Janine Ashbless - Red Grow the Roses

OK, so he wasn’t exactly bursting with originality either. It gave Sophie a little confidence back. ‘I work at an art gallery in town,’ she said. ‘A commercial one, not high art or anything – and I’m just an assistant – but I want to run my own gallery one day. I like hanging out with friends and going out on the town …’ She ground to a halt as she realised she was being obvious and dull. ‘What about you?’

He just sat and looked at her with his face almost alight, like he was full of sunshine. She could imagine him climbing a mountain or white-water-rafting or hitchhiking around Asia. ‘Me?’

‘You. You’re supposed to say something interesting,’ she reminded him.

‘Oh. All right then. I’m a vampire.’

She had, she thought, never met anyone who looked less like a vampire. ‘As chat-up lines go,’ she said, a little acid now, ‘that’s better than “I’m a serial killer.” But, you know, a bit worse than “I’m a big Star Trek fan.”’

‘Ouch.’

‘You could try it in the Fox and Grapes though. They have a Goth Night on a Wednesday, I think.’

‘I’ll remember that.’ His brow furrowed humbly, but he grinned.

‘And to be honest,’ she said pointing at him, ‘even if I wanted to be impressed, that’s just not vampire at all.’

‘What?’

‘Your teeth. Unconvincing. Where’s the fangs?’

‘Retractable.’

‘Really?’ She was actually enjoying herself now. He didn’t seem at all put off by her sarcasm.

‘Of course. Otherwise we’d be lisping and drooling all over the place.’

‘Oh, right .’

‘Hold on. I’ll just …’ He pursed his lips and wrinkled his nose back and forth as if something were stuck in his teeth. Then he peeled back his lips and opened his mouth. He had fangs this time: translucent as Chinese rice porcelain, sharp as thorns.

‘OK,’ she admitted. ‘That’s quite impressive. And … different.’

He shut his mouth and flashed his eyebrows in a smile, vindicated.

‘Did you show that to all the girls?’ Sophie turned to the table at her right. ‘Hey, Netta, did you get a look at these?’

Netta looked startled to be interrupted. ‘At what?’

But when Sophie glanced back, Number Twenty was gone. ‘I … uh …’

Gone. Completely gone. Sophie’s eyes searched the room. There were plenty of people in buying drinks, apart from those engaged in the speed-dating, but none of them looked like him. Sophie bit her lip. She didn’t understand where he could have disappeared to; she had barely looked away from him. She supposed that if he’d leapt up and hand-sprung backwards he could have jumped over the bar itself in time, but that was a bit too Ninja-like to be actually believable. She got up from her stool anyway, and walked over to the bar to check for herself. He wasn’t hiding down among the glasses and the plastic crates.

‘Weird,’ she said.

It was another three minutes before the last round of the speed-dating was over. They were the longest, most awkward three minutes of her life, but at last the chime was sounded and all the couples broke up and she was able to make a beeline for Netta.

‘Did you see where he went?’

‘Who?’

‘The guy with me. Number Twenty … well, he would have been your Number Nineteen. The really good-looking one.’

Netta frowned. ‘Really good-looking? You sure?’

‘Oh, come on! Blondish, white shirt … nice teeth .’ She was even more confused now.

‘Uh, no.’ Netta looked down at her tick-sheet. ‘I didn’t mark him down anyway. I can’t really remember him, to be honest. There were so many guys, I suppose, Sophie: you just stop noticing after a while.’

Sophie passed her hand over her face. ‘Can we get out of here?’ It was the state of her own mind that was worrying her, but she tried to hide it. ‘I’m scared the one with the bad breath is going to try and carry on our chat.’

‘You’re not going to hand your sheet in?’

The piece of paper had grown damp in her hand, she realised. She crumpled it up. ‘No. I didn’t fancy any of them, really.’

Netta sighed. ‘Me neither.’

They made their way to the door – and there he was, Number Twenty, bathed in the magenta strip-light of the Bar Trattoria sign, chatting amiably to the bouncer. His eye fell on Sophie. ‘Hey there. You going before I can buy you a drink? I’m Ben, by the way.’

She blinked. Face to face with him once more, she couldn’t believe there was anything weird about him. Not that the teeth thing had actually worried her: she’d assumed that was just a trick of some sort. ‘Um. We thought we’d head out somewhere else.’

He glanced questioningly at Netta, who looked very pleased indeed. Plump and pretty, she always made the most of her capacious cleavage and now Sophie saw her swing it into action, turning those orbs on Ben like twin lamps, in the hope of dazzling him.

‘I’m Netta. Short for Agnetha – my mum was a big ABBA fan.’ She giggled. ‘We work at the same place, Sophie and me.’

‘Ah … the art gallery?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well, can I buy you both a drink then?’

‘I don’t see why not.’

Sophie shrugged and nodded, pushing any lingering disquiet aside.

‘You want to go to a club?’ suggested Ben. ‘How about the Rose Garden? We could skip the queue: I know the guys on the door.’

‘Sounds good,’ said Netta.

‘Yeah,’ Sophie agreed. The Rose Garden was expensive and she’d never been there.

He held the glass door open for them both and followed them out on to the street. Netta took the chance to catch Sophie’s eye and mouth ‘ Hot !’ at her. Sophie wanted to ask her if she remembered him from the speed-dating line-up now, but she didn’t have the chance.

He didn’t let them down at the Rose Garden either, marching them straight up to the bouncers and inside, after a nod and an exchange of greetings. He made sure he paid too, and bought the drinks at the bar, slipping an arm round each of their shoulders as he stood between them and ordered, encouraging them to choose the fanciest cocktails they could find on the bar menu. The dancefloor wasn’t yet packed as it was relatively early in the evening, so there was plenty of space for the three of them to go on and dance together. He was a good mover, Sophie noted, though his eyes only really lit up when they played a remix of some jangling 60s hit by a group she was too young to be able even to picture. He flirted with both of them, paying each equal attention and obviously enjoying their company, wriggling up against Netta with a cheeky twinkle during a dirty song, dancing away insouciantly a moment later with an ironic wink at Sophie. Every move he made proclaimed: ‘I’m having fun and I’ll take the fun as far as you like but I’m not after anything heavy.’ His grin gleamed under the UV light, but his teeth were completely normal. Well, Hollywood normal.

Taking a break, they retired to a quieter corner to rest their feet for a few minutes. Netta went off to the toilet then. Normally Sophie would have gone with her, but they had a fresh batch of drinks on the table before them by this point and she wasn’t going to be so naive as to leave them unguarded, not with the stories you heard these days. Ben seemed nice, right, but … they didn’t know him. Not yet. You had to be careful, didn’t you? So she sat and they made light talk and that was when Ben kissed her, leaning in and brushing his lips softly to her own.

All the noise of the club seemed to fade to nothing.

Oh, thought Sophie in the sudden silence inside her head: Oh, I like this. She was flushed and warm from the dancing; his lips felt cool, yet the flicker of his tongue-tip hinted at a deeper heat. She could taste the tang of the lager he’d been drinking. His stubble was softer than she’d expected on her skin as his mouth moved over hers, swallowing her breath. And oh, his hands – one arm around her, smoothly, like she might startle: the other now on her knee, his fingertips the lightest of caresses, not at all intrusive even as they slid up the inside of her thigh, over the lace patterns of her black tights. His cool fingers sketched pointillist pictures of sensation on her skin as they played over the tiny holes in the lace, and Sophie felt a sly seep of moisture within her, a secretly avid response to his touch. And how she wished she’d worn stockings now, as he reached the hem of her skirt.