1
‘Oh God!’
The man at my feet looked up at me with tornado-grey eyes set in features so chiselled, they made Michelangelo look like an amateur. I say looked. Glared would be a more accurate description and the sculpted jaw was so tight, I reckoned there was every chance it might crack at any moment. A thin trail of blood began trickling down from his brow.
‘What the…’ he paused momentarily, took in the audience of assorted ages now gawping at him on the floor and chose to swap out a word ‘…hell are you doing?’
I jolted out of my shock. ‘Sorry! I didn’t see you! I’m really, really sorry. Are you all right?’ I put out a hand to help him up although, as I would be trying to haul up what appeared to be six feet five of solid muscle, it was more an apologetic gesture than to offer any real help.
He gave me another glare and got to his feet, unaided.
‘You’re, um… you’re…’ I touched my hand to my temple and then reached up, almost automatically, to do the same to his. He backed up and I snatched my hand down. I cleared my throat. ‘You’re bleeding.’
The man briefly put his fingers to where I’d been aiming for and brought them back, now covered with a little blood. He rolled his eyes. ‘Great.’
‘Do you want me to take you to the hospital?’
He’d begun to turn away from me but at this, he snapped his head back. ‘Thanks, but that’s a definite no. You can’t even steer a two-by-four! Christ knows I’m not going to get in a vehicle with you.’ With that, he turned away and began striding down the aisle of the DIY shop. A few muffled sniggers rippled through the onlookers as they began to disperse and within a few moments, I was left standing there on my own, still holding the plank of wood I’d knocked the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen flat on his arse with. This wasnotsupposed to be my life!
Not that I had ever planned to knock anybody on their arse, but if the same scenario had happened in one of the romcom movies I loved to watch, the results would have been very different. It would have been the perfect meet-cute. For a start, I’d have been dressed in some sexy cut-off shorts showing off my toned legs and a fitted T-shirt, or maybe a checked shirt, knotted at the waist. There’d be some barely there, but just-enough, make-up on and I’d have salon-perfect hair tied back in a perky ponytail, sunglasses perched on top of my head. The guy would have sat up, made some funny remark, smiled at me and next thing you know, he’d be helping me do my house up, with several accidental touches, a steadying hand around my waist as a ladder wobbled until, finally, that first kiss would happen…
Except this wasn’t a film. It was my life. And my life wasn’t remotely like a romcom. In fact, if pushed to categorise it by genre, right now it would be closer to disaster movie. I was not dressed in a way that anyone would describe as cute. Having already ruined several ridiculously expensive outfits, I’d finally succumbed to adopting protective clothing. However, not having the first idea what I needed and, at the time, being far too tired to be in charge of a credit card, I’d ordered something more suited to entering a crime scene. The one thing the universe had got right was that the guy was gorgeous. But after that, it had all gone a bit off-piste.
‘Shit,’ I mumbled to myself as I grabbed another plank off the pile, checking three times that no one was around me as I did so, and made my way to the tills. Having paid, I lugged the wood out to my car. The sun of earlier had, at some point during the melee inside, decided to take a nap and hand the baton over to a large, ominously grey rain cloud. As I slid the planks into my car, the raindrops got heavier until it felt as if I were standing in a cold, exposed shower. The coveralls begin to stick to me, each plop of rain turning them more and more transparent.
‘Come on!’ I growled through gritted teeth. My car was not meant for jobs like this. When I’d bought said car, the thought of ever putting items from a DIY store into it had never, and would never have, crossed my mind. Even the thought of me entering a DIY store was laughable. But I had not had the last laugh. That honour appeared to about to be awarded to the man from earlier. I gave the wood one last shove, hoping it would stay in position, then slammed the boot lid closed. The wood did stay in position. The glass in my rear window did not. I stared as the glass shattered then neatly fell inside my car.
‘Perfect.’ I swallowed hard, squelching down the tears of frustration that threatened to spring with alacrity from my eyes to join the rain now pouring down my face.
It was then I noticed my paper hazmat suit disintegrating around me, the greying bra and oversize pants I’d worn underneath beginning to show. I pulled my keys from my pocket – the material of which proceeded to stick to said keys, leaving a gaping hole by my hip. ‘Bloody hell!’
That was when I saw him. Looking at me from the truck parked opposite me, windscreen wipers sloshing side to side. The threatening frown was long gone, replaced now with a bloody great smile. I turned away and grabbed the car door handle. As I did so, I caught sight of myself in the window. I looked like a papier-mâché school project that had gone terribly,terribly,wrong. Bits of paper were now stuck all over me and with each move another bit of my suit parted company with the rest of it. Yanking open the door, I slid inside, rammed the key into the ignition and burst into tears. This wassonot supposed to be my life!
