Page 38 of The Suit

8

Rafe

Murray looked down at his shirt, the sweat covered one that was now dripping in half of Penn’s beer.

It was Tuesday night, and we were currently sitting in our favorite dive bar off Madison Square Park following our regular game of basketball. We’d been coming for so long that our favorite table was always free for us, and our order of burgers and beers arrived almost as soon as we sat down. Penn had also arranged for another giant TV screen to be installed so that our table had an uninterrupted view of baseball when it was on, followed by hockey, football, and occasionally basketball when the season was out.

Penn wiped his mouth with the back of his hand while I slapped him through his choking.

“Do it harder,” Murray growled only for Penn to move out of the way before I could get another whack in.

It took him another two minutes of coughing through his laughter before he could form a coherent sentence, which meant that I could at least finish my burger before the interrogation about to take place. Thankfully this place was always so full and noisy that we weren’t attracting any attention.

“Say it again.”

“No,” I grumbled.

“Raferty, say it again. I want to hear the words come out of your mouth.”

I side-eyed him as I picked up my beer. “Murray owes you a hundred grand. You won your stupid bet. I had sex with Beulah Holmes.”

I didn’t even care either. Not really. I wasn’t lying when I’d told her it was the best sex I’d ever had. I couldn’t even explain it, it was one of those inexplainable things - like crop circles and Penn’s obsession with baseball. But there we had it; I’d experienced the best sex of my life with the worst person I’d ever met. Go figure.

“But how. And when?”

“Friday.”

“FRIDAY?!” he shouted, which started him coughing again, and he ducked out of the way before I could smack him, “Four days ago FRIDAY? We’ve seen you every day!”

“Correct.” I threw a fry into my mouth.

“That took less than a week…”

“Also correct.”

He wiped his watering eyes then crossed his arms over his chest with a scowl and sat back. “We’ll cover why it took you so long to tell us next. But first, I want to knowhow.”

I grabbed a few more fries, then washed it all down with a gulp of beer, taking my time knowing it would annoy Penn more than anything else, before slowly wiping the burger grease from my mouth and hands with a paper towel, then mirrored his body language… except mine included a sigh dripping in deep defeat.

“On Friday after I left you, I went to the office to finish off some work, and she had returned some papers which been filed with the judge, only she’d scribbled through them with a big red marker. I was mad and stormed around to her office. We argued again, then ended up having sex.”

I still wasn’t entirely sure how it had transpired; how it had gone from raging anger to raging with a different kind of emotion. But the second my lips had touched hers I was done for.

Penn leaned forward, his hands clasped in front of him. “Then what happened?”

“What do you mean”

“After you had sex, what happened.”

“I left. Well… stormed out.”

Murray’s eyebrows shot up and he didn’t bother hiding a smirk, “You stormed out? You had sex and stormed out?”

I shrugged. “Yep, and I’d do it again.”

They both looked at me with identical expressions, waiting for the rest of the story.

“I dunno what I was expecting from her, but it wasn’t the first thing that came out of her mouth, which was about some fucking work she hadn’t done… Like having sex with me reminded her of work she’d forgotten to do.”