Neville nodded again, in Ross's direction. “Tell this glib-tongued tosser he should go to the Harvest Festival dance tonight,” he ordered.
Ross scoffed and rolled his eyes away, as Danny turned to him.
“Go to the Harvest Festival dance tonight,” the younger man echoed, then added, “...you tosser.”
“Oh, shut up,” Ross told him.
Unwilling to let the subject drop, Neville pressed pointedly of a sudden: “What else are you going to do? Stay in the flat and wank off to pictures of Kate Winslet? You can do that anytime.” He swayed on one leg, leaning in toward Ross again. “Come on, guy. Come out with the rest of us. So what if you can't pull-”
“I didn't say I couldn't pull!” Ross snorted back at him. “I said there wouldn't be anyone there worth pulling, that's all.” He glared at Danny, too, now. “That's why I'm not going. It's just a waste of time.”
There was almost a minute of silence between them, uncommon when they weren't on the water, and it made both Neville and Danny fidget and shift on their feet. Then Danny gave another shrug of his narrow shoulders.
“Suit yourself,” he said, and he turned to Neville. “You can come with me and Jade, mate.”
At that, Ross lifted his chin. “...What?” he muttered, as he narrowed his eyes at Danny. “Since when did you and Jade get together?”
Neville hissed, and there was a low smack! sound as he swatted Danny in the arm. His brown eyes flashed to Ross, as he offered something like an apologetic smile. “Ah, yeah,” he said with a drop of his shoulders. “We were going to tell you, but....”
“...It just, sort of, happened,” Danny finished with another sheepish shrug.
Ross blinked at him, feeling his chest deflate.
Dark-haired Danny Crispin was his friend...but he was also skinny as a stick, and not terribly bright: as a Year Ten, he'd barely eked his way through his maths GCSEs. He was a passable athlete, but hardly in Neville's or Ross's league; when the crew (the three of them, along with Niall and Scott) were training for the Quiksilver Skins competition, Danny almost always came in last. Working in his family's grocery, stocking fruit and veg all day in between breaks for the waves, he likely didn't clear fifteen thousand pounds in a good year.
And Jade passed on Ross for that?
Fuck, but that was a blow to the ego. Now he really did want to go back to the flat and drown his pities in a good wank....
I wasn't certain that I would be able to get into the head of a narcissistic jerk like Ross so easily...but it has turned out to be much more freeing than I'd been expecting. Maybe I have more of a vain streak in me than even I'd thought...!
Here's to a new day of writing!
No comments:
Post a Comment