However, tonight was Gibsie's seventeenth birthday, so after relentless phone calls and texts, I'd given in and agreed to go out to celebrate with him and some of the team at Biddies.
Biddies was our local haunt in town, and contrary to the name, it was pretty modern with minimal culchies propping up the bar.
During the day, Biddies served the best food in town, and at night, it transformed into the hub for the town's younger generation.
I ate there a lot when my folks weren't home. The co-owner and head chef, Liam, was a really decent guy who had no problem with catering for my dietary needs. It was the only place in town I knew I could go to where I was guaranteed to get clean food.
As far as nights out went, I didn’t drink there very often, that was more of Gibsie's thing, but when I did, we were guaranteed to get both served and shitfaced.
It was a bad idea considering we both had a club match tomorrow morning, but Gibsie had justified our recklessness by repeating the sentiment that a fella only turns seventeen once.
That was true.
Problem was, it wasn’t as easy for me.
The lads could let loose on a night out and go mental if they wanted to.
No one except their mothers would judge them in the morning.
If I messed up, on the other hand, my name would be publicly dragged through the mud, the rugby heads would be on my case, and my position at The Academy would be in jeopardy.
Which made tonight worse for several reasons.
The first being, I was seventeen and had given into Gibsie's relentless pressure by drinking myself into a semi-paraletic state right along with him.
And second, Bella was here.
Both of these were very bad things with a possible disastrous ending.
Within minutes of my arrival at Biddies bar, it became pretty clear that Cormac wasn’t Bella's top priority; the minute I sat down at the table with the lads, she'd made a beeline for my lap and hadn't left since.
I spent most of the night trying to avoid making eye contact with the short skirt she was wearing and the view of that scrap of black lace between her thighs whenever she bent over the table to whisper something in one of her friend's ears.
It physically pained me.
Not because I was having some emotionally charged reaction towards her or anything like that, but because my balls ached.
It wasn’t that Bella wasn’t an attractive girl.
To give her credit, she was probably the best-looking girl in the bar.
With black hair styled into a bob, a tall, curvaceous body, and a massive pair of tits, she was a serious looker.
The issue was that I was done.
I was over it, whatever the hell it had been between us, and I had been for a long time.
And I wasn’t interested in stepping back into the ring for another round.
It didn’t seem to make a blind bit of difference to the girl because she was like a dog with a bone.
Me being the bone.
I'd lost count of the number of times I'd gone to the bar for another round just so I could reposition myself on a seat far away from her.
It didn’t work.
Her ass always found its way back to my lap, and I just ended up getting drunk faster.
No amount of no's or not tonight's or never agains' seemed to make a difference.
She wouldn’t leave me alone.
I didn’t want to embarrass or hurt the girl, though.
I wasn’t a complete prick.
Which was why I was tolerating this shite.
By half one, my head was swimming; the alcohol in my veins, mixed with the strong-ass medication I was still taking, making me clumsy and uncoordinated.
On a bright note, I wasn’t in pain anymore.
I couldn’t feel a fucking thing.
Super.
"Do you want to go somewhere else?" Bella purred, leaning close to my ear. Sliding her hand into the opening of my shirt, she trailed her fingers over my collarbone. "Somewhere a little more private?"
"No." Shaking my head, I brushed her hand aside – the one that was tiptoeing up my arm – and reached for the vodka and red bull I'd switched to eight pints in.
My movements were clumsy, causing my drink to slosh over the rim of the glass and onto the knee of my jeans.
All fucking night she'd been trying to kiss me and pet me, and all night, I'd been turning my head and brushing off her wandering hands.
I wasn’t a PDA kind of guy and she knew this.
Sitting on my lap like this wasn’t something I would tolerate on a normal night when we were on good terms, and the only reason she hadn't been ejected from my lap by now was because I was drunk as fuck and didn’t want to accidentally drop her on the floor and cause damage.
I didn’t like this, though.
Drunk or not, I didn’t appreciate this touchy-feely crap.
"Come on, sexy." Unperturbed by my actions, Bella reached for the collar of my shirt again. "We could always go out to the car?" she suggested, flicking another button open.
It had to be the fourth fucking button she'd managed to undo.
"No, Bella," I grumbled, my words coming out slurred. "Stop doing that." Capturing her hand, I removed it from my shirt and put it back on her lap. "I'm not in the mood."
"I can get you in the mood," she teased, hand moving to my belt buckle.
"Stop." I snagged her hand and placed it firmly on her lap. Again. "I'm still recovering – and we're done."
"Oh really?" She slid her hand inside my shirt, ignoring the we're done part. "I can change that, too."
"No." I brushed her other hand away from my crotch, grunting in pain when she roughly palmed my dick. "Bella, stop –" I paused to shake off the hand curling around the back of my neck. "Please just stop."
Jesus Christ, if I kept touching her after she'd told me to stop, there would be war.
Double fucking standards.
"Stop?" Bella snapped, glaring at me.
"Yes." Setting her hand back down on her thigh, I shifted out from beneath her. "I'm tired."
"You're always tired, Johnny!" she bit out. "And you're never in the mood anymore."
I wonder fucking why, I thought to myself, but made no move to answer her.
I was careful with my words around girls.
They could – and would – be misconstrued to her advantage.
Drunk as I was, I remembered exactly what I had been taught at The Academy, and this girl wasn’t going to get a rise out of me.
Not tonight, Satan.
Shrugging, I cast a bleary gaze around our table.
Our friends were watching.
No surprises there.
My gaze landed on Gibsie and I gave him my best 'you're a fucking bastard' glare.
His returning grimace was an apologetic one.
"Don’t ignore me when I'm talking to you," Bella demanded, voice high and pitchy, letting me know, even in my drunken state, that she was in worse condition.
"I'm not ignoring you," I replied, trying to remain calm through the haziness.
"Yes," she hissed, voice rising. "You are!"
"No, Bella." I released a weary sigh. "I'm not."
"Fine." Cupping my face with both her hands, Bella dragged my face down to hers, pressing her mouth to mine. "Then prove it," she growled before smashing her lips to mine.
Because of the alcohol coursing through my veins, it took me an extra few seconds to register what was happening.
The feel of her tongue sliding against my lips was like a douse of water.
I jerked my head away, but she had a death grip on my hair, keeping my lips on hers.
Temper rising, I stood abruptly, knocking the table in the process, and thankfully freeing myself from her hold.
Drinks smashed to the floor, glass shattering around us, drawing the whole room's attention to our table.
"What the fuck, Johnny!" Bella screeched, glaring up at me from her seat. "What's your problem?"
"When I tell you no," I growled, wiping the back of my mouth as I glared down at her. "I fucking mean no!"
"I just wanted you to kiss me," she screamed. "Is that too much to ask?"
"I don’t want to fucking kiss you!" I roared back, losing control of my temper. "I don’t want your mouth on mine. I don’t want your hands on my body. Because I don’t fucking want you!"
I regretted my words immediately.
But it was too late.
Bella burst into tears, and of course, I was the bastard who made her cry.