Her Bad Boy (Chapter 1)

How does a girl cope when her twin flame is the definitive bad boy? (18+ Erotica)

Chapter 1: The Advice of Madame Rosario

Nobody knew the future.

Sally McMasters knew the only law that governed the future was the law of irony. What you expected to happen rarely ever did. What was that saying about the best laid plans?

So she considered it the height of irony to find herself sitting in a tacky gypsy tent waiting for Madame Rosario to read her friend Daisy’s palm. Was this the best way to spend a Friday night? Have a bit of fun, Daisy had said, dragging her in from out of the chilly bustle of the fairground. Live a little. But Sally didn’t seem to live at all these days.

Draped in multicoloured fabrics, Madame Rosario stared intently at the glass ball in front of her. She shifted her large frame in her star sequinned chair, which creaked in complaint. The tent shook, rattling the glass ornaments hanging from its ceiling. “Ah, I zee... uh men.”

“I hope you mean a man, and not men,” Daisy chirped cheerfully, “I’m not sure I could handle more than one, not long term anyway. Maybe for a threesome but-”

Sally nudged her friend hard in the side to shut her up. Madame Rosario had started giving them strange looks, but Daisy continued unperturbed.

“Are you going to look in that big glass ball for my mate as well?” Daisy stifled a chuckle. “I want to see what he’ll look like. Make him tall, dark and delicious! She loves them like that.”

Madame Rosario glared at Daisy.

“Men are not made to order,” Sally nudged her friend again, but softer this time.

The fortune teller puffed out her ample bosom indignantly. The tent seemed to shrink. “Ladiez, theez is no joke! Pleez consantrate!”

Sally gave Madame Rosario her best placating smile. “Forgive my friend. She is over twenty but acts like we’re still in kindergarten.”

The fortune teller looked at her for a moment, and Sally felt uncomfortable under the scrutiny of Madame Rosario’s coal black eyes.

“You very recently split up from lover, yes?”

Sally raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Yes...”

“Give me hand.”

Sally stretched out her hand with a little trepidation, as though Madame Rosario might bite it.

“This boy was a bad boy, yes?”

Daisy gave a whoop of delight. “Was he ever!”

Sally’s free elbow was too far for a third nudge. “Shut up, Daisy.”

“You know I’ve just about had enough of you, young lady.” Madame Rosario’s accent had suddenly changed into a perfect Scottish brogue. Both girls blinked at her in amazement.

Daisy looked around to see if someone was secretly filming them for one of those TV shows that played pranks on unsuspecting members of the public. “What’s happened to your accent?”

“Gone with my patience! Now go on, scoot out.”

Both girls got up to go, but the fortune teller, still holding on to Sally's hand, motioned for her to sit back down. “Your friend can wait outside for you if she’s a mind to.”

Madame Rosario gave Sally a beaming smile as Daisy traipsed out of the tent. “What a relief. It’s been like that all day.”

“Daisy is harmless.”

“In small doses so is arsenic.” Madame Rosario patted her hand. “You are different. So I will give you a real reading, and not the gimmicky tat I do for the rest.”

Sally looked a bit embarrassed. “I have to confess that I don’t actually believe in this stuff.”

“I know. Most don’t. But curiosity gets the better of them. Now, let me have a look...”

It went quiet inside the tent for a few moments, and Sally could hear the sound of the fair intruding in. She wondered if Daisy would skip off and leave her, and felt a small pang of guilt when she realised that she didn’t much care if she did.

“You know I’m really not that curious-”

“This boyfriend of yours,” Madame Rosario cut into Sally’s sentence.

“Ex-boyfriend,” Sally cut back.

“He really hurt you didn’t he?” Madame Rosario asked quietly. “He’s a real bad boy, as we used to say.”

A real bad boy. A term applied to men that treat women poorly, so why did most women she knew lick their lips at those two words? “They still call them that,” she replied, clearing her throat. Somehow it had managed to dry out.

Madame Rosario gave a sigh. “There is just something about a guy like that which draws you in. You know you shouldn’t, but you just can’t help yourself. Right? Even as your head tells you to beware your heart just gets you into trouble.”

Sally nodded in reply. She had never figured it out, what the attraction actually was. He wasn’t necessarily more physically attractive or smarter or more successful than the other nicer guys around town. In fact, he had fewer of these qualities, yet had been harder to resist. She had been smitten by him from the first day she laid eyes on him. Just one look had sent a frisson of excitement up and down her spine, rooting her to the spot.

