Chapter One Tristan #2
“Off we go, fellows!” Benji shoved the door open as if he owned the street, which wasn’t far from the realm of possibility, then promptly fell out onto the pavement. But he got up, brushed himself off, and pointed. “Into the club!”
Zara laughed, tottering after him, and Henry, ever the weary parent, tugged her skirt back into place and followed.
I gave the driver a nod, already charged to the account, naturally, then stepped out into the cold, breath fogging in the glow of streetlights.
Benji lurched up to the first bouncer, slurred a greeting, and slid a wad of notes into the man’s pocket.
The door swung open. East London still took cash as currency, then.
West London ran solely on names.
Our names.
And as such, we spilt into the club in a mess of perfume and bravado.
Zara hooked her arm through mine, dragging me through the array of bodies.
It was a furnace. Sweat, smoke machines, strobe lights pulsing to grime tracks rattling the walls.
Shots slammed onto the bar before I could blink, Benji shouting for tequila, Zara squealing, Henry protesting but downing one, anyway.
I drank because it was easier. Letting the liquor scorch my throat, blur the edges until the panic climbing my ribs dulled into something I could stand.
Tequila, vodka, whisky. I didn’t care what burnt, only that it did.
Zara kept pressing glasses into my hand, and Benji squared up to a group of lads, loud and reckless, auditioning for the next role in his endless charade of a life.
But Henry stood rigid at my side, as he always had since we’d first bunked together at Harrow, one hand buried in his trouser pocket, the other clamped around his glass as though the place itself might stain him.
“I don’t see the appeal.” Henry leant closer, not bothering to raise his voice above the din. He was far too well-bred for that.
I followed his line of sight. The dance floor was a mess of bodies, mostly men grinding against each other, sweat slick, shirts half-unbuttoned.
A few women too, flashing bright nails and louder laughter, making space for themselves in the press.
Not a full gay bar. Not like the places I’d sometimes sought on my own pre-Ollie, but rainbow enough to set Henry’s jaw tight.
Straight-laced Henry, still unsure why his best mate from Harrow hadn’t treated bumming as the rite of passage it was for most of our set but had carried it into adulthood.
Enjoyed it, even.
“You didn’t have to come.” I glanced down at my phone, Ollie’s dot pulsing steadily on the map. Right here. Like a second heartbeat.
“Of course I did. If there’s a chance to witness the downfall of Oliver Montgomery, I want front-row seats.” Henry’s nose wrinkled at the sight of men tangled together, mouths and hands everywhere. “Though perhaps they’ve a VIP section? Somewhere less… sticky?”
“I wouldn’t recommend the back room.” I scanned the crowd. Lights strobed across strangers’ bodies, smoke and spilt spirits thickening the air until it clung to my skin. The bass rattled through me, hard enough to make my teeth ache.
“Why?” Henry asked, all ignorance and naivety. “Do they water the drinks down back there?”
I snorted. “Not exactly.”
“It can’t be any worse than this.” Henry lifted his glass, took a sip, and hissed. “Haig. Christ. We’ve descended straight into slum city.”
And in that instant, I couldn’t have agreed more as my usually polished floor dropped right out from under me.
Because there he was.
Ollie.
My Ollie.
Except he wasn’t mine. Not then. Maybe not ever.
Ten feet away, swallowed by the chaos of the dance floor, mouth locked to another man’s, Ollie fisted his hands in a stranger’s shirt, doing a wonderful job of proving how all my privilege, all my money, and the status I’d been raised to think mattered, didn’t buy loyalty. Didn’t buy monogamy, either.
Or anything else worth a fuck.
My chest hollowed. The tequila turned to acid. The noise fractured into silence so sharp it rang in my skull. The life I’d built, the future I’d moulded around him, splintered under the strobe lights bright enough to illuminate every lie I’d told myself.
Two years.
Two fucking years of restraint. Proving I could refuse the path laid out for me without burning it down. Of making myself acceptable to my father and useful to Ollie. Two years of standing perfectly still between who I was meant to be and who I wanted to become. And he did this.
