I could hardly wait.
I made up with Jimmy O over drinks at the Drum. We shook hands and grunted apologies and bought each other pints in the usual way of it. No hard fucking feelings and all that shit.
Rutting Eleanor Hartwell always seemed to put the guys in good spirits. Talk of Jodie was off the menu and I kept it that way. No point dwelling on it now. It was already done.
I put a lid on it, but the whole fucking thing was a barrel of shit. I’d be raging one minute, wanting to face off to every single one of them for going anywhere near her, and the next I’d be in the garage toilet, jerking one off to the thought of her face as she came with her eyes on me and another guy’s dick in her pussy.
Just as well I was taking a break from the Bang Gang business, I couldn’t trust my dick to play ball if I’d wanted to. It had a mind of its fucking own these days.
I handed Buck the black book and he stared at me, raised his eyebrows.
“What’s this for?”
“What do you think?” I said. “Knock yourself out, book in whatever you fucking like. This week, next week, sometime never. I don’t give a shit.”
He didn’t look convinced. “And you? You planning on joining in or what?”
No.
I shrugged. “I’ll play it by ear. Might be there, might not be.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “I’ll let the guys know. If you’re sure?”
Not really. I pictured the piles of notes I’d be adding to the university box if I could sort my pissing head out.
“I’m sure.”
“Alright,” he said.
“Alright,” I said.
And it was done.
I contemplated just texting her. A did that mean shit to you? text that would set my mind at rest one way or the other, but every time I pulled my phone out Lorraine’s stupid smug face put me off again. It’s embarrassing. Christ, Darren, she’s long over you. Let it go, have some dignity. I thought about them laughing over me at the cafe, Jodie brushing it aside and hoping I didn’t get the wrong fucking idea about her little Bang Gang splurge.
No fear, I wouldn’t be getting the wrong fucking idea. I’m not that much of a soft fucking twat.
At least Lorraine was sorting Petey out. The guy had the permanent balls-emptied kind of grin that we’d all had at some point or other while she was on the scene. Me first, right in the beginning, before we were even a group act. Even the thought of it now gave me the shivers.
“Mum’s getting a tent,” Ruby announced one night after school. She was sitting on a pile of tyres, sucking on a cherry pop while her sister caught up on Facebook in the office.
I stuck my head out from the Citroen’s engine. “That right?”
She nodded, a big toothy grin on her face. “And Tonya might be coming. Not Nanna, though, Mum says if we put her on an airbed she’d never get back up again.”
I smiled at the image of Nanna slumming it in a sleeping bag. “Your mum might well have a point there,” I said.
“Will I be able to help? With the cars?”
I let out a sigh. “Not sure, Rubes. It’s not like round here, it’s pretty fast, all hectic like while the racing’s going on.”
“But I can help! I can be fast!”
“I know you can,” I smiled. “I’ll make sure you get to see enough of it, don’t you worry.”
“Can I sleep in your tent?”
I thought of the lads along with me, the fact that Buck was already planning to throw a sleeping bag in my tent to save setting up his own. “Probably best you stay with your mum,” I said. “She’ll be worried otherwise.”
She didn’t argue.
I wondered if it meant anything, Jodie coming. Jodie’s never been interested in Rally in her life.
But Ruby was.
Ruby wasn’t interested in a whole lot else.
It was almost certainly for Ruby’s sake and not for mine.
I picked up the girls on Saturday morning, and Jodie seemed shifty, nervous even.
“Good week?” she asked.
I nodded. “Alright. You?”
“Yeah, average,” she said. The girls piled into the truck and I went to follow them but she called me back. “I’m out tonight,” she said. “First time in ages. Just a night in town with Lorraine and Tonya.”
Lorraine. The thought hit me in the gut.
“Have fun,” I said.
She sighed. “It’s just… I haven’t been out before… not for so long… not so far away…”
“Girls will be fine,” I said.
“It’s not that,” she said. “It’s Nanna. You couldn’t… if she called, I mean. Could you keep an ear out, in case the club’s too loud for me to hear my phone?”
I smiled. “I’ll always keep an ear out for Nanna, Jo, you know that. Any problems she can call me, I’d be straight round.”