"You're doing it wrong," the whiny witch said, and not for the first time, either. Heaving out a long sigh, I stop sticking the bats to the wall and look down at the woman who has been supervising my decorating abilities for the past fifteen minutes. "They need to be higher up."
"They will be," I say impatiently. Motioning to the black shapes that are already on the wall, I say, "We're starting low and then as we near the corner, the bats fly higher."
Sophie Clément, I've decided, is irritating as fuck. I've tried to understand why Daniel is marrying her, but for the life of me, I just don't get the attraction. She's opinionated and she nags way too much, and she has this weird scowling thing going on with her face. Pretty sure she only broke that out for me, but it's really fucking infuriating.
What's worse than the scowling, though, is the way she seems to think she's superior to me. She's so hoity-toity. Ever since I arrived a quarter of an hour ago, Sophie's been bossing me around like this is my first time at the rodeo. Well, sweetheart, it isn't. Surprisingly, I'm a fucking pro at decorating for Halloween. I mean, I did my planning on Pinterest, so I think I've got this thing sussed. The midget just needs to sit the hell down and leave me to do it. In silence, preferably.
"You're still doing it wrong," was all she said as I turned my back on her, took a deep breath and promptly chose to ignore her for as long as possible. "Hey, Kangaroo Boy! You're doing it wrong."
"Sophie, shut the fuck up." The words slipped out of my mouth without passing through the filter in my brain, but to be fair, that's how I function.
Being from a bogan family back in Australia, I spoke my mind and screw anyone that didn't like my honesty. From the way that Sophie gasped, I don't think she's ever had people call her out on her bullshit, but it's about time she gets used to it because if there's one thing I don't do, it's to compromise my opinion to suit other people.
"You're an animal," Sophie mutters, her words laced with venom that could give a Black Widow spider a run for its money.
"Yeah, a kangaroo, apparently."
When Daniel called and asked me to help get his house sorted for the Halloween party tonight, I was more than up for the challenge. I mean, I'm a party animal and I know how to throw an epic evening of fun, games and utter madness. I'd readily agreed to Dan's request and quickly started to think up ideas, but then I got blindsided last night when Sophie text me, letting me know that she and I had to work together to get the place ready.
Knowing Sophie doesn't like me, I was half tempted to call Dan up and tell him that I was no longer available today to help. An emergency had occurred and I'd been called in to work. It would have worked; with my job, if I wasn't on shift, there was a real possibility that I could be called in and get held up for hours. Still, I resisted the urge. I don't let my friends down. Even if that means having to spend a huge portion of my day with Dan's psycho fiancée.
"You're-"
"I am not doing it wrong!" I say, going into full defence mode now. Hopping off the ladder, I inspect my handiwork and see that there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. I point to the flying bats and turn to Sophie with a glare in my eyes. "What's wrong with it, huh? Nothing!"
"If you had let me finish," she answers back in a short tempered way. I watch as she folds her arms over her chest and pulls her shoulders back so that she appears taller, not that it worked because compared to me, she's still a short arse. Her eyes seem to darken with annoyance but only serves to make her look demonic, which is apt. She is a fucking demon. Dan should run. "I was going to tell you that you were about to fall off the ladder, but next time I know not to bother saving your life."
She gives me a death glare, spins on her heels and stomps off towards the coffee table that's in the centre of the living area. "I was only a foot off the ground," I tell her. "I think I could have survived that fall, thanks, Sophie."
"More's the pity," I heard her say to herself.
I spent the next five minutes finishing off the line of bats that now adorned the white wall before grabbing a bagful of spiders and some double-sided sticky tape. Kneeling at the door, I began to dot the spiders in a zig-zag motion up the panels, making it look like it was a game of Follow the Spiders. I'd heard from Daniel that Sophie wasn't a fan of creepy crawlies, which for an Aussie like myself, was really fucking funny. Who doesn't like spiders? I mean, I could understand if it was a Huntsman or something because they are monsters, but the house spiders here in the UK were nothing compared to what I grew up with. How could anyone be scared of something so tiny and unthreatening?
"What the hell!" Sophie screamed, presumably upon seeing the fake spiders that I was sticking to her door. "No, take them off."
"No, you take them off," I challenge her. If I was right about her pathetic phobia, she wouldn't even touch a joking spider so I think my meticulously placed arthropods were here to stay until Dan took them down tomorrow. "I think they add character. You should keep them up all year round."
