‘Hi.’ Dan stood in front of me, back in his regulation jeans, T-shirt and
trainers, looking far more confident than he had any right to. ‘Can I come
in?’
I peered around the doorway and attempted to stare him down. It was
easier with the tins of paint. ‘Why?’
‘Because?’ He ran his hand through the back of his hair, making his curls
flop forward into his eyes. Not that I was noticing his eyes. Or his curls. Or
the way his bicep curled against the white fabric of his T-shirt when he bent
his arm. ‘Rachel, just let me in.’
I considered slamming the door in his face for a moment before relenting
and opening it fully. Redhead Rachel was going to have to go back in her
box for ten minutes. ‘I honestly have absolutely no idea why you’re here,’ I
said, closing the door behind him. ‘Unless Ana sent you to kick my arse.’
‘Ana could kick your arse all by herself.’ He walked through to the living
room and surveyed my handiwork. ‘Maybe not Emelie though. You’re
painting? Or just graffiti-ing your own house?’
I looked at the oversized abuse on the wall and shrugged. ‘He is a dick.’
‘Definitely, definitely all over then?’ he asked.
‘We’ve been through this. I think it was just before your girlfriend went
mental in the bogs of a very classy event.’ I sat on the arm of my chair,
keeping a safe distance in case he came down with a case of the kisses
again. Kissing Dan would be awful. Genuinely terrible. I really hadn’t given
it a second thought and I absolutely hadn’t lain awake thinking about how
our almost-kiss made my heart race and lips tingle. ‘Apparently I’m
boring.’
‘Couple of things.’ He still had his back to me as he picked up a
paintbrush and began painting around my eloquent message. ‘Firstly, she’s
not my girlfriend. Secondly, you were the one who ended up being carted
off in a police car and, thirdly, no one can call you boring. As evidenced by
my secondly.’
Why hadn’t he mentioned the fact that I wasn’t wearing any trousers?
Why hadn’t he acknowledged that he’d tried to kiss me? She wasn’t his
girlfriend? Which pants was I wearing again? Why was he here?
‘I wasn’t at my most stable,’ I admitted, picking up the second paintbrush
and starting on the other wall. ‘Things are a bit up in the air at the moment.
And she was such a … such a—’
‘Such a dick?’ he interrupted.
‘Well, yes,’ I looked over to watch him happily painting away with a
smile on his face. I supposed it would have been a shame to have those
biceps in the neighbourhood and not put them to good use. The biceps and
the lovely back muscles that moved under his too tight T-shirt every time he
stretched up. And I wasn’t sure how his backside was helping, other than
temporarily putting me into a trance every time he bent down to reload his
brush. ‘I’m sorry, I know you two are, well, whatever, but I can’t deal with
it any more. She’s a moron, Dan.’
I wasn’t able to engage my tact muscles at the same time as my perving
muscles, apparently.
‘Yeah, she is a bit,’ Dan agreed, making short work of the white wall. ‘I
don’t know what I was thinking.’
‘It’s possible that you weren’t,’ I suggested, slightly relieved that he
hadn’t walked out before finishing that difficult bit up by the ceiling. I hated
stepladders. ‘As usual.’
‘How’s the list going?’ he turned quickly, catching my checking him out
completely.
I blushed and turned back to painting my wall, hoping that he could only
see one set of cheeks blushing.
‘Fine.’ I really didn’t want to go into my lingerie purchase with him right
now. He was seeing all he was going to see of my underwear there and then.
‘Good.’
We painted along to low levels of ‘Crazy for You’ until I decided enough
was enough. We weren’t going to talk about the fact that he’d tried to kiss
me the night before? I put my brush back in the tray, checked they were in
fact decent, full-coverage knickers and cleared my throat.
‘Dan?’
‘Rachel?’
‘Without wanting to sound ungrateful, why are you here?’
He stopped painting, turned around and pulled a face.
‘It’s a good question actually,’ he said, pink paint dripping onto his white
trainer. ‘I was at a camera shop in Old Street and I was walking back to
Angel then the next thing I knew, I was here.’
‘Right.’ I noticed a smudge of paint on his cheek and fought the urge to
rub it off. Redhead Rachel was clearly insane and she did not like being put
in a time out.
‘Thought I’d check to see whether or not they’d sent you down.’ Dan
spotted the paint on his shoe and sat down cross-legged on my hardwood
floor to wipe it off. ‘I just wanted to see if you were all right.’
