Chapter 15: Angry & Drunk

I was so numb as I left Vanessa’s room that I didn’t notice Imogen standing in her doorway waiting for me. I walked right past her without a second glance and barely registered her calling to me.

“Paul? What did she say? You asked her out again, right? What did she say? Paul? Paul? Paul Robertson don’t you walk away from me.”

As I reached the door to the stairs, I heard a door open and Imogen ask, “Ness, what the fuck did you say to him? It’s like he’s one of the walking dead or something.”

By the time I got to the ground floor, the numbness had worn off and had been replaced by something else. Something far, far worse. Mark’s door was open, and he got up off his bed when he saw me unlocking my room.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

I turned to face him. “How’d it go? How’d it fucking go? She fucking said no, that’s how it went.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. I don’t know why you’re surprised. I’m not. I couldn’t be less fucking surprised. I mean, why would any bitch want me for anything other than sex, huh? Why would any of them want me for anything other than my fucking cock? Cause that’s all I am, isn’t it? A fucking cock! A fucking self-fucking-powered dildo with a body attached. Fuck! Fuck this!”

“Hey, mate,” said Mark. “Calm down. Did she really turn you down?”

“Yes! She turned me the fuck down. And it’s your fucking fault!” I jabbed my finger into his chest.

“My fault? How is this my fucking fault?” He pushed my finger aside. Anger flashed even stronger inside and I fought the urge to thump his smug fucking face.

“Because. You fucking made me go up there, that’s why.”

“Don’t blame me for making you do what you’ve been trying to do all week. You should be fucking thanking me. At least now you know and you can stop fucking stressing over it.”

“Stressing—” I growled, threw my door open and stomped inside. “This is ... Shit, you know what? Fuck it. Fuck her, and fuck Imogen and fuck you and fuck the whole fucking lot of you.”

“Paul, you need to calm—”

“Where’s my Scotch?”

“What?”

“Where’s my fucking Scotch. You know, the fucking good stuff that I keep buying but for some reason, we keep in your room. Go and get it.”

“Why?”

“Why the fuck do you think? I’m going to get shit faced.”

“Is that a good—”

“Don’t go all preachy on me, Mark. This is your fault, you made me go up there and make a complete arse of myself, so the least you can do is be a mate, go and get the fucking Scotch and help me get completely fucking wankered.”

He started for his room and as he left he said, “The least you can do is go and have a fucking shower. If we’re getting pissed, I don’t want you smelling like a fucking used jock-strap.”

I don’t know which was worse, the pounding on the door or the pounding in my head.

“Paul! Paul, open the door!” It was impossible not to recognise the Welsh twang even as she shouted through the door.

“Fuck off!” I grunted as loud as I dared.

The pounding didn’t stop. It got worse.

“Paul Robertson, you open this door right now!”

I grunted again and rolled off the bed. I had fallen asleep on top of the duvet and was still in the clothes I wore last night. After polishing off the Scotch with Mark and Jem, the three of us had gone to a pub just off campus, ordered some bar food and drank until the landlord kicked us out at closing time.

“It’s probably open,” came Mark’s voice from the other side of the door. “I doubt he was capable of locking it last night. I know I wasn’t.”

The door opened and Imogen strode in as if she owned the place.

“My God, look at the state of you. I was going to ask why you weren’t at breakfast, but I guess it’s kind of obvious.”

I grunted again. Words are over-rated anyway.

“Come on, go and shower and get dressed. We have a lecture in half an hour. You can get something to eat after that.”

“Just leave me alone,” I whined.

“Get the fuck up now and go clean yourself up! I’ll make you some coffee. You’ll have to drink it though since it’s still illegal to inject it intravenously.”

I did as I was told, then followed Imogen to the lecture, although how I stayed awake through it, I’ll never know and I certainly didn’t take any of it in. Afterwards, she dragged me to the canteen in The Union and forced me to eat. I should have been grateful. But I wasn’t.

“What did you do last night?”

“What does it look like?”

“But why?”

“Why do you think? Your best friend blew me out. Or didn’t she tell you that?”