“Tell me if any of this rings a bell? Never showing up until he wanted sex, and no phone call afterwards. Forgetting or ignoring your birthday and other important dates? Flirting openly with other women when you were together? I guess he probably even hit on your flighty friend who came in with you?”

Sally hadn’t noticed, but tears had begun to appear at the cradle of her eyes. “I found them in bed together,” she whispered.

“Well you’re a loyal friend. I could tell that. But loyalty can sometimes blind you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you ever heard of something called your twin flame?”

Sally shook her head, but she was interested enough to want to hear more. Madame Rosario let go of her palm, and stared her straight in the eyes.

“I hope you won’t mind me saying, but you’re a bonny wee girl, with your baby blues and black hair, a lovely lass like you would be scooped up in no time in the Highlands where I grew up. But you’ve no confidence in yourself. If you had you’d have seen the truth of the matter.”

“What truth? And what does this have to do with a - twin flame?”

“I’m coming to that. I saw in your palm that you really love this guy. But more than that, he’s your twin flame. The ultimate relationship.”

Sally gave out a half-laugh, but she felt more like crying. “That’s not how I would have described it.”

She knew well the law of irony from her university studies on history. Was it not the only genuine historical law after all? She remembered Joseph Brodsky’s writings about the conceit of thinking that a person could determine the future from the past. When the Berlin Wall collapsed some thought global capitalism had won, and no one could have predicted that over twenty years later the same economies would be struggling to stay afloat.

Yes, nobody knew the future.

She knew that; but if she was so supremely confident, why was she sitting here waiting for Madame Rosario to look into her past to see if a tall, dark and hopefully handsome man was waiting in the wings for her? And why did she feel so sure the fortune teller was right when she said her ultimate relationship had been and gone?

However destructive it might have been, she knew she would never love anyone like she had loved - like she loved - him.

Hell is other people, was it Jean-Paul Sartre that wrote that? But for her it was the absence of one person. And the more she missed him, the more she felt her health was suffering. The joy had gone out of her life. Even her brother Iain, usually so good at cheering her up, had failed this time around.

Sally was aware that carrying around a load of anger could hurt her physically, too. There had been a study she’d read where a heated ten-minute argument showed a jump in blood pressure for couples. Well, her relationship had been a lot like that, but it had also made her feel alive. Now, she just felt empty, deflated - and dead. Her soul was void.

Madame Rosario took back hold of her hand, and stopped Sally's train of thoughts. ”It was never boring with him, was it? It was unpredictable and exciting. He was strong, self-assured, maybe even a little aggressive?”

“I felt safe with him.” Was she actually defending him? She couldn’t believe her ears. Yet, Madame Rosario had a way of making her talk. “Most of our problems were not his fault... he was trying to get his life together after doing a tour of duty in Afghanistan.”

Madame Rosario nodded understandingly. “You haven’t met anyone else that makes you feel the way he does. He never came across as needy and desperate, but you felt he needed you - right?”

Sally nodded, unable to hide her amazement. She was reading her like a book. “How do you do that?”

“Never mind that. Talk. You need to talk.”

She was right. She did need to talk. “At first I couldn’t believe I was attracted to someone like him, but he was so charming and passionate about everything. He is a soldier, but it really changed him. He wanted to fight for peace, he said, so he left the army. But it broke his heart...”

“You know usually a lack of self-esteem is what attracts a woman to a bad boy. She’s always the one doing the giving in those types of relationships. If she doesn’t feel good about herself, she chooses someone who reinforces her negative self-beliefs. But with you I sense it was different - this guy is your twin flame, and quite the opposite, it was your lack of self-esteem that stopped you fighting to make it work.”

“What are you saying? I should have forgiven him for sleeping with my best friend?”

Madame Rosario traced the lines of her palm. “You know I read a lot in your palm, but I don’t read that.”

“I caught them in bed together!”

“In flagrante delicto?”

“I didn’t exactly catch them in the act if that’s what you mean, but maybe that’s because I got there too early!”

“Did you let him explain?”

“How could he explain what I saw with my own eyes?”

“What did your friend-?” She stopped and pointed questioningly at the door of the tent, motioning to Sally for her friend’s name.

“Daisy.”

“Right, Daisy. What did she have to say about it?”

