Flick Read Online Free Page A

Ella, Josh and a lass called Sally that I once got off with. To my shame she is now fat, and a chav.

WHAT KIND OF FUCKING STUPID NAME IS “RAINBOW”
    â€œWHAT kind of FUCKING STUPID name is ‘Rainbow’?” The club is packed and it’s three a.m. before we spill out onto the promenade. As usual I’m holding forth in the spotlight, the others blinded by my winning combination of sex appeal, humor, and overbearing cockiness (because I’m now twatted). There’s the shouting of drunk lasses, there’s fighting skinheads and there’s the sea less than fifty yards away, the waves crashing over each other wildly as if in a rush to join in with the party and compete with the noise. All the while Will Flicker, known as Flick, acts the jester, and tonight he’s in fucking top form, the King of Scorn, all the lesser mortals crowding around him admiringly to laugh at his witty comments and cheap jibes. What a cock.
    â€œYeah!” Ella chimes in, acting blond (not a big stretch for Ella). “Imagine saying, ‘Hi, I’m Rainbow .’ ”
    â€œ ‘Let me take you to my pot of gold.’ ” I make another blinding crack. “I bet her boyfriend’s a leprechaun.” Mike snorts alcopops out of his nose and I nudge him and whisper loudly. “The height makes him perfect for easy-access muff-diving.”
    â€œBAhahahaha.” Jamie chokes on his cigarette smoke. “And his ginger beard tickles in a really good way on my woohoo!”
    Ella giggles. “And his little green clothes make him really easy to coordinate with.”
    Back to me “for something funnier but more obscene” (and I actually say that out loud): “I only appear if it’s very . . . WET . . . indeed.” Oh yes, every daft prick there laughs, much louder than they did for Jamie or Ella. Too easy. I’m too good, that’s why.
    A voice from behind me adds to our banter. “Yeah, she must be a right whore!”
    â€œAll right! Calm down, that’s taking it too far.” I turn and find myself right in the face of a girl about my age, one of the late-night slags probably, but there’s a fullness to her lips and a light in her eyes, which I think are gently mocking me although I’m not sure yet why, implying better health. Her hair is scruffy, a dark frieze about her face, her makeup light and her complexion pale, not orange like Ash and the others. “Who are you then? You out with Ashley?” I say, expecting a quick answer, gearing myself up for a bit of banter.
    â€œYou first.” Her directness blindsides me. The right corner of her mouth grins, daringly, proudly. I stop moving with my Beck’s halfway to my mouth. Cheeky bitch. Sexy too. I almost blush but manage to wait for about three seconds, then give her an oh-you-want-to-play-games look (slightly suggestive, with a backwards movement of the head, followed by a slight nod forward—damn smooth). I then cock my head in a substitute shrug, say, “Will Flicker”—pause—“but everyone calls me Flick,” then grin and take a swig. Champion.
    I’m feeling on top of the world, cock of the walk, and somewhere in the reaches of my mind I hear a lone sober thought quietly wonder if I could be very, very drunk. Not just superficially and amusingly drunk, but deeply, and importantly, drunk. But the thought is fleeting. I continue.
    â€œAnd you?” I shoot her a questioning, Brad Pitt–from– Fight Club I’m-so-hot look. The thought becomes a disdainful voice: Maybe you should calm down . I ignore it, focused instead on what I’ve now realized is a very attractive lass, who my whisky-sodden and stoned brain believes without doubt will be getting off with me under the pier by closing time. Oh yes. Her smile stretches, her full ripe lips part like a tantalizing femme fatale’s and involuntarily I imagine them on