Saving from Monkeys (5 page)

"Why've you gone red?"

The rest of him, however, provided plenty to dislike.

I dropped his hand quickly.
"Global warming," I said swiftly. "So, Whal-, I mean Jonah, Abi told me you're doing Engineering?"

Asking people about the course they did at uni was akin to older people discussing where they worked; it was safe chit-chat ground.
After a few minutes I even forgot to be weirded out by talking to Jonah as just a normal person rather than someone contractually obliged to mop up his sick. It didn't take long for me to come to the conclusion that he'd vastly improved in the few years since I'd really had anything to do with him. As a teenager he'd been so carefree he had come across as decidedly care
less
and brief interactions with him had invariably made me wish I had an English to Grunt translation dictionary. Now, while not exactly effusive, he at least formed proper sentences, and anyone could see that he was completely besotted with Abi. That was enough for me.

Still,
Jonah was still by no means the most subtle of conversationalists, as demonstrated when, in response to my explanation of what I was studying, he said, "You're doing all that business stuff so you don't end up like your mum, hey?"

Abi and Elliot's conversation faltered and Elliot snapped his head round to look at us, his expression flint-like.
"Any of us would be lucky to end up like Rox's mum," he said flatly.

Sweet and everything, but not exactly true.
My mum was great, but it has to be said that Jonah had a point; I really
didn't
want her life.

Mum’d
left school at 17 and picked up a job as a cleaner before clearly reading too many romance novels and fancying herself in love with the son of the house. From what I can gather, he enjoyed the flirting, but when the flirting turned into unprotected sex and I was conceived, he became less keen on the whole thing. My mum was put out on her ear and that was that.

For my first 10 years my mum took various jobs and worked hard, but the poverty line was still something we aspired to until she got the job with the Sinclair family and finally found some stability. When I turned 14 and was able to work as well things improved further, but at the end of the day, my mum still had very little show for all her hard work.

That was not going to happen to me. Period.

"Cinders, I didn't mean..." Jonah looked stricken and I nodded.

"It's cool, I know you weren't having a go." And I did, but I seemed to be the only one. Abi looked disturbingly like her 'perfect boyfriend bubble' had deflated a little and Elliot's jaw was still clenched tightly.

"Hey, Smelliot," I broke the moment by bringing out the last of our triad of stupid childhood nicknames and poking him with the fork again.

"What?" He snapped out of his 'defend Rox's mum' daze, plucking the pronged cutlery out of my hand and putting it down on the other side of the table, pointedly out of my reach.

"Why don't you tell Abi about the time you and Jonah rescued that mother duck and her ducklings?"

He looked at me like I was mad, but this was nothing new for me and I gazed calmly back, before looking across at Abi and explaining, "Elliot and Jonah once found this family of ducks in the storm drain. They managed to pull the cover up and spent all day trying to catch each of them and get them to safety."

"Aww," Abi cooed, as I knew she would, leaning in against Jonah's side and clearly forgiving him for his earlier insensitive remark.

"We were the ones who hit the ball that scared them down there in the first place," Elliot spoke quietly out of the corner of his mouth as the waitress came back with our food.

"Yeah,
I
know that, but Abi doesn't need to," I whispered back, feeling infinitesimally more kindly towards him after his swift defence of my mum. "Besides, you were only 12 and you felt awful about it so that's something."

He laughed softly and I hastily focused my attention on my newly arrived meal as I caught another whiff of his light scent that made my nostrils tingle, not unpleasantly.

The 'getting to know you' lunch progressed quite well from there. Abigail, being the safest bet for us all, found herself the most popular conversational partner, but I managed to exchange a few words and smiles with Jonah, and only stabbed Elliot once with my butter knife.

All things considered, I thought I'd been on my best behaviour, but then the
bill arrived. Beaming the smile of the well-intentioned, Jonah picked it up, heartily announcing, as if he'd discovered a cure for cancer, "I'll get this."

Before I knew what was happening, I'd snatched it off him with a sharp, "No you won't."

Abi's mouth dropped open, Jonah looked at his now empty hand as if wondering how he'd been so quickly dispossessed, and Elliot groaned quietly and muttered, "Here we go..."

"I mean," I said quickly, hoping if I got in there fast enough I could distract them from how rude I'd been, "I'm happy to pay for mine."

"Rox, it's just a sandwich," Elliot said patiently, in the manner of one talking to an obstinate child.

"Yes,
my
sandwich," I explained, glaring at him despite our truce.

I felt a tug on the receipt in my hand and turned to see Jonah reaching over and trying to get it back.

"Look, how about if I pay and then anyone unhappy with the billing arrangements pays me back if they really feel they have to?" He said, using the sort of patient voice one uses on the insanely unreasonable.

God, it was always like this! You tried to take responsibility for your own expenses, as any adult should do, and people looked down on you like you were some sort of spoilsport.

"Fine," I said ungraciously, surrendering the receipt and immediately fishing my wallet out of my bag.

By the time the waitress had been summoned back over and given Jonah's credit card, I'd deposited the exact amount of money I owed on the table in front of him. He made a show of his shaking his head, but he put the money into his own wallet and I was satisfied.

A short time after that, Elliot and I stood awkwardly to one side whilst Abi and Jonah bid their lengthy farewells to each other, even though they were planning on meeting up again that night anyway. I tried to not even look at Elliot. Something about just standing there in broad daylight, without anything specific to argue with him about, felt more uncomfortable than our whole interaction after we'd had our drunken one night stand. Maybe he felt the same, or maybe the terms of our truce still held, because he made no attempt to talk to me and it was with great relief we both welcomed our friends back from the land of the lip-locked.

