Page 1 of Rafferty's Rules
Chapter 1
RAFFERTY
I know what you’re thinking.
What’s a good-looking guy like him doing in a place likethis?
Believe me, I’m questioning this myself right now. But when a friend drunkenly calls you to say he’s about to visit a brothel on his buck’s night, you do what you can to prevent him from breaking his fiancée’s heart. It doesn’t matter if you’ve just gotten off a fourteen-hour flight, or that the flight had been delayed by another three because, when your phone rings, and you hear those words, you do what you can to make it right. Even if you end up embroiled in someone else’s clusterfuck.
And it all started off like this...
‘Joe, don’t be a knucklehead.’Have a day off from your full-time state of being,I think but don’t add.
‘You were supposed to be here.’ As Joe’s words run drunkenly together, I stifle a curse. Who the hell allowed him to get drunk this early on?
‘I’ll be there. Give me twenty minutes.’ Immigration cleared, I round the baggage carousel in long strides, cruising through customs unheeded. ‘Twenty-five tops.’
‘Says it’s gonna take him twenty minutes,’ he says, playing to his buck’s party entourage. ‘It won’t take me that long, eh, fellas!’
The peanut gallery gives a bawdy jeer, followed by shouts of:
It’ll be all over but the cryin’!
Nah, it’ll take him that long to get it up!
Ever felt like your flight had landed you in teenage purgatory?
‘So that’s the defence you’re working on, is it? Sorry, babe, I’m only a little bit guilty because it only took me a few pumps? Call me old-fashioned, but I think Anna will see it differently. In fact, if she thinks you’ve been within a whiff of a brothel, your wedding will be off and your arse will be toast, mate.’
‘What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her,’ he answers with more than a touch of belligerence. ‘What happens on the buck’s night stays on the buck’s night.’
‘That’s right, is it? With the bunch of fuckwits you’re partying with? Which one of the boneheads decided it would be a good idea to leave the strip club anyway?’
I can’t believe I’ve travelled all this way to put up with this shit. It’s not as though I was looking forward to overpriced drinks while watching some bored chick grinding away on a pole, but a brothel? And while I’d happily get back on a flight out of here to Af-fucking-ghanistan, I’m not only back in Sydney for tonight. I’m also required to stay for my brother’s upcoming nuptials. And for reasons I’d rather not think about, I’m looking forward to that event like I would a root canal.
I step out of the brightly lit airport into a cold, wet Sydney evening and shouldn’t be surprised by the weather’s welcome home as Joe’s words mumble down the line.
‘You wouldn’t tell her, would you, mate?’
‘Snitches get fucking stitches,’ some joker yells in the background.
‘Do you think I’d be first in line to tell her?’ With an annoyed shake of my head, I climb into the waiting dark-coloured Mercedes. I gesture to the driver to wait as the sound of a door creaking open echoes down the phone, and Joe’s mumbles are suddenly overtaken by the deep thrum of the bass, house music, a cacophony of voices, and clinking glasses.
Is he still at the strip joint? A club?
‘Nah, these boys are sweet as. They wouldn’t—’
‘Think, Joe!’ The words burst from my mouth angrily. ‘You can’t keep a secret when you’re partying with thirty guys. One of them will go home and tell his missus, who’ll tell her girlfriend, who’ll tellhergirlfriend, and before you know it, you’ll be standing at the altar with your dick in your hand because Anna will have chopped it off.’ If she’s got any sense, she’ll make sure she’s wearing rubber gloves.
‘But I’m getting married,’ he announces, his tone much like he’d said he was about to be hanged. ‘From next month on, I’ll only ever have Anna pussy. Forever!’
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I close my eyes. Drunk logic is making this an issuenow? ‘You’ve been dating since you were fifteen—half your fucking lifetime! The prospect of screwing one woman for life hasn’t been an issue before.’
Breathe in, breathe out. This is not your fucking problem.
Only it feels like my fucking problem because infidelity is never excusable.
And yes, there are all kinds of disloyalty; just don’t ask me which kind I’m guilty of.
