Chapter Thirteen She’s Lost Control #3
Like every woman, she had a constant subconscious radar on alert for her bodily safety, especially when in the presence of men.
It only rose to the fore of her mind in the form of an adrenaline spike when it pinged in alarm at a man’s leering gaze or an unwanted shift in proximity.
It was going off like Christmas now. She was not what one would consider a dainty woman by any means (much to her chagrin), but this man was excessively tall, his dense muscle noticeable even beneath the layers of his black rollneck and heavy woollen overcoat, not to mention his menacing demeanour.
Or the fact that he was effectively trapping her in a blind on a street whose residents wouldn’t bat an eye at a woman’s cries for help.
“Who’re you then? The bloody Duke of Hoxton?” she said with a bravado she didn’t feel, knuckles whitening around the cardboard box she held protectively in front of her chest.
“Just someone who knows you aren’t his girlfriend any longer.” Another step downwards. Just the one. It was enough to send her heart into her throat. “And as such, that revokes your privileges to be in Julian’s flat without his presence.”
It was a slight relief -- but only slight -- to hear him say Julian’s name. He knows him. He knows where he lives. They must be mates.
“Yeah, well, I was only leaving, wasn’t I?” she huffed, gathering her courage and starting up the stairs, willing herself to be as solid and unmovable as a boulder. “Came to get my things. Not that it’s any business of yours, your majesty.”
She was just below him now and he wasn’t making any move to get out of the way.
She steeled herself and pushed past him, her shoulder knocking painfully into his rock-hard bicep.
She was doubly relieved to reach street level.
If the feel of his arm was anything to go by, he’d have had no trouble overpowering her.
She was just about to launch into -- if not a run, then at least a very fast walk -- away from this wretched street and this wretched man when she heard him clear his throat meaningfully, the way middle-class people do when they want to get the attention of someone they can’t be bothered to waste words on.
This had a very similar effect to stroking a cat against its fur, and she spun on her heel with nostrils flared and annoyance fully stoked once more.
“I wouldn’t bother trying to get back together with him this time, Aisling,” the man said. The chill that ran up her spine at the sound of her name on his lips was nauseating. “He has someone new in his life.”
He stepped back up to street level, his full height towering over her.
There was an extra layer of meaning to what he was saying, one that teased her brain like a riddle whose answer was just on the tip of her tongue.
It was in the suggestive slant of his brown eyebrows.
It was in the hint of a smirk that dimpled his artfully unshaven cheek.
It was in the way he was trying -- and he very clearly was trying -- to intimidate her. The way a jealous new girlfriend might…
The penny didn’t drop so much as pierce her skull at 100 mph like it’d been chucked off the National Westminster Tower.
There’d always been something a bit tarty about Julian, a bit girlish and flirtatious.
And she had, for a moment back at uni, thought he might be a bit of a bender.
But she’d chalked it up to him being a mod, a dandy, girlish in a way that was artfully crafted entirely for the benefit of women.
The kind of sideways that only straight men believed to be gay, the kind of gay they told cautionary tales about -- “oh, you watch out for blokes wearing lip gloss. They’re poofters.
You’ll see.” But the real gay men in Aisling’s experience were the ones with moustaches and muscles and chest hair who’d chat up other mustached, muscled gentlemen and get each other off in the park at night when no one was looking.
It was only girls who fancied a lad who wore mascara and too-tight trousers and had the muscle-definition of a sickly Victorian workhouse orphan.
Julian had always been just too obvious to be actually queer. Or so she had always thought.
But thinking back, how often had she dismissed his flirtations with male bartenders as performative for the benefit of any ladies present?
Or chalked up the way he’d eye up a lad walking past as his appreciating their fashion sense?
Or excused the fact that the porn tape collection in the back of his wardrobe all starred the same male actor because he was a fan of his work?
Honestly, the signs were all there. She’d only been too blinded by love, of all bloody things, to see it.
Julian fancied men. He must do women as well, because no one could fake the sort of genuine pleasure Julian took in a pair of tits.
But, to be quite frank, it would’ve been easier had he actually been gay.
To know that he still fancied women -- could still fancy her -- and yet had chosen to be with a man instead was a little gutting.
Her pride was soothed only by the fact that the man in question had Australian-model good looks.
But only barely. Because the man was a first- rate cunt.
Swallowing the sudden urge to spit in his face, she ground out, “I hope you two are very happy together.” Then, decorum be damned, she turned and ran.