Page 4 of Cherry Beats

I wanted to stand up and shout, ‘Correction: Whydidshe call you Paw?’ but I left it alone. With a name like Gertrude, the girl had enough to contend with.

Presley finally glanced over his shoulder and narrowed the one eye I could see of his. He made a lazy finger gun, pointed it at me, blew out his cheeks, and fake blew my head off. I threw my arms in the air, stumbled back and pretended to take the hit.

“Presley?” Gertrude pushed.

“It’s nothing,” he answered smoothly, looking back at her like she was boring him.

I hoped she was, but I also felt a weird need to help her out. Hoes before bros and all that.

“It’s because he hashugefeet,” I shouted over to her. “Like… big bear paws.”

The gullible, lovely Trudy leaned over the side of the table and took a look at his biker boots. Her eyes came alive. “Oh! He really does.”

I gave her a nod and a wink when she looked up again. “Andyou know what they say about men with big feet, don’t you?” I threw my cloth on the counter and held my hands up in the air, creating a big space between them. “They have even bigger…” I bounced my hands.

“Tess,” Presley groaned.

“Socks!”

Presley’s head slammed down on the table with an exasperated thud, and I had to use all my childish strength to bite back the cackling laughter that was desperate to break free.

“Socks?” Gertrude scowled. “What’s so good about that?”

“Oh, you know.” I shrugged, gathering the cloth in my hand again. “Some women like to borrow their men’s socks. The bigger, the better, right?”

“Ugh, make it stop,” Presley mumbled from beneath the blonde wavy hair that now surrounded his face.

I laughed out loud. I couldn’t help it. This was fuckingfun.

“Ignore her,” Presley eventually said to Gerty, lifting his head weakly. “She’s the village idiot.”

The village idiot who wants to screw the hot rocker. There’s a book in there somewhere.

Gertrude glanced between the two of us, her face suddenly sour, like she could feel the tension I always imagined would one day be there between drummer-boy and me. I’d been confident up until then, but one accusing look from her and suddenly I wasn’t too sure I was hiding my shit anymore.

“Sorry. Ignore me,” I offered weakly, waving my cloth in the air by way of apology. I turned away from them and began to rearrange the bottles on the back shelf. Jimmy, Jonny, and Baileys were wiped down for the seventieth time that night, while I pretended not to listen to the conversation behind me.

Gertrude asked him if there was something going on between the two of us.

Presley barked out laughing like it was the single most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard in his life, inclusive of my stupid big sock joke, which now sounded pathetic when I heard it play back in my head.

She accused him again.

He told her she was paranoid, and that I was someone he knew in passing.

She said she could read women, and maybe he needed to look a little closer at the feminist chick who was quite clearly besotted with him.

My cheeks flared and my body overheated to the point of me not daring to look down at my fingertips in case they were already chargrilled.

“Tess!” Presley called me abruptly, and even though I didn’t want him to see my rosy red cheeks, I spun around on the heels of my feet and strapped on a beaming smile. When I made eye contact with him, his bright blues were narrowed on me, his body leaning to one side while his hand rested on the back on his chair. He was scowling. Really scowling.

“‘S’up, Presley?”

“Are you in love with me?”

“Fuck, yeah!” I pushed my lips out and nodded eagerly.

Sometimes it was easier to tell the truth by hiding it within a joke, so it seemed like a lie. He had no need to know how much that single question had just winded me.

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