Page 11 of Love at First Fright

Lily was gutted you couldn’t make it this weekend and wanted to send you this. She also has the next round of your game ready for you.

Below that, another image: an extreme close-up of something pink and ridged, the texture almost alien under what must have been maximum zoom. Lily was three points behind me in our “Guess What on Earth This Is” game and clearly out for blood. I smiled, thumb hovering over the keyboard.

Is that… a cross-section of someone’s brain? Should I be concerned about what you’re teaching your daughter?

“Are you listening?”

I tried not to sigh as I put my phone away. “Sure.”

My hand crept towards the radio dial. Classic FM whispered at barely audible levels, some soothing string quartet. I twisted the dials, hunting through static until I caught the opening riff of something promising. Arctic Monkeys. The guitar line made my fingers twitch against my thigh, muscle memory from years of—

Brad’s hand shot out and turned the volume back down.

“Anyway, as I was saying—”

Sweet Christ.

The M4 stretched endlessly ahead. We’d been on the road for forty minutes. Brad had been talking for thirty-nine of them. Walking to Wiltshire suddenly seemed like a viable alternative. I could’ve been there by Thursday.

“—absolutely demolished it. Proper textbook stuff. The client went mental.”

I nodded without really hearing him. This was my own fault. When Gerald had offered me this lift with Brad, I should’ve said no. Should’ve taken the train, even if it meant two connections and a bus that only ran on alternate Tuesdays. But I’d looked at my bank balance—which had now reached overdraft levels of crisis—and thought, Fuck it. How bad could it be?

Regret tasted like stale coffee and poor life choices.

Brad’s hand darted for the radio again. I’d been so subtle that time, barely a millimetre turn of the dial. But no. Down it went.

“You listening, Chaz?”

“Charlie,” I said through gritted teeth. “It’s Charlie.”

“Right, yeah, Charlie.” He grinned, all pearly whites and smug satisfaction. The morning sun caught his profile—strong jaw, straight nose, those annoyingly clear blue eyes. He’d probably never had a pimple in his life. His hair, short and precisely styled, didn’t move even when he turned his head. Some expensive product, no doubt costing more than my weekly food budget.

Despite the September chill, he wore shorts. Of course he did. He had to show off those thick, muscular thighs—ones built from years of actual athletic training rather than wishful thinking and the occasional jog. A tight-fitting polo shirt clung to his broad shoulders and chest.

Objectively speaking—if one were to assess him purely from an aesthetic standpoint, divorced from personality—some people might