Page 20

“I dig the name.” Lori winks at me and hooks his arm with mine as we go inside.

It’s bigger and nicer than I expected. The lights are dimmed, giving the place a warm glow.

The air is sweet and rich, compared to the outside chill.

The round bar counter is in the middle of the room and people are sitting in the brown booths or gathered around the high wooden tables surrounding it.

The clink of glasses and loud chatter relegate the notes of some pop song to the background.

Lori pulls me toward the bar. The sparkly, white counter—the exact same shade as my nail polish—feels cold under my fingers. The two bartenders look busy as they swiftly prepare one cocktail after another.

I undo the buttons of my coat but leave it on. The clothes Lori’s lent me are beautiful but slightly too revealing for my liking. A very short, leather skirt, black stockings and a soft sweater that leaves part of my belly and one shoulder bare.

“Tequila shots! And keep them coming,” Lori orders, and after a moment eight little glasses appear in front of us.

“Elbows up!” Ollie says, before downing his glass.

This is not my first time having shots with them. I like tequila, it gives me a nice buzz. So I follow their example, and three glasses later, my stomach starts to burn slightly.

A guy slides in next to me, but Lori raises his arm to push him away. “Come back in ten minutes. He needs to drink more.” He winks, and the guy nods and leaves but not before sending me a heated look.

“What just happened?”

“First rule of hooking up,” Ollie raises one finger, “if he comes back, it means he’s really interested in you. If he doesn’t, it’s his loss.”

“I want to drink a Tequila Sunrise, anyone else?” Michael asks us.

“I’ll try one.” I raise my hand.

The sudden feel of a body pressing against mine turns my back stiff.

“Did it hurt?” The misty words uttered near my ear make me flinch.

“What?” I shift, forcing the body to move back slightly. There’s a tall, large, brawny guy in front of me. He’s wearing a very tight long-sleeve shirt, his blond hair is gelled back, and his black jeans leave almost nothing to the imagination.

“When you fell from heaven…did it hurt?” His fingers caress the end of my braid, forcing me to lean away against the counter behind me.

“Did you just confuse me with Lucifer?” I ask, not understanding his sudden question.

His eyes stop going up and down my body, lingering on my legs. I feel a little uncomfortable.

“Lucifer?” The guy’s expression has turned into a frown now. “No…I…”

“Ohhh, burn!” I hear Lori snort, but the guy’s attention is completely on me. He’s objectively handsome, but my body is rejecting his nearness.

“Never mind. I am here now. What are your other two wishes?” He gives me a toothy smile, leaving me puzzled once again.

“Crikey, you can’t stop being lame,” Lori clips just before he drags me close to him.

The beefy guy sends a hateful look Lori’s way.

“Find it hard to follow me? Yeah, my fiancés have the same problem at times.”

“Fiancés?” he asks.

“He has two,” Ollie explains, before gulping another shot.

“Wow! I can actually see the smoke coming out of his head,” Michael laughs at the guy.

“Fucking bitches!”

“If I wasn’t already married, this would have me erase Tinder from my phone,” Ollie teases.

“Fuck you, you crazy, ugly whores.” The guy’s face has turned red, he looks furious. Another very tall, very beefy man has made his way over, a friend of his I suppose.

“Were you suddenly hit with Tourette’s syndrome?” Lori asks him.

“No, Lor. He’s simply an incel.” Ollie smirks, giving the guy a long look.

“A what?” he growls angrily.

“An incel is a person, usually male, who has a horrible personality and treats people like sexual objects, thinking his lack of a sex life comes from being ‘unlucky’ when the cause is his blatant sexism and terrible attitude.”

“In other words, he is the entitled jerk who calls you an ‘ugly bitch’ right after you ignore or reject his brave, but gross attempt at an opening line,” Michael adds.

“Hard pass,” Lori finishes. “Plus this bitch,” he touches his chest, “is very crafty. I suggest you shut your arse and run along!”

“Fuck that! Let’s settle this outside, you freaks!” the blond guy snarls.

“Really? Didn’t you hear my crafty bitch warning?”

“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.

“One…Two hours—” Lori starts to say when I see movement out of the corner of my eye.

“Watch out!” I scream just as parka dude comes down on us.

Ollie tries to stop the punch, but it finds his stomach.

Lori hits the dude’s throat as I splash my drink on his face.

Michael pulls one of his arms back as Lori does the same on the other side until I hear two cracks, probably from both shoulders being dislocated, and a loud groan. They let him go and face him again.