Page 18 of The Friend Request

He leans over and kisses me on the side of my head. His lips land on my hair and stay there for half a second. Then he’s gone, picking up his briefcase from the hall, calling goodbye to Olivia, opening the front door, and I’m left standing at the sink with hot water running over my fingers and the ghost of his mouth on my hair and the memory of a different mouth on my lips. The two sensations overlap and blur, and I grip the edge of the worktop and close my eyes.

I kissed Ross Mercer last night.

No – Ross kissed me. There’s a difference. He leaned in and I didn’t stop him, and for three or four seconds I kissed him back. Then I pulled away, drove home, climbed into bed next to my husband, and stared at the wall until dawn.

But I kissed him back. That’s the part I can’t get around. In those seconds, I felt relief, and want, and the terrifying sensation of being known by someone who used to know me better than anyone.

I wanted it. I can tell myself I didn’t, I can rewrite the scene in my head with me pulling away sooner, pushing him off, saying no before his mouth reached mine. But that isn’t what happened.

I wanted it, and part of me still does, and that is the thing I cannot say out loud in this kitchen or any other room in this house.

Olivia thunders back downstairs with her PE bag and her coat and stands in the hallway shouting that she’s going to be late. I wipe my hands, check that my face looks normal, and drive her to school in silence except for the radio, which plays something forgettable that we both ignore.

She gets out at the gates, slings her bag over her shoulder, and says, ‘Thanks, Mum,’ without looking back.

I watch her disappear through the entrance, and my throat aches with love so fierce it feels dangerous.

The house is quiet when I get home. The breakfast things are half cleared, the coffee machine still warm, Alex’s mug sitting in the sink with a ring of brown at the bottom. I finish tidying, load the dishwasher, wipe the surfaces, and then I sit at the kitchen table with my laptop and try to work.

I can’t work.

I stare at a half-finished cover layout for twenty minutes, and all I can see is Ross’s face under the street light, his hand reaching for my jaw, the expression in his eyes when I pulled away – not anger, not frustration, just concern, and something underneath it that looked an awful lot like sadness.

My phone buzzes.

I pick it up. It’s a Facebook notification – a message, not a post, the little red circle sitting in the corner of the app like a warning light. I open it, and my chest tightens.

Ross Mercer.

We need to talk. It was more than just a kiss.

I stare at the screen. Eleven words. Eleven small, ordinary words that could blow my life apart if they were seen by the wrong person, and he’s sent them on Facebook, where Alex could find them if he ever thought to look, which he won’t, because Alex trusts me.

The guilt hits so hard I feel it in my teeth.

I lock the phone and push it away from me, towards the fruit bowl, as if distance will make the message disappear. I open my laptop again, stare at the cover layout and move the text box forward and back.

I don’t reply.

I won’t reply. Last night was the end of it – a moment of madness, a detour, a wrong turning that I’ve already corrected by walking away. I’m not the woman who does this, who lies to her husband and meets old boyfriends in restaurants and kisses them on dark streets and then sits at her kitchen table the next morning pretending everything is fine.

Except I am. Because I did.

The phone sits face down on the table, and the message sits inside it, and I can feel it there like a splinter under my skin – small, sharp, impossible to ignore.

I don’t reply.

But I don’t delete it either.

Chapter Eight

Three days pass, and Ross doesn’t stop.

The first message arrives on Tuesday morning, while I’m sitting at my desk pretending to work on a cover layout I’ve barely touched.

Kim, please. I just want to talk.

I read it, lock the phone, and put it face down on the desk. Five minutes later, another one.