Cockney: A Stepbrother Romance (11 page)

Jesus I need a drink
.

Well, no, what I really need is something young, willing, and strange that I can sink my cock into until I forget all about Chloe Caulfield. I need a distraction; a drug, a drink, a lay I can forget about five minutes after like usual. I need
anything
to get my mind back in focus instead of this lingering obsession I have on the last girl in fucking Britain I need to obsess over.

Then of course there’s the
raging
case of blue balls I’m gritting my teeth at as I shove my way to front of the line outside the trendy club in Hoxton.

“Oy, chill there little lord.” A huge guy with dreads and a suit holding a clipboard steps between me and the door, “Feeling like a special fuckin’ snowflake tonight are we?” He narrows his eyes at me and nods his chin at the hundred or so people glaring at me from the line that runs down the length of the block.

“I’m meeting someone.”

He laughs, “I bet you are, son, I bet you are.” His arms fold over his chest and the smile drops in an instant, “Back of the line, and don’t make me do it for you.”

The funny thing here is that I was
raised
amongst tough guys like this. Wannabe gangsters and villains like this taught me how to lift a wallet from tourists in Leicester Square, or flip stolen handbags alongside Camden when other kids were learning to ride bikes and do their homework.

Needless to say, I’m not intimidated by thugs in suits working nightclub front doors. Not to mention, I need a drink fuckin’ ten minutes ago, and I’m
on
the list.

I’m about to say something about the man’s mum that’ll most likely make things wild real fast, when the door behind him bangs open and a man in a top suit with a bird on both arms stumbles out, laughing. He stops suddenly, and his mouth spreads into a grin as he sees me, “Ollie! Oy you little shit, c’mere!” 

He pushes past the scowling door man, shrugging off the two tarted-up girls on his arms as he grabs me into a big bear hug. 

Danny Cole;
the
Danny Cole, as in one of the most recognized chefs on the planet. As in, three fucking stars in Michelin, Danny Cole. I get blog posts, Danny gets the New York Times.

“The young prince deigns us with his presence after all, eh?” He pulls back, grinning at me, “Didn’t think important chefs like you could make it out to social functions like these.”

He’s yanking my chain; purposely being a dick to rattle my cage. Anyone else in the world would get popped in the mouth right quick for that type of shit, but then again, anyone else in the world isn’t the man who taught me how to cook and got my ass off the street.

If you believe in them, you might say Danny Cole is a sort of guardian angel. That is, if you also believe guardian angels drink like Irish dock workers and fuck anything with a pair of tits that moves. 

“Sorry, late night at
Jolie
, and-” I shoot the bouncer a withering look, “Had a bit of a problem with the list it seems.”

Danny shakes his head, “Oy, well, get your ass in there son; you’re gonna
love it
in here.” He turns and pats the bouncer on the shoulder. “Easy there boy-o, he’s with me,” Danny says as he passes him a wad of notes. He grabs the two girls he walked out with and drags them back inside, jerking his head at me to follow.

“Yeah,
boy-o,
” I say with the fakest smile I can come up with as I clap the big bouncer on the shoulder too, “
Down boy
.” His eyes narrow at me, but he doesn’t say shit as I follow Danny inside the club.

*****

It’s fuckin
mad
inside; and that’s even before Danny leads us through the crowd back to the VIP area he’s commandeered. The VIP area full of champagne, booze, and fuckin’
gorgeous
girls just gaggling to hang out with him.

Jesus, celebrité suits Danny well.

When we sit, we’re instantly surrounded by girls with bedroom eyes; girls who drape themselves over the two of us, girls who laugh at everything Danny says, and girls who trace fingers over my arms with stars in their eyes.

Kitchen groupies.

The fucked up thing is, this
actually
exists. With chefs being the new celebrity rock stars they are these days, the rock-star lifestyle naturally follows. Model-slash-hostesses and actress-slash-waitresses, food bloggers, restaurant reviewers, or just star-fuckers who see your name in the paper next to a picture of success and see it as their best shot of touching greatness.

Okay, given, these girls are all here for
Danny
, but cool by association is never really a bad thing now is it?

I mean the man only has
one
dick.

“Oy, so how’s it being the top-dog, Beckett?” Danny says, running a hand through his silver-tipped hair as a young blonde thing on his lap tries to kiss his neck. “Feel like murdering your whole staff yet?”

I laugh. “Naw, mate; it’s-” I shrug, “It’s exciting.”

Danny grins, the lines around his eyes crinkling. He’s one of those pricks that just gets more handsome with age; one of those guys that makes me hope I age more like my mother’s side than my pudgy, balding father’s. 

“So thats a yes on murdering the lot of them?” He says.

“Shit yes,” I say, raising a glass of champagne to him as he laughs.

“Fun being at the top, eh?”

I snort, “We calling
Jolie
the top now?”