* * *
Isn’t it funny how your best ever, absolutely bloody fantastic ideas come along when you’re three sheets to the wind? Except usually you wake up the next morning with a raging hangover that feels as if the entire population of South America is doing the tango in your skull and decide, after a little more sober consideration, that the idea is not quite so stellar after all. Well, that is how it is supposed to happen but here I refer you back to the disaster movie that is my life. Unfortunately, I did not take that vital sober reconsideration time. Instead, I got exceedingly drunk, came up with a fantastic idea and, never one for hanging around, and having a reputation for getting the job done, I acted upon it.
Which was why I was here. Now. Crying in an old bra and the enormous pants I’d once bought in error. It was only when I’d got them back from the laundry service that I realised they weren’t my usual thong style. Of course, by that point, I’d had them washed so I couldn’t take them back. They’d got shoved to the back of the drawer and forgotten about. But today was huge pants day because a), I’d run out of clean thongs and b), I have to say, despite the fact they were now stuck to my wet body, they actually were far more comfortable than having dental floss between your bum cheeks. I mean, it wasn’t as if I had needed to worry about VPL in this get-up. Until now. I glanced down at myself through my teary eyes. I hadn’t banked on the rain or the disintegration of both my clothes and my dignity in front of a handsome stranger I’d just brained with a plank of wood. The truth was I hadn’t banked on any of this. I was so out of my depth, I’d need a helicopter to winch me to safety. But I’d made the decision and now I was stuck with it.
* * *
It was the social media post that pushed me over the edge. There was my ex-fiancé with a woman a good ten to fifteen years my junior on a far-flung white-sand beach getting married. That would have been bad enough, considering it was less than three months since we’d split up after over ten years together, but the best bit – you’ll love this – is that they were havingmywedding. I paid forthat exactwedding. I knew it was non-refundable when we booked it but I didn’t pay much attention to that. After all, we’d been together ten years and I was finally getting the dream wedding I’d always wanted but had had to pretend not to want because that’s not the done thing these days. Not if you’re a successful career woman.
It’s all very confusing. One minute, you’re told you can have it all and then you can’t. Then you’re supposed to not want it all but by that point, you’re doing it all anyway. Either way, I had dreamed of this wedding. My Sindy doll had had this wedding and I was supposed to have it too. But I didn’t. Because, as it turned out, when my fiancé was away on business trips to secure a very important client for his law firm, he was also securing the owner’s heiress daughter as a new fiancée. And I, the old model, was out. So last season.
To add insult to injury, he then took the wedding – the wedding I had saved for since I left university. The wedding I’d dreamed about. The wedding I’d paid every damn penny for because Adrian was going to put the same amount down as a deposit on a new house together. The wedding that was non-refundable but still named him as the groom so he’d just changed the bride’s name and gone through with it. He looked so damn happy I actually punched him in the face. Or rather I punched the photo, which meant I then had to use my phone to order a new laptop and now have a scar on my knuckle where a piece of the glass got stuck and I had to pull it out with my eyebrow tweezers.
Luckily, I didn’t notice the pain too much for that – or any of it really because, as luck would have it, the wine subscription box had arrived the same day and over the next four days, I proceeded to drink the entire contents. I rang work and told them I was sick, but illness is no excuse when you have important meetings, and my presence was ‘requested’, which was code for ‘demanded’, at a conference on the Monday morning. I was granted permission to attend online instead. And that was my downfall.
Used to messaging with a friend using the chat function in the app, I did so now. Thanks to getting pally with Bacchus, what I didn’t realise was that it was set to ‘All’. Therefore my comment turned out not to be the confidential exchange I’d thought it was.
I can’t believe we’re all bowing and scraping over this dick.
In itself, typing this was a harder task than it usually was, then I looked up at the screen to watch my friend try and cover his giggles. But there was no such reaction. As I scanned each of the little squares on the screen, expressions ranged from shock, embarrassment, confusion and, in the case of my boss, outright, purple-faced rage. Kind of like the girl in the old Willy Wonka film. My brain scuttled off to find her name. It never did come back. I think it passed out on the way there.
Even through the pleasantly soft-edged wine haze, I realised something was amiss.
There was another, very short meeting after that with fewer people involved. I remember something about ‘conduct unbecoming’ and ‘utterly unforgivable’ coming up but the rest was pretty fuzzy. I got the gist though and that gist was that I was most definitely fired.
