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“We need to meet the others in thirty minutes, Al,” the tall friend reminds the blond guy of…a previous engagement.

“Look at them,” he counters with a snort. “I’ll need less than five minutes.”

“Less than five,” Lori echoes.

“What?” the friend utters with disdain dripping from his voice. He crosses his arms in a deliberate move that shows his huge biceps under the parka he’s wearing. “Are you scared, Tinker fucking Bell?”

He seems to be an incel as well.

Lori turns his gaze on him. I’ve seen that crazy look in his eyes every time he’s about to make someone eat their words. Oh boy.

“Let’s do it.” Ollie finishes his cocktail through the metal straw and then moves toward the back of the bar without looking back.

I open my mouth to try to stop him, but Michael’s hand squeezing my shoulder halts the words in my throat. I’m not afraid for my friends, I know they can wipe the floor with these rude guys, I just don’t want them to do it because of me.

“You need a distraction, right? Lori and Ollie need to vent a little. Birds, stone.” Michael hands me a cocktail glass and then pulls me across the bar and outside into the smoking area. It looks like a veranda, delineated by physical partitions all around, two sliding windows, and a roof. Four tall ashtrays are standing at the four corners and little round lights decorate the walls. I can see a few cars in the alley outside and a couple of dumpsters under the lampposts illuminating the silent area.

The windows are closed, but the air is chilly in here. The two beefy men talk low for a few seconds. The friend seems eager to finish this.

I’m fidgeting from one foot to the other, moving close to Michael. It’s cold, and I feel like I’m once again the cause of another mess. I did need a distraction but not of this kind.

“Do you want gel man or parka dude?” Lori asks Ollie, they look both at ease and excited about the upcoming fight. They love the adrenaline, the thrill that comes from subjugating an asshole—I’m quoting their words.

“Parka dude, I guess.” As soon as Ollie finishes uttering those words, parka dude moves toward him. He’s taller and with more muscle mass. The difference in size doesn’t seem to intimidate Ollie—he used to be part of an illegal underground fight ring, That’s how he met Rague. He also trains with him, who’s triple parka dude’s build.

Ollie evades two punches aimed at his face and a knee to his chest, before hitting the other man in the side and then kicking his knee, moving in the perfect position to trip him. As the big guy stumbles forward, Ollie spins and elbows him in the nape, and then lands a merciless, full kick to his back. I get out of the way as parka dude hits his forehead against one of the ashtrays and then falls heavily on the floor. Damn, he’s tall. Less than a minute, and the first guy is already down.

My eyes move to Lori. Gel man has pulled him against his front, a knife is resting against Lori’s throat. I let out a terrified gasp, but Lori smoothly lifts both his hands to grab the large arm around his throat. He bites it viciously and then twists it outward, breaking the guy’s hold on him.

“Bringing a knife to a fist fight, so naughty of you, gel man.” He spins around and takes the knife out of the guy’s fingers. Then he stabs it into his thick thigh. The blade slices through fabric and skin easily, making the man scream in pain as Lori gives it a slow twist, going deeper into the rectus femoris muscle. The attacker is growling and sweating when Lori steps back, pulling the knife out. He kicks him in the balls, making him stagger away holding both his thigh and groin now. His pant leg is turning crimson red like his cheeks as he drops to one knee, groaning. Lori throws the knife in the air and catches it by the blade, ready for the next attack.

“You should have listened to my suggestion, you daft prick,” Lori scoffs. Then he abruptly brings down the knife’s handle on the guy’s temple and watches him fall unconscious to the hard floor.

“That’s it? Those guys were pathetic,” Lori whines. “I thought they’d have a little more stamina or at least a better pain threshold, for bloody sake.”

Ollie is tapping his shoe on parka guy’s side, but there’s no response.

“It was entertaining,” Michael assures him, drinking from his glass. I completely forgot about mine. My fingers feel frozen around it.

“This is all my fault,” I mumble around the cocktail straw.

“Not true, Angel. Thanks to this, Bez won’t be strangled tonight.” Lori smiles at me.

“What did he do?” Michael asks.

“He said my face’s beauty regimen is shit and threw all my creams in the trash!”

Oh, that’s like declaring war to Lori, he’s obsessed with his skin care routine.

“But what did you do to make him react like that?” Ollie turns our way.

“Nothing.”

“The way you scoffed it out implies there’s definitely something,” Ollie insists.

“I might have kept him waiting for…a while.”

“How long is a while?” Michael tilts his head in question.