Sally went quiet. She was reluctant to tell her that they hadn’t talked about it.

“You told me a little while back that she was harmless. But I think that was the loyal part of you talking, the part of you that defends without thinking. And I think we both know that Daisy isn’t as harmless as she acts.”

As if on some mystical cue, Daisy popped her head through the closed door of the tent. “What are you doing? Getting your whole life read in here? How much longer are you going to be?”

Sally gently took her hand away from Madame Rosario’s, and stood up. “Thank you for the advice. But I really need to get going.”

Madame Rosario shrugged her large shoulders. “But just remember this - clarify what you value most in life. What is it you can’t live without? Once you know what matters most, and believe you’re worthy of achieving it, you’ll have taken an important step towards finding the right partner for you. Maybe in this lifetime it isn’t your twin flame. But you will have to live with the fact that you’ll never love anyone like him again. Don’t forget that, will you?”

Sally left the tent with the fortune teller's words ringing in her ears.

Daisy stuck her tongue out behind them after she felt they were a safe distance away from the fortune teller. “I should have never talked you into it. What a waste of money!”

“She didn’t ask me for money.”

“I was talking about me! How about you? No tall, dark man on the horizon?”

Sally tried to give out a smile. “Oh, plenty of men. Just not the right one.”

“Really?” Her friend gave a loud guffaw. “Plenty of men, eh? That’s not how I’d describe our current situation. Where are they, then?”

As Daisy pretended to scan the fairground, Sally looked up at the big wheel turning slowly around in the distance, its lights flashing like spinning stars in the night, and the excited teenagers waiting in line to get on it. She spied a pair of young lovers huddled together at the end of the line. Snatches of conversation drifted over to them.

Was it only a few short weeks ago that she had been huddling like that? She had to admit that although he was a bad boy in so many ways, she’d felt valued and respected by him. A complete contradiction in terms, she knew, but that was him to a tee. He was well-read, surprisingly for a soldier she used to think, and he’d never once tried to undermine her self-worth like other men had, intimidated by her education. In a small, northern town like this located in the Scottish Lowlands, few men had time for what they called uppity skirts with brains.

The tears suddenly stung her eyes again when she remembered how intimate they had been. Yes, he had frustrated her with his pigheadedness sometimes, and with his long absences, but he had stirred her senses and met her needs like no other man had before.

It seemed unfair that while he’d opened up her defences and made her vulnerable to him, he’d refused to do knock down his walls for her. His refusal should have warned her that he wasn’t in it for the long-term. He’d never made her any promises to be faithful, and if she was honest with herself, he’d never felt available for a real relationship. She’d always felt there was some dark part of himself he kept closed from her, and that hurt.

“Hey... Are you all right?”

“Yeah.” Her friend's voice was beginning to grate on her nerves. She suddenly felt she had to get away from her. “I think I am going to go home though.”

“What? What for? The night is still young to meet some fresh new talent.”

“Oh Daisy, act your age! What type of boys do you think you are going to find at a fairground?” The fuse Madame Rosario had lit inside her, slowly burning ever since she left the tent, had finally exploded.

Daisy looked as though she’d just taken a slap to the face. “What is the matter with you? Just what did that fat bitch say to you in there? You seemed to get very pally with her.”

“Nothing. And don’t call her names. She’s old enough to be your mother.”

Daisy put her hands up in mock surrender at Sally’s sudden outburst. “OK. OK. Calm down. Listen, give me a call tomorrow when you are feeling better, all right?”

“Yeah, sure.” Sally nodded, feeling relieved that the tension was over. Having a confrontation in the middle of a busy fairground was the last thing she needed.

“Call me, OK?”

“Sure.”

She walked away from Daisy towards the direction of the Ferris wheel ride, and felt a tightness in her gut. It felt a little like guilt for being such a flake. But what would it achieve losing a friend as well as a lover-?

Her breath caught in her throat without warning. What she saw seemed to make her ears tune out the sounds of the crowded fairground.

Was she dreaming? Had she been thinking about him so much, that he had materialised out of thin air as if by magic?

Because there he was. Her bad boy. She had come eye-to-eye with the man whose name she’d tried so hard to forget since throwing him out of her life.

Stephen was standing only a few feet away from her. Her twin flame, if Madame Rosario's advice had been right.

She instinctively licked her lips. She couldn’t look away.

Now what was she to do?

End of Chapter 1 | Read Chapter 2

Yours in love,