Young Buck Pt. 01

I peered through the mere inch of vision I had left at the shitshow that was my brother's wedding reception.

It was the last weekend of April - that vehement spitroast of a cold and frosty spring into the scorching foreshadowing of summer - and I was somehow simultaneously freezing my tush off and sweating buckets into the layers of tulle buffeting up around me. Ridiculous. And the DJ Henry had hired was all of a sudden blasting banger after banger through his tinny tripod speakers when everyone left at his gig was stupidly drunk or simply too stupid to enjoy it.

But he'd found the fucker on Gumtree two days ago, so it was quite frankly a miracle someone had showed up.

I loved dancing. It was probably the only enjoyable activity left for me at the handful of weddings I was still expected to attend. Sober or not, twirling my hands and shaking my hips and harnessing my very respectable sense of rhythm was worth every smear of fake tan or horrific snapshot to my name in the wedding album. It didn't matter to me. Love was meant to be celebrated. I was happy to lead the charge.

When I was younger no one had minded so much. Now, at thirty two, things were a little different for me. One - I was thirty two and still unmarried. I was meant to be sad and pitiful, not enjoying myself.

Two - I was thirty two, unmarried and quite obviously overweight. To be living a rosy-cheeked, gummy-grinned, unabashedly happy existence in addition to all three was possibly a cardinal sin.

Eduardo hadn't minded, of course. The two of us had screamed in each other's faces song after song, my stocky younger brother slurring butchered Italian as he pressed me into his side and got progressively more sloshed. Seline hadn't minded either. We'd taken some gooey selfies together and she'd tearfully (but elegantly) declared her gratitude for the way I'd had her back during the hellscape of the last six months, and for the fact she now got to inherit me as a forever sister. I'd snorted back my own sobs and accepted her bony embrace.

It was my own sister, Val, who'd torn me off to the side and insisted I start to behave.

"What are you doing???" Her spittle hit a spot on my chin with her last word, her mouth ripped open like a wide gash and oozing as we stood in the corner.

"What am I doing?" I'd asked her. Not to be stroppy, or annoying; I simply did not understand her need for hushed and solemn secrecy in the middle of a very crowded, gregarious room.

"You're behaving like a child!" She pointed to a spot on the dance floor where seven-year-old Sammy was bouncing around in her jelly shoes. "MY child!"

"Your child is having fun, Val." I gestured back to the room with my head and tried to bring her with me. "You should be too. That's kind of the point of these things. This is a big day for all of us."

"NO." This time when she hissed at me, her spittle hit me directly on the mouth. "It's not. This isn't your own damn wedding, Bi. Stop acting like it."

It was at that point I'd parked my arse as far away from the speakers as I could go - far away from my sister's prying eyes at the very least, and her equally cunty helm of friends. She wasn't always like this. The breastfeeding and the hormones had made her more miserable than usual. And in any case, I wasn't about to make what was left of this disaster of a day into a funeral for our fading relationship.

Eddy and Henry were still tearing it up on the floor. They were the only two still up there, actually. Other members of the groom's party were traipsing around somewhere, stumbling onto and off the checkered dance floor, dragging paper streamers beneath their dress shoes and sporting holographic party hats. Some funny bastard had smuggled them in after the cake cutting.

Poor Henry. He was going to feel it the most out of all of us. Three of his four drafts for the best man's speech were homages to fart jokes and the number of times they'd seen each other naked, so there'd been no choice but to fire him when we found out Nana had faked a near death experience to secure her invite to the festivities. The two of them had grown up together, never living more than a town apart even when they went to university, and he'd remained a burr on my brother's bomber jacket even when he took up with Seline. It was only a matter of time before the guy was Googling apartments in Stevenage.

They were gripping each other's shoulders now, half-hunched like they were in their own little rugby huddle. Henry shook my brother with a vigorous proclamation and Eddy planted a sloppy smacker on his cheek.

I imagined the look on my sister's face and giggled into my Vin Santo.

A chair dragged to my left, and I looked up as Bernie dropped himself into it. It groaned at the sudden surprise of his weight much louder than mine had when confronted with me. And I hated - HATED - that for a quick, noncommittal second, it made me feel a little better about myself.

"Uh oh."

He said it with such uninhibited concern that I knew it was a joke. But I still had to slam back the protective coo in my throat.

I twisted it into a chuckle instead and glugged back some of my wine. "These chairs. They're bloody rude is what they are."

"Yeah?"

