Sticks and Stones

  Sticks and Stones

  By Susie Tate

  Copywright 2014 © Susie Tate

  All Rights reserved

  Acknowledgements

  A huge thank you to my readers for their ongoing support, and special thanks must go to my editor Liz Jackson; her attention to detail knows no bounds.

  Warning

  There is the very occasional bit of welsh in this book. Some of it is nice, cariad and cwtch being examples, and some not so nice. If you need a translation for any of the words or phrases you’ll find it in the Glossary at the end, and if you’re ever in Wales and you need a good insult, it could very well come in useful.

  But if swearing in two languages isn’t for you, I would probably steer clear.

  Chapter 1

  Silent tears

  The first sensation that Dylan registered was the warmth under his hand. As he swam up towards full consciousness he also noticed the softness on his face and the delicious smell surrounding him. His head was buried in soft wavy blonde hair with an incredible, yet weirdly familiar, fresh citrusy scent, and as he looked down he saw that his hand was splayed possessively over a toned female stomach.

  He groaned. Why oh why was he continually as horny as a three-balled tomcat? Whoever it was he’d shagged last night he knew it would bite him in the arse. If he weren’t careful he would succeed in alienating the entire female staff of every hospital in South Wales before his rotation was over. The last three months he had been at his most prolific, spurred on by the mind numbing boredom of elderly care.

  Could he make a stealthy exit without waking her up? As he started shifting on the bed he felt her begin to stir. So much for a ninja-style-stealthy-minimal-confrontation-escape. He closed his eyes in resignation, and felt the stabbing pain behind them and the telltale badger-mouth, which explained his memory loss and recent stupidity.

  Why didn’t he stop at a few social wets? Especially on a mess night out. Another wave of recognition swept through him as he breathed in the citrusy scent and his eyes shot open. He started sweating what was most likely pure alcohol as he stared down in horror at the woman who was now turning to nuzzle into his shoulder and drape her arm across his stomach, making a little low noise of contentment.

  Christ, he’d really gone and ruddy done it now.

  Or had he?

  He frantically wracked his brain for his memory of the night before. Lou and Frankie had been completely smashed. He remembered doing a couple of shots with them, telling Lou to dial it down and being poked pretty painfully in the chest for his trouble. He remembered snogging that physio he’d had his eye on for a while, but getting distracted by all the blokes around them openly leering at Lou and Frankie on the dance floor.

  From that point on everything was a little hazy. He had a few flashes of half carrying Lou through the bar whilst being furious with her for getting in that state and essentially cock-blocking him, seeing as he had to drag her home.

  Her breasts were pushing up against his chest now and her leg had draped itself over his under the duvet, which only served to intensify his alcohol sweats. Dylan wasn’t blind, he knew that a half-naked Lou was most men’s idea of a wet dream, and yes, of course he himself had on occasion had the odd impure thought when it came to her.

  To be honest there were very few females that Dylan hadn’t at some stage visualized having sex with. Even his piano teacher when he was twelve, Mrs Allcock, despite her greying hair, dodgy front teeth and penchant for congealed bright red lipstick, was not completely safe from the odd dirty thought (although Dylan thoroughly blamed her name for the direction of his daydreaming whilst trying to muddle through his scales under her watchful, heavily made-up eye).

  However this particular female, who was currently plastered over his front, was very much off limits. There was a huge difference between thinking about doing something (or someone) and actually doing it.

  Weirdly in the last three months since working with Lou he had been having more and more disturbing thoughts about her. He blamed her proximity and the sheer boredom of the job he was being forced to endure. Hell, the daily multidisciplinary team meeting was enough time for Dylan to construct an elaborate fantasy involving a much more amenable Lou than was typical, and a conveniently empty treatment room/office/registrar computer room/the underneath of the ward clerk’s desk/the store cupboard on the geris ward.