Well that was nice. Really nice.
‘You could have called,’ I suggested. ‘Sent a text?’
‘I could,’ he agreed.
Right, I needed trousers. The overwhelming urge I had to knock Dan
onto his back and find out just what that kiss would have felt like was
entirely being-in-my-knickers-related, obviously.
‘Back in a minute.’ I dropped my paintbrush on a dustsheet and pelted into
the bedroom. I just needed a pair of trousers, shorts, anything. A pair of
knackered cut-offs that had somehow survived the cull won the race and I
slipped them on while giving myself a stern talking-to. This was Dan. This
was my friend, Dan. OK, so yes, when you very first met him you thought
he was cute, but as soon as he’d established that you were the hired help
and not a model, he’d turned off the charm, turned on the bullshit and any
thoughts of an office romance were quickly banished. He probably just felt
sorry for me because I’d been dumped. Or maybe Veronica had told him I
wanted the Sydney job and he was here to let me down gently. Either way,
hanging around my flat looking cute and helping me with the painting …
well, it wasn’t a crime but he needed to leave. It was too weird.
‘You know, I’ve never actually been inside your flat before,’ he called
from the living room. ‘It looks like you.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, striding back in with a great sense of purpose. A sense
of purpose that was somewhat shaken when I saw that Dan had taken his Tshirt
off. Oh. My God.
‘I didn’t want to get paint on it,’ he explained, pointing to his shirt on the
chair, like butter wouldn’t melt. It was one thing to see your attractive coworker
in far-too-tight-for-a-straight-man jeans and T-shirt, and one thing to
see him looking gorgeous in a tuxedo, but to have him half-naked in your
living room was quite another. Had he always had that body? Yes, the great
arms I could understand, he was always lugging camera equipment around,
but actual abs? Muscles that I could see and count? Not that he was bodybuilder
bulgy, just nicely defined and perfectly tanned. And while I’d
always thought I preferred Simon’s smooth chest, the curly brown rug that
perfectly matched the hair on his head wasn’t hurting. We weren’t talking
Tarzan and the apes, just a light dusting right across his broad, broad chest.
Shi-i-i-t.
‘All right, Fabio.’ I picked up his T-shirt. ‘I’ve put my clothes on; you
put on yours. It’s time to leave, I’ve got plans.’
‘Fine, but I think you’re going to want another coat on this unless you
want people playing Catchphrase on your wall.’ He set down his brush and
pulled on his shirt. Promptly getting pink paint all over it.
‘Say what you see, Dan,’ I said, holding the front door open. ‘I’ll talk to
you later.’
‘Wait.’ He paused on the top step. ‘What are you doing Saturday?’
‘Day?’
‘Night?’
Ruh-Roh, Scoobs.
‘I’m actually having a birthday party for Matthew,’ I stammered. ‘Here.’
‘Oh.’ He picked at the paint on the front of his shirt. ‘That sounds like
fun.’
‘You can come if you want.’
The words were out of my mouth before I’d had time to think them
through. Damn you, Redhead Rachel. I needed to be careful; this whole
split personality was all going a bit Black Swan. Except I was not Natalie
Portman and no one was going to be giving me an award for going mental.
‘Nineish?’
‘Done,’ he gave me a grin and vanished down the stairs. ‘See you
Saturday, Summers.’
I didn’t know what I was most worried about. The fact that I was going to
see him on Saturday or the fact that I was super excited about it.
Preventative measures had to be taken.
Back in the living room, I sat down for a second and stared at my freshly
painted pink wall. What exactly had just happened? Completely weirded
out, I dragged my handbag across the floor and pulled out my phone, the
scrap of paper with Asher’s phone number on it coming out too. Right. I
was supposed to call him. Maybe a palate-cleansing date with the cute
Clark Kent-alike yoga teacher was exactly what I needed. Because Dan
hadn’t asked me out on a date. And even if he had, I wouldn’t have said
yes. Probably. I tapped the numbers in quickly before I could go any further
down that line of thought.
‘Hello, Asher speaking,’ he answered right away, which was nice.
‘Hi, Asher.’ I wasn’t good on the phone; texting had been invented for a
reason. ‘It’s Rachel? We met at the thing at …’ Where was it that I’d set the
sprinklers off and caused thousands of pounds’ worth of damage and
watched my best friend punch a supermodel in the face? Oh yeah. ‘The
Savoy last night.’
