Page 14 of Hard Tail
I shook my head. “No—it might as well earn its keep on display until tonight. I’ll just put asoldlabel on it.”
I disappeared behind the desk to write one out, and Matt headed out back to carry on with the repairs work, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
It underlined neatly just how much of a spare part (pun not intended) I was in this business. It was a bloody good thing Jay wasn’t actually paying me—I’d have felt honour bound to give him a refund. Just as I was feeling really down about my lack of success as a shopkeeper, though, a steady stream of customers started to come in. Matt must have been right about the Wednesday effect. I actually took a fair bit of money—and even sold my first bike.
Granted, it had three wheels, was pink and covered in daisies, but the little girl dressed to match seemed almost as thrilled with her new ride as I was to have sold it.
After that, we hit a bit of a lull, which left me with little to do but think. And while I had a lot of things to think about—like whether Kate would want to sell the house or to buy out my share (she could move in there with Alex, wouldn’t that be nice?); how long it’d be before I got a letter from her in legalese I no longer had a lawyer living with me to translate; and whether I ought to get a lawyer of my own—for some reason I kept coming back to Matt.
Well, maybe not just him. There were a whole lot of other issues that went hand-in-hand with that can of worms. Not that cans had hands, or worms either, for that matter…
Damn it. I got out from behind the counter and started to pace around the shop, straightening the hanging bike locks (again) and arranging the helmets in order of size this time. Colour-coding them had been a daft idea.
I suppose I was hoping that setting my body in motion might still the whirling of my mind. And in fact the mindless tasks did their usual trick of setting my subconscious free—although not in the direction I’d expected. I suddenly realised where I’d seen that coral necklace Matt was wearing before. Jay. He’d brought it back from Goa.
My throat went tight. Had Jay given it to Matt? Jewellery, in my admittedly limited experience, was what blokes gave to their girlfriends. I’d bought Kate jewellery. Sometimes even when she hadn’t asked me to. Was Jay after Matt to be his…boyfriend?
But Jay wasn’t gay. Or even bi. Was he? No, he couldn’t be. And even if he was, he wouldn’t cheat on Olivia—although come to think of it, after a night spent in her chilly company, a bit of time with Matt’s warmth would definitely look attractive. But Matt already had a boyfriend, anyway…
I gave a guilty start as the man himself emerged from the back room. “Everything all right?” he called out cheerfully.
“Yes! Yes, of course. Fine. Why wouldn’t it be?” I rubbed my hands together nervously. “Sorry. It’s been a bit quiet, that’s all. Makes me restless.”
“Jay usually reads a magazine.” There was a stack of old bike mags up on a shelf behind the counter.
“Not really my thing,” I said, shrugging. “Although I suppose I might find out a bit more about the business if I look through a few of them.”
Matt tightened his lips like he was trying not to smile. “You might want to look at the ones on the bottom first.” He reached over for the repairs ledger, dropped it, picked it up again and wandered out back with it, whistling an off-key tune I didn’t quite recognise.
I stared after him for a moment—then dug out a magazine from the bottom of the pile and opened it up. And goggled at the assortment of naked breasts and other female parts that leered up at me from the glossy pages. Well, I say assortment, but they were all pretty similar, really, with only minor variations on the general theme of barrage balloons. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t even any pretence at being natural—these girls were apparently only too happy to show the world a goodly proportion of their body weight was made of silicone.
The jangling of the shop bell startled me out of my appalled fascination, and I frantically tried to shove the magazine out of sight of the teenage lads in hooded jackets coming through the door. I fumbled, ended up dropping it, and kicked it under the counter as far as I could.
The boys were laughing and joking with each other, and I wondered if they might be trouble. I’d read theDaily Mail, so I knew anyone wearing a hoodie was liable to mug me as soon as look at me. But as far as I could tell, they didn’t try and shoplift anything, and eventually coughed up the money for a puncture repair kit and another pump adaptor. That made three in the last two days. I wondered where all the old ones were going—was there a pump-adaptor fairy somewhere, maybe living in a brightly-coloured castle built of short lengths of tubing with a screwy bit on the end?
Still, I wasn’t complaining. I rang up the sale with a smile. As the lads turned to go, one of them stooped to pick something up and handed it to me solemnly.
“There you go, mate. Dropped your porn.”
It was Jay’s bloody magazine. Conveniently open to a centre spread of a young lady who’d obviously decided to blow her limited budget on the very last word in depilatories instead of anything resembling clothing. I must have kicked the wretched thing right out from under the counter. “Thank you,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster and watched as they left the shop and dissolved into wild laughter outside.
“Bloody,bloodyJay!” I fumed, shoving the magazine roughly back under the pile of bike mags.
“Trouble?” Matt’s voice made me jump, and I cricked my neck turning back towards him.
“Ouch!” I rubbed the side of my neck, grimacing as the pain and the pins-and-needles gradually wore off.
“Sorry.” Matt hung his head. “Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.” He turned and started to lope morosely back to the other room.
I stared. What was that all about? “Did you need something?”
Matt spun around. “Oh—nothing important. It can wait.”
“Why would it have to?” I frowned.
“Well, you know. You looked a bit…” Matt gestured vaguely.
It was lost on me. “A bit what?”