Though in that moment, I wasn’t sure what gutted me more.
That my friends were here to witness my downfall, or that Ollie, smug bastard, was doing the very thing I never had the courage to.
Breaking the rules. Getting dirty. Living without apology.
He was out there taking what I’d only ever dreamt of.
Milling with those totally unworthy of us.
Slumming it. Getting a bit of rough and finding out if cheap tasted better.
And fuck, I hated him for it almost as much as I envied him.
“Oh, Tristan…” Zara’s voice dropped, all edge gone. “We could pretend we didn’t see it?”
Henry closed a hand around my shoulder. “Tristan?”
He didn’t smile. Even if some part of him might have felt vindicated, he didn’t reach for humour.
Not now. Not over this. He’d save the commentary for later.
The quiet observations about Oliver slipping a rung or two down the ladder by betraying me.
But for now, Henry stayed exactly where he was.
Firm. Grounding. Holding me upright without making a spectacle of it.
It was Benji’s laughter splitting the air as he clambered onto the railing, theatrical as ever, reminding me a betrayal had occurred. “Ollie! Yoo hoo!”
Ollie broke away from the stranger long enough to glance up at me.
And I wish I could say there was regret there.
Shock. Guilt. Even a hint of shame. But no.
What I caught in his eyes was colder. Flatter.
Exasperation. As if he’d expected to see me there and was bored with it.
I guess in hindsight, had he wanted to remain covert, he would have turned his fucking location off.
“Oh, Tris.” Ollie looked out of it. Drink. Coke. Something else. “Guess I got your field study for you.”
The floor tilted beneath me. Then chaos hit.
Benji vaulted the railing and onto Ollie’s back with Henry dragging at his sleeve to prevent him, only for Zara to slip under his arm and join the fray.
All of them did what maybe I should have done.
Confront. Fight. Claim. Not that it was a fight as such.
Not in the normal sense. No fists or slurs.
Oh, no. This was teacups at dawn and polite exiles from the circle.
Tanking reputation was punishment enough for us.
Far crueller. But I couldn’t even muster the strength to fling his joint account card at him.
Instead, I shoved through the crush, through strangers and strobe light and bass, until the doors spat me out into the night.
Cold air hit like a fist. A sour cocktail of rain, diesel and sweetened vapour to match my state.
There, I lurched into the nearest newsagent, bought the cheapest whisky they had, wrapped it in a brown paper bag, and walked on with warmth burning a small trail down my throat.
I then turned left into a narrower run of brick, where the alley breathed stale heat and the single orange streetlamp buzzed like an insect.
There, I crouched on cold concrete, paper bag between my knees.
Then, because I was a mess, and this was what messes did, I fished out the little bag Benji had passed me in the cab, and in some perversely private way, spilt a line on the back of my hand and lifted it to my nose.
I snorted it. Let it consume me. Corrupt me.
Claim me. And whilst the poison threaded my veins, the bottle slipped from my hand, whisky spilling down my Burberry overshirt and sinking in.
Fuck it.
I tore the thing off and hurled it aside, not giving a shit about the name stitched into the label. Then I stood, my thin vest clinging damp to my chest, looking as though I belonged in some gilded cage above a dance floor, not hunched in a piss-slick alley.
Somehow, I couldn’t give a single fuck.
Expecting my friends to find me, I stepped out of the shadows, into the spill of streetlight. They’d drag me back inside, laugh it off, patch me together with shots and sarcasm and I could pretend I hadn’t watched my world collapse ten feet away.
I tipped back more whisky while I waited. Let it burn.
Then I leant against the brick wall and glanced across the road.
A man stood there, right opposite me, in the doorway of a shuttered shop, half swallowed by shadow, half carved out in a gleam of neon.
Broad shoulders under a dark puffer jacket, buzzed hair catching the weak light, cigarette burning between his lips.
He didn’t smile. He stared. Steady and unflinching.
As if he’d been waiting all night for someone to appear exactly where I was.
Couldn’t have been waiting for me, obviously.
That would be ridiculous.
But someone like me.
A mess. A vulnerable, drunk, high-as-fuck mess.