‘Oh, hi.’ He didn’t hang up! He actually sounded happy! He didn’t know
that I was the psycho who’d probably cost him his deposit from Moss Bros!
‘I didn’t really think you’d call.’
Oh.
‘But I’m really glad you did.’
Oh!
‘Did you get out OK? How mad was that scene with the sprinklers?’
‘Yeaaah.’ I was very glad he could not see my face. ‘Mad. Totally mad.’
‘I was thinking, do you have plans tomorrow night?’ he asked straight
out. Wow! A date! This is what happened to Emelie all the time!
‘I don’t,’ I said, trying my best to sound flirtatious. This was, after all, the
potential father of my children. Christ, my mother would die from
happiness if I told her I was marrying a yoga teacher. Although, as we
hadn’t even been on one date yet, there was a chance I was putting the cart
a little bit before the horse.
‘Brilliant,’ he definitely sounded happy. ‘I’m teaching a class in Islington
and I thought you might like to come along.’
Really? He’d gone to the trouble of giving Emelie his phone number so
he could recruit me into one of his bloody yoga classes? Sorry Mum.
‘And then maybe we could go and get a drink?’
The wedding was back on.
‘That sounds lovely,’ I lied through my back teeth. The drink sounded
fantastic; the yoga sounded like sheer torture. ‘Can’t wait.’
He gave me the time and whereabouts of the class, we said quick
goodbyes and I hung up. Yoga date. Either this was a brilliant idea – lots of
potential for touching and hilarious stories for the kids, or a terrible idea – I
would end up back on muscle relaxants and we’d only have kids because
we kept dating out of a weird sense of obligation since he’d injured me and
I was embarrassed. Once again, I had that cart rolling well ahead of the
horse.
While I was on a roll, I checked Facebook for any new messages from
Ethan and giggled like a little girl when there was one waiting.
‘Hey again,’ he started, ‘I can’t believe you’re single.’
I took one look at the ever more obvious ‘Simon is a dick’ on the livingroom
wall and struggled to see his difficulty.
‘You’re still ridiculously cute – remind me why we never got together?
You could have been my first kiss instead of Verity Smith. Have you seen
her on here? Not a pretty picture …’
What? Still cute? There had been a level of cuteness previously
established?
‘Sorry, that’s awful. But yeah, sucks that you’re not with someone
awesome. If you were here or I was there, I’d totally be asking you out. You
never thought about emigrating? Toronto is great!’
Obviously I hadn’t thought about emigrating to Toronto but, as of that
second, I was mentally packing my bags. I could live in Canada. So what if
it was a bit cold. So what if I didn’t know anyone there except for the love
of my life. It was close enough to New York that I could get good, highprofile
work – and it wasn’t as if there wouldn’t be work there. I was fairly
certain people wore make-up and read magazines in Canada. At least,
Emelie did, and she was Canadian. Technically.
Giving up on the painting, I ran a bath and thought about the items left on
my list. We were more than halfway along now and it was getting tricky. I
still had everything crossed that Veronica would be able to get me on the
Sydney job, which would cross off the travel requirement. Writing the letter
to Simon was something that needed doing while I was in a more stable
mental state. Or a less stable state. One or the other. Which only left finding
a date for my dad’s wedding and bungee jumping. Or similar. I wasn’t sure
which was more worrying. Not that anything was as worrying as the fact
that I could not stop thinking about Dan’s chest hair. Sinking into the deep
bubble bath, I closed my eyes and tried not to picture his arse as he bent
down to pick up the paintbrush. A bungee jump would definitely be less
trouble than this.
It was Friday. And what a difference seven days could make. It was like I
was living in not quite a Craig David song, although I sincerely hoped I’d
be chilling by Sunday. Except without actually saying chilling, because I
could never get away with saying that. What with me being 28, middle class
and white. In an attempt not to think about the fact that I had my first date
in five years later that day, I’d started the morning off with a run marginally
more successful than the last, in that I didn’t fall over; then put another coat
of paint on the living-room walls and been out to buy food and booze for
the party Saturday night. I’d even made my very own chocolate cheesecake
in lieu of the forbidden royal iced sponge that Matthew had outlawed. No
one had dropped by uninvited, no one had thrown up and no one had
dumped me. So far it was one of my better Fridays in recent memory.
