Chapter 25 #2
I peer up at Horatio, waiting to see if he’ll defend poor Natalie, but he just laughs and takes a large swig of his drink. “Trust me things are never boring with Molly.”
“I’m not sure that’s a compliment,” I mutter.
“It is,” Alex reassures me.
“Do you know she once fell down a manhole?”
I turn around and glare at Damien who’s creeped up on the three of us and is eyeing up Horatio’s best friend with interest.
“That was because the cover was faulty,” I hiss. Then, because I really don’t want either Horatio or Alex quizzing me about that incident, I introduce Alex to my best friend – even though I’ll probably live to regret it given the way Damien is looking like he’d happily eat Alex for breakfast.
“I like your suit,” Horatio tells him.
“Thank you,” Damien says, glaring at me as if to say, ‘I told you so’. “But do you like Molly’s dress? I chose it for her.”
Horatio’s gaze travels down my body, and I swear it’s like magic, like I can actually feel his gaze against my skin, making me shiver all over.
I gulp.
“Very nice,” Horatio answers, his voice much deeper than it was a moment ago.
“Jeez, get a room, you two!” Alex chuckles, causing Damien to frown.
“No,” he says. “No room, you know that–”
My instinct is to slap a hand right across his mouth, because while Horatio might know the dangers of physical intimacy with regard to the antidote and everything, Alex most definitely does not.
However, slapping a hand across my best friend’s face in the middle of the bar would look odd, if not violent.
So instead I yank on his sleeve and say, “I need to visit the ladies’ room. Come with me, won’t you, Damien?”
“Ew, no, why?” But I’m already pulling him away.
Once we reach the safety of the corridor, away from where the bar patrons can see us, I turn on him.
“What are you doing?” I say. “We’re surrounded by civilians.”
Damien’s gaze darts around the bar.
“So what?”
“You can’t go talking about the love potion, especially as everyone here thinks that the thing between me and Horatio is real. That we’re really dating.”
“Ugh,” Damien says, his whole body sagging. “So complicated.”
“It’s not complicated. Just don’t talk to anyone but me or Prim or Tiggie.”
“Can’t I talk to the little human in the colourful shirt?” He pouts at me.
“Most definitely not,” I tell him. “Just be good.”
He rolls his eyes. Damien hates being good. He hates it with a vengeance.
“So boring. How about we do some dancing?”
“If by dancing you mean deliberately elbowing people’s ribs or stepping on their toes, then no.”
“It makes things more entertaining for me.” Damien looks at me. “Oooh,” he says. “I do have gossip.”
“What gossip?” I say, wondering if he’s been using his entrancement skills to obtain illicit information from the humans in this bar.
“Your sister.”
“Which one?”
“Prim. She’s broken up with the boring man.”
“Norman?!” I yell so loudly that probably everyone in the bar hears, even above the noise of the music. “Prim’s broken up with Norman? That can’t be right, Damien.”
“She told us when she got here. It’s true.”
I don’t wait around for any more information. I march straight back into the bar and towards my older sister. She’s definitely a little tipsy and is dancing with our younger sister, Tiggie.
“Damien says you’ve broken up with Norman,” I say, without warning.
Instead of breaking down into tears or collapsing into despair, Prim flings her arms up into the air, smiles the beamiest smile I’ve seen her smile in forever, spins 360 degrees on the spot, jumps up into the air, and then says, “Yes! I’ve broken up with him!”
“Hooray!” Tiggie cheers, waving her arms.
“Are you serious?” I say.
“Oh, come on!” Tiggie grabs my arms and throws them into the air too. She’s obviously had a fair bit to drink as well. “This is the best news we’ve had in ages.”
“But you love Norman,” I say. “The two of you are perfect for each other.”
Prim sees the concern in my eyes, leaves Tiggie and Damien dancing/ torturing humans, and pulls me to one side.
“I didn’t think you really liked Norman,” she says.
“Well, um, I guess he’s a nice enough fellow.”
“Exactly.”
