CLUB 27 SITS across the highway from Saint Catherine’s University.
When Henry and I arrive, the moon hangs above the building full and bright. A group of university students gather in a semi-circle in the front courtyard by the door, smoking cigarettes. All the girls are wearing bodycon dresses with booties or heels. Every single one.
“I’m underdressed.”
“You aren’t. I promise,” Henry says. Easy to say when you look as dapper as he does at all times. Striped oxford, dark jeans, black peacoat. Hair tussled just so.
I shove my hands into the pockets of my blue plaid flannel dress with the sweetheart neckline—the one Mama calls my grunge gown. I always pair it with black tights and Doc Martens (all thrift store finds for under thirty bucks, thankyouverymuch). It’s the warmest outfit I packed. Henry warned me that the building is an old warehouse and might be chilly.
I suffer through the introductions at the door. Henry seems to know everyone, and I hadn’t considered that I would have to actually talk to other people. He introduces me as my friend, Jo. When we get to the guy sitting on a stool at the door, he digs into his pocket and takes out two five pound notes with Queen Elizabeth’s young face on them. The door guy puts them in a little metal cash tray. I dig in my purse for my own cover fee, but Henry laughs and takes my hand. “I got yours, come on.”
He pulls me in the door of the building, which is a big dark box with laser beams of light flying around the room. And it’s loud.
“I’ll pay you back,” I sputter, not sure if he can even hear me over the thump of the music.
Henry swings around in front of me and walks backwards without letting go of my hand. The warmth and the closeness set me off-balance. He leans in close so I can hear him. “If at any point you’re not having a good time, we can go. Okay?”
We can go. As in, we’re here together. A unit.
I nod, unable to shake the queasiness. Dylan always paid for me when we went places together, but we were dating. Henry and I aren’t—I look down at our joined hands. Oh God. This is a date.
“Look who’s here!” Mons shouts as he approaches us through a stream of blue flashing light. “And holding hands!” he adds.
“Ignore him,” Henry says directly into my ear as Mons arrives. He lets my hand go to give Mons a fist bump. Behind me, someone nudges my shoulder. I turn. Zara grins at me.
“Nice outfit,” she shouts, pointing at my boots.
“Th-thanks.” It feels weird to get a fashion compliment from someone wearing an ink-black jumpsuit and red t-strap heels. “Happy birthday!”
She leans in and hugs me. For once, it’s not awkward.
“Thank you! I’m so glad you came!”
Henry turns from his conversation with Mons. He flashes Zara a grin and she steps forward and wraps her long arms around the back of his neck. I watch as he hugs her, his hands meeting along the small of her back—it’s friendly, respectful. But a zap of envy charges through me. I want to be able to hug him like that.
“I have a present for you later,” Henry tells her. It’s meant for only her ears, but he has to say it over the music. It feels like I’m intruding so I glance over to Mons, who is one giant eyeball focused on Zara. He watches her as she laughs with Henry. Mons doesn’t just look at her. He examines her, like he’s doing it for a thesis.
“Come dance with me.” Zara grabs my hands. “I want to introduce you to some of my other friends.”
It takes a moment to realize she’s talking to me, but once I do, my body locks up and I assume cat-on-a-bathtub-ledge posture.
“No.” I shake my head vigorously. “Nuh uh, no way, nope, no—”
“Oh, come on.” She pokes out her bottom lip. “Don’t be like Henry. Please? It’s my birthday!”
“Maybe later,” I lie.
Mons steps up and breaks her hold of my hand. “I’ll dance with you, lovey.”
She wiggles her fingers out of his grasp and waves at him.
“You wish. Way too early in the night for that.” She dances away, laughing, into the sea of swaying bodies.
Mons raises a highball glass to his lips and takes the last swig. “Always watching her walk away,” he mumbles. “She would’ve said yes to you, though.” And he lightly nudges Henry with his elbow.
Henry gives him a tight smile. “How’s work?”
“Oh, you know.” He laughs. “I’m running Dad’s business into the ground.”
“Come on, mate.” Henry cocks his head to the side.
“It’s true.” Mons stands up straighter, taut as a stretched rubber band. “Lot to learn yet. He can’t do as much anymore.”
Henry either doesn’t know what to say or chooses not to say anything. I don’t ask what they’re talking about, either, because my anxiety is through the roof.
“I’m off for another scotch. Be back.” Mons stalks away to the bar.
“Is he still that pissy about the photoshoot?”
He shrugs. “He’s still pissed that Zara and I dated for a bit. The photoshoot was just insult to injury.”
I focus on the dance floor instead of what he said, pretending Zara didn’t already share this information with me. Pretending I’m not standing here deciphering what dated for a bit really means. A few months down the road, will Henry tell people that he and I dated for a bit? Dated for one night? Made out on a grassy hill in the English countryside and then bumbled around each other for the next couple of weeks?
He leans in again, so close the words vibrate on my ear. “I’m going to get us a drink. What do you want?”
“Just water,” I say, like the most boring person ever. But hey, boring people don’t puke in trashcans. Or do all the stupid things that flash through my mind when his lips are that close to my ear.
“I’ll be right back,” he says.
I nod and search the dance floor until I see Zara again. When she makes eye contact with me, she smiles, teeth megawatt bright. Her friends dance around her in a circle, but she outshines them all. She could be a runway model—grace and poise and confidence and beauty. And I know it deep in my bones when I look at her. I can never compete.
Henry returns with my water a moment later. “How are you holding up?”
Oh, you know, just sitting here being despicably jealous of your lovely friend.
“I’m fine.”
We watch the people on the dance floor for a few minutes, shoulder to shoulder. When I see the way some of them move together, I get a little shiver imagining what it would be like to dance with Henry like that.
