“He’s a grumpy ass, isn’t he?” Joe said, and Jason laughed.
Matt stretched out in his chair and closed his eyes. As the men left, he opened one eye and called to Lake. The Englishman turned back to him.
“Thanks,” Matt said.
“Anytime.” And then Lake was gone.
Leaving Matt alone with his bruises.
30
“Men are stupid,” Claire said.
“Dumber than dirt.” Jena lifted her almost empty wine glass to toast Claire’s sentiment.
“Hey!” Harry called from the bar, where he was perched with his laptop open in front of him. “I’m a man.”
“Yes, you are.” Magenta patted him on the head before heading back to the table full of women, armed with more bottles of wine.
Harry shrugged and went back to whatever he was doing.
The women had pushed two small round tables together in the middle of the bar area of the pub. Jena, Abby, the twins and their best friend Magenta sat around the tables. In the corner, a couple of old men were playing dominoes. It was a quiet Monday night for the pub part of Dougal’s business, but from the hum of noise coming from the restaurant area, he was still having a good night.
“Samuel told me he was different.” Claire topped up everyone’s glasses.
“They all say that,” Abby said. “Even David. I still remember his earnest declaration that he was a better man.”
“Better than what?” Megan said.
“That was always the questions,” Abby said wistfully.
“It’s caveman thinking,” Jena said. “Matt’s all ‘grr’, ‘aarrr’. He’s only happy when he’s hitting something or flexing his muscles. When he’s not in protector mode he’s in possessive moron mode. He told me he’s keeping me. Like I’m a piece of lost property no one claimed.”
Harry let out a bark of laughter, and the women scowled at him.
“This is ladies’ night,” Claire told her cousin. “Stop listening or leave.”
“My mistake,” Harry said. “I won’t listen anymore.”
For a second that seemed reasonable to Jena, and she vaguely wondered how much wine she’d drunk.
“I don’t belong to anybody,” Jena declared. “I’m my own person. I’m responsible for me.”
“Hear, hear,” Claire said. “Samuel told me he’s moving here. He keeps telling me I’m his and he’ll stick around as long as it takes for me to agree. That is not normal behaviour. It should have set off alarm bells, but I was too distracted by the muscles and the penis piercing to pay attention.” She sighed. “Sometimes I think the only word he knows is ‘mine’. It’s like those seagulls in Finding Nemo—‘mine, mine, mine, mine…’ I’m nobody’s freaking fish.”
“You’ve got to stop using the movies you watch in kindy as your social reference point,” Megan said. “Last week you were quoting Mickey Mouse. That is not cool.”
“Wait a minute.” Abby leaned across the table and pointed in Claire’s face. “Go back a step. He has a penis piercing?” Her eyes went wide.
“Yep, he has a ring. It’s called a Prince Albert piercing. I don’t know why.”
As one, the women around the table leaned towards Claire.
“How does it feel? For you, I mean. You know, when you, you know?” Abby stage-whispered.
Harry coughed loudly. Jena frowned at him. Was he listening again? He seemed focused on his computer screen, so she turned her attention back to Claire, who was blushing bright red.
“We haven’t done that yet.”