Page 20 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
Flynn and I turned surprised eyes on him. ‘You sure? You didn’t seem over-keen on the place.’ Flynn asked.
‘Yeah, well, Margot’s paid for a month, might as well use it. And there’s some well fit lasses in there I gets to stand behind, and Minnie does this thing where she touches my leg…’ He trailed off into his own private musings.
‘Just go steady in those shorts.’ Flynn began rewrapping the sandwiches. ‘You’ll do yourself a mischief.’
I drove back down to the gym, where the car park was now much fuller, as those who started the day at a sensible hour put in their exercise. The two men on the bikes were still there, I noted.
‘Don’t enjoy yourself too much!’ Flynn called as Fraser got out. ‘And you’ll have to get the bus back!’
Fraser’s farewell was a lot cheerier in the daylight. He didn’texactly bounce his way into the gym but he limped in a more convincing way.
‘I hope he’s not going to turn into a gym bunny,’ I said as we watched him go. ‘Well, maybe not a bunny,’ I added, as Fraser’s stocky form scuttled up the entrance steps. ‘A gym wombat, possibly.’
‘It’s good for him. Social contact,’ Flynn said. ‘You and Fraser have a surprising amount in common.’
‘Shut up. No, we don’t.’ I turned the car again. I wondered if I could ask Margot for petrol money; all this running up and down was sending my fuel gauge lower than I liked it.
‘You both need to get out more.’
I rounded on him. ‘Who madeyouGod?’
Flynn looked taken aback for a second, scrunching foil. ‘What?’
‘All this telling me what I am and what I’m not and what I ought to be doing with my life! Maybe I’m happy with it the way it is, all right?’
I oversteered and the car wobbled into the middle of the road, incurring a beeped horn of warning from an oncoming driver.
‘I’m sorry,’ Flynn said quietly. ‘It’s weird, working in a bar. People come in and tell you their problems and it’s awful when you can clearly see what’s wrong but you’re not allowed to say anything other than “have you ever tried a Cancun Mobcap?”’
‘That’s not a real…’
‘No, no it isn’t. It was for illustrative purposes only.’ He sighed. ‘But you seem like a nice person and I hate to see the way you’re… You’re right. None of my business if you want to work some grotty job and date awful men. Up to you. Obviously.’ Another sigh. ‘I like you, that’s all.’ Flynn took his glasses off and polished them on the cuff of his shirt. Without them he looked a lot less sarcastic – almost naked tothe world.
‘Oh.’
‘And I really would like to offer you a job. I need someone else behind the bar.’
I stared at him and the car wobbled again. Things like this didn’t happen to people like me, getting offered a job out of nowhere. I’d practically had to beg for the call-centre role. ‘Are you allowed to hire people like that? Don’t you have to check with the owner or something?’
The polishing upped in tempo. If his glasses had been that dirty, it was a wonder he’d been able to see Eddie at all. ‘I… well, I am the owner. Technically. Sort of.’
‘How can you besort ofan owner?’ I felt a bit weird now. I’d been assuming that Flynn was like me, working the kind of job that most people do at the weekend, making just enough to get by. But he was the owner of the bar? Or was he spinning me a line – like Dex had when he’d told me he was an ‘entrepreneur’? But then, admitting that your main job is dealing drugs would be a hard sell, even on Tinder. I straightened myself up a bit, as though I had my boss in the car.
‘My dad.’ Flynn began to examine his spectacles now, holding them up to the light and twisting them this way and that, almost as though the distraction was helping him through the conversation. ‘He owns quite a few bars, bistros, that sort of thing. I’d come back from Melbourne – I was out there managing some of his wine bars – and he’d bought this place to renovate but didn’t really know what to do with it. I had some ideas, so he made the place over to me. To prove myself, I guess.’
Without his glasses on, I could see that Flynn wasn’t quite as young as I’d assumed. There were faint lines and creases around his eyes and the morning stubble that outlined his cheeks made him look older, too, and more serious.
‘That must be nice,’ I said, meaninglessly but aware that my voice was tight and the words sounded bitter.
He shrugged and slipped his glasses back on. ‘It’s life,’ he said. ‘I’ve not really known any different. Anyway.’ He shook his head. ‘I could offer you a job, but there is one absolute deal-breaker…’
I pulled the car into the same space as I’d pulled it out of. Life hadn’t really got going in the little town yet this morning, none of the shops were open and the street was almost devoid of any action, apart from a little knot of binmen who had clustered into a doorway and were smoking furtively. Did I really want a job that came with conditions? From a man I’d assumed was on my level? I had to admit to myself that I’d have treated Flynn differently if I’d known that he wasn’t only a bartender in a tiny Yorkshire town. I would have been wary of him, for a start.
I looked up at my flat. It was grim, the stairway smelled of week-old cod and I had to watch TV in bed. I could move. I could head for the city and find myself another minimum-wage job that would only pay me enough for a room in a house share. But at least I wouldn’t have Dexter turning up on the doorstep whenever he felt like punishing me.
‘What’s the deal-breaker?’ I asked, cautiously.
Flynn, still sitting in the passenger seat as though oblivious to the fact that we’d stopped and I’d turned off the engine, grinned, and it made him look young again, almost like the student I’d assumed him to be. ‘You can’t drink,’ he said. ‘I won’t have anyone working with me drinking. It’s too easy to slip up, to short-change, to get into arguments. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen. Would that…’ He stopped, frowned, then started again, with weighted words. ‘Would that be a problem?’