“Oh, Paul,” she said, softly. “You have no idea what you did, do you?”

“What I did?” I realised I was shouting and tried to calm my voice. “What I did? All I did was ask if she wanted to go out again. She shot me down. She said no.”

She smiled in what I’m sure she thought was a kindly manner but to me it just felt patronising. “You scared her. Terrified her. The poor girl’s a wreck.”

“She’s a—This is unbelievable. So what are you telling me? Did she go and get smashed last night too?”

“An emotional wreck, you idiot. You can’t just spring something like that on her without warning. If you’d told me what you were thinking, I could have laid the groundwork for you then it wouldn’t come as such a shock for her and she wouldn’t have gone running for the hills.”

“What? That makes—”

“I told you, didn’t I? I told you she’d had some bad experiences. Well, I wasn’t just talking about sex. Her last boyfriend was, and pardon my French, an absolute fucking shit. He treated her like dirt. He cheated on her more than once. He was horrible. So as you can understand, she’s wary of getting into another bad relationship.”

“She’s wary? Fuck me, Gen, does she think I’m like that? Does she think—”

“Right now, until someone proves differently, she thinks all men are like that.”

“Great, just my luck to take Ems’ advice and give it another chance and I pick someone who’s just as fucked up as I am.”

“Why, what happened to you?”

I stared at her.

“What? I know something happened to you, but you’ve never said what. And every time I’ve asked you’ve just ignored the question.”

“You don’t want to know.”

“But that’s just it, Paul, I do want to know. If I knew, I could—”

“You could what? Help? Make things better? I’ve been trying to make things better for over a year, why the fuck did you think I ran away to America?”

“I thought that was a gap year.”

I huffed. “No one can make it better Gen. Not Ems, not you, and it looks like Ness can’t either. So just drop it, okay?”

She shook her head sadly but said nothing more. I finished eating and then we headed to our next lecture.

I got drunk with Mark and Jem again that evening, but not so drunk that Imogen had to bang my door down on Friday morning. I didn’t ask about Vanessa and Imogen didn’t say anything about her either. As far as I was concerned, it was over. Done with. Behind me.

That night, the girls decided we’d be going to Central Pier and after the usual stops at a couple of bars in town first, we made it into the nightclub by nine. I headed straight for the bar to get a round of drinks in. Usually, Jem, Mark and I took turns to buy each other drinks. The prices in Central Pier, like in most nightclubs, were much higher than in the other pubs and bars in town so it was normal to drink your fill before hitting the club and then nurse one or two drinks for the rest of the night. I’d certainly done that—in fact, I was surprised the doorman didn’t turn me away for being too drunk.

Guess I hid it well. But then, I’d had practice.

The cost of the drinks also meant that the queue for drinks in Central Pier was never very long. I was approached by a very attractive barmaid as soon as I leant on the bar.

“What would you like?” she asked.

I eyed her up and down. What was it that attracted me about all these busty blondes?

“Well,” I drawled, “What I’d like, would get me thrown out of the club, so how about three bottled lagers—don’t care which, whatever you’ve got—and three vodka chasers.”

“Coming up.” She bustled away to make up my order.

“I hear the fresher blew you out.” I’d been avoiding Amanda all night, but she’d obviously followed me to the bar when I wasn’t looking. “Of course, I’d have just blown you.”

I looked at her. She was smirking like she’d just won first prize in the raffle or something. I didn’t answer her.

“So,” she said, “since you failed to get your own date for tonight, we can get back on schedule. It’s Kimberley’s turn, all right?”

“No. No, it’s not all right! Don’t you fucking get it? I’m through playing your fucking games. I’m done with the Paul Fucking Robertson Experience. Okay? Got that? You’re not my fucking pimp!”

“But Paul—”

“But nothing, Mands! Just fucking forget it.”

“Jesus, Paul, I’m only trying to help.”

“Help? How is treating me like a piece of fucking meat helping, exactly?”

