"Oh, dude. . . ."
"Then move on to cooking you a three-course dinner."
"You're kidding me!"
"Then followed by a very stimulating dessert."
"OK, you win. Jez should be fine, let's go."
He chuckled at this and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, “Nah, you’re right. If anything happened to Jez, you'd be devastated. Anyway, it gives me a chance to introduce you to the boys."
"Damn my big mouth," I muttered.
"S'OK, I'll find a good use for it later."
"Guys, this is Ash," Gabe said. He'd led me downstairs, past groups of people to a mob sitting in a semi-circle near the shed door, watching the photo shoot proceed. Jez still had her shirt on, but she was now lying sideways along the seat and fuel tank with a mysterious smile on her face as the bloke snapped off photo after photo on a high end DSLR. “Ash, this is Macca," Gabe pointed to an older guy with a long, iron-grey ponytail and a silver beard, "Shane, Mick," likewise a guy in his thirties with buzzed hair and a cheeky grin, "and where's Rick?"
“Gone to grab a few more slabs of beer,” Macca said. "Nice to meet you, Ash."
"Nice to meet you, too," I said, taking a seat beside Gabe on an old tyre. "So, what do you do?"
"Bit of bogging up and grinding," the man said with a slight lift of his broad shoulders.
"Bullshit!" Gabe said. “He’s one of the best fabricators in the business. Want a beer, love?"
"Sure, and how about you, Cadbury? What do you do?" I looked Shane square in the face. His eyes went wide as Mick's narrowed down.
"You're not making shitty comments about. . . ." Mick began to growl, gesturing to Shane’s dark skin.
"What? No! It's just when we met, all Shane could talk about was chocolate."
All of the men's eyes swivelled around to a flustered Shane, then they all burst out laughing. "Not that shitty line again, on the boss's missus!" Mick said, pounding on Shane's back.
"Just because it looks like you've been dipping your dick in chocolate, doesn't mean it's going to taste like it if you can get 'em to put it in their mouth," Macca said with a grin.
"I thought we had an agreement," Shane hissed.
"You tried chatting up my girlfriend, right after I told you not to?"
"Look, boss, I'm sorry. I didn't know. Can’t you get her to wear a bell or something?”
Mick hit himself on the forehead. “Shane, mate, we’ve talked about this. Just because we call them pussy doesn’t mean they are actual cats.”
“Fuck off, cunt.”
“You know what you gotta do,” Gabe said, picking at the label on his beer, only looking up when Shane let out a long moan.
“Get up, ya prick,” Mick said, giving him a shove.
“Maybe we should let him pick his own song this time,” Macca said, “though he did a stand-up version of “I’ll Always Love You” when he forgot the beer that time.”
“Ricky’s here!” Mick said with a grin. “Let her choose.”
Her? I turned around to see a woman dressed in the same blue overalls. She carried a slab of beer on one shoulder. “The others are in the ute,” she said, flicking the keys to Mick. She opened one end with practised ease, handing a beer to Macca, Shane, Gabe and then she turned to me.
She was pretty, I realised, really pretty. The sides of her head were shaved, but she had long tawny locks falling in a messy tangle, strands partially covering a pair of bright-green eyes. Green eyes that widened when they saw me flicked from Gabe to me and back again several times. The guys weren’t noticing, focussed as they were on whatever punishment they had planned for Shane. She swallowed hard and then forced herself to smile, holding out a beer and saying, “Hey, I’m Rickie-Lee.”
“Shit, sorry, Rick. This is Ash, my girlfriend.”