"Oh, absolutely. You should've heard the noise they made when I sat down."

Bernie laughed in a way that was both charming and effusively polite. "Bianca, no."

"Seriously. It was like a Mexican wave of creaking from one chair to another. They might have been sharing notes."

He gave me a disappointed side glance as his lips pursed together in a grin.

"Tired yet?" I forced back my smirk as a yawn pushed at the seal of his mouth. "It's late, my guy. Do you have a lift home?"

"Your mum said I can crash at Mrs Fragala's tonight." He was still smiling that boyish grin, sheepish now under the veil of his Asian flush. If his stubble was slightly thicker he could have passed for any Sicilian in the room. "So I think you guys are my lift home?"

I looked out to where my brother and the rest of his groom's party had devolved to a dogpile on the dance floor. Presumably from trying to build a human pyramid. "It does mean you'll be sitting through a lot more of... this."

Bernie hummed thoughtfully, lifting his own beer bottle for a sip. Hadn't spotted that before. Birra Messina - good lad.

"Your brother is..." a diplomatic pause followed as his fingers drummed on the neck of the bottle. I lifted my wine as I waited. "... a weird one, isn't he?"

It was the most honest thing I'd ever heard leave Bernie's mouth. Not that Bernie wasn't honest. God no. Growing up, Bernie and his sister had made me and my ragtag siblings look like circus urchins birthed straight onto the road. Never late. Never unruly. They'd had their own issues, sure, but it was a miracle our families had kept a friendship going for as long as they had when their lives were as different as chalk and cheese.

But whilst we and our wider circle were - well, messy, loud, dysfunctional Sicilians; never keeping an opinion to ourselves or a thought in our heads - Bernie had grown up fairly shy and reserved. So regardless of how much liquid courage he had flowing through his lanky twenty-something system, I still felt like catching my eyes as they fell out of my head and rolled straight down the table for the dogpile.

I hid my laughter under my tongue. "You're off the clock now, Bernie. Don't feel compelled to be nice."

"I'm not being nice! I think that was pretty uncalled for, actually."

"Bernie Shaw, my brother is a bellend if there ever was one, and I know you know this because only three people on this entire freaking planet wanted to be his groomsmen. We are very lucky you stepped in when you did."

A soft snort escaped him as he did a one-armed shrug thing with his shoulder. You know. The thing that most men do when they've been shoved under a microscope and don't quite know how to wriggle their way off the slide.

"Yeah, well." He turned to look at me, placid smile taking on that ever-so-cheeky tilt. "How long have you guys known us? Probably my whole life, right?"

I shook my head and groaned. "Gosh, what a lifetime. I've told you before how shocked I was when Aunty Angela finally gave birth? That somehow she wasn't supposed to look like she still had a beach ball underneath her cardi?? I basically stopped speaking to her."

Bernie threw his head back and laughed the way he always did when I span through my rolodex of bits and remarks, dredged up for the sake of small talk and keeping the conversation sweet and bubbly. I knew he'd heard this one at least a dozen times since we'd developed a friendship. I knew he was smart enough to call me out on it. But he still acted like every zinger I lobbed at his head was a prize stray from a sportsman in their prime, and something about that was so very tender.

"I'm very glad she didn't hold it against me," I closed solemnly, shaking my head as he wheezed a final snicker.

"She loves you. There's no way she'd hold it against you. And if a six-year-old runs away from you because she liked her aunty better with a bigger belly, I dunno what to tell you, that child's a keeper."

"Ahh, Bernie. You're a suck-up and a liar. But as long as you feel like flattering me, I'm happy to back your nonsense. As for humility, I have none."

"You don't need it, Bi." Slouched in his spindly reception chair with his long legs stretched out in front of him, Bernie raised his beer bottle and swirled the dregs of the liquid in the light. "Save it for Val and Eddy. Hell, maybe even noona."

I bit my lip as I thought of his sister, bittersweet pangs splitting up the cracks in my heart.

He turned his head of shocking black hair and quickly caught my gaze. I steeled myself and raised an eyebrow.

Unflinchingly - unblinkingly - he lifted his bottle to my glass. "Alla nostra, Bianca," he spat out in gravelly tribute.

The giggles peeled out of me like a rush of air from a bubble blower. Big and buoyant and rolling. It was a sign I'd definitely had enough dessert wine, but it also took me back to summer weekends spent with Sammy as she raced across my garden in her bare feet, reaching for each wobbling globe as they popped iridescent on her face. Sunshine and ice cream and girlish shrieks of delight.

