Russ:This is insane!
Ash:But what’s more insane is Yo thinking this actually all means something deep and spiritual.
Charlie:Maybe it does.
Ash:Not you too.
Melusi:I’m also leaning towards the universe here.
Yo:You need to have sex with him!
Ash:WHAT!
Ash:Stop it. Immediately.
Melusi:I’m leaning towards sex too.
Frank:Who’s having sex?
Melusi:Go back and read the convo!!
Sarah:I’m kind of agreeing with everyone here.
Ash:Nope. No! And this is the last thing I want to say on this matter.
Ash:If Logan was the last man on this planet, I would not have sex with him. I am not having sex with Logan McAdamson! End of story!
Melusi:What about having sex with Maximillian Adam?
Ash:Same goes for him.
Ash:In fact, same goes for every man on the planet. Because I am on a dating detox! Which everyone seems to forget.
Yo:I thought you quit that.
Sarah:Me too?
Ash:That was before I found out Max was Logan. So as of now the detox is still very much detoxing! And now I am going to bath!
Frank:What theFUCK?
I tossed my phone on the bed, lay down and looked at the ceiling. I tried to relax, but the incessant beeping from the WhatsApp group was going insane. I decided to mute it for a few hours, but not before seeing one of the messages on the screen.
Melusi:Well, let’s hope he realizes this time that it’s suck, not blow.
They were clearly still discussing the prospect of me having sex with him, even in my absence. God, we shared everything. I’d once been to a therapist to try to deal with all the trauma from my childhood, and she’d asked me what support system I had now, and to describe it. After I had, she’d proceeded to tell me that it was clear we were all co-dependent and we needed to set more boundaries with each other, because it wasn’t healthy and . . . I’d stopped going to her that day.
Sure, we were total oversharers, but when you study something so creative and personal together, like film, you develop very deep bonds. Trust me. Staying in a tiny caravan with five other students and having to all sleep together under one blanket to keep warm because you’re shooting your extremely low-budget student film in the middle of winter in the middle of nowhere means that oversharing stops being a thing. But my friends were very wrong about one thing. I was not going to be having sex with Logan, Max, whatever he was. The detox was very firmly in place.
I needed this dating detox,a serious one. No men, no sex, nothing even vaguely flirty and romantic. It always ended badly: if it wasn’t men saying crude things to me in cinemas, or ending dates before they’d even started, it was things like me being bitten on the hand by a troop of fire ants (because in college I’d thought it a good idea to have sex with this gorgeous entomology student that I’d fancied for a whole two semesters in their lab, and while up on the counter, my legs wrapped around him, raring to go, I’d accidentally put my hand into the ant enclosure). And maybe worst of all, worse than all those things, it was me flirting with a guy who I’d really felt a connection with only to find out that he was none other than my ex-boyfriend. The same person who’d shattered me as a human so badly that it had taken me forever to put myself back together again! And who may or may not have cast an actual sex curse on me. And who may or may not own bloody llamas.
CHAPTER 16
Max
I suspect the dinner turned out the way it did because when I’d seen the huge flat rock the manager had shown me, I’d told him how I could imagine this as a great setting for a romantic picnic, or engagement shoot. I’d then mentioned that I was actually just briefed by a client, a major international jewelry brand, to find the perfect location for an advert for their latest range of very high-end engagement rings and that this might be an option I could present to them. Perhaps that’s why management had gone so overboard with the dinner set-up I was now faced with.
“What is this?” I turned to see Ash standing at the bottom of the boulder, looking up at me in horror. It was evening, but we were in the grip of a heatwave, and the external heat just contributed to the internal heat I felt looking at her.
