Page 50 of Start With A Slap

“Why thank you, sir,” Ivy said, toasted everyone she could reach and knocked back her shot.

Aidan nudged Sever. “Are you sure I can’t have her?”

“Positive,” Sever said.

“Face like that begs to be drawn...”

Sever snarked, “That tired line still work for you?”

“Only on you, gorgeous.” He grabbed Sever in a headlock and kissed his head. “God, I love this man!”

“I’ve missed you too, baby.” Sever puckered his lips at him and bit a Gitane out of his pack.

“Ten years I don’t see this wanker, and he hasn’t aged a feckin’ day.” He took one of Sever’s cigs. “Spend all that time in a freezer, mate?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Under a moony glance from Sever, Ivy felt compelled to change the subject. “How did the two of you meet?”

“Orgy,” Aidan said, and lit his cigarette. “Oh, it was a magical evening. The rock stars were twinklin’, the blow was stacked yay high?—”

Max snapped her fingers. “Hoboken, 1986!”

“Leeds, ‘93,” Aidan corrected.

Max thought for a second and said, “Nope. Wasn’t at that one.”

Ivy giggled. Assuming they were joking.

“She’s cute when she laughs,” Aidan said.

With unchecked longing, Sever sighed, “Yeah.”

Aidan gave him a curious once-over, then snickered to himself. “I see. Well, thisisan occasion. Let’s have another round, shall we? A good hard liquor can cure any ailment.”

“Here, here,” said Max.

“I’ll pass,” Ivy said. If she didn’t want to be ‘cured’, she had to space things out.

Sever passed too.

Zalika came to the rescue by engaging Ivy in conversation. When she asked Ivy if she acted or wrote or worked in film, due to her living in L.A., she shook her head. “I have no talents.”

“Now that’s not true,” Sever said.

“I’m a great paralegal,” she said, to which Zalika said, “What’s that?”

“It’s a day job,” Max said, then pressed her. “Come on. Everybody’s got their somethin’. What’s your flavor? What’s your passion?”

She glanced at Sever, who smiled and said, “Dying sunflowers.”

She said, “Abstract expressionism.”

“My kind of girl,” Aidan said, interested anew.

Thus began an evolving discussion, first about art, then music, then law, then politics, that carried them through two clubs, Sever and Ivy locking horns over each changing subject.

She realized she might be enjoying the horn-locking a little too much — and maybe losing track of her carefully spaced drinking — when, at a loss for new things to argue about, she disputed Sever’s comment that it was starting to rain.

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