Exhaling on a dreamy sigh and letting the tipsy laughter chase away my sadness, I lifted my glass in his vague direction and let our receptacles touch with a clink. "Alla nostra, Bernie."

***

My family weren't a particularly religious bunch. Sure, we went to church for christenings and for weddings and for funerals; we prayed when someone was sick, or suffering, or just messing us majorly about. The last time I'd attended church for anything serious was when Val got herself baptised again. My mum was maybe the only person who had attended in earnest. The rest of us came to watch her get dunked in freezing bath water and attend the barbeque at her Roman Catholic fiancé's family mansion.

I remember thinking the stained glass was pretty. I'd thought the robes were impressive and Val was beautiful and the chorus of pre-pubescent teenagers singing throughout the ceremony were nothing short of angelic. Spiritual, though? No.

It was nothing like the sensation of bass pumping through my veins and ricocheting round the bowl of my skull. Sticky sweet perfume and the smell of cordial and mixers tangling with pheromones in a basement nightclub, turning four hundred strangers into a rolling ocean of hedonistic lechery. An unconventional and slightly blasphemous take, sure, but I was as sure of that as I was of anything.

Anything that drilled friendship and camaraderie out of boxed-up city slickers and set them free from their crippling self-consciousness was as close as I would get to seeing the hand of God.

My hair was swinging like a vine, wound in a braid that was slowly frizzing up in the humidity of our circle and freeing itself from its hair-tie. Wisps of it scratched against my neck and décolleté and sweat beaded along my brow. But asides from the lucid sensations of pagan revelry, I could have been floating in heaven.

"BI." Katie grabbed my arm to get my attention, hand slipping over the flesh of my bicep. She was sweating too. Everyone in our little group was dancing like it was the last night of our lives. "ARE YOU GETTING A DRINK."

"WHAT??"

"I SAID, ARE YOU GETTING A DRINK??"

"NO, NO, I'M GOOD. DO YOU NEED A DRINK??"

"I MIGHT GET A DRINK! SUE - ARE YOU GETTING A DRINK??"

Sue whooped something that seemed supportive, but her eyes were sealed shut and her sandy blonde hair was sticking to every part of her face.

Plenty of other well-wishers had joined and left our merry band as the evening trundled onwards, starting with the restaurant reservation in Haggerston and moving to a rooftop bar in the uber-gentrified recesses of Hackney. The basement club had been Sue's recommendation, seeing as tomorrow was the first day of June half term and Katie had taken the day off, so none of us had places to be.

Word had been circulated and plenty of the group chat lurkers had seen the message and sent strings of icons, but I couldn't be fucked with them anymore. Tonight was my night. I was going to make it last.

The sultry notes of The Pussycat Dolls began seeping from the turntable over a lick of pounding synth, and all of us began to scream. What a time to be alive, when the nineties were coming back as avant-garde and interesting.

A few heavily-cologned London boys came sniffing at our heels as we danced together and attempted to fit to our groove - flattering, but not essential - and whilst Sue was thrilled at the suitors at her beck and call, Katie's patience with the dick parade was starting to wear thin.

"Where are they?" she grumbled at her illuminated phone screen after swatting away her latest rejection.

"Who??"

"Channing and Leslie. Said they're right around the corner. They're bringing a friend if that's okay."

I grinned at the Middle Eastern fuckboy who'd twirled me around and dipped me before letting me get back to my friends, slapping the kiss I blew to his cheek. Corny, but cute.

"Aww, I haven't seen those little terrors in forever!! How are they doing now?? Are they well?"

"What did I miss?" I asked, stealing a swig of Katie's drink. I spat it back immediately. "This is piss. The fuck did you order?"

"A twelve-pound ninety tequila and pineapple juice, so you'd best be ordering me another now that your slobber's been added to it."

"I'll take it." Sue stole the novelty palm tree bottle and straw before either of us noticed, necking the thing in one go.

"OH MY GOD, SUE."

Katie retched. "That's vile. I think I might be sick."

"HELLOOOO PARTY PEOPLE!!" Channing barrelled into the centre of our squad with all the entitlement of a six-foot-four problem child, gathering us in his arms and mussing our hair with his stubble. "BIANCA, CONGRATULATIONS!! I HEAR YOU'RE OFFICIALLY FIBROID FREE?!!"