  Okay so it had recently become somewhat of an obsession with Dylan, but that didn’t mean that he should ever have actually followed through. Lou was a big pain in the arse, but she, together with Frankie, were his best friends. Yes it was a bit weird to have female best friends, but Mike (his male best friend and not male partner as might be suggested by the whole female best friend thing) lived in London now, and the four of them had been inseparable at Uni.

  At first, after falling head over heels for Frankie, Dylan had pushed the foursome thing to spend more time with her. But after two years of getting nowhere he realized that he had three best friends who knew him better than anyone, and that two of them were female.

  When he got over Frankie he was actually pretty pleased with the dynamic. Mike had a girlfriend from school throughout Uni, and was so loyal and in love with her (they were now married) that he may as well have been a eunuch, so none of the four of them had ever shagged or even snogged. However much Dylan fantasized about sex with Lou he wouldn’t risk the friendship, and to be quite honest she would be a high maintenance nightmare as a girlfriend. He liked quiet, slightly shy, softly spoken women, not obnoxiously posh, brash, foul-mouthed, feisty ball-breakers.

  Terror flooded him as he watched her eyelids flicker open. She was smiling slightly, and looked so unbelievably beautiful and somehow vulnerable, that for a moment he couldn’t quite believe she was the same harpy he knew. She squeezed his stomach, and her head slowly tipped back so her eyes could meet his.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he swore, his voice loaded with regret. Her smile faded and that look of vulnerability was quickly replaced by her familiar defiant, take-no-bullshit expression.

  ‘Please tell me we didn’t…?’ he started to plead. Something flashed across her face, and for a moment she looked almost in pain, but her next words were said in a reassuringly careless way.

  ‘Calm down Dildo. As if I would allow my lady parts to have any contact with your disease ridden toothpick sized excuse for a wiener.’

  He heaved out a heavy sigh of relief. He most certainly did not need another balls up to add to his cluster fuck of a personal life at the moment.

  ‘Babes,’ he said patiently, ‘you and I both know that the junk in my trunk is most definitely the real deal; you’ve seen it often enough.’

  ‘Ugh.’ Lou pushed away from his chest and sat up in bed next to him. ‘Only because you and your rugby buddies are such narcissistic freaks that you think everyone in the bar wants to see you drinking pints with your trousers down, and then wrestling half naked on the sticky floor. You do know it smacks of repressed homosexuality don’t you? All those showers and baths together…’

  ‘Babes, calm yourself,’ Dylan interrupted, patting her on the head. ‘You don’t want to get yourself worked up imagining all that lush man flesh whilst we’re having a cwtch* in bed. I wouldn’t want you to pounce on me in my weakened state.’

  ‘Gah! You. Are. A. Disgusting. Sick. Deluded. Pervert.’

  ‘Don’t get all gushy on me babes, you know it only embarrasses me.’ Lou snorted and crossed her arms under her chest as Dylan ran his hands down his face. ‘My head feels like there’s a Frenchman living in it.’

  ‘Series two,’ Lou put in quickly. They were both well used to this game now and if either of them ever missed a quote they would never hear the end of it.

&nb
sp; ‘Episode?’

  ‘Chains.’

  ‘Well played.’

  They sat in silence for a moment staring at the opposite wall.

  ‘Jesus, you’ve still got that collage up of our elective,’ Dylan said suddenly, making Lou jump. ‘That must have been eight years ago now.’

  ‘Well those views were gorgeous,’ Lou said defensively.

  ‘Yes babes, yes they were,’ Dylan replied, and Lou rolled her eyes at his smug expression.

  ‘I mean aside from the loser whose fat head is blocking half the shot in some of them.’

  ‘Some of them?’ Dylan spluttered. ‘I think you’ll find I’m the main attraction of that whole collage. In fact it’s like a montage of me.’

  He felt Lou stiffen beside him and he laughed. Above all things he loved to wind her up. Sometimes it felt like winding Lou up was his life’s calling. He’d even found himself wishing that he were at Lou’s flat winding her up of an evening when he was out with a girl. This for Dylan was beyond bizarre since he also considered sex one of his life’s callings, and him thinking a night of guaranteed no action would be more fun than an (admittedly boring) evening ending in the horizontal tango was just plain weird. ‘That beach was awesome mind. All those freaky pink shells. Remember the time we watched the sun come up after we’d stayed up in that little beach bar?’