Feeling a little proud of myself, I smirk at Sophie before walking passed her and heading down to the basement level where the kitchen was. I still had a fistful of spiders and decided that they would make the perfect centrepiece for ice cubes. Finding the ice tray in the freezer, I fill it halfway up and place it back in the minus-five degree compartment. Once it had frozen, I'd place the spiders on top and then fill the other half so that the spiders were in the centre.
In the meantime, I decided to torment Sophie a little more by blowing up some balloons and then attaching some white string around it haphazardly with PVA glue. Once the sticky concoction was dry, I popped the balloon and watched as I was left with a 3D spider's web. To finish, I glued some spiders onto the web and tied a piece of string to the top, allowing me to hang them up later.
The other balloons came in handy, too. I decorated the orange ones to make them look like pumpkins, drawing silly faces on them, while the white ones were intended to look like ghosts.
"What is your obsession with spiders?" I heard Sophie ask from the doorway of the kitchen.
I shrug. "I don't have an obsession."
"Well, you seem to love putting them up all over my house," she commented, pointing at the 3D webs that were sitting on the table. A beat passed before I heard her sigh heavily. "Daniel told you that I'm scared of them, didn't he? Now you're tormenting me with them because you hate me."
Her words came out more as a comment than a question. Plopping herself in a chair around the table, she kept her eyes on the spiders, shivering once or twice before she turned her gaze away from the decorations. "Why do you hate me?"
I quirked an eyebrow in her direction. "I think the question should be- why do you hate me?"
I've never understood why Sophie took an instant dislike to me. I mean, I'm a fucking delight to be around, so what's her problem? Is it the fact that I sleep around? Make more money than she does? That I don't give a flying fuck what people think of me? That I'm simply more awesome than she is? Like, really, what was her issue with me?
"You're a prick," Sophie answered casually, like her words weren't an insult to me.
"Really? And what have I done to make you think that of me?" Picking up the Sharpie, I drew the outline of the mouth for my balloon pumpkin and begun to colour between the lines. "As far as I know, we've hardly hung out so you don't know me well enough to truly form that low of an opinion about me. Usually, I have to root and boot a girl before she starts calling me a prick."
Despite my cocky attitude, most people loved me. I'm what the Brits like to call a cheeky chappy. I could kill a man but all I'd have to do is flash my dimpled smile and I'd get away with it, no questions asked. The only people that really didn't like me were the girls that I'd slept with and ditched moments after we were done. Very rarely did I do that; ninety-nine percent of the time I would let the women stay over and I'd cook them breakfast in the morning. It was only the really clingy girls that I had to get rid of quick smart.
"I don't like the influence that you have on Daniel," Sophie said as she dared to look me in the eye. "I mean, that stunt you pulled last week-"
"Whoa!" I spoke up and interrupted Sophie before she found her high horse, mounted and never came back down. "I was not the instigator of Dan's stag party. That was Sam and trust me when I say that he is more than capable of coming up with shit like that without needing my help. Do you call him a prick for it? No. So I'm guessing that there's another reason that you hate me. So, spill."
Sophie went silent for some time. I could see the cogs of her mind turning but I couldn't understand what she was thinking. Sam was the one who had the bright idea to take Dan away on that stag week, not me. It was Sam that chose our destination, not me. It was Sam that led everyone astray, not me. It's not like I didn't enjoy the whole thing- it was a fun trip- but I couldn't take any credit for the shenanigans we got up to.
"I don't like the fact that you're trying to get my sister into bed," Sophie finally said, her voice resigned to the fact that this was a probable reality. I stopped what I was doing so that I could give Sophie my full attention, noticing the way that her head hung low and her shoulders were deflated around her. So, that's why she hates me. "Look, Charlotte had her heart broken by this absolute... God, there isn't even a name for him."
"Fuck muppet." I offer up a name for the dipshit that broke Charlotte's heart.
Sophie blinked at me. "Colourful yet accurate. Nevertheless, Charlotte is broken and the last thing she needs is a manwhore like you storming in, making her think that she's the centre of the world for one night and then running for the hills the next morning. She deserves more than that and I cannot stand around and watch as you break her even more."