"The Montefiore is fucking glad to see the last of me mate." I accepted his overzealous high-five and somehow managed to catch the guy before he toppled me to the ground.

"Are you supposed to be drinking??" Leslie, with her round face and a current monopoly on the common sense gene in her family, drew me in for a hug and smacked a fierce kiss to the side of my face. "I don't care if you're not. I mean, I care a little, but -"

"Don't worry," Sue dragged me up against her sticky frame and grinned in reassurance. "She's been a good girl. Officially hit the all clear three days ago."

It was only as I opened my mouth to piggyback off of Sue that I saw who they'd dragged with them to the club.

"Oh my - BERNIE?!"

Bernie's wide-split grin and lanky frame were just about prepared for me as I pushed past to loop him in a hug. "Hey, Bi."

"Wait - do you know her??"

"Bi, is this THE Bernie?!"

"YES, THE Bernie!" I wrapped an arm around his waist and forced him to face the group. "Bernie, meet my best mate, Katie - we're thick as thieves and went to school together; she's Channing & Leslie's older sister. Ursula is another cousin you might remember from the wedding? Guys, this is Bernie; we lived right next door to each other back when my family was up in Peterborough. Our parents are really good friends."

"Hi - yes, I do remember you actually!" Bernie raised the wattage on his ever-charming smile and extended a hand to Sue. "Did you gave one of the readings?"

Sue nodded vigorously and beamed. "Yes!! I also couldn't read my own handwriting so I made half of it up, but no one seemed to notice! You have an older sister as well, don't you? Was she there??"

"Yeah, Harri. She couldn't make it - her firm's out in Korea and work's really tight for her at the moment."

"Ahh, shame!"

His shoulders rippled in a flex of nonchalance - that smile filing down to a razor-sharp grimace in the shadows of the light show - before I placed a hand on his chest and turned to the others.

"This round is one me. Shots?? Who needs to catch up?"

I felt his presence behind me all the way to the bar, soft edges and towering physique stitched to the field of my shadow. We thumbed our phone screens without talking as we waited in the throng. His hand touched the small of my back as I finally laid my elbows on the teak.

Once the card machine had successfully sailed away from us I turned to him with a grin.

"How are you doing, Bernie?" My voice was hoarse with all the yelling I'd been doing. I hoped he could hear me.

The flash of his chuckle had his teeth glinting through the dark. "I'm alright Bi. What about you? You look like you're having a good time."

I shook my head and pressed the water bottle I'd ordered to my chest, trying to soak up the worst of the flush running up my neck. I didn't need to look at him to know the kid was laughing at me.

"I am, you know." It occurred to me I should give him some context, even though the purpose of this foolhardy trip into London was to land that chapter plainly behind me, instead of giving life to the horror that had kept a tight fist around my throat and body. I swallowed down at the bartop.

"I've - well - I've been unwell for a few months now, but it got much worse right after the wedding. Fibroids." I gave him a fleeting glance before looking off into the far corner of the room. "I've kind of always had them, but, ah... I won't go into it, actually. All you need to know is -"

"Why?" The word sank like a lead weight between us. His brows dived stubbornly to a sharp point between his stare. I sighed.

"Women's stuff is kind of gross, Bernie. And the point is I'm fine now." I tried on his nonchalant shrug for size. "Look around us. It's why we're celebrating."

It was hard to decipher the look on his face as his gaze drifted around the room - back to our friends far removed from this conversation and the other patrons by the bar.

"I'm not gonna drop dead if I learn a bit more about it, am I?" The words were dry and sarcastic, brittle as they fell from his mouth. He didn't take them back and I didn't bother restraining my contempt.

A sourness I couldn't quite wrangle ate its way through my resolve.

"I started bleeding," I said bluntly. "Through everything. My clothes, my bedsheets. I bled through a chair at parents' evening and started dripping onto the floor. That's when I went to the doctor. They booked me in for an urgent ultrasound and discovered two of them had swollen to the size of a ten-week pregnancy."

Bernie didn't say anything. These weren't terms that held any significance for a straight, healthy male in his mid-twenties anyway. But he stayed close to me, head bent to catch my words, watching the way I played with the water bottle seal and pressed all the blood out of my fingertips. I preferred this. Bernie and his watchfulness made this terrible story seem just like that - a story - and I felt safe enough to somehow continue.