Emelie and Matthew had finally surfaced to come and wish me well on
my date, in that Emelie was texting Paul, halfway through troughing a giant
chicken vindaloo and Matthew was texting ‘nobody’ and had just spent
over an hour trying to get the hottest photo of his new tattoo for Facebook
(he said Facebook, I was pretty sure he meant Grindr). Oddly enough,
neither of them felt up to coming to yoga with me. I wasn’t asking them to
come on the date, just the yoga class for a bit of moral support, but when
six thirty rolled around, I was standing at the front door in a pair of
Emelie’s tight little workout trousers and a hot pink vest that just didn’t
cover nearly as much as I would like and clutching Matthew’s yoga mat.
Alone.
‘But I don’t want to.’ I went to my last line of defence: whining.
‘What if Asher is your soul mate?’ Emelie asked through a mouthful of
naan bread.
‘He’s probably not though,’ I whined again.
‘Em said he was hot,’ Matthew said without looking away from his
phone. ‘Get out of the house.’
‘Have fun on your date.’ Em waved her hand around randomly, her eyes
trained on the X Factor auditions repeat. She was certainly doing her best to
fill the Sky Plus box up with as many anti-Simon shows as humanly
possible.
‘I hate you both.’ I let myself out with a huff. ‘I’m going, aren’t I?’
‘And you’re going to be late,’ Matthew pointed out. ‘Fuck off.’
‘I’ll leave condoms by the bed,’ Em called.
Turning on my ballet flats, I stomped out and slammed the door. As
much as you can stomp in ballet flats. Which it turned out was quite a lot if
you really put your heart and soul into it.
Predictably, the bus was late, meaning I only just made it to the yoga class
in time. Asher, sitting up at the front of the room, gave me a relieved smile
and a wave as I dashed in, clumsily unrolling my mat and clobbering two
other students round the head with my foam blocks. Thank god I hadn’t
picked up the wooden ones.
‘Good evening everyone,’ Asher began. I sat cross-legged and tried to
look as serene as possible. Out of his tux, Asher was still very cute,
although I sort of missed his geeky glasses. Hopefully they’d be reinstated
for drinks. His yoga outfit was thankfully not made of Spandex. Perhaps he
was the one? Perhaps we’d end up living on an ashram with our beautiful
bendy children Clover and Paxo. Hang on, that was the stuffing.
‘Shall we start tonight’s practice with three ohms and quiet the voice in
our mind?’ Asher called out to the class in a disturbingly calm voice.
Maybe he could tell I was considering naming our first-born child after a
Christmas dinner table staple.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, but the little voice in my mind
refused to play along. Instead of ohm-ing, it seemed to be tutting loudly and
whispering something that sounded rather a lot like ‘Christ? Really?’
Yes brain, I replied unhappily, really.
‘How did you find it?’ Asher asked at the end of the session. I sat on the
floor, red-faced and sweaty, rolling up my mat and praying that I would
never unroll it again. I stared up at him, not quite able to believe he was
asking. I’d spent half the class in corpse pose, silently crying, and the other
half tearing my hamstrings off the back of my legs, audibly crying.
‘It was challenging,’ I said, after spending at least half a minute trying to
think of an answer that wasn’t a lie and didn’t include the words ‘fucking
horrible’.
‘Wasn’t it?’ he beamed. ‘So what do you feel like doing?’
Sitting on the floor, looking up at his open, happy face, I had a sudden
vision. Asher and I in perfect warrior poses with two identical little Ashers
trying to copy us and falling over in adorable bundles of geeky, glasseswearing
joy. Snapping back, I bit my lip.
‘Drink?’ I suggested.
‘And then I called her a vacuous cow,’ I said, finishing up my hilarious ‘the
day I shouted at a supermodel story’ and my second glass of red. ‘And
marched off.’
‘Right. Wow. That’s um, yeah. Wow,’ Asher said for the umpteenth time,
finishing up his third beer. He drank a lot for a yoga teacher, I thought. That
wasn’t a tick in the ‘future father of my children’ column.
‘But you know, onwards and upwards. My round.’ I stood up. ‘Another
of the same?’
‘Right. Yes,’ Asher said. ‘Another.’
Standing at the bar, I looked back at our table. OK, so he was a bit quiet,
but he seemed nice. And he couldn’t be evil or anything if he taught yoga,
surely? After class, we’d ducked into The Lexington, my theory being that
if my hamstrings gave up, I’d be able to crawl home. Jamie, the bartender,
nodded acknowledgement and lined our drinks up on the bar.
‘All right, Rachel?’ he asked, taking my twenty.
‘Not so bad.’ I returned his smile and took my change. ‘Busy night?’
