Page 22 of Rogue

Well now, what would be the odds of this? How would Humphrey Bogart have put it? Of all the aisles in all the Walmarts in the state, I just had to walk into hers.

The girl from the Beached Whale just glowered, her eyes wide and disbelieving, and I couldn’t help but grin. “Me.”

She looked even more beautiful up close, and this angle offered a tantalizing glimpse down the V-neck of her top to the swells of her breasts. Yet it was her eyes that grabbed me. They were such a beautiful shade of blue, as deep clear as the ocean. Yet there was something else. Something very familiar about them. I’d seen them before somewhere, I was sure of it, but where?

However, the look blazing in those fierce, Icey waters suggested she didn’t see the funny side of this serendipitous moment quite the way I did. “What-what are you doing here? Are you following me?”

“Following you?” I could help but laugh. “Now, why would I be doing that?”

She hadn’t struck me as the type to be that full of herself. Then again, if I’d been in her shoes, and bumped into the punter from my work, who’d just fucked up a group of Russians for me, in a supermarket halfway across the county, I guess I’d have been a tad suspicious too.

She looked like she wanted to say just why she thought I was following her, and probably wouldn’t have been too shy about expressing herself in some very colourful terms. Then she must have thought better of it, as I’d already shown I wasn’t worried about expressing my own views in public. Of course, she would never have been in any danger around me. It might have been old fashioned and rather sexist in this liberal world, but I had never hit girls.

“Never mind, it doesn’t matter,” she growled, dropping the bag of candy into the basket by her feet. The only other item in there was a microwave meal that was probably about as nutritious as the box it came in and had only a day or two left on the use by date. “What are you doing here, then?”

“Shopping. Same as you.” I held up my much fuller basket for her to see. “I fancied a full English tonight.”

“A what?” She arched a brow, her suspicious look melting away for a moment, to one of genuine bewilderment that looked very cute on her.

I couldn’t resist the opening. “Full English, you know? Bacon, sausage, eggs, beans, mushrooms and tomatoes with a few rounds of toast. A full English Breakfast.”

“But it’s too late for breakfast.” Her nose practically wrinkled at the implication.

“Not in Australia, love,” I teased. “And in England, any time is a good time for a fry up.”

“Sounds delightful.” Her tone dripped with sarcasm, and I swear I’d never been so tempted to swat an ass in my life. She definitely had a butt made to be slapped, or squeezed, or framed and hung in the Louvre. Clad in those denim jeans, it was a certifiable work of art.

“Ah, don’t knock it till you try it. This will cure anything, from a hangover to a broken heart,” I promised, knowing I must have sounded like a salesperson on an infomercial, but the words were out before I could stop them.

The line was one of my old man’s. He’d always sworn by it, even when my mum was telling him a doctor would disagree. He’d just say, “And a Doctor told Snow White she needed to eat more fruit, and look what happened to that old cow.” She’d laugh at that, and then it would all be good between them. But by the look on her face, this girl wasn’t about to give me the same opening. Pity, I’d rather like to see her smile again. “So, does your boss know you’re doing a grocery run on company time?”

I reckoned she should have had at least another hour left of her shift at the Beached Whale. Hospitality work was the same the world over- long hours for shit pay. It didn’t matter if it was in a greasy spoon or Gordon Ramsey’s next bistro. If you came in on the afternoon shift, you’d be doing the cleanup after shutting up. And there was still another hour or two before the Beached Whale rang the bell for the last call.

“Oh-that’s none of your -oh, whatever, just leave me alone will you, alright?” she snapped, grabbing the candy from her basket and throwing it at my face before turning on her heel. There was an unmistakable catch to her voice as she shot back. “Why don’t you just fuck off! You’ve ruined my life enough for one day…”

She had made it barely four strides when I touched a hand to her shoulder to stop her. She tried to shrug me off, but I’d already stepped around her to block her way. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“They fired me alright!” she sobbed, her eyes sparkling with tears, like a sea of diamonds. “I got fired because of you and your macho bullshit!”

I blinked and raised my hands defensively. “Me? What did I do?”

What was this girl on about? How could I be responsible for her getting the sack?

“That fight, you idiot!” she exclaimed, stabbing me in the chest with her finger. “When the boss came in to find out what happened, Marcus blamed me. Said I’d been giving those men the runaround, and you were drunk and got jealous, and started a bar fight before taking off.”

“The fight?” I asked. I knew I must have sounded like I’d taken one too many kicks to the head, but I didn’t give a shit. This made no sense. It was insane. Then her words sunk in and I remembered the barman and I had the sudden urge to wring the little shit’s neck. “And what, he just took that limp dick’s word for it?”

Her eyes almost did a full 360 in their sockets. “Of course he did. He’s his son. I tried telling him what happened, but he just said he should have known better than to hire an Indian bitch and told me to take a hike and not to bother asking for a reference.” And with that, whatever damn inside her that was holding back the tears broke apart, and she sobbed. “I needed that job, asshole! Now, what am I going to do? Do you know how hard it is to find work in this town?”

And I had no fucking idea what to do.

I didn’t know how to comfort a crying girl.

I’d never been what people called an emotional person. It just wasn’t in my nature. Never had been. When I’d been in the system, one of my foster families had been concerned about my refusal to open up and ‘talk about what had happened, and all I must have been going through.’ They’d even taken me to see a child shrink who’d diagnosed me with just about everything from PTSD to emotional withdrawal. He must have just loved reading my file and imagining all my possible conditions that he’d charge by the hour for. I bet he’d offered them counselling after I ran away. Then again, they had probably needed it more than I had.

I wasn’t a head case. I’d just never needed to talk it through.

I’d just found healthier ways of dealing with it.

---