"Fibroids are only considered high risk when they breach five centimetres." I took a sip from the water bottle before quickly realising how parched I was and guzzling half its contents. I squashed it back onto the bar with a crunch. "But I didn't want to take the risk of these guys getting out of control again and forcing me into a full-on hysterectomy. So I went private. I got them removed, and I've been in recovery for the past couple of weeks."

A low sigh from Bernie's mouth blew the hair from the side of my face. The laden tray with our drinks orders landed in front us at the bar, and the water bottle was swept to the side.

Bernie caught it before it could be trashed and handed it straight to me.

"I'm sorry," he said, eventually. "I don't know if this is meant to be... normal, for girls... but it sounds kind of scary. And painful. I'm glad you're okay."

I nodded slowly.

"And I'm glad you could tell me." His hand dragged its way back through its hair. "Even though I like, twisted your arm a little bit."

At that, I simply snorted, and pressed a hard-knuckled fist into his arm.

"Yeah, well, I should probably work on that too," I acquiesced. I couldn't tell him about the insane urge that had blossomed in me over the past few years; this fierce protectiveness, these invasive attempts to shield him from the fallibility of the people who cared for him. Like I could do jackshit as a surrogate sister, and a shittier, absent friend. "You're a man now, Bernie. I still have trouble stomaching that. Just looking out for you, you know?"

Bernie looked down at me - anxious smile on my lips and nervous fingers toying with my halterneck - with a question in his gaze and a quiver to his smirk. Then he shook his head, pulling the tray of shots towards us.

"No need for that tonight," he said admonishingly. "Let's get drunk, shall we?"

And with a final crush of my water bottle and two shots tipped down our throats, we proceeded to do just that.

***

It was even louder out by the bus depot than it had been in the club. Half of it was the ringing in my ears, I was sure - the rest of it the howling wind and scourge that was East London on a night out. But even with Channing and Katie arguing at a note on the Richter scale nearby, I couldn't hear a single word of what they were saying.

Sue had left a little while before us, prising herself from a tawny stud with amber eyes just before the lights came on. She'd dragged him up the stairs with her to grab her coat and sneak off for the night, but not before pouting me her goodbye from the mezzanine. I was only too happy to give her two thumbs up for the road.

A wave of gratitude for my cousin crashed through my inebriation. She was sweet and rowdy and downright hilarious, and to date, the only member of my external family who hadn't said a word about my weight loss. A very sensitive by-product of my body's healing journey during the process of purging a non-existent baby. I found it difficult to recognise myself within my new shape and size; the changing landscape of a skinsuit I knew was simply trying to keep me afloat.

Sue was the one who'd sent me soup on Deliveroo and had fluffy pyjamas delivered to my door during my lowest point. If anyone deserved a good dicking down tonight, it was her.

"Bi," Katie rasped as Channing disappeared into the chippy behind us. She was squinting somewhere in my vague direction, barely able to keep her eyes open. "Channing's trashed. Leslie might have an exam tomorrow; she said she forgot to check her timetable. D'you mind if I drop these two back home?"

I eyed her warily, my arms wrapped around a lamppost with my head tucked against the metal to keep it from swimming. The original plan had been for me to crash on her sofa and grab a hungover brunch before I took the train back down to Brighton. "Uh... are you okay to drive?"

She spat a vacant laugh out into the London air. Through the glass, Leslie was wailing gospel into her mushy peas.

"Nah. Can't be fucked tonight." She whistled the last of her drunken fag between her lips and dropped it beneath her stiletto. "I'll pick it up in the morning. Would you be alright at your parents?"

"Yeah, don't worry about me. Still got the back key and all. You guys head off."

She trudged an unsteady path over the me and kissed the top of my head.

"Text me when you get in." Squeezing me hard until I slapped her on the arse, she pinched the cleft of my violin chin. "You really are tiny. I feel like I could pick you up and lob you back to Stanmore if I wanted."

"Don't fucking try it."

With a flappy wave that sent her charm bracelets jangling, Katie disappeared inside the chippy with her siblings. I braced my head against the lamppost and turned to where Bernie's gangly limbs were hunched over a bus stop bench.

"Hey."

He lifted his head - with great difficulty - from the cradle of his hands. "Hey."

That same sloppy smile was on his face, the one he'd been wearing all night despite the spilled beer on his jacket or the tiredness ringing his grey-green eyes. He waited for me to speak.

"You know where you're staying tonight?" I asked.

There was a momentary falter as he went through his options. One ankle rolled against the pavement, his Docs tap, tap, tapping out a pattern against the kerb.