“You know,” he says. “It’s not that we can’t dance. It’s that we choose not to.”
I swallow, a little freaked out by the way he says things that seem to answer my thoughts sometimes. I smile without looking at him. Maybe this telepathy thing is working between us, after all. “Exactly.”
When Sanjay arrives, an entourage accompanies him. He introduces the beautiful girl standing closest to him as Aditi.
Once we’ve all exchanged pleasantries, I lean over to Henry and whisper, “The mudlarking girl?”
He smiles and nods.
When Zara finally leaves the dance floor with her uni friends, she gets hugs from Sanjay and his friends. “Let’s go up to the roof.” She points. “We can sit down before it gets too crowded.”
We make our way as a group to the brick stairwell at the back of the building and follow single file to a door at the top of two flights of stairs. Henry places his hand on the small of my back. Acutely, I feel every point of contact between his fingers and my spine.
When we emerge on the roof, my ears are cottony from the loud music downstairs. It’s faint and faraway below, but the damage to my eardrums has already been done. I glance around at the London skyline and try to ward off the dizziness. People sit at the rooftop bar, but there are empty tables everywhere. We push a few together so we can sit as a group. Henry and I sit across from Zara.
“This seat taken?” Mons gives each word an extra syllable as he takes the chair on the other side of me. I clear my throat and shift away.
Henry gives him a look, but his phone rings. He stands up and steps away to answer it. Mons moves closer, eyeballing my water glass. “Not the usual whiskey on the rocks kind of night for you, eh?” He chuckles.
I swallow back the bile of the memory. “I’m never drinking again.”
“Bollocks. I always say that, too.” He holds up his drink.
“But here we are!”
I glance up at Henry, who’s speaking animatedly in his phone. “Wonderful. Thank you so much. I’ll stop by tomorrow.” He and Sanjay exchange a glance and he nods at him. Sanjay smiles, then leans over and whispers something to Aditi.
Mons offers me his drink. “Have a sip.”
I decline, but he commandeers a few more inches of my personal space and offers again. “Oh, come on. You’ll loosen up a bit. Single malt scotch. Tastes much better than Jameson’s.” Up close like this, his eyes look even more bloodshot. His breath curls hot and sour.
“No thanks.” I scoot my chair backwards.
He fixes his gaze on my mouth for a moment, then nods and looks away. “Suit yourself.”
“What were you saying to Henry earlier? About your dad? Is he sick?”
Mons looks at me again, this time less predatory. “He has Parkinson’s,” he says. “Hard for a man who works with his hands. He can’t complete jobs as fast as he used to, so he’s losing business.”
This new information gives me a twinge of guilt for disliking him so much. Maybe people who seem horrible are really just going through something that makes them seem horrible. Maybe Mons is just lonely, too.
“That sucks,” I finally say.
“Yeah, well. We do what we have to for our families, don’t we? No matter that I’m shite at fixing cars. I’ll live on my father’s reputation for a while until everyone figures it out.”
He wraps an arm around my shoulders and pulls me into a side hug. In that instant, I catch Henry’s eye as he hangs up the phone.
“He’s keen on you, you know,” Mons says, tongue thick with scotch. “Shame, really.”
I turn to Mons, sliding out from under his arm. “A shame?”
But he doesn’t answer; he’s watching Henry.
Suddenly Henry’s hand is in mine. He’s helping me to my feet. “Are you all right, love?”
I am a little taken aback, but I nod. “Of course.”
Mons jumps up and slams his drink on the table. “Yes, she’s all right, Henry, for fuck’s sake!” His outburst draws the attention of everyone around us. “You’re such a bloody tight ass.”
“Shall we mingle?” Henry doesn’t acknowledge the dig. He leads me in the opposite direction. He’s trying to be light, to pretend this isn’t a big deal, but I feel the storm brewing.
To our backs, Mons shouts, “Always the white knight, aren’t you, mate? Saving ladies from the villain!”
“Just ignore him,” Henry says for the second time tonight. We make our way to the other side of the table where Zara is sitting. “He’s been itching for a fight for ages, and it gets worse when he drinks.”
Henry’s body jerks—so abruptly I have to let go of his hand. His glass clatters to the ground with a bursting tinkle. I sidestep to avoid the sudden explosion of shards.
Mons grabs Henry by the lapels of his coat. He’s shorter than him by several inches, so it looks a little cartoonish.
“Mons, stop it right now!” Zara yells at him.
“You’re pissed, mate. Don’t do this,” Henry warns, stern and calm.
“Tell me, then, why is it that you think you’re the hero?”
“Mons,” Sanjay warns, stepping up behind him.
Henry glares at Mons, stone-faced. “You can stop being the villain any time you want.”
Mons laughs then, looks around at his audience, because everyone is watching. Exactly how he likes it. My pulse throbs so hard in my throat I feel like I might choke on it.
“We’re not talking about me.” He lets go of Henry’s lapels and brushes them off. “We’re talking about you.”
“Let’s just go, Henry.” It comes out as a whisper. A plea.
Mons turns his head my way, and a smile slithers its way from his left ear to his right. He looks back at Henry and stabs a thumb in my direction.
“She thinks you’re the hero, too, then. That’s quite rich, don’t you think?”
“Mons,” I say, thinking maybe he’ll listen to me. “Everything’s fine, okay?”
“You think so?” He puts his hands on his hips and smiles, showing teeth. “Wait till you hear all of this one’s secrets.” He pats Henry on the chest. Hard. “Do let me know how fine you are after that. I don’t believe you’ll like him very bloody much then.”
“You’re a pathetic little man,” Henry says, stepping back. But before he can turn, Mons lunges at him—a barrel of snarls and fists and knees. He makes surprise contact and Henry’s head stutters backwards. Just once. Then all hell breaks loose.