You Can't Hurry Love

Chapter Eleven

'You work at Music Motion? I love that place! I was literally there a fortnight ago. Are you front of house or a performer?'

We were all waiting on the platform for our tube to arrive and Lizzie was questioning Isaac about his job as a freelance drag performer, talking at him and Lincoln in the same bulldozer way Lizzie does whenever she's with people, acting like she's known them forever whether she met them an hour ago or not. I've always envied that about her. You could put Lizzie in a room with a hundred people and she would leave with a hundred friends, whereas I would just sweat profusely and wait nervously in the corner with the hopes that someone would approach me first.

Luckily for Ben and I though, this has given us the perfect excuse to skulk off to the side to discuss the unfortunate event that had unfolded, the first time we'd been able to do so since we left the restaurant, and from the look on Ben's surly face, I knew I was going to be on the receiving end of his belligerent mood.

'I cannot believe she invited him. It wasn't her place to do so. Who even is she anyway?' He was shaking his head and glaring down the platform at the three of them, his eyes fixed on the man gate-crashing his big night out. Someone he just happened to loathe, who was currently making his boyfriend sputter with laughter.

Am I missing something here?

How come everyone seems to be finding Lincoln so funny all of a sudden? Because I've now spent several occasions in this man's company and I have to say, at no point has he ever gone out of his way to make me laugh.

'She works in my building. And look, she was just being friendly. She doesn't know how much of an arse he is yet,' I reply somewhat cagily, feeling the need to defend my friend even though I secretly agreed with him. Lincoln joining us this evening had definitely put a dampener on things. My only saving grace was that I could probably lose him the second we got to the club anyway. 'The night is still young. Knowing him he's probably seconds away from telling her her haircut makes her face look weird, or that her perfume is too pungent, and then she'll tell him to sling his hook.'

Though from the looks of what I can see from over here that doesn't yet seem to be the case.

'Yeah, I guess so,' Ben huffs. 'But you could have done something about it at the restaurant and then we wouldn't have to wait for him to cock-up.'

'Like what? He asked me outright in front of everyone if I had a problem with it. I could hardly say no, could I?'

'That's exactly what you should have said!' Ben shouts, raising his voice passionately and alarming the people standing near to us.

'Oh, really? And you would have done the same thing, would you? Tell him he wasn't invited and then leave him to lock the door after us as we all went on our merry way!'

'Yes, I would!' he declares vehemently, although one of his eyebrows starts twitching, a surefire way to indicate that he might not be telling me the truth and when he sees me looking at it, he contorts his face back into its skulk as he mumbles under his breath, 'You're a people pleaser.'

'HOW am I?'

Now it was my turn to get annoyed and I drag him further up the platform and away from our friends' prying ears.

'Oh, come on, don't deny it. You're so scared of upsetting anyone that Lincoln could have punched you in the face and you still would have invited him. You, my friend, are-'

'WHAT? Kind? Benevolent? Unproblematic? Everything you're not, apparently. And you should watch your words, Benjamin Garrick! Maybe you're forgetting that I'm the one holding the tickets tonight.'