"I... don't know." A yawn broke through his sluggish epiphany and the heel of his hand came to rub roughly against his eyes. "Plan was to kip a sleep at Channing's, I think. Sorry. Don't really remember."

He didn't sound apologetic. He sounded like he was perfectly happy to fall asleep against that tiny bus stop bench, provided someone woke him up in time for work. I frowned at the thought of this tall, lanky teddy bear getting mugged by some East London hobos before rush hour.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket to check my route and cursed as the battery icon flashed in the corner. "Piss and shit."

"What?"

I summoned a deep breath and picked over the uneven pavement in my boots, heels clacking in the near silence of the bus depot. I stopped when I was stood in front of him and extended my hand from the sleeve of my sherpa coat.

"Give me your phone," I said softly. "I'm getting us out of here."

For the second he didn't move, I really did think he'd fallen asleep. Then he tilted his face back very, very slowly, and cracked his eyelids open to look at me.

I had to remind myself it was the sort of dead, unwavering stare that proved he wasn't really there. This Bernie was drunk, and sleep-deprived - dumb enough to be getting absolutely plastered with fresh acquaintances on a Sunday night, with no back up plan and not a shred of sense to hang from. Vapid and vulnerable. Sweet, but stupid.

The sentiment didn't quite land when the glint of his hooded eyes met my own in coolly-measured surrender. Impenitent. Flicking from the flex of my throat to the slow blinking of my lashes; his strong, hooked nose inches away from the valley of my breasts. My coat had been hastily thrown on to protect me from the cold, but not to hide the way this catsuit fit my supple body like a leather glove, cinching my soft curves and dragging the best bits of me into the garish light.

Without taking his eyes off me, he managed to extricate his phone from his dress slacks and tap it into my outstretched hand. He now seemed like a willing participant in this helpless gambit of his. Eyeing the way I stood over him like somehow this was exactly his choice.

I put his face out of my mind as I swiped through the apps on his unlocked phone, flicking through the rideshares and eventually coming across a taxicab service. When I moved to dig my bank card from my phone pocket he plucked the phone back out of my grasp.

"Don't," he muttered, dodging my swipe and groan.

The wind rippled over the street as stranded clubbers came pouring out of the alleys, picking at our clothes and biting at our skin. Rustling through the trees above us as catcalls peppered through in bursts. I kept my eye on the small car crawling over Bernie's phone screen, counting down the minutes until we were out of the cold, ignoring the fingertips that grazed the backs of my knees as voices came closer before bobbing to other benches and cars.

I looked down at him with a quiet realisation as the taxicab pulled up nearby. "Bernie."

"Mmm?"

"Was it your birthday last week?"

His thousand-yard stare sank quickly behind his eyelids again. There were echoes of a scream across the road where someone was kicking at a vape store shutter. The taxicab beeped.

"Come on."

"Bernie!"

Hands slid up my thighs and hips to steady himself, gripping as he side-stepped out of the shelter.

"It was, wasn't it? May... twenty-something? Twenty-fourth?" I growled something under breath as I stumbled after him. "Why didn't you say something, you idiot?? We should've taken you out!"

"Why'dya think I was in London in the first place, Bi?" Backing away from me in long, loping strides, soiled jacket looped through an arm and hands sunk deep in his pockets, he grinned.

I sank into the seat offered to me with the grace and decorum of a beached walrus, roving my hands over the cracked black upholstery and sliding my arms out of my coat sleeves. The drum and bass anthem of London after dark pounded through the radio as Bernie spoke with the cabbie outside, cracking some kind of wiseguy line and receiving a cascade of raucous laughter. This guy, I thought, blinking behind the thickness of sleep. Could charm the nuns right out of a convent.

A ricochet rang through the car as the engine roared to life and we pulled out into the empty streets. I was surprised to find Bernie's legs in the cramped pocket of the back seat next to mine.

"You should be up front," I mumbled vaguely.

Fingertips drummed against the centre seat besides me, gripping as we turned a corner and I was slammed against the door. Bernie slid up in his seat and I turned to fit myself into the corner.

"Didn't want to leave you alone back here," he responded. "You're pretty drunk."

"Not that drunk," I threw back. There was a musical chuckle that had me snapping open my eyes to glare at him. "I'm not."

His eyebrows shunted a cynical inch up his forehead. "No?"

"I can handle my liquor, young buck. Probably better than you can." The car swerved against a bump in the road again and I threw my head back, grimacing, as the impact ran through my pelvis. "Balance, however - now that's a lost cause for me."