‘There’s a band on upstairs so it’s pretty quiet actually,’ he said, nodding
slightly over to where Asher was sitting playing with his phone. ‘What’s all
this?’
‘Oh, new … friend,’ I pulled a face. ‘Simon and I broke up.’
‘Bloody fast worker,’ he replied. ‘I suppose there’s no point messing
around.’
‘He seems all right,’ I nodded.
‘Well, I’d hold out for better than all right, if I were you, but as long as
it’s fun.’ He gave me a half-smile and moved down the bar to serve the next
punter.
Fun. Hmm, was I having fun?
‘So how long have you been into yoga?’ I asked, setting Asher’s beer
down on the table in front of him. His long legs were folded up underneath
his chair, yoga mat off to the side.
‘Cheers. Been a couple of years now,’ he said, pushing his glasses back
up his nose. ‘I love it.’
I nodded. Good, healthy lifestyle. Tick. ‘What made you start?’
‘Actually an ex got me into it,’ he admitted, sipping his pint. ‘He’d be
practising for years and it was like, if I ever wanted to see him, I had to go
to bloody yoga class. I’m glad I did now, though – much happier having
yoga in my life than him.’
I felt my eyes widen against my brain’s command and very slowly spat
my wine back into my glass. For some reason, I was not quite able to
swallow …
‘Your ex was a him?’ I was sure my voice wasn’t quite as high-pitched as
it sounded in my head.
‘Yeah, oh god, that’s not a problem, is it?’ He looked nervously across
the table. ‘I forget some people aren’t always totally OK with, you know,
that.’
Before I could answer, a strapping six-foot yoga god wandered into my
vision, pushed me over onto my arse and swooped in to give Asher a great
big kiss. I sat on the grass weeping while my fantasy children sobbed, ‘why,
daddy, why?’
‘Totally OK with that,’ I said, having another, considerably more
successful go on the wine. ‘Totally.’
‘Phew.’ He jokingly wiped a hand across his forehead. ‘Like I say, ex.
Long time ago ex.’
I was fine with it. Really. Who wouldn’t be in this day and age? Aside
from my dad. Again, big tick in the yes column from my mum probably.
But I was fine with it.
‘I did the teacher training after we broke up.’ Asher sat back in his chair
and stretched out his legs. I couldn’t even move mine. Still. And it had been
two hours and three glasses of wine since I’d even attempted a downward
dog. ‘Can’t believe my distraction ended up changing my life.’
‘I can kind of understand that.’ I sipped my wine. ‘Really.’
‘Good to know.’ He leaned forward across the table and looked around
before nodding for me to come closer. I put down my wine. Was he going to
kiss me? Was this the start of something wonderful? ‘I know we’ve only
just met, but I actually run a naturist class on Saturdays and then some of us
kind of get together afterwards. At my house. You could come along
tomorrow if you wanted to?’
I sat back, pressing my lips in a thin, white line.
‘Is that the loo over there?’ he asked, pointing towards the doors at the
side of the room. I nodded silently, staring ahead and not moving. All that
time on corpse pose had come in handy after all.
As soon as he disappeared into the toilet, I whipped my phone out of my
bag to send Em our agreed ‘get me the hell out of here’ text message. I’d
had enough. I glanced up at the toilet door. No movement.
‘I’M A CELEBRITY, GET ME OUT OF HERE’ I typed as quickly as I
could and kept my phone in my hand.
I had a text from Dan. My thumb hovered over the open button for just a
moment. Most likely he was going to say he couldn’t make the party, that
Ana had tightened the chain on his balls and summoned him home. Try as I
might to pretend otherwise, I felt a bit disappointed.
‘Can I bring anything tomorrow?’
Huh. It was a nice text. But I still had no idea what was going on and I
hated not knowing what was going on. Matthew’s best bet was that it was
exactly that, a bet; while I didn’t like being the subject of a wager, I was
prepared to accept it was a likely option. And also, as Em immediately
pointed out, I was perversely sort of flattered. As long as it wasn’t a pull-apig
sort of bet. That wasn’t flattering to anyone.
I was brief in my reply. ‘Just yourself. And booze. Loads of booze.’
‘Checking in?’ Asher retook his seat. ‘Or just letting your friends know
I’m not a serial killer?’
‘Well, I don’t know that yet, do I?’ I really didn’t want to be on a date
with the naked yoga orgy-meister any more. ‘No, I just got a text.’ I waved
my phone around in the air, just to illustrate the point.
