Brawl (2 page)

“I don’t think it’ll bleed too much,” I shrug, previous anger forgotten. He chuckles, one of those lazy, masculine laughs that dampens your panties, and he straightens to his full height. Eyes staring into mine, he drawls in a low sexy voice, “I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not. Your pain’s turned out to be my gain.”

Score.
I inwardly smile, but make sure I keep it cool on the outside. Lifting one eyebrow, and cocking my head to one side, I ask, “How so?”

Smiling a cheeky, half-grin, he moves his gaze over my frame with insolent slowness.  Starting at my long dark hair before inching his way down my body, he lingers on my plump lips, my ample chest, and the toned legs that I inherited from my mother before coming to rest on the huge tattoo covering my exposed right thigh. I’m dressed in my usual denim booty shorts, tight tank, and Doc’s so there’s a lot of skin for him to feast on.

“If I hadn’t hurt you, then you wouldn’t have cussed me out, and I wouldn’t be taking you out tonight,” He grins. “I’m Nate, by the way.”

Extending his hand, he waits for me to close the distance and accept his offer. I don’t, leaving him hanging. “You’re very cocky, aren’t you, Nate?”

His grin widens, delight lighting up his face. “You have no idea.”

“Too bad, I already have plans for tonight,” I lift my eyebrows at him, mocking him, and giving him a taste of his own medicine. “But, you have a good day now.”

Turning my back to him, I smile to myself as I grip the handle on my cart and take a step away from him. If, and that’s a big if, I can sweet talk Zali into watching Cooper for me, I was planning on heading to my favorite night club. It’s the only one I can get into, no-questions-asked, with my obviously fake ID. I don’t turn eighteen for another two months so my options are limited until then.

Although, I will admit, that my plans are open to last minute rescheduling if Nate decides to take my bait.

Abandoning his shopping, Nate moves after me. Grabbing the handle, he forces my cart to a stop. I turn to look at him, feigning surprise. “I’ll bet I can show you a better time than anything else you’ve got planned.”

Shaking my head at his blatant line, I yank the handle out of his hold. “I’ll think about it. Maybe, we can meet up later tonight? Discuss our options further?”

Nate understands what I’m offering straightaway. His eyes become hooded with unconcealed desire and he basically licks his lips. “Sounds like a plan to me. Where? And how will I get hold of ya?

“I’ll be at Nitro’s from about ten til it closes. Find me there.”

After naming the club I frequent, I leave the ball in his court. If he doesn’t show, it’s no skin off my nose. There’ll be plenty of other willing participants to choose from. I don’t wait for his answer, nor do I care what he thinks of me and my veiled proposition so shortly after meeting him. Nodding my farewell, I push my shopping cart away.

I’ve been around. There’s no denying that fact, and to be quite frank, I don’t give a shit what anyone thinks about it. It’s my pussy, and I chose who I let touch it.

Sex and lots of it.
That’s my “thing”; well, that and the fights I regularly get into. After the shitty hand I’ve been dealt—alcoholic mother, absentee dad, useless sister, and a little brother to raise because the adults have all checked out—I’m entitled to a couple of vices. Sex with different men, the occasional girl who takes my fancy, and venting my frustrations on the face of anyone who steps on my toes; I consider them acceptable methods of stress relief.

Shit, I haven’t given into my daily daydreams of homicide yet so I must be doing something right.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he yells after me. The two little old ladies who are dithering over their shopping lists in our aisle, turn and tut at him for making so much noise. Rolling my eyes directly at them as I walk past, I’m met with looks of disgust as they take in my tattooed arms and legs, pierced bellybutton, and the shaved side of my head. I curl my top lip in response and they clutch their purses to their chests as if I’m going to rob them.

Yeah, yeah, get in line. You’re not the first, and you won’t be the last, to judge me by my in-your-face appearance. And, it’ll be a cold day in hell before I give a fuck.

“Hey, what’s your name?” Nat yells again, unperturbed by the old lady’s censure.

“I only wanna fuck, not friendship.” I smirk at the little old ladies when I say the word “fuck”, and they give me what I was looking for—matching gasps and the one closest to me crosses herself like I’m the devil incarnate. “Names aren’t necessary.”

