Bad Desire: New Beginnings - Fast Forward

Chapter 60

"To say thank you, let's have more than your one sad and lonely one drink." Ashley nudged Jack's side with a huge grin plastered across her face causing him to just frown back at her.

After Jack's agreement to lend her the money for rent, she seemed to have a kick in her step and in a much perkier mood than she had been previously.

"How does that make any sense? You have 'no money'?"

"Oh!" Ashley began to laugh. "I wasn't offering to pay!!"

The teasing grin that was now evident across her faces caused Jack to roll his eyes. Ashley's previous upsetting victim act was very quickly lost and she was straight back to her happy self.

"So you want to borrow a couple of hundred from me and then celebrate paying your rent with my money by using more of my money to pay for drinks?" Jack let out a much-needed breath after finishing the sentence.

Shrugging her shoulders, Ashley downed the last of her drink before standing to her feet.

"Come on, we are supposed to be celebrating our friends' love!" Reaching out she grabbed Jack's hand before pulling him to his feet.

Reluctantly following suit, they both began making their way to the bar with Jack's mind still fixated on Jess.

He still hadn't seen her and she hadn't replied to his texts either, so while Jess was not here, Ashley was taking full advantage of Jack's attention.

"What do you want?" Ashley asked after briefly smiling at the bar man.

Jack was looking back at Ashley unsure of how to react, so just started laughing instead. This girl really didn't see how she was acting could be portrayed. She was aware they would be using Jack's money to pay yet was still acting as though she was doing him a favour.

Jack remembered her being like this back when they were younger. It didn't matter how rich her parents were, she never had the kindness in her to treat anyone else. She would always take without giving and would overly use what was seen as 'traditional' or the 'norm' to get what she wanted. That meant, when she was out, she would always rely on the guys to buy her drinks and not ever offer to pay herself.

"Whatever, just order a selection. I'll buy a round for the table." Jack replied with a wave of his hand.

He knew if he was going to be caught up in buying Ashley's drinks for the rest of the night, he may as well include everyone else in the antics. If he started just paying for hers, she would definitely take it the wrong way. However, if he included those that were in the party too, he could get away with making it a social group thing and not just him and her.

...

It was clear the drinks paid for by Jack had gone down well because he had ended up paying for many rounds after that. Ashley had continuously made her way up to the bar, taking Jack's cash as she did so to get their crowded table with a continuous round of drinks.

Jack hadn't originally planned on being the guy to ensure everyone had a drink in hand all night but he seemed to have taken on that role thanks to Ashley. He had been so busy trying to get out of irresponsibility drinking with her alone that it seemed to have involved the whole table and the cash he had brought with him was very quickly going down.

There was no way this was going to end well but with plenty of alcohol in him, it was proving difficult to turn down. So unless he found Jess as soon as possible, this night would be getting a lot more reckless than he had planned for it to be.

...

While everyone seemed to be enjoying the free drinks, resulting in a lot of overly drunk friends in the first few hours, not everyone was enjoying the night quite so much. After what had gone down between Sophie and Elliot, Elliot had managed to get Erika to go with him somewhere quieter so they could talk.