I reached across myself to search for the seatbelt in the darkness - stripes of cool white and caustic yellow coating the seat in long, rhythmic strokes - thumb grazing the metal buckle a second too late. Hot hands that belonged to the same dancing fingertips on my knees and delicate graze across my back at the nightclub planted themselves against my midsection, pulling me across the seat, dragging my buttocks over taut muscle until they were seated plainly in his lap.

I looked up expecting Bernie to be as horrified as I was; astounded and apologetic and just as perplexed by these phantom limbs that had sprung up besides us and packed us together. Then I saw those same hands curve around my shoulders and pull my legs more securely across his thighs. Brush a wisp of hair back from the side of my face.

My throat dried up completely as a soft, sharp smile stretched to meet the coolness in his gaze.

"Bernie?"

His name spilled quiet and hushed from my tongue. Like a treaty that had been breached. One of the loose hands on my stomach was quickly folded up in his own.

The confusion in me sizzled like it was being raked over burning coals.

His smile spiked indulgently at me. "What's up?"

I tried to not to make any sudden movements as I swallowed hard within my hold; steeled the tremor in my fingertips and fought the scared, aggressive heartbeat bucking wild against my ribcage. The heat licking high in my belly.

"What are you doing?"

He almost laughed at me. Again. "I'm keeping you safe," he said - that same crooked smirk rounding his words with jagged simplicity. "I told you already."

"Stop being cryptic," I bit out, grating the words along the roof of my mouth. "I don't - I don't understand. Tell me what's going on, please."

"Fucking hell, Bi, I don't know if it can get more obvious than this..."

His thumb stroked once along the base of my stomach before long, slender fingers threaded through mine.

"I've missed you, okay?" The words rippled in a frustrated slurry, slow and thick and heady. The openness in his gaze was as raw as it was inscrutable. "I don't see you, like, ever. And whenever I do it's always in the middle of some crazy family function... or like, some fucking commitment, where there's a million and one other things to be doing. When I know you're gonna be there, those days are so much more bearable. You always make sure I know that I'm wanted, and you always go out of your way to keep me sane. But it's always, always at arm's length."

That thumb stroked along my belly again, squeezing my fingers in his grip. I felt my breath begin to falter.

"I like the fact we're closer now," he said quietly. "I just... want you a little closer than that." His heavy gaze flitted from our joined hands to the contours of my breasts, the flushed terrain of my open chest, the column of my neck. "Is that so bad?"

It was a loaded question and I would have been a fool not to notice it. But in one swift motion those sweet almond eyes were back on mine, and the hand that had been gently holding me swept the length of my body to wrap around the back of my thigh.

And so help me, the way my pussy fluttered at that single wanton gesture told me this man - this young, brazen man who'd only just become someone I could call a friend - was going to get exactly what he wanted from me and more.

His head cocked in a way that was too cunning to be inquisitive, watching me struggle to form a response of my own.

"Bernie," I managed, as a siren sailed past our window and brought some centre back to my resolve. "This is not a good idea."

"Mmhmm."

"I'm not saying you're not... attractive. I'm saying this is bound to be a mistake."

"Haven't even done anything yet," he muttered.

I searched the glazed eyes of this stranger for any sliver of the Bernie who'd gotten into this car with me. The Bernie I'd known for years. There was a sigh that sounded more like a hiss and a pounding in my ears as I drew my hand up to his neck.

I brushed a thumb across the bumps of his stubble. I let him stare at me as long as he wanted.

"I'm looking out for you," I murmured. "Can't help it, can I? You don't want us to be strangers again at the next reunion. I know I certainly don't."

His eyes shuttered as he leaned into my ministrations. Stubbornly, he nudged his face against my palm.

"Consider it a favour, then." he whispered along the length of my thumb. "You can throw a little bone for the birthday boy."

My groan dissolved into a fit of laughter. What an impossible piece of garbage. "Bernie, no."

A hand slid up the back of my neck. "No?"

"No!" I tried to the claw back the stupid sound, twisting my face into the glass and ignoring the smile making a mockery of me in his triumph. "NO!"

He turned me back to face him by winding my messy braid around his wrist, pulling me back almost painfully, surveying the spoils of his war. My cheeks bloomed pink beneath his gaze. The canyon of my reluctant grin clamped shut over runaway giggles.

"God, I love your laugh," he whispered, before sucking my bottom lip into his mouth.