  ‘Mmmhmm,’ was Lou’s only response but he saw her nod her head.

  ‘Where were Frankie and Mike again?’

  ‘They were tired I think, you guys had just climbed Killy.’

  ‘Pussies.’

  Lou snorted, ‘Yeah.’

  Then Dylan had another flash of memory. A drunk Frankie swaying on the dance floor came to mind.

  ‘How pissed was Frankie last night?’ he asked. ‘She never lets herself get that steaming.’ Dylan had practically made an art of watching Frankie over the years, and he knew that slamming back shots and letting drunk Cardiothoracic Surgeons maul her on the dance floor was not her style. Hardly surprising really, what with her mum and Papa Marco. He suddenly tensed with worry. ‘She did make it home okay didn’t she Lou?’

  Lou sighed. ‘I’m not a completely crap friend you know. I wouldn’t have left her there in the state she was in. Truth was that Weasel Gankface got to her first and practically carried her home. Far as I know he’s still here.’

  Dylan let out a breath that he didn’t even realized he’d been holding. Caring for and worrying about Frankie had become somewhat of a religion to him, and even though he’d given up long ago on her loving him back it was still a tricky habit to break.

  ‘He cares about her you know,’ Lou said quietly into the silence that followed. ‘You should tell her.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Dylan replied in a small voice. Of all the stupid things he did at Uni keeping Frankie and Tom apart was by far the worst (and that was saying something seeing as he had once been caught rolling around in profiteroles, barking like a dog at the Dean’s wife with his testicles hanging out, at one of the rugby balls).

  ‘She’ll forgive you,’ Lou continued. ‘You know she will, that’s just her nature.’

  Yup: sweet, caring, quietly funny, insightful, beautiful, forgiving.

  Argh! He almost went to smack himself on the forehead.

  Must not obsess over Frankie anymore.

  It’s been years.

  Enough.

  It seemed like Lou was going in for a reassuring hug, but she chickened out at the last minute and performed an awkward head pat instead, much like he had done a minute ago. For some reason Dylan found physical contact with Lou awkward, even more so over the last few months. His eyes drifted down to her pink lace-encased breasts (her nightwear was like something you’d expect a Vegas show girl to wear during a burlesque performance) and unfortunately he felt his body start to react.

  ‘Right,’ he blurted out, scrambling off the bed and making a grab for his phone. ‘It’s bloody half five in the morning. I better go sleep on the sofa or we’ll have the piss ripped out of us all day. How did we end up like this anyway? We must have been really outers to fall asleep together.’

  ‘Yes, well at least neither of us remember too much about it,’ Lou said stiffly. She had her arms wrapped round herself on the bed now and wasn’t meeting his eyes. Dylan had the nagging feeling that he was missing something.

  ‘Look, babes are you sure that nothing…?’

  ‘Of course not you numpty,’ Lou gave him a bright smile, which he thought somehow looked slightly forced. ‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist; you know I wouldn’t touch you with a barge pole.’ Dylan hesitated then decided that his uneasy feelings were most likely the result of hung-over paranoia.

  ‘Oh, well thank Christ for that,’ he huffed out whilst pulling on his trousers and searching around for his t-shirt. ‘That really would be the bloody last thing we need at the moment.’

  ‘Yeah, absolutely,’ Lou agreed, her voice sounding slightly raspy.

  ‘You getting a cold babes?’

  ‘No just standard hung-over hedgehog shat down my throat,’ she replied. ‘Now can you please bugger off so I can get some sleep.’

  ‘I’m going now…’

  ‘In a minute,’ they both said together. ‘Your turn of phrase is so predictable Dildo. I do hope that you and your countrymen realize that “now, in a minute” makes no real sense.’

