“I’m sorry,” she said, sitting forward in mild alarm. “Do we need to go?”
“No, no,” I reassured her, and she sat back again. “Just something I didn’t want to have to deal with.”
“Well then, sounds like you could use a distraction,” she said, holding up finger guns.
“Hah, maybe,” I said offhandedly. But then again, maybe Icoulduse a distraction. I thought about going home and spending my first full weekend alone in the house – and a long one, at that – not only without my best friend, but also knowing that I was about to be kicked out of my home. I had no plans, which meant I’d have to spend the whole weekend cleaning for the stupid listing photos. It sounded like a recipe for a breakdown, which I clearly was on the verge of already.
“Are yousurethere’s enough space?” I asked.
“Yes!” she said, clapping her hands together. “Does that mean you’ll come?!”
“And the rest of the group would be okay with me being there?” An image of Jack flashed through my mind, and I snagged ever so briefly on the idea of spending the entire weekend with him. But Chloe’s enthusiasm cut right through it.
“Absolutely!” she practically shouted, clapping some more. Percy, clearly thinking she was playing, came over and jumped up, putting his paws on her hands. She squealed with delight and waved her hands to make him dance around. “See? It’s clearly meant to be!”
“Clearly,” I said, smiling as I continued to stroke Pablo, who snoozed contentedly on my leg. I wasn’t sure if it was “meant to be” so much as “a passable excuse to avoid my house”, but either worked for me in the moment. Either one was a welcome escape.
Chapter5
Jack
Ipulled up to the wisteria-covered cottage – though it was far too big to really be considered a cottage – and paused the podcast I’d been listening to, having completely lost the last five minutes or so because I was thinking about the weekend ahead. I saw that I had a message waiting; it was from Chloe to the group chat we had with Phil, Grey, Fatima, and Jared. Our old gaming group chat. I was sure we’d all acknowledged at some point that we should add Morgan, but we mostly used it to chat shit, so no one had pulled the trigger.
Change of plans - bedroom reshuffle because I convinced Morgan to come along this weekend! That means Phil and Jack have to share a twin room. Soz.
I stared down at my phone in my hand.Well,I thought, thinking back to the horoscope Amy had sent me,that’s certainly a shake-up.
I thought back to Monday night, when Chloe had been pestering Morgan like usual to come along to the pub, and she’d looked so trapped and freaked out. I’d tried to give her an out, but I couldn’t come to work with Chloe every day to keep her in check. I was sure Morgan had plenty of better things to do with her weekend, but it seemed my best efforts to keep my golden retriever best friend at bay had failed. I opened the back to get the groceries, and like the cliché I was, I overloaded my arms just to avoid taking a second trip, eight different reusable bags digging into my forearms as I closed the boot with my foot. This posed a problem when I got to the front door and needed to fetch the lockbox code off my phone, and three of the bags ended up on the floor of the stone porch so I could get to it.
I unloaded the groceries in the big, beautiful kitchen and got to work on dinner, which we’d eat as soon as everyone else arrived. I slipped into a bit of a Zen state whilst doing the chopping for a big pot of early summer vegetable soup; Phil was usually the cook, but he was coming with the others, so I’d offered to take one for the team. I decided to explore the house instead of just sitting around stewing along with dinner. I spent a while admiring the way the modern extension, where four of the bedrooms were, blended seamlessly into the no-doubt-listed building. I found the room Chloe had assigned me, wandered through the vast walled garden, and stood on the bank of the river that I knew just forty minutes away flowed through town.
I’d been perplexed when Chloe and Fatima had first suggested the weekend away – sure, they’d had a voucher, but was it worth using it to go less than an hour down the road? But I still got that holiday feeling as I closed my eyes to the breeze and took a deep breath. It was definitely an upgrade from Fatima’s, where we usually hung out. Not that her house wasn’t nice – she and her boyfriend Jared had bought it with the express purpose of having lots of people round – but it was our usual haunt, and it was nice to switch things up.
An alarm sounded on my phone after a while to let me know the soup should be ready, just as I heard the sound of tyres on the gravel drive. The two cars pulled up in a mini caravan, and I put on my best royal wave as I walked around the house to meet them.
I greeted the others casually as they got out of the cars, but my breath caught in my throat when I saw Morgan. She always wore dungarees and jumpers and graphic tees on Monday nights, with her ultra-curly hair piled on top of her head. It was actually quite cute, the slightly dishevelled look she rocked most of the time.
But she didn’t look cute now. She was wearing a green floral summer dress, the sleeves fluttering down over the tops of her arms and the V at the front dipping low enough to create the tiniest bit of cleavage. Her brown hair hung in shiny, perfect ringlets, creating a halo of curls around her.
Why the fuck was Isotaken aback? It wasn’t like I’d never seen a beautiful woman before.
Her eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses, so I wasn’t sure if she’d clocked me, but then she smiled, and my brain short-circuited, taking me a moment to smile back. She moved around the car towards me, her leg poking through a high slit in her dress, and I might have actually gulped like a cartoon character.
“Fancy seeing you here,” she said, casually enough, but the best I could do in response was jab my thumb back over my shoulder towards the house.
“I made soup.”
She nodded and smiled tightly, as if she were holding back a laugh. “Is that so?”
“Veggie,” I said, nodding and looking out at the surroundings. Anywhere but at her.
Now she didn’t even bother hiding her laugh.
“Okay, well, I look forward to trying it.” She put a hand on my arm as she moved past me, patting it a couple of times, and I felt my face go instantly red.
“Smooth,” Phil said from the boot, and I picked the finger I thought would best express my thanks for his contribution and held it up to him, then tried my best to bury my embarrassment. I had a highly anticipated soup to serve.
* * *
