3. Shandy and the girls
Shandy giggled and Fred felt a fluttering in his chest. When her fingers grazed his, as she took his phone from him, he felt a tickling, electric buzz shoot up his arm.
“So! Which of the girls would you like to message first?”
Her words brought him back to reality. She was just doing her job.
She wasn’t even being kind, really. Bob had asked her to take him to his room, so she had taken him to his room.
Now she was just making polite conversation.
Her eyes twinkled mischievously as she looked down the row of pictures of the stunning women who had given him their numbers that night.
“I bet you like her best!” she grinned, pointing at the first girl he had danced with. “There’s something sexy about the way she’s not quite smiling at you.”
She was right on both counts. Fred leant towards her on the bed to try to watch whatever it was that Shandy was doing on the phone, and he caught a waft of a sweet, delicate perfume, kind of floral, but almost tasty too.
He felt his mouth water at the thought of burying his face in her neck, nibbling on that perfectly rounded ear, running his tongue down across her shoulder, across her chest…
He swallowed and reminded himself again that, as far as she was concerned, this was just work.
“So what do I do next? What if I do like her?” Fred asked, trying to make himself more interested in the beauty from the night before than the one sat directly opposite him.
It wasn’t easy. Everything about Shandy was delightful.
Her hair hung in golden ringlets about her face, and she twirled a strand between her fingers as she talked.
Her eyes were a delicate grey-blue, but their beauty came more from how she used them than their colour.
The way she looked at him made him feel warm and calm.
She felt curious without being intrusive, amused without mocking.
He tried hard to keep his eyes on hers, rather than letting them trail down to her tiny mouth or her rounded breasts.
“If you like her, message her. She doesn’t have your number, so it has to be you who goes first. And with a girl like that, I wouldn’t leave it too long!”
“Message her?”
“Look… I’ll show you.” Shandy tapped on the tiny picture of the girl he had met just hours before. “What would you like to say to her?”
There was a lurch in his pants at the very thought of how she had ridden him. That wildness and confidence, her naked skin, those deep brown eyes that stared back at him from the phone.
“Can I see you again?”
“Woah! Too soon! At least let her know who you are! How about ‘Hi! I’m Fred. We met at the Rock Tavern’ or something like that.”
Shandy took one look at his massive hands, chuckled, and then showed him how to talk into the phone so that his words appeared on the screen. He pressed send, but the message just shook at him.
“Oh! It looks like that’s not her number! Maybe she gave you a fake one! Some girls are like that.”
Not her! She wanted me to call! Fred thought.
“I’ll help you message some of the other girls tomorrow.
Come downstairs when you wake up, and you can spend the morning with me.
Bob’s away for the next day or two, so he’s put a fairly strong binding spell on this building, which means you’re stuck with me!
You can’t get out, but we could let some of these hotties in for you! ”
As she got up from the bed she trailed her hand languorously over his shoulder. He tried to contain the frisson of excitement that shook through him. When she turned to leave, he watched the curve of her hips and the way her skirt swished around them.
As he fell asleep, he imagined the things he would do with her, if she ever wanted him to. The bar downstairs would be the perfect height, he could lift her skirt just a little bit…
The next morning she was waiting for him behind that very bar with a plate full of food and a cup of something hot and aromatic. The bar was empty, apart from the two of them.
“I heard you moving about upstairs and decided you were probably a Full English kind of guy. I worked out your taste in women pretty quickly too, right?”
“This is really good! Thank you!” he answered, shovelling in the bacon and eggs. “What’s this brown stuff?”
“That? It’s coffee! Helps you wake up and stay awake. And tastes good. I made you an Americano, to start with. What do you think?”
Fred took a mouthful and closed his eyes to appreciate the depth, strength and complexity of the flavour.
“Mmmm… yes! I could drink this all day!”
“Let’s wait and see if it has any effect on you first. We had a fairy here a few months ago and it really messed up her magic. She was firing off love spells each time she farted!”
Fred smiled at her. He loved her openness and joy. A warmth spread again in his chest.
“Why does Bob have you so involved in all this. You’re not an elf, are you?”
“Me? No. Just a common old human. He took me in when I was a teenager. I’d run away from a bad situation and he gave me a bed to sleep in, no questions asked. He’s harsh on the outside, but he’s a softie at the core. He knows I owe him everything, and he trusts me.”