Throwing his head back, Nate breaks into bellows of laughter. Shaking my head at his over-the-top reaction, I slide my phone out of my bag and check the time. I’m going to be late to pick up Zali if I don’t get a move on. Leaving him to it, I make my way to the nearest checkout and pay for my groceries.

Gabbi

I
pull into the driveway of our family home. I need to get the groceries put away before I go and pick Zali up from her final exam and get onto the rest of the shit I need to sort out today.

Zali has me worried. She hasn’t a clue what she wants to do when she leaves school, and with only one year left for her, she needs to put some thought into it soon. The only things I can get out of her when I ask are that she wants to get as far away from our useless mother as she can, she doesn’t want to be saddled with Cooper when I leave in a few months, and she thinks her deadbeat boyfriend is “the one”.

I’m with her on option number one, but I can’t get on board with two and three. There’s no way Mom will let me take her cash-cow Cooper when I leave so Zali will have to watch him until I can get settled and find a job. And her pot-smoking, drink-driving, unemployed boyfriend couldn’t be further from “the one”, if he was strapped to a fucking missile launcher and shot at the moon. He likes the kudos of having a hot, blonde, eager-to-please schoolgirl on his arm, but I know he’s fucking around on her whenever he has the chance. She just won’t believe me when I tell her.

“I hope you’ve got something wet in those bags,” my mother stage whispers from the couch as I walk through the front door, laden down with shopping bags. It’s probably too much to carry in one go, but I’m a one trip or die tryin’ type of girl. I don’t care if my circulation is cut and my hands drop off, I’m not making a second trip to the car. “My mouth feels like the Sahara Desert.”

“I’ve got juice, milk and coke. Help yourself.” I state flatly as I walk past the living room and into the kitchen. I was hoping she’d still be comatose so I could put off this confrontation. “You owe me one-hundred and fifty for your part of this week’s shopping.”

“Aaaw honey, I’ve got a date tonight with this guy I met last night. I didn’t have any luck on the pokies and I only met Karl late in the night so I really want to see him again. Can I pay you back next week?” she wheedles.

“For God’s sake, you still owe me two hundred for last week’s food and I paid the power bill so you owe me five hundred for that.” I snap through gritted teeth. This is typical of the selfish cow. “You need to give me money for Cooper’s cricket—that’s due this week as well. What do you do with the fucking money Dad sends you...and your pension?”

Mom’s lucky that just before Dad walked out, she was granted compensation from an ex-client for a serious back injury that she sustained while working for them. In her previous life, before she became an alcoholic, gambling mess, my mother was a successful interior decorator. She made a killing because of her excellent eye for detail. Part of me is thankful that Dad used her compensation to pay off the house and arranged a very generous pension to be paid to her weekly for the rest of her life. Of course, this was before he ran away with my mother’s best friend; so another, much larger part, is furious at him for leaving me with the mess.

“Here,” she yells hoarsely, slapping a few fifty dollar notes on the coffee table, “Have this, you ungrateful little bitch. I put a roof over your head, feed you, and put you through school, and you repay me by covering yourself in those ugly tattoos and applying for
art school
so you can use being
creative
as an excuse for being a rampant slut. You’d think that the least you could do after turning into such an embarrassing disappointment is pay a few lousy bills for me so I can afford to enjoy my life.”

She stalks off into her bedroom and slams the door behind her.

“Fuck you,” I throw one of her discarded high-heels at her door. It makes a hollow thud when it connects, before falling to the floor. “If I’m a slut, at least we don’t have to look far to find where I got it from. DNA’s a bitch.”

“I hate you, Gabriella Mitchell. I wish I never had you. It’s your fault my life is ruined.” She screams from her bedroom. A moment later, I hear the springs of her bed squeaking—she must have thrown herself on it, like a petulant fucking child. Rolling my eyes at her melodrama and ignoring her nasty words, I wander over to the coffee table and count the notes she left behind. There’s one-hundred and fifty, which will pay for Cooper’s cricket, at least. I pocket the money and get on with packing the groceries away.

Stretching my tight neck muscles, I force myself to ignore the headache that’s growing behind my eyes. Dealing with my crazy mother has this effect on me, which is why I try my bloody hardest to avoid her. The pounding pain refuses to budge, increasing when the realization that I need to seriously bump my hours up at the gym hits me. There’s no way I can afford to keep paying the bills and save enough in time to move closer to my art school in the city.

