Don't Get Caught

Chapter 2 - Ariel

I hurried along the uneven pavement, struggling to keep up with Skarsgård's long strides. My ridiculous shoes not helping the situation as my superpower began to slip. "Look, I know we've met before, and not that long ago, but can you help me out with your name."

"Danny."

"Danny. Great. Ariel."

"I know."

"Yes. You have a good memory."

"You have an unusual name."

"No, I don't. It's a Shakespearean name."

"Sounds like a mermaid's name to me."

"Well yours sounds like a-" Ugh, my brain couldn't work fast enough. The Little Mermaid had come out when I was eleven so perfect timing for me to go to secondary school and gain years of practice at batting away mermaid comments from students and teachers alike. Right then I couldn't think of one. "-A loser's name." Great.

"Whatever. Are you staying at mine?"

"Am I? You tell me."

"I've got plenty of space."

He almost seemed annoyed; his responses short and sharp, no smile. I should really go home. But Danny spotted a taxi heading in our direction and flagged it down, flicking his cigarette to the kerb.

"You coming?" he said as the black cab pulled up next to us.

I gave him a quizzical look, crossing my bare arms across my chest.

"Look, I'm not leaving you here in the middle of the night, so far from the sea... and dressed like that." Deadpan. He lingered on my dress with an unreadable expression. All I knew was that it wasn't desire in his eyes. "If you want to go to a hotel instead, I'll drop you off somewhere. But you should really just stay at mine."

He leant over and opened the taxi door. I took a breath, catching his musty scent as I got in, pulling on my short dress to avoid giving him too much of a show. Sober me would have realised Danny was not in a casual birthday hook-up kind of mood, but drunk me was desperate to spend time with him, regardless. He intrigued me.

"Thanks for this," I said as the taxi sped off. "It was my birthday - I got a bit carried away."

He smiled then, finally, but didn't say anything. We fell into silence. I looked straight ahead, forcing myself not to blatantly check him out, but his legs were too long for the limited space, so they spread out, encroaching on my side of the cab. One expensive Chelsea-booted foot in my footwell. I had a thing about good shoes. Our feet looked good together.

His house was only a five-minute drive away in a nice part of the city. It was at the end of a wide, tree-lined road, each house with a long driveway and plenty of land around it. So, Danny was rich, then?

He walked up the cobbled driveway ahead of me as I looked up at his imposing residence. A long building with large, dark windows, the front of the house framed by a magnificent oak tree. I took careful steps along the uneven driveway, not wanting my heel to get caught. Falling arse over tit was not going to endear me to him.

I was starting to experience a glimmer of nervousness as he let me in through his heavy front door. I didn't know this guy at all. The inside of his home was as large and intimidating as the outside; an enormous entrance hall with many doors leading off it. There was no obvious place to leave shoes in the empty hallway, so I kept mine on, clicking along the dark parquet flooring that led deep into the even darker house. A hollowness rang through the long corridor.

Danny took me through to the kitchen which was more open and airier, and retrieved two glasses and a bottle from the drink's cabinet. "OK, I have whiskey." He said it as if it surprised him it was there.