Sophie's speech resonated with me. "Ok, so in a rare moment of vulnerability, I'm going to be honest. When I was about twenty-two, I'd been dating this girl for- what?- five years?" Already regretting starting the story, I took a seat opposite Sophie and filled her in on what only a handful of close friends and family knew. "We met at school, fell in love, got hot and heavy and she was marriage material, you know? Then just a week after I thought, 'Fuck I really love this woman' I got home from uni early and walked in on her and my mate having a doori."
"A what?"
"They were fucking," I translate the Aussie slang into simple English for Sophie. "So, there they were, my best mate since forever and my girlfriend, screwing like rabbits. You know, it hurt like a fucking bitch. Never thought that it was possible to have your heart torn out, stomped on and shit over, but you know... So, I took my grandpa's age old advice. To get over one girl, you get under another. So, that's what I did."
"From the way you keep getting under girls, I take it that you're still not over the break-up?" Sophie enquires.
"Can you really call it a break-up?" I asked, a smile working its way onto my lips. "I got over the betrayal, yeah. I just never broke out of the habit of sleeping around. That's not to say that that is the only intention I have towards your sister. I mean, I don't even want to sleep with her."
Lies. For weeks now, I've been heading to Charlotte's shop, hoping that I would catch a glimpse of her. Until this week, she evaded me, but on Tuesday, I finally saw her. It was fleeting at first and I barely had time to register that it was her until she had disappeared from view. I hoped that she would come back to the shop front, but when she didn't, I took matters into my own hands by asking one of the waitresses that fawned all over me if she could go and get Charlotte for me.
Ever since Dan had mentioned Sophie's sister, I'd been curious about her. She'd recently come out of a relationship, her ex had come out of the closet and Charlotte was heartbroken over it all. This was enough to intrigue me; for a guy to break-up with a girl and come out as gay, I had to wonder if it was something to do with Charlotte. Maybe she wasn't attractive enough and had repulsed the guy so much that he turned gay. But that was ridiculous. No guy wakes up one day and suddenly decides to be gay, so it must have been an issue before Charlotte. Still, it did make me question what she was like.
I'd built up a picture of her in my head. She'd be short. Blonde hair. Green eyes. A little on the curvy side. Self-conscious. Awkward.
She was nothing like I'd imagined. She was taller than I had expected, although still shorter than me. Her hair was brown naturally, although she had a hint of honey colour running through. Her eyes were blue, although not a vivid shade. She was slender but still soft. She was purposeful and didn't let her emotions overcome her. And she had a confidence that made her look at me in the eye, instead of shying away. The girl I had met on Tuesday wasn't heartbroken; she was surviving. Which kinda made me feel better about dreaming of how she'd look naked in bed.
"You want to sleep with her," Sophie asserted. "You'd be an idiot if you didn't."
"Well, I'm not an idiot," I smirk, practically confirming Sophie's suspicions.
"No, you're not." Sophie laughed and shook her head, jumping slightly when she caught sight of the spider's web just to her right. Deciding to do the decent thing, I stood up from my seat, grabbed a dish towel and threw it over my work of art so that it was no longer in Sophie's peripheral vision. "I hate spiders."
I laugh. "You may not want to put ice in your drink then." A silence descended, but unlike the silence that met us earlier, it wasn't tension filled and angry. It was just there. "How about we come to a compromise? I will steer clear of Charlotte. I won't pursue her. If anything happens between us, it'll be because she instigated it, not me. In return, I want you to give me a chance. Yes, I'm a prick, and yes, I will do a lot of things that you probably won't like. But that doesn't define me as a person, so please... give me a chance. Dan is my best friend and he loves you, so that kinda means I have to tolerate you but that's really hard to do when it's so obvious that you want to hate me."
Sophie stares at me for a long moment. Her eyes scan my face, trying to gauge whether or not I'm serious, but when she doesn't find any signs of my joking around, she relents. "Fine, I will give you a shot. But you have to promise that you won't try it on with Charlotte. Can you do that? Can you promise me that you won't try to screw her?"
"I promise." I say the words while crossing my fingers under the table. "Now, let's stop piss farting around. I have a mirror to deface with red lipstick, syringes to fill with red vodka, a bed sheet to scribble on, a scavenger hunt to prepare for, a game of pin the spider on the web to put up and a kickass costume to put on. Everyone will be packin' shit by the time I'm finished."
Sophie
Daniel
Fletch
Charlotte