Danny rolls his eyes as the girl on his lap starts to suck on his earlobe. “I can get you a job at fuckin Burger King if you like, boy-o. You got a packed house over there every night at your father’s place and you’ve got a kitchen they sunk, what, like a million quid into?” He snorts again before tossing back the rest of his champagne. “Don’t be one of those twenty-three year old jaded twats, Ollie.”

I shrug, nodding at him as the girl next to me on the couches slides up closer to me, as if her interest in me is directly tied to how much attention I get from Danny.

It probably is, and I
probably
don’t give a fuck.

“So, Marco giving you any shit over there?”

“Nah,” I say, “I’m running it real proper.” 

Danny smirks past the girl in his lap, “Yeah I bet. Little hothead like you trying to make everyone scared of him, right?” He shrugs, “It ain’t easy at the top mate. You’re isolated up there.” 

“Tell me about it.”

“Aw, now what’s the matter, lad, run out of waitresses and hostesses to fuck over there?” Danny grins at me while a second girl comes up behind the first attached to his neck and starts kissing
her
neck. “C’mon mate, what’d I teach you about fishing off the company pier?”

“Probably something like, ‘they’ve got the best fish’?”

Danny roars out a laugh before raising a hand to our personal cocktail waitress and gesturing for another bottle of bubbly.

Run out of waitresses and hostesses to fuck over there?
Yeah,
right
. Except I’m not sure how to tell a guy like Danny that it’s the opposite. How do you tell a perpetual bachelor like the man sitting next to me, the man who taught me everything I know about getting pussy, and the man with
three
girls now literally crawling all over him that it’s actually
one girl
that’s got me twisted up in this vice I can’t seem to break out of? How the fuck do I even begin to explain that I’m actually
annoyed
by the girl running her hands over my thighs because all I can think about is Chloe and her outright denying me?

“Listen, Ollie; stick it out with
Jolie
,” Danny says, looking me in the eye. “I know working for your pops ain’t ideal, but that’s a good place to earn your wings, mate.” He sighs and then reaches over to clap me on the shoulder, “Now buck up and cheer up, and go take this pretty young thing-” he grins at the girl climbing into my lap, “into the bathroom or something. You’re making me nervous over there, lad.”

He’s right, really. The whole Chloe thing is fucking with my head in ways my head
never
get’s fucked with by a girl. I need to forget the whole thing and just move on to things I know, like fucking models in club bathrooms. The Chloe thing? Fuck that. That’s a tree I need to stop barking up anyways. Time to drink up and forget.

*****

A few drinks later, and that plan is just
not
fuckin’ working; the whole “getting Chloe out of my mind” bit. The girl on my lap is running her hands over my chest, leaning into my neck as if to kiss me there even though I keep absently pulling away every time she does. I’m just not fucking feeling it; at all. 

This girl is fake; in every sense of it. This girl is a shadow following the light of the fame. She doesn’t want
me
, she wants what I
am
. She wants what I represent, and the idea of that has me gritting my teeth.

But I know what I need, regardless of her intentions. What I need is to fuck Chloe Caulfield right out of my system. What I
need
is what I knew I needed when I walked in here. I need to bury my cock balls deep in something strange and something that’ll hopefully scream loud enough to get Chloe’s name out of my head.

So when the girl who’s name I honestly don’t even know asks me if I “want to get out of here”, I say “fuck yeah,” even if just on instinct.

And when we’re in the cab, and she’s all over me, I’m still trying to make myself get into it, even if I’m
still
not. 

“Oy, c’mon baby, I want to feel you fuck me right here in the cab.” A girl this forward would normally have me hard a steel, but for some reason it’s sort of just turning me off this time. And I’m trying to muster myself up to get into this and just do what I know I need to do to get Chloe out of  my damn system, when the girl starts to pull her skirt up, flashing her panties at me in the back of the taxi. “C’mon,
fuck me
chef,
” she says.

Fuck
.

It’s the words I was
dying
to hear from Chloe earlier. The words I’d give a fucking leg to hear out of her mouth. But hearing it from this girl’s overly-made-up lips is just the final breaking point of the whole night for me, and I’m just done.

“Oy, where do you live luv?”

She grins at me, like this is me finally saying yes to her invitation, “Hackney,” she says, batting her eyes and licking her lips.

“Fantastic.” I knock on the driver’s glass, “Oy, pull over here, mate.”

She suddenly looks at me like I’m crazy. “Where are you going?”

“Sorry darling, gotta work in the morning.” I pass a bundle of notes to the driver, “Make sure she’s in first, yeah?”

“Are you fucking serious?” She’s glaring at me now, as if me not wanting to fuck her in the back of a taxi makes me some sort of reprehensible asshole.

“Nice meeting you,” I say, shutting the door behind me and knocking on the roof to signal the driver.

“Fag!” She screams out the window as the taxi pulls away into the night.

Classy ladies you hang out with, Danny
, I grumble to myself, clenching my jaw.

I’m not far from home, so I walk, ignoring my raging case of blue balls and still trying to figure out how to get Chloe fucking Caulfield out of my Goddamn head.