Page 89 of Savage

“Long enough,” he says, and then turns to me with one of those playful smiles that he’s so fond of today.God, I want to strangle him sometimes. “You start to earn your keep, and I might never let you leave.”

He’s joking, right? Right?I mean, he’s not serious about keeping me. Tank’s just the unlucky bastard who got lumped with me. I’m not even sure why Jett wanted me to get clean. I’d always thought he believed I was good for sucking cock and nothing else.

“I’m going to get us a trolley. Start gettin’ your shit together,” Tank says and wanders off.

Start getting my shit together? Yeah, because it’s that easy.

I watch his retreating figure for a moment, appreciating how good his arse looks in those jeans when it dawns on me that I’m alone. I mean, not alone, because there’s an entire store full of shoppers here, but for the first time since he found me in the middle of the road, Tank isn’t with me. An elderly woman stands a few feet away. She has one of those big fake Louis Vuitton bags—or maybe it’s not fake. It’s not like I’d know the difference. I glance around, pinch the bridge of my nose and cry out. She looks over at me, alarmed, but continues her perusal of the clothing in front of us, which is all far too young for her. I glance around for Tank, he’s nowhere in sight.

“Oh,” I say, and stagger a little.

“Are you alright dear?” the woman says. She doesn’t look overly sympathetic—more annoyed than anything.

“I just … I have this terrible migraine, and I need something to take the edge off, but Rizatriptan is the only thing that works.” God bless Kick for introducing me to that one. It’s no coke, but it will take the edge off in a bind.

“There’s a chemist a few doors down,” she informs me.

Yeah, except my arsehole babysitter won’t give me any.

“I know, it’s just that I don’t have a script and I can’t get in to my doctor until tomorrow, and I know it’s going to get so much worse between now and then and … you wouldn’t happen to have any Nurofen, or pseudoephedrine, would you?”

“I have Panadeine Forte. I need them for my back pain. No water, though, you’ll have to buy a bottle from the front counter.”

Fuck. To anyone else Panadeine Forte isn’t anything to sneeze at, but my body is used to much stronger opiates. Chances are I’ll burn through it in a half hour, if it does anything at all.

“That would be great. Thank you so much, you’re really a lifesaver.”

She pulls out the box from her handbag, and I wait on tenterhooks as she slowly pops one tablet out from the blister pack into my hand. I snatch it closed as though at any second she might take it back.

“You know, my husband used to get migraines,” she says, tucking the card of pills back in the box. I try not to stare longingly at them as they disappear into her bag. “They really knocked him for six.”

I nod in agreement. I’ve never suffered from migraines. Headaches maybe, and that feeling on a comedown like you just touched a live wire and your whole body has gone into shock. I’ve felt that for the last two weeks. “Yeah, they’re really killer.”

“Well, you best get that tablet into you before it gets much worse,” she says.

“I will,” I promise, with a pained smile. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She goes back to perusing the clothing, and I turn away and swallow the pill dry, wondering how many times I can get a complete stranger to hand over their medication today. It’s not blow, but it might take the aches and pains away. Fuck Tank for not even allowing me to take a Panadol. He really can be as cruel and sadistic as his reputation states.

I grab a few black T-shirts and singlet tops, some jeans and a couple of jumpers. It’s all hideous generic shit, stupid sayings, too much colour, and ugly as all fuck, but it’s not like they have a clothing line for club whores in Kmart.

I wander over to the underwear section and pull a pair of pink panties with little white printed bows decorating them off the nearest rack and look them over.Who even comes up with this shit?I mean, I know plenty of men who dig the little schoolgirl vibe, but still, even they have to find panties like this insulting. I shove them back on the rack and head into the section where they keep the bra and panty sets. Picking up a black lace bra and panties in my size that I think Tank will like, I throw them over my arm with the rest of my finds.

“No,” Tank says, startling me, so I jump and almost lose the cargo in my hands. I whack him with a plastic coat-hanger. “We go somewhere else for lingerie.”

I laugh and shoot an incredulous look at him. “Lingerie? Since when do you shop for lingerie? Since when do you even like lingerie, much less use the word?”

“I like ruining ling-er-ie.” He draws it out as if it’s a dirty word, and he’s a prepubescent boy who’s having way too much fun with it.

“All the more reason for you to buy it cheap,” I say, placing the underwear back on the rack. Tank takes the clothing slung over my arm and throws it in the trolley.

“That’s all you’re getting?”

“Oh no, we’re stopping by the sanitary items aisle too.”

He frowns. “You mean I gotta put up with you on withdrawals as well as your fuckin’ rag? Jesus Christ, there better be a fuckin’ big-arse bottle of Black Label at the end of this shit with my name on it,” he mutters, and then he appears to be thinking hard about something because his eyes shoot skyward and he gets this adorable furrow in his brow. “You’ve never had your period around me before?”

“That’s because they have these magic little red sugar pills that I skip every month. When you take away the birth control, they tend to come on pretty hard and fast.”

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