THE WRONG brOTHER
Chapter One
Daisy
I walk into the bar where Leah asked us all to meet. It’s not somewhere we usually go and pretty much anytime we go out as a group, we start off in Maynard’s. Maynard’s is a pub owned by Dean, Leah’s boyfriend, whose surname, quite confusingly, isn’t Maynard but Anderson. He said Anderson’s doesn’t have the same ring to it and used his mom’s maiden name instead. Dean and I don’t agree on much, but I have to hand it to him – Maynard’s sounds a ton cooler than Anderson’s for a pub name.
But the fact we’re not going there makes me wonder if Leah has broken up with Dean. Maybe this is her telling us all they are through and then we will spend the night either celebrating her singlehood or drowning her sorrows, whichever way the break up went. Both ways sound like they are going to be filled with lots of shots, cocktails, and bluster.
I look around for the girls. The pub is more of a wine bar than a real pub. It is too trendy to be a pub, with its monochrome colors and chrome and glass bar. Actually, that’s probably not glass; just something that looks like it. I hope so anyway. It seems kind of dangerous having an actual glass bar. I’m pleased to see that the place hasn’t let its need to be trendy affect the seating. Too many wine bars do something cool with the seating that looks awesome and often futuristic, but that makes it unbearable to sit on. Not here. Here there are normal tables and chairs, a few high stools at the bar and a few booths.
I spot an arm waving at me from one of the booths. I wave back and head over to the excited arm. Leah jumps up when I reach the booth. We hug hello and air kiss each other’s cheeks.
We are an unlikely pair to look at and I don't think anyone would say we were best friends if they just saw us together. Leah is pretty and blonde with soft curves and her even softer voice. She has a bubbly personality and an infectious laugh. And then there’s me. I’ve been described as ‘pretty in a terrifying way’ and I kind of like that. I have gothic-black, shoulder length hair with streaks of electric blue in it. Tonight, I am wearing it in a messy up do. No one has ever called me bubbly. I enjoy a laugh but I’m kind of cynical and, I’m told, a bit standoffish. Meh. I’ve been called way worse.
Leah is wearing a gorgeous, curve hugging pink dress with spaghetti straps. The dress comes to just above her knee, and she is wearing sparkly gold sandals that have ties that come up halfway up her calves in a complicated lacy pattern. Again, we are opposites. I’m wearing black fishnets, a black tutu style skirt and a black corset top. The corset has lines of metal spikes down the bones, and they match the metal spikes coming out of my heels. While it’s not the most girly of outfits, when I wear a corset, I feel like a woman because it gives me breasts and hips, a waistline, all things I seem to lack in my normal clothes.
Funnily enough, in the outfit I’m wearing, pretty much all my tattoos are on show. I have upper sleeves on both arms, red roses across my chest, and various pieces on my thighs and calves. The one hidden away is half of a jigsaw puzzle piece and it’s on my hip, a spot chosen by Leah who has the other half of the jigsaw puzzle piece on her and didn’t want it to be somewhere visible. Again, we’re opposites, but the fact we got a best friends’ tattoo tells you how much we love each other.
“I’m so glad to see you, Daisy. It’s been way too long,” Leah says, ushering me into the booth.
Fucking Daisy. Who had the bright idea to name me after a delicate little flower? Well, my parents obviously, but the name couldn’t have been any further from matching my personality.
“Way too long,” I agree.
I nod at Harriet, and we exchange greetings and how are you pleasantries and then I move on to Ellie, someone I’m shocked to see here to be honest. Ellie is Leah’s sister, younger than her by a year or two, and while the two don’t dislike each other, they rarely socialize together outside of family gatherings. Seeing her makes me think I am definitely right about the break up. It would be something Leah would think proper – her sister finding out with her friends rather than after them.
Leah has waved down a waiter and ordered five toxic pond cocktails and five shots of blue Aftershock.
“We’re just waiting on Rachel. She messaged me saying she’ll be here in a minute,” Leah says, explaining why she’s ordered five drinks for seemingly four people, not that I expect the waiter to care much one way or the other as long as the drinks get paid for.
The choice of drinks again makes me think I’m right about her and Dean breaking up. They are the sort of drinks you drink when you want to get drunk and pretend you’re having fun when your heart is breaking. I’m guessing the announcement won’t happen until Rachel is here though.
Leah and I have been friends forever, or so it seems. We actually met at high school, but I guess that covers all of the important years and now, at twenty-five, we’re still best friends. We met Harriet and Rachel at college. They too were best friends and the four of us became a foursome, and while we’re all fairly close, we are still very much two pairs of best friends that have formed a larger group.
Rachel is a beautiful, tall black girl. She should have been a model, she’s seriously that beautiful, but she opted to be an accountant instead. Harriet studied psychology, the same as me, and how we met at college, and neither of us work in fields associated with our degrees. I work in fashion and Harriet is a teacher – and no, she doesn’t teach psychology, she teaches geography of all things. Leah is a hair stylist in the most expensive salon I have ever been to.
The irony of that is that Dean’s family are old money, and in normal circumstances they would have judged Leah as below them, but somehow, she has managed to make them feel that she is fit to be one of them. Apparently even to one of their big cheese sons who is uber-successful in the finance world. The rich brother, and a total snob, I hear. I wonder what he makes of Dean, who owns a bar, but seems to have no plans on expanding his business into a chain of bars or anything like that. I bet he isn’t overly happy with Dean’s career choices or his relationship with Leah.