Page 23 of Hate You to Love You

An expression of frustration spreads over Elliot’s face. ‘Here,’ he quickly grabs the tote bag that he’d been holding earlier and shoves it in my direction.

‘What’s this for?’ I ask, peering into the contents of the bag. It’s filled with notebooks.

‘Some of Claudia’s notebooks, detailing the writing process for Summer Memory and These Days. She wanted whoever was doing the article to have it to inform the direction of their writing. These have to be returned to me at the end of this tour. Got it?’

‘All right,’ I reply sharply. ‘If you want to keep things professional from now on, then keep the communication to a bare minimum. Email me. I don’t care. Just leave me alone.’

‘Fine!’ Elliot agrees, his voice still raised.

‘Amazing!’ I yell back at him, storming off.

‘Fantastic!’

‘Glad we’re on the same page!’ I add.

But as soon as he’s out of my line of sight, my heart sinks. How did we get here?

chapter ten

then

After six months of living with Jones at The Terrace, we’ve fallen into a rhythm that can only be described as peaceful. Life has an effortless atmosphere that felt like an endless summer. Other roommates had come and gone, until Sal and Laney eventually joined us in the Sydenham house. I’ve been applying for jobs, and by the time March rolls around, there have been a few freelance jobs – and many rejections, though I haven’t given up hope.

The gang are gathered around the coffee table in the living room for dinner. Somehow, none of us have ever considered getting a dining room table, so we sit on the floor crowded around this one.

‘There’s too much chilli,’ Laney says with a cough. She removes a hair tie from her wrist and frantically ties her hair back as she struggles with the food.

‘Too much chilli? You know the dish is literally called chilli,’ Jones mocks her, his spoon scraping along the base of his bowl.

‘I, for one, don’t think this is as hot as the wings Jones made last month,’ Sal says, even though he’s chugging water.

I push my half-finished bowl slightly away from me. ‘Agreed,’ I add. ‘I had to sleep with a fan next my face for a week after those wings.’

While everyone is arguing over the spice level of Jones’s chilli, my phone starts buzzing with a call from an unknown number. I jump up from the couch and run into the kitchen to take it, deep down hoping it’s one of the places I’ve applied to.

‘Hello?’

A smooth and playful voice greets me on the other end of the line. ‘I finally watched When Harry Met Sally. Unpopular opinion, but they should never have got together in the end.’

‘Who – who is this?’

‘Oh, are we doing that thing where we pretend we don’t know each other again?’

‘Elliot?’

‘You sound disappointed.’

‘No, no. I’m not. I’m just surprised.’

Totally and most completely surprised. I hadn’t seen or heard from him since that day in the video store, back in September.

‘Why are you calling? I ask.

‘Because I like talking movies with you.’

I move further into the kitchen and rest up against the counter. ‘I thought rom-coms were too cheesy for you?’

‘I know what I said but—’ Elliot pauses. His voice is hazy and dreamlike, as if he were a late-night radio show host. ‘But there was something you said that I can’t get out my mind.’