Prim, for once, isn’t wearing her glasses, and I can see the contact lenses floating in her eyes. She’s curled her hair and undone the top buttons of her blouse. Just these simple little differences make her look like a completely different woman. A happier, freer one.
I should be happy for her, but it’s freaking disconcerting.
“Exactly. Nice,” Prim says. “I’m so bored of nice. And actually, most of the time he wasn’t very nice. I mean, would you call ignoring your girlfriend most mornings, most daytimes, most evenings, and most weekends in favour of your stupid mobile phone and never-ending work demands, nice?”
“No,” I say. “I wouldn’t call that nice.”
“Exactly.”
Her eyes dart around the bar, and she pulls me a little closer.
“And do you know, I’ve never once done that whole magical explosion thing when I’ve been in bed with Norman?
And I mean, it’s happening all the time for you,” she says, “and I guess that got me thinking as well. I’m only thirty, Molly.
I’m not sixty or seventy. I should be having the best sex of my life!
Not mediocre, not-so-great, and not-nearly-often-enough sex. ”
“Sex isn’t everything,” I point out, feeling like such a hypocrite, because sex has always been important to me.
Prim snorts. “Can you guess what the final straw was?” I shake my head. “He checked his work emails during sex.”
“Oh no, Prim, he didn’t! That is the worst!”
“Exactly. The final nail in the coffin.” She crosses her arms over her chest and nods decisively. “I broke up with right then and there.”
“You’re okay about it? You’re not sad? I mean, everyone was expecting you and Norman to be together for the rest of your lives. To have a wedding, and a house, and babies.”
“That wasn’t me, that was Mum,” Prim says. “And no, I’m not sad about it. In fact, I’ve never felt happier. I might even do some flirting.” Her eyes scan the bar as if looking for a suitable candidate. “Is that one with the colourful shirt single?”
“I think so, but he’s also gay,” I say.
“Never mind. Plenty more fish in the sea,” she says, striding off to rejoin Tiggie and Damien on the dance floor.
“Hey,” Horatio says, appearing next to me. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, fine. It’s just… Prim’s broken up with Norman.”
“Isn’t that a good thing? I thought you didn’t like Norman.”
“No, I didn’t. It is a good thing, I guess. I’m just sort of stunned and shocked. We’ve been wanting her to break up with him for ages. Me and Tiggie did anyway. I didn’t think she’d ever do it.”
Horatio peers her way. “She looks happy.”
“She does,” I say. My introverted and usually reserved older sister is throwing some serious shapes on the dance floor. I laugh. “She looks really happy.”
And then, to my utmost astonishment, I watch as one moment she’s dancing with Tiggie and Damien and the next, in the blink of an eye, she’s dancing with a man, her arms wrapped round his neck and his around her waist.
The man is not wearing a suit. His hair is not neatly combed. And he certainly hasn’t polished his shoes. He’s wearing dark jeans slung low on his hips, a dark T-shirt ripped at the neckline, and his muscular arms are crawling with tattoos, his ears littered with piercings.
I almost faint.
I’ve dated many men who look like that, but my sister Prim wouldn’t go near one with a barge pole.
“How? What?” I mutter. “Do you think she needs rescuing?”
“Ermmm,” Horatio says. “Doesn’t look like it.”
Tiggie seems to agree. She’s pointing to our sister and giving me the thumbs up from across the dance floor.
I glance back at the mis-matched couple. This is too weird for words.
I’m currently fake-dating, and developing feelings for, the kind of man my older sister would consider her dream date. Sensible job. Sensible shoes. Sensible mortgage.
Okay, he also looks like a superhero and has not one but two very un-sensible cars. But still.
And then my older sister – a woman who usually hates the idea of public displays of affection – is currently grinding away with the kind of man that, until a few weeks ago, I would have found hot as hell.
In fact, I’d have been drooling in his direction, dying of jealousy to see my sister with him and not me.
And yet I don’t feel anything like that at all.
I search the whole of my body and the whole of my brain for one teensy trace of jealousy or envy or anything other than astonishment and happiness for my sister, and I don’t find it at all.
I glance up at the man beside me.
Is this his effect? Or the effect of all those feelings?
I need another drink.