Maybe it was the alcohol - or the adrenaline high of complete surprise throwing me loop for loop on a night like this. But the way Bernie's mouth took mine was unlike any kiss I'd ever experienced. I'd fallen for forbidden lip service before; desperately and devilishly and in ways that got me far too wet for a first date or a grind in the bar. Bernie kissed me like he was pillaging my mouth, taking ownership of something sacred, running castles into the ground to keep me right between his fingers. Writhing and pining between his hands.

I gasped into the kiss as he gripped me by my hair, tipping me back to plunder me further.

"No no no no, Bernie, I - mmmpfhh - wait!" Our lips drew apart with a wet POP as I panted to catch my breath. "We might - ah - we've got to be careful. Okay? We're not alone here."

Bernie ignored my concerns almost immediately in favour of sucking along my neck. "I paid him off," he mumbled.

"What?"

Pressing a particularly hard lick to a spot by the hollow of my throat, he exhaled his aggression into me. "I paid him," he repeated, a low rasp tunnelling through his words. "Told him to keep his headphones in. He won't say a word 'til we're in your parents' driveway."

Lashes blinked up at me beneath a sheen of blazing lust, daring me to rebuke him for it. Do something. Say anything. When all I did was breathe absently through the shock, I felt him drag his tongue along my collarbone and - eyes still boring into me - nip at a patch of sensitive skin.

Moaning, I threw my head against the glass.

A former iteration of myself would have been aghast at the way I broke for him. Ashamed of how quickly my hand spanned the length of his chest, climbing his neck to lodge firmly in his gorgeous hair. Embarrassed by the reedy noises I left him to collect like tokens, encouraging every swipe of his fingers across my back and belly, every grope he administered to my arse and thighs.

It wasn't enough that I'd somehow buckled beneath his greedy affections and sick, silky claim of my body. I'd let him pummel into me that I was allowed to enjoy this too. I was supposed to want it. Succumb to it. Use his actions to get me off and stoke the flames of my own desire.

"Fuck, Bernie." I bucked against him as his thumb found a new spot to torture - the delicate strip of perineum leading straight to my cave of wonders. His teeth found the edge of my earlobe and the whine rattling in my throat grew strangled.

"Wanna get you off like this," he grunted, rubbing delicately as I rolled for him. I grazed a fingernail against his wonderfully taut nipple and felt the growl rumble through his chest. "Shit, Bi. You moan like fucking heaven. You feel like a fucking dream. Want you coming all down my wrist and singing 'til you're soaking my trousers. 'Til I've blown my load just listening to you beg."

My breathing hitched and I was ready to tell him to make me, but all of a sudden our foreheads were knocking together, and the car was lurching to fast, unsteady halt.

The radio echoed loudly over the ghostly quiet of the backseat.

"We're here, boss."

There wasn't a word from either of us. Just wild, heavy panting and hot breaths dancing together in the cold. I pushed myself upwards, framing a hand against the window and wincing in mortification as I saw the condensation on the glass. I smudged my handprint into oblivion.

Bernie cleared his throat and zipped up the centre of my catsuit; a casualty of our fondling that had just about kept my tits away. Praise be for tape and sticky cups.

His eyes danced over me as I began cleaning up the crime scene; combing through my flyaways, pulling my arms back into my sherpa. I'd just about flipped the collar and gotten presentable again when I found myself frozen in the path of his focus.

My jaw dropped in horror as I took in the state of his face.

"Oh no," I muttered, rubbing a thumb over the blush and lipstick marks. He looked like he'd been making out with a tin of passata. I dug through my pockets until a found a half-open pack of tissues and dabbed a glob of hand sanitizer into the centre.

I offered it to him, and when he didn't move, proceeded to wipe away the aftermath of our tryst. He let out a retch as it got into his mouth, and chuckled when I slapped him across the chest.

"Do yourself up," I said. "Come on."

Before I could slide off of him, his hands landed decisively on my hips. Skimmed their way up to my waist and pulled me to meet his heavy stare.

"Are you sorry?" he asked.

My heart thudded in my chest, and my stomach swirled beneath his fingertips. Tightness crawled along my jaw as Bernie simply looked at me.

"Are you?"

The curt appraisal of his cool, cutting gaze landed on every square centimetre of my face. When he found nothing there he could pick apart for clues, he took one of my hands from his forearm and slowly - diabolically - pressed it to the rock-hard bulge in his pants.

"Not even a little."