‘Anything exciting?’ he asked, trying to readjust the boys subtly. He was
unsuccessful, I noticed immediately. This was one of the major problems
about a post-yoga date. Spandex or not, his ensemble left very little to the
imagination – and I wasn’t even that imaginative. And that would have
been embarrassing even if we weren’t sitting in my local surrounded by
men in jeans and other assorted normal-person outfits.
‘Just a friend,’ I stuttered over the word slightly. ‘A guy I work with.’
‘He’s a make-up artist?’
I thought he sounded a little bit too amused by the idea of a male makeup
artist for a bisexual yoga-teacher.
‘He’s a photographer,’ I clarified. ‘We work for the same agency.’
‘I’ve never met a make-up artist before,’ he mused. ‘Can’t imagine
spending all day touching up someone’s lipstick.’
I smiled politely and threw back half my glass of wine. It was drink it
fast or throw it over him and I didn’t want to cause a scene. Where was
Em? Where was my phone call?
‘What made you want to do it as a job? The make-up thing, I mean.’
Asher rubbed the end of his nose. Had it always been that big?
‘Well, I used to like art at school but I was no good at it and I was always
doing my friends’ make-up.’ I had the short answer down pat. It was a
question I was asked a lot. ‘The more I did it, the more I really loved the
idea of making something beautiful, using make-up to transform someone.
That’s it really.’
‘It’s interesting because obviously you don’t look like someone who
wears a lot of make-up,’ he said while I sat on my hands. ‘It’s probably
because I’m a man but, really, I just don’t understand the thrill of covering
your face in crap. No one looks better like that. I mean, the other night? All
those women done up like complete tarts? No thanks.’
‘Well, I don’t go around covering people’s faces in crap,’ I said. ‘Thank
goodness.’
‘It’s just a weird job though, isn’t it?’ He just didn’t know when to stop.
‘Did your parents never freak out and tell you to get a real job?’
‘Nope.’
‘And the whole “artist” thing. Really? Make-up artist? I mean, if you
were a real artist, wouldn’t you be offended?’
‘Nope.’
Despite the fact that my glare could have frozen the seventh circle of
hell, he carried on.
‘Always fancied being a photographer though.’ He laid his phone on the
table to show an entirely unremarkable shot of London from Waterloo
Bridge. ‘I’ve always had a good eye.’
I couldn’t count the number of times I’d seen Dan deal with amateur
photographers. Putting them down with a look was one of his gifts.
Occasionally it took a patronizing smile or polite laugh. I understood; we
both had jobs everyone thought they’d be able to do. After all, I was just
touching up someone’s lipstick and putting crap on their face.
‘I think it’s probably a more difficult job than people realize,’ I said
diplomatically, ignoring his phone. ‘Dan is really talented.’ I thought back
to the photo in the gallery the night before. He really did have an amazing
eye for creating something stunning. When he wasn’t taking pictures of Ana
in her knickers.
‘Yeah, if I hadn’t had to get a job, I could have studied photography. It’s
not reliable though, is it?’ Asher’s tone was decidedly defensive. ‘I mean, I
suppose some people just luck into jobs, don’t they?’
‘He didn’t luck into it,’ I replied with equal aggression. ‘He worked
really hard. Being a photographer doesn’t just happen – you have to do
years as an assistant, you’re always having to study new techniques and
work with new equipment. And then there’re the long hours and all the
travelling. And if you’re as good as Dan, it is reliable.’
Asher looked pissed off.
‘Same for make-up artists,’ I muttered into my wine glass. My phone was
still dormant in my bag. Where the bloody hell was Emelie? If she was
texting my brother instead of saving me from a night in the cells when I
clubbed this idiot to death, there would be trouble. ‘It goes a bit further than
touching up people’s lipstick.’
‘Do tell,’ he said, looking at his watch.
‘You know, I would, but my friend just texted me and I really need to
leave,’ I said, knocking back the rest of my wine and throwing my bag over
my shoulder. ‘Thanks so much for tonight.’
‘Did your friend really text you?’ he asked, standing up but not looking
particularly surprised.
‘Nope,’ I flounced past him. ‘Bye.’
‘You forgot your yoga mat,’ he shouted after me across the loud and now
busy bar.
‘I don’t care,’ I shouted back.
Which was true until I got outside and remembered it wasn’t actually my
yoga mat and now I owed Matthew twenty quid. Bugger.
Best. First. Date. Ever.
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