I guess it could be said that I really have three vices—sex, fighting, and drawing. I’ve had an artistic streak for as long as I can remember, and I’ve always wanted to become a professional artist. It’s only recently that I decided that art school and then a tattooing apprenticeship was my life’s goal. The whole “starving artist” persona that appealed to me as a kid, has been replaced by the need to earn money from my art. Tattooing is the easiest way to do that, so that’s been my new plan.

In between bouts of massaging my temples, I stash the food I bought into the pantry. Breathing deeply in an effort to calm the tension headache that’s now in full effect, I gaze down at the huge tattoo on my right thigh. It’s my own design, and a constant reminder to never trust anyone ever again.
Not that I really need one.

Inspiration struck late one night, and I sketched Lucifer sneaking up on three kneeling angels and planting a knife in each of their backs. The angels are bleeding from the knife wounds between their wings, and Lucifer’s smiling down at them evilly. He’s happy with his handy work, and off to the side is God drawn as a woman, sitting idly, watching her children being taken down by someone who used to be one of them.

Zali hates it. She reckons it’s morbid and ugly, and that I should get over what Dad did to us when he up and left. I can’t be like her, though. Every time I listen to Cooper crying because Mom’s gone out and left him with us again, or I watch a little more of his childhood being stripped away from him when he wakes in the morning to another strange man in our home, the hatred I feel at our parent’s betrayal festers a little more, gaining intensity, and making the crater in my chest where my heart used to be grow bigger.

One of my regular clients at the gym owns a tattoo parlor. Most of my tattoos are from my own hand—I find the allure of having my art permanently on my body and the peace I find as the needle drills into my skin addictive, so I’m covered in more ink than I ever expected to be. We have a deal where he sells my drawings to clients in exchange for free tattooing and his assistance with the spots I can’t reach myself.

Running my finger over the face of Lucifer where he sits smirking like the devil he is, I push down the hurt, and concentrate on the anger and hatred. Slamming the pantry door shut, I grab my keys and decide it’s time to get the fuck out of here before I march into Mom’s room and tell her exactly what I think. I can’t spend another second in this hollow, memory-filled house that used to be our family home.

Gabbi

“L
et me do the talking at the start.” I tell Zali, as evenly as I can. If she thinks I’m bossing her around, she’s liable to get her back up and ruin this for both of us.  “You’re not exactly what they’re looking for, but I think I can talk Steve around.”

“I hope you can. I really want this job.” Zali gives me a weak smile, appearing to take my advice for once. I can tell she’s nervous, but so am I. I’m in two minds about bringing her ditzy self into my only sanctuary from the craziness of our family. Although, getting her employed and on the right path will make me feel better about leaving Cooper with her until I get my life sorted out.

My plan is to get a job that pays well enough to support us all, and then make a deal with Mom where she can keep Cooper’s child support money but I have Cooper full-time. Maybe even Zali, if I can talk some sense into her and get her to leave her piece-of-shit boyfriend.
I just have to get my boss on board with my plan.

“Hey girl, I need to see Steve if he’s free?” I greet Amy, the gym’s night receptionist. The Fitness Hub is the only twenty-four-hour gym in our area, which is the only reason I’ve been able to make half-decent money and still get through school.

“He’s in with the new night manager but I think they’re nearly finished.” Amy replies looking through Steve’s office window.

“Cool, we’ll wait.” I grin at her, as Zali and I take a seat opposite Steve’s door. “So how did your hot date go last night?”

Amy’s my closest friend and my partner-in-crime on the rare nights we get to go out together. We spend most nights together working at the gym, and have a blast doing it. She’s ten years older than me, but I feel closer to her than I do to anyone my own age. Probably because she’s alone with a kid and understands my life better than the morons I went to school with.

“It was a freaking dud! I was home by eight thirty, sitting on the sofa watching the latest episode of The Walking Dead, and stuffing my face with ice cream. Unfortunately, the second I mentioned that I had a kid; he remembered that he had to get up early for work. It definitely wasn’t worth pulling a double shift today so I could have last night off.” Amy moans, a devilish grin breaking free a moment later. “Although, the new night manager’s gorgeous so I might take him for a spin—”