“Are you… together?” Fred asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
“Me and Bob? He’s not my type, and I’m not his! He’s a good bloke, and you couldn’t get a better wingman. The number of magical migrants he’s paired up, he should probably run a dating agency! Speaking of which, give me your phone!”
Fred passed his phone over.
“So, who’s next in line to get chatting to? It’s a Sunday morning, so you might not hear back so quickly. Or you might, depending on how interested they are and what else happened to them last night.”
Fred’s eyes were immediately drawn to the two girls who had danced with him together.
“How about that one, and that one?”
“Okay… nothing like that other girl you went for yesterday. But hey, broad tastes can be a good thing. I never could understand fussy guys who only had one type. Girls are all gorgeous, right?”
Fred returned her broad grin. Maybe that was why Bob wasn’t her type. Maybe her type wasn’t guys at all! This time the messages sent properly, and Fred was soon messaging back and forth between the two of them.
“Why don’t you have Liv round for coffee at 3, and Liz round for drinks at 6? That should give you long enough with each of them! And if you wanted time alone together, you could always take them upstairs!”
She winked. Fred’s mind flicked to the thought of taking Shandy up instead. Images of sitting on the bed next to her the night before criss-crossed with everything that hadn’t happened between them. He swallowed a sigh.
“You never know!” he grinned.
After getting him to take a shower, back in his room, Shandy showed Fred a chest of clothes, letting him pick out the ones he liked best, and pointing out a few she thought would suit him.
“I haven’t seen any that look my size though!” Fred scrunched up his brow. “I always had to have my clothes custom made back home.”
“Bob has his ways. See that mirror? Try them on over there.”
As he pulled on each piece of clothing, they billowed out at first and then snapped back to fit him perfectly. Shandy flitted around him, buttoning cuffs, smoothing down collars, helping him select the perfect outfit for his dates.
“I did rather like those leather trousers you arrived in, to be honest. They clung in all the right places. Bob’s mirror’s a bit more of a prude.”
That mischievous look again! She looked him up and down in the outfit they had chosen together: pristine black jeans and a subdued black t-shirt, that clung just enough to show off his impressive shoulders. He watched as Shandy licked her lips, before their eyes met again.
“This outfit has the official Shandy sheal of approval.. I mean seal of approval,” she grinned. “Liv and Liz are lucky girls!”
“I’ve never dated a human before though! What do I do? What do I say?”
“Just be yourself!”
“But myself is a 200 year old elf from a distant realm. What if they ask me about my family, my school, or my hobbies?”
“Just say what you can without giving yourself away. Try not to lie, that gets complicated. Or maybe just try to keep the conversation on her? Two birds with one stone: she thinks you’re nice, and you don’t have to talk so much!”
Fred thought back to all the dates he had been on back home. He was good at all that. Good at being interested. Good at eye contact. Good at nearly everything.
He tried his best to be helpful as Shandy got ready to reopen the bar, but it soon became clear that the space behind the bar was no place for an elf built like a tank. Every time he turned, something else got knocked over.
“Yeah, I don’t think you’re going to be working here,” Shandy gasped, as she grabbed a bottle of Japanese Whisky that was about to take a dive.
Just before 3pm, a message came.
“Running late. Nearly at the Tube. See you soon! Xxx”
“Tube?” Fred asked.
“A train underground…”
“A train?”
“I’ll show you when that binding spell comes down,” she laughed, playfully punching him on the arm.
Fred hadn’t travelled all that much, but he knew that different societies had different expectations of physical touch.
There were tribes in the mountains who ended each day in a cuddle pile, and whole cities where even kisses were restricted to the bedroom.
Even different families had their own standards.
His family were famously cold. He could count on one hand the times he had seen his parents hug.
He had no idea what the norms were here.
Was Shandy just being Shandy, or was she trying to tell him something?
When Liv finally showed up, it was around 3.45. A few customers were taking advantage of the more chilled out atmosphere of the Rock Tavern of a Sunday afternoon, sipping on coffee or cocktails, but Shandy and Fred both clocked Liv slipping in, dishevelled, then slipping off to the Ladies.
“She likes you!” Shandy giggled. “Couldn’t have you seeing her at less than her best!”