AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Just taking a stab at the middle name, there,’ he says with a shrug, tapping away on the iPad. ‘Penelope? Petunia?’
‘Nope. And nope.’
‘Am I even just a little bit close?’ he asks, in a whisper, the top of his armjustbrushing mine.
‘Guess what.’ I lean in. I can smell his warm skin, his aftershave. ‘I don’t have one.’
‘What?’ He grimaces, looking sideways at me. ‘Nomiddle name?’
‘No middle name,’ I repeat.
‘Mm. Shame,’ he says, going back to tapping on his iPad, nodding quickly to a colleague who ambles in amongst the hubbub. ‘I was hoping you’d have a boring one, like me. Mine’sJonathan.After my dad. So basic.’
‘Oh, no, I think that’s cute. JackJonathan.Cute.’
Jack laughs, eyes flicking up from the screen, to mine. ‘Cute. She’s calling me cute,’ he utters to himself, and makes a disgusted face. ‘A sad day.’
‘What’s wrong with cute?’
‘Where do Ibegin?’
I giggle as Jack, grinning, looks back down at his screen. And people are looking over a little now, eyes sliding away from their hushed, worky conversations, and I feel a little thrill of .?.?. pride? Like, yep. That’s right. I was public enemy number one, and now I’m chatting to Hot Adventurer Jack Shurlock when not so long ago, I was almost fired. He also wants to kiss me when I least expect it. (The disclaimer being: if he wasn’t off his head on alcohol and does not remember and said that to everyone because he’s just sosmooth, as Lin said. Maybe Good Girl Jess and even Gail bloody Fryer are waiting for him to kiss them when they least expect it, too.)
‘I can’t believe also,’ I whisper, ‘that you mentioned the screen display in the email. And cc’d actual .?.?.’ I jerk my head in Michael’s direction, my eyes wide.
‘Well, he needs to know how good you were,’ Jack says, writing something down with a stylus, on the screen. His handwriting is surprisingly neat, andoh.He’s left-handed.Of course, Jack is left-handed. Of course he rejected the generic, right-handed way of writing made-up letters and symbols.‘You’re a display pro, Millie Chandler.’
‘Yes, well, if he didn’t sense the sarcasm,’ I lean in, whispering again, ‘he’s more stupid than I thought.’
‘Oh, he is,’ says Jack, flatly, still scrawling. ‘I assure you.’
I stifle laughter, as people continue to shuffle in the room. One of the freelancers takes a biscuit, turns it over in his hand, then puts it back.
‘Maaaate.’
George Reckitt, a know-it-all mummy’s boy, from sales, appears behind us, and launches straight into whacking Jack’s back violently.
‘You good?’ asks Jack, and when he holds his hand out, George grabs it in that rough, lazy handshake men do, grins at him, says, ‘My man, my man.’ I notice this about Jack. People seem to really like him, to want to be his friend, and Jack doesn’t really seem to ever be that interested. And I thinkthat’sthe appeal. At least, it often is for me. The more someone doesn’t seem to like me, the more I’m likely to prance around to try and make it so. ‘They like me’ equals ‘achievement unlocked’, equals, ‘good enough’. I was often like this with Owen, especially towards the end of our relationship. Always trying to enter some sort of correct combination; to get it right. Weirdly, I don’t find myself doing that with Jack. If anything, it’s the opposite. I .?.?. show him who I am, and the more he just accepts it, remembers it, holds it, the more I want to share.
‘You going tonight?’ says George. ‘Steve’s birthday drinks?’
‘I don’t think so, mate.’
‘Yeah, well, if you do, just keep me away from the vodka. Ha-ha.’
‘Ah. Vodka,’ says Jack, half-listening. ‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah, we all remember Manchester, don’t we? Me and Mark. You and Jess?’ George plonks himself down in front of us at the table, and laughs. ‘What anight.Carnage.’
George takes out his phone, starts scrolling.
‘Are you going?’ Jack asks, casually, turning towards me.
‘What happened in Manchester?’ I whisper and Jack taps the side of his nose and smiles, and it thrills me and makes me jealous all at once.What did you and Jess do? Did you kiss her on the dance floor? Have wild sex with her in the loos?‘And no. I’ve not been invited. Of course.’ Yes, Jack, calling him a sexist celariac will do that.
‘Lucky girl,’ he says.
‘Am I?’