"So
, what did you think of Elliot?" I asked as I linked arms with Abi and finally drew her away from her boyfriend. I didn't consider that I'd pretty much stolen the line she would have had reserved for after lunch, I so wanted to know her impression of the guy she'd heard so much about through me.

"Well..." she bit her lip as we started walking down the pavement back to our room, and my shoulders slumped.

"You liked him, didn't you?" I said flatly.

"Not for what he's like with you," she
responded loyally and I gave her arm an appreciative squeeze.

"It's alright," I said nobly. "He's your boyfriend's best friend; you're allowed to like him, even if he is a ridiculous excuse of a human being."

"Oh come on, Rox." Abi hitched her bag up her shoulder and looked kind of exasperated. "I don't buy that he's
that
bad. You have too much self-respect to sleep with someone who was truly awful, no matter how drunk you were."

Was that true? I really hoped it was because, to be honest, I was still struggling with myself over the 'having sex with someone I didn't like' thing. The way Abi put it gave me an opportunity to view the situation in a slightly different light and I allowed myself a moment to reflect.
Maybe it wasn't about having sex with someone I didn't like, maybe it was about me having sex with someone who I at least knew wasn't a racist or a bigot or a deliberate duck murderer.

"Fine," I said heavily, sending a quick look over my shoulder to make sure that Elliot wasn't close enough to have heard my admission. "I'll admit that it's unlikely he'll drag you into an alleyway and kill you."

Abi snorted with laughter before her grey eyes turned serious and she said, "You know, when he was talking to me he was fine. He was interested in my art and he even said some nice things about you."

I stumbled at this sudden revelation and, shielding my eyes from the sun with my hand, looked across at her to demand, "Like what?"

"Maybe nice isn't the right word," she backtracked, obviously slightly put off by my intensity, "it was more
fond
, I guess. I asked about growing up with you and he said that it'd been fun mucking about and working on getting each other in trouble. I suppose it gave me a bit of insight into why you ended up sleeping together despite everything."

Wow, I must have been really wrapped up in my conversation with Jonah the
Whale (must
stop
calling him that) to have missed this juicy bit of information!

"Oh yeah?"
I asked incredulously. "Care to elaborate on your findings? Because I still have no idea."

"Well," she looked kind of uncomfortable, but tough! If she thought she had some glimmer of understanding then she was damn well going to have to share it with the class. "Don't you think it could have had something to do with homesickness? Like he was missing home and you reminded him of the good old days or something?"

I stared at her for a moment and then laughed loudly as all expectation of her imparting some kind of wisdom about Elliot's thoughts on that night evaporated in an instant.

"Oh sweetie, it's a good thing you're not doing psychology," I chuckled, "because that was the
worst
diagnosis I've ever heard."

As was pretty much her wont these days, the rest of the walk was taken up with Abi gushing about how lovely Jonah was, Elliot completely forgotten. This was fine
by me as it gave me time to zone out and focus on giggling internally at her suggestion uninterrupted.

It wasn't a secret that Elliot's parents weren't exactly
the cuddly types, but I knew better than most just how truly cold and unfeeling they were towards their only child and how gladly he'd left their house.

A fresh wave of amusement hit me and I shook my head.
Elliot Sinclair homesick? If there had been one thing that had made him sick, it had
been
home.

----------

They stood outside the café and watched the girls go.

Physically, Elliot mused, they were about as different as you could get, but he could see that they'd done that weird absorbing each other's
personalities thing that girls sometimes did. It'd thrown him a couple of times while talking to Abigail when she'd said something or tilted her face in a way that was Rox through and through.

He'd had a weirdly good time at the lunch, he decided. Abigail had been genuinely good fun and any time spent in Rox's vicinity at least guaranteed you were never bored;
certainly worth a few puncture wounds here and there.

"So what do you think?" Jonah asked, trying to sound nonchalant, but betrayed by
a tense expression that suggested a negative appraisal on Elliot's behalf would be an offence worthy of beheading. Considering this was a feat Jonah could easily have achieved with one swipe of his massive hand, Elliot was glad he didn't have to lie as he said,

"Abi's cool, mate. I like her."

Jonah's whole body relaxed and he nodded. "Yeah, she
is
cool."

There was a pause during which Elliot found himself looking back over at the retreating
forms of their erstwhile lunch mates. He saw Rox steal a quick look over her shoulder then say something that made Abigail laugh, and had absolutely no doubt they were talking about him. That meant that when, in the next second, Rox seemed to trip on absolutely nothing and whip her head round to stare at her friend, he wished he'd been closer to them and could’ve heard what had just been said.

"Funny seeing Cinders again like that. She got hot, right?" Jonah knocked him
with his elbow and Elliot suddenly realised that he'd gone from wondering what the girls were talking about to just plain staring at the swing of Rox's jean-clad arse as she walked away.

Quickly focusing instead on his friend, he gave him a shove back and grinned.
"Steady mate, I just got through meeting your girlfriend, don't tell me you're moving on already?"

Jonah shook his head and looked irritatingly knowing. "Nah, I'm just saying. I reckon I see how the other week happened now."

Elliot jostled him again and then changed the subject.

Yeah, Rox had done something to her hair since she'd started uni that made it bounce about as madly as her thought processes, and there was no denying that
that butt could get any red blooded male's interest, but Jonah was full of it. Because, although Elliot couldn't deny some of the truth in the 'she got hot' stuff, if Jonah thought that was the reason he'd slept with Rox then he
didn't
see. He didn't see at all.