Page 27 of Feed Your Fiends

Three days since that angel of darkness visited me.

Three days since he paralysed me, pressed his warmth against me and wrapped his wet tongue around my nipple. Seventy-two hours since his gentle, exploring fingers played with the peach fuzz I’ve yet to shave. Then it all went black.

My throat and thighs clench at the memory. I dreamt of Gant so often, even before the hospital…were they all just dreams? Nightmares that I’d secretly craved? The way he moved me around like the little doll he always said I was…

I shake my head and get back on track. I’m not about to go down that slick, slippery path in broad daylight.

Right, where was I?

Three days since Hale took me in, and three days of gruelling renovations that left us severely sleep-deprived.

Yesterday was the first day I was allowed on my feet for short bursts, and the surprising lack of pain made me overly ambitious today. An hour ago, I’d decided that I was sick of wheeling around Libellule’s dark walls.

The club needs more liquor for the grand opening, and I need actual sunlight. The moody ambience was only playing into my dark thoughts, so I volunteered to place the order. Hale’s been swamped with party planning, the handymen for things we couldn’t do ourselves, plus an excess of deliveries. Rie Rie couldn’t be trusted to pick out popular alcoholic brands for anyone under fifty-five, and she’d undoubtedly put in the wrong pin for the company’s debit card Hale gave me this morning.

I sigh as Rie Rie’s sweet and clueless face comes zooming to the forefront of my brain as the cab Hale paid for whips around a curb. Stassi and Zedd’s birthday party will bring in nine hundred guests. The club’s full capacity. There’s no way Rie and I could work the floor alone even if my feet weren’t fucked and yet Hale still hasn’t hired new workers, as he’s penny-pinching to get the renovations done.

For a pampered rich boy, I’d expected him to have soft, delicate hands and two left feet, but he’d surprised me. I’d instructed him easily from my wheelchair, as he pushed the floor buffer around for hours before getting on all fours to patch the gouges with wood filler. Stassi dropped by with cappuccinos and croissants this morning to enjoy the show, and I’d left them finishing up the last section of wallpaper.

With the lights dimmed, our DIY upgrades were passable, but we’d left the leaking roof untouched. If Hale’s calculations, based on Stassi and Zedd’s party alone, were right, he could fix the roof by next month. In the meantime, we’re praying that no one performs rain dances. Now that I have a stake in the club, I need it to succeed, perhaps even more so than Hale does. He may not like his mother right now, but he has her. She’s his backup. And me?

Mothers.

Jaime….

I glance out the taxi window as it lurches to a stop in front of The Watering Hole. Jarett’s favourite place to get plastered is the last place I want to be, but it’s the closest liquor wholesaler. Besides, seeing its grimy murals of drunken safari animals is better than staring at the club’s walls. No matter how stunning it is, the new forest green dragonfly wallpaper is painfully embossed into my brain from how many times we had to fix a crooked piece.

I slip from the cab and swallow the bubbling dread in my stomach as I walk like a newborn deer to the front doors.Jarett’s long gone,I tell myself as the familiar scent of air-conditioned smoke and stale peanuts hits me. If I could accept that Jaime didn’t give a damn about me and neither did Gant, then I could face a simple liquor store.

Just twelve more steps, I prod myself along as I zone in on the bar, already desperate to take a seat. I damn near sprint toward it and let out a sigh the moment the pressure is off my feet again.

There’s a poster on the cork bulletin board. Unlike the others that have littered the board since I was a child, the colours are vibrant, alerting me to its newness. It’s a picture of a band that’s going to perform this weekend. I lean forward for a better look, hoping it’s no one popular enough to compete with Stassi and Zedd’s party. As I squint at the unfamiliar faces, relief washes over me when I realise our crowds won’t conflict. The band members can’t be under forty years old.

I skim the font. “That Night.”

Mum’s favourite band. No, notMum’s.Jaime and Jarett’s favourite band. The two J's who I’d exorcised from my life.

Tearing my eyes away from the glossy poster, I focus on the burly bartender instead.

“Elle?” he asks, when his broad back whips around so he’s facing me.

“Hi, Harod,” I say with a nervous chuckle.

“I knew it was you,” he says, his bushy grey brows lifting. “I saw you with some girls a few weeks ago.”

Aria had used her ID when we’d bought the alcohol for me to practice bartending with. That was before I knew Hale owned Libuelle. The minute I spotted Harod during our shopping spree, I hid behind my plastic curly wig.

I nod. “I need to place a big order. Can I get the catalogue?”

The Watering Hole was still stuck in the nineties, never bothering with a website.

Harod’s smile falters at me cutting the conversation short.

He’d never done anything to me, but he was there a half dozen times when Jarett had, in his bar, where a nine-year-old shouldn’t have been. And that was enough to make me despise him.

“Sure, sure,” he says, eyeing me curiously. “Long time no see, huh?”

“Hmm,” I mutter dismissively, taking the dog-eared catalogue he’d pushed across the counter.

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