  Dylan held his hands up in front of him in surrender, finally located his t-shirt and pulling it over his head. Having dismissed him he saw Lou turn away and sink back down under the covers.

  He closed the door softly and was about to make for the sofa when his stomach started grumbling and he noticed the cake on the stand.

  What did Frankie say about that cake stand? He thought as he sidled up to the kitchen counter. The bloody thing was huge; surely she wouldn’t miss a couple of slices. He used a surprisingly lifelike looking sugar-flower to scoop up some frosting and popped the whole lot into his mouth, before scouring the kitchen for some milk and a knife.

  *****

  Lou waited until she heard Dylan leave, and then sat up. After staring blankly at the collage on her wall for a minute she quietly swung out of bed and padded to the door. She carefully turned the lock and after she was sure it was secure she crept over to her wardrobe. Standing on the mountain of clothes that had accumulated on the floor of it, she reached up and extracted a small dog-eared shoebox from a high shelf, which she took back to bed.

  Once she was sitting up with her legs under the covers she pulled off the lid and started delicately pulling out the tattered photographs, which she laid out around her. At the bottom of the box was a small pink and white shell. She turned it over and over in her hands for a moment before gripping it firmly in one of her fists, which she brought up to her chest. With her other hand she reached for one of the photos and traced the shape of the face dominating it with her index finger, before grabbing the pillow that Dylan had been sleeping on and bringing it up to her face.

  She hugged the pillow and inhaled deeply before letting the silent tears track down her cheeks. For the longest time she remained absolutely still except for the deep breaths she took from the pillow as her tears started to soak into the material. Her eyelids started drooping as the first light of dawn began to shine through her window, and she finally succumbed to sleep lying in the middle of her photos, holding the small pink shell, with her face buried in the pillow she was still clutching like her life depended on it.

  Chapter 2

  A great shame

  Despite the fact the Grand Round was in full swing, Lou didn’t do the standard open-the-doors-just-a-crack-and-slope-through-to-find-an-inconspicuous-place-to-sit-in-the-lecture-theatre. No, in true Dr Sands fashion she burst through the double doors, and beamed her mega-watt smile at the audience, who had all turned away from the interminably dull Professor Henderson to watch her entrance.

  Dylan sat back in his seat and rolled his eyes. If anyone had made an art out of dra
wing a room’s attention it was Lou. He looked back at her as he heard her stage-whispered greetings to people either side of the aisle, as if she was walking down her own personal red carpet and greeting her fans.

  She flounced down to the front on her sky-high heels and he had to suppress a laugh as she grabbed a handout from the desk in front of the lectern, winked at the Prof, and in another obnoxiously loud stage whisper said, ‘Sooo sorry to have missed the start Professor, you know how I live by the crucial content of your lectures.’

  As normally happened to any male in receipt of the full Louise Sands charm offensive the Prof’s eyes became unfocused and he nodded his head dumbly. With her long blonde hair flowing down her back and around her face, and wearing one of her fitted business dresses which showcased her endlessly long legs she could probably have told the Prof he was the dullest man alive and still have received the same reaction. Spinning round on her heel she strode back up to where Dylan was sitting, scowled at him until he was forced to make room for her, and sat down with a flourish of her handout and a dramatic hair flick, which succeeded in sending the handouts of the bench above flying in multiple directions.

  ‘Quite finished?’ Dylan mumbled in her ear, inhaling her fresh citrusy scent and closing his eyes briefly against the impact. In the weeks since he’d spent the night in Lou’s bed he felt like he was going slightly insane. Her scent, the way she spoke, her smile, her laugh, in fact everything about her turned him on. After years of regarding her beauty in a rather abstract way whilst he obsessed over Frankie, it was like the shutters had been violently pulled away from his eyes, and he now found it difficult to focus on anything else in her presence.

  ‘What are you on about now Dildo?’ she hissed out of the side of her mouth whilst still maintaining a perfect smile for the Prof and her fans.

  ‘Are you quite finished prancing about like the main attraction at “Stringfellows” during a bloody clinical meeting.’