“Well, look at you! You haven’t gotten laid since last Friday, and clearly, it doesn’t agree with you. You’ve been a right grumpy shit all week, just because you didn’t get your rocks off on Saturday. Trust me, give Kim a right good seeing to tonight and you’ll feel a whole lot better in the morning. I’m just worried about you, that’s all.”

“Worried? Worried?” I tried to control the anger inside, but some of it escaped as a frustrated grunt. I looked Amanda in the eye and asked, “Have you ever done anal?”

“What?”

“It’s a simple enough question, have you ever had anal sex. Ever taken it up the arse?”

“What’s that got to do with—”

“Because you’re right, I do feel better when I get laid. But I don’t need your help to do it. I’m perfectly capable of picking my own partners. From now on, I choose who, I choose when and I choose how. So let me tell you this, you need to stop worrying about me and start worrying about when I decide it’s time to pop your anal cherry.”

She looked suitably shocked, which was quite satisfying.

I grinned and nodded. “Yeah, that’s right, at some point, at some time when you’re not expecting it, I’m going to decide it’s your turn and as payback for all the times you’ve shoved me on your friends, I’m going to make you choke on my dick, then shove the damn thing up your arsehole. You got that?”

The barmaid had arrived with my order, so I took the tray and went to find Jem and Mark.

Despite what I said to Amanda, I’m not so stupid as to look a gift horse in the mouth, and I knew that the regular girls on the list would all be up for it if I showed an interest. I mean, why wouldn’t they? I’d rocked their worlds before and I knew they all wanted me to do it again. But I’d be damned if I was going to find Kimberly just because Amanda had said she was next, so about an hour later I sought out Hannah instead. I’d be lying if I said she wasn’t my favourite of all the girls on Amanda’s list. I think there was some kind of connection between us that wasn’t there with any of the others—maybe it was just because of the unique nature of our first encounter at The Halloween Ball. Or maybe it was something more. I don’t know. I do know that I’d very much enjoyed our previous times together.

And so had she.

I tried to keep an eye on her all night, and when I spotted her alone at the bar, I moved in. She looked surprised when leaned on the bar next to her.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.” She smiled. Hannah had a lovely smile. Not as lovely as—

“Can I get you anything?”

She shook her head. “It’s fine. It’s my round. Do you want—”

“It’s okay. I’ll get them.” I looked into her eye and she held my stare. She was wearing a sleeveless blouse so I reached up to gently stroke her arm—running my finger from just below her shoulder down to her elbow.

She watched my finger and shivered. “What are you doing, Paul?”

I shrugged. “Just wondered if you wanted to ... You know.”

“Always. You know what you do to me. But it’s not my turn. It’s Kim’s.”

“Who said?”

“You know who said.”

“But I’m not taking any notice of what Mands says anymore.”

“Really?”

I nodded.

“She’ll be upset with you.”

“I don’t care.”

“She’ll be upset with me.”

“But it’d be worth it, wouldn’t it? You know we make the sweetest of sweet music together.”

She barked out a laugh. “Ha! Talk about corny. Does that line work on all the girls?”

I grinned. “I don’t know. It’s the first time I’ve used it. Ask me again in the morning. After ten-ish. After we’d had breakfast.”

“Is that a protein-rich breakfast you had in mind?”

“For you. For me, I’d prefer something a bit sweeter.”

She shook her head. “You’re incorrigible.”

I shrugged. “So what do you say?”

“What I should say is go and find Kim.”

“But?”

She smiled. A smile full of lust. Her eyes full of desire. She placed a hand on my chest and took a deep, deliberate breath—the way one does when trying to control your breathing. Trying to control yourself.

“I tell you what, why don’t we do some vertical dancing for a couple of hours, then go back to my room and do a horizontal tango.”

She grinned. “Fuck that. If Mands sees us dancing all night she’ll be pissed. Let’s just head back up the hill now.”

“Now?”

Her eyes widened and she nodded. “If we do this, it could end up being the last time. If nothing else, Mands will cut me off for cutting in. So let’s make the most of it.”

I nodded. “Come on then. Let’s get out of here.”