Then I looked up to find Andrew watching me across the crowded bar, and I felt myself colour bright red. Yeah, that was right, there was no moral high ground on this one, and Andrew had a lot more to lose than either Lin or Nevins, like his job.
Tracey obviously took my flush as proof of interest and groped me under the table, squeezing my thigh inexpertly.
What was it about doctors? Did they all have absolutely no idea about sex?
Andrew had his back to me, leaning against the bar in the way that totally drunk people do, and he looked damned hot.
God, last night had been good, but it hadn’t been enough.
I fended off Tracey’s hand, picked up my lager and walked through the crowd to stand beside Andrew.
He turned around and smiled crookedly at me. I didn’t know him well, but something was wrong—or right, perhaps?
“I was just going to come looking for you,” he said. “Ready to leave? Want to go round up Lin and Nevins?”
Dr. Seagate slung his arm around Andrew’s shoulders. “I called the taxi company.”
Andrew pecked Dr. Seagate on the cheek quickly and said,
“Okay, quack,” and they both dissolved into laughter.
I stood in front of the loo doors. There was only two options, they had to be behind one of the doors, so I pushed the women’s loo door open and called out, “Lin, Nevins, we’re leaving. If you want to come along, hurry up.”
The woman fixing her make-up in the mirror glared at me so I shrugged at her and left to repeat the process in the gent’s loo.
I didn’t hang around to find out which one they had been in.
Chapter Thirty Two
F had been feeding Clarissa and me whiskey in vast quantities, presumably expunging his guilt at having started this whole mess off, when he wasn’t ducking out of the bar to stand on the pavement with his cell phone and conduct top secret negotiations to try to get both Clarissa and me jobs at London.
Clarissa was completely drunk, clinging onto me in an attempt to stand up, and I led her out of the bar to the bus stop outside and sat her on the seat, hoping she wasn’t planning on throwing up in the taxi.
“Sorry,” I said to the couple making out in the bus shelter.
“Alcohol-induced emergency here.”
Clarissa leaned sideways against the shelter and I looked at the couple beside me again.
Obviously I was drunk, too, because I’d failed to notice that the man was achrondoplastic and was actually standing on the bus stop seat to reach the young woman he was kissing.
Only he wasn’t achrondoplastic, at least not the common version. Judging by his hands, currently groping the woman’s ass, and his narrow torso, and the shape of his mouth when he’d said, “No problems,” he had EVC syndrome.
Elis-van Creveld. Now there was a rare autosomal recessive syndrome, and I wondered how someone of Old Order Amish descent had wound up making out in a London bus shelter.
Clarissa said, “I don’t feel very well, Andrew,” so I helped her to her feet and took her to the gutter to throw up.
A strong and inspiring start to the evening.
The taxis began to arrive and after putting Clarissa into one, with an open window beside her, I looked around for Matthew. There were about thirty of us, by the look of it, all trying to get into the five taxis F had ordered, and I grabbed Matthew’s hand and pulled him into the same taxi as me.
If I was going to be squashed into a car with too many drunken doctors, I was going to do it with Matthew pushed up against me.
Lin and Nevins appeared at the door of the pub and rushed into the same taxi as us, piling in just as the first taxi took off.
“All set?” the driver asked, and he turned his indicator on and pulled out into the traffic without waiting for an answer, or for Lin to close the door.
There were too many of us in the cab and Matthew was half across my knees so I pulled him properly into my lap, giving Jilly, one of the psych registrars, room to sit. Jilly was six months pregnant, so she needed the extra space.
“Thanks, Andrew,” she said, grinning at me and patting her belly.
Matthew was tense on my lap, not that Lin and Nevins were paying any attention to us. They were sitting on the floor of the cab and Nevins had his arm around Lin. They were obviously wrapped up in each other, so I stroked Matthew’s arm and smiled at him when he turned to look at me curiously in the flickering of the passing streetlights.
I wanted to tell him that I’d been fired, that it was all okay, but this wasn’t the time, not with everyone listening.
There would just be too much explaining to do.
The taxis pulled up outside F’s place and Matthew scrambled out of my lap so I concentrated on helping Jilly out of the taxi.
Matthew was standing stock still in F’s living room, gazing around. I guess I’d got used to F’s conspicuous consumption, but Matthew’s surprise made me look at it through fresh eyes. F’d told me once how much the view he had of the Thames had cost him, but it hurt to think about, even as drunk as I was.
Lena, F’s girlfriend, hadn’t been at the pub, so I’d assumed she’d been working, but she was waiting for us at F’s apartment, and she took Clarissa away, holding tightly on her arm, presumably to put her to bed.
When I stood beside Matthew, he said, “There’s a bong on the coffee table, just like my place.”
“There always is at F’s,” I explained. “Though when I’ve brought Henry over to fight with his kids, he’s always put it away.” I looked at the plump cream sofas, with luxuriant deep blue throw rugs over them, and the gleaming wooden floors, and said, “No beer can tower though.”
F said, “What don’t I have?” as he walked put to put the ornately carved box that he kept his stash in beside the bong.
“A beer can tower,” I said, and F chuckled.
“God, no. I haven’t had one of them for years. I’m embarrassed enough about the number of empty wine bottles I put out every week.”
“You could make a wine bottle tower,” Matthew suggested, much to my surprise. I had no idea he was acquainted enough with F to joke with him.
F chortled beside me. “Hell, yes. With the coloured bottles alternating with clear, all held together with Transpore. It’ll be a tribute to my misspent youth, may it last forever.” F raised his glass and said, “Fuck, you two need a drink. Booze is in the kitchen.”
There were platters of food in the kitchen, sandwiches and little pastries and the inevitable samosas, all covered with clear plastic and bearing the name of a large catering company. That was typical F, too, throwing money around, or rather debt.
I pulled Matthew into my arms when he opened overhead cupboards in search of glasses, and he settled back against me as I nuzzled his neck. “Mmm,” he said. “Aren’t you worried someone will walk in? And make trouble for you at work?”
I took a step back so I was leaning against a counter, the polished granite digging into my back, pulling Matthew with me so he was pressed against me firmly, his ass available and inviting against my groin.
“No,” I said against his neck. “Read this while I grope you.” I stopped fondling him with one hand for long enough to pull my dismissal notice out of my trouser pocket and hand it to him, then went back to sucking on the tender skin of his neck while he read the letter.
Someone walked in, said, “Oops,” and walked out again, and I had a really indulgent grind against Matthew, making him squirm and chuckle as he read.
Then he stopped squirming and said, “Fuck! They fired you!”
“Yep,” I said. “Not your tutor any more.”
Matthew turned around in my arms, sliding one thigh between mine, giving the most heavenly pressure against my cock, and wrapped his arms around my neck. “Aren’t you angry? Or upset? Because they fired you?”