Page 1 of Commitment Issues
Chapter One
Elliot
“There’s no way I can get out of it, even if I wanted to. And why should I? I’m the best man, for God’s sake. Or one of them.”
I push my fingers through my hair, the hard tug on the strands making me wince. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had this conversation with James.
“Yes, and who’s the other one? Andrew and Marcus can’t be expecting you to go. Not now.”
The position I’m in is unenviable. That’s the cool, reasoned, understated way of looking at it. A shit storm waiting to happen, is the other. James glares at me. For such a short arse, he’s surprisingly fierce. A Rottweiler in Armani. Or one of those horrible yappy little dogs beloved of over-powdered, over-rouged elderly ladies. Whichever, he has sharp teeth when he has a mind to use them. But I should be grateful, I suppose, that one of my two oldest friends took it upon himself to be President and Chairman of Team Hendricks when my relationship with Gavin hit the skids, crashed, and burned.
“You can stop glaring at me.”
“I’m not glaring. I’m glowering. There’s a discrete, finely tuned difference,” he drawls.
“Whatever that squinty-eyed expression is, backing out of being Andrew’s best man can only be excused by death or imprisonment, and I’m not planning on either of those. I’ll get us some more drinks.” If I disappear to the bar for a few minutes perhaps he’ll have changed the record by the time I get back. I go to stand, but James’ grip, surprisingly strong for such a slight man, keeps me captive in my seat.
“You’re just trying to change the subject. I know you too well, Elliot Hendricks.”
Unfortunately, that’s true. James continues to glare — or glower — at me, but even in the bar’s muted lights, it’s impossible not to see the mischievous light in his eyes. And that doesn’t bode well. The wordsJamesandmischievousare an ominous and sometimes frightening combination.
“And besides, you don’t need to go to the bar. There are lots of luscious young waiters milling around.”
James shifts his focus from me. Throwing out a smile and a wink he summons up, as though by magic, one of thelusciousones.
“Two more G&Ts, darling, and one for yourself.”
He makes no secret he’s checking out every inch of the young waiter. I swallow the groan aching to escape my throat. My friend’s sharpening his knife to make another notch on his bedpost. With a simpering smile, the waiter disappears with our order.
“And you can take that pained look off your face.” James spears me with his feline eyes. “It doesn’t suit you. It just makes you look like you’re straining for a shit. If you are, of course, please don’t let me stop you from availing yourself of the facilities.”
“If I do have a pained look, it’s because you won’t change the record.”
“He’s very pretty.”
“What?” I should be used to James’ sudden, incomprehensible switches of subjects, but they never fail to leave me floundering.
“The waiter. He was immune to my charms, and his smile was as false as a reality TV star’s tan and tits, which naturally makes him something of a savage, but I saw how he was looking at you.”
“He wasn’t looking at me, and even if he was, it was only because the staff here are ordered to flirt. It’s in their employment contract. It keeps the punters happy, and happy punters order more drinks. And why did you want to meet here? We could have booked a table at Caravaggio.” My stomach gives a Pavlovian rumble as I say the name of the small restaurant that serves some of the best Italian food in London. I can almost taste the lasagna.
“Because the waiters at Caravaggio are neither as cute nor as easy as the ones here. And all that pasta? You know how carbs go to my hips.” James arches his brows in mock horror, and even though I don’t want to, I can’t help laughing.
He leans forward, all trace of waspish humour disappearing.
“It’s good to hear you laugh, even if it is at me. It feels like too long since I heard those butch, gravelly tones,” James says, a small and this time genuine, smile tugging at his lips. In truth, it feels like a long time since I’ve had cause to.
The smile drops away, and is replaced by brow-crinkling concern.
“Seriously Elliot, you need — and deserve — some mindless, no strings fun. You need to let off some steam, and I don’t mean by pounding your way across Hampstead Heath. It’s another kind of pounding that’d do you the world of good. I mean it.” He squeezes my arm, to underscore his words. “I do worry about you, you know.”
And just like that, my eyes prickle. I tell myself it’s because of his steel hard, bony fingers digging into my forearm, but it’s not that and I know it. James, who’s been by my side since we met at school as young teenagers, a man with whom, on the face of it, I have little in common, does worry about me. He always has, in his own way, and I know he always will.
Of course, I’m hardly going to admit that. I clear my throat.
“I’m a big boy now, and I really don’t need looking after. I can tie my own shoelaces, I won’t lose my mittens because they’re on a string, and if I get lost I have my address sewn into my clothes.”
James huffs as he shakes his head, and leans back in his seat. His cat-like eyes rake up and down me, not in any kind of a sexual way, thank God, not in the way he’d done it to the waiter; it’s more as though he’s studying me, trying to work me out, but quite why he needs to do that after so many years I honestly don’t know.
