.”
“When they saw me, they all stopped screaming at each other and Archie thrusts Lauren at me and she’s trying to cling to him and he shouts, ‘get her out of here,now’, and you know what? You don’t prevaricate in situations like that. You just get the hell out. So I brought her to the Shamrock… and… that’s where you found us.”
“Man. That’s heavy.” Carts’ fingers unfurled.
A wave of exhaustion hit Aaron. The sudden memory of Alice’s shocked face winded him as if Carts had actually punched him. Wearily, he sat down on the edge of the pavement, bent his knees and rested his arms on them. A moment later, Carts folded down beside him, found a stick in the gutter, and began scraping it through a pile of dry leaves.
They used to sit like this waiting for the school bus.
A sliver of gratitude found its way through the haze of exhaustion. Carts had always been fair.
“She was having a meltdown on me. Nothing else, I swear.” Aaron glanced down ruefully at the mascara streaks on his shirt. “They’ve been having an affair for a while, I’d guess.”
“Yeah, well, it was obvious she was pretty cut-up about something. I thought it was you. I got Dan to take over before I came to find Alice. He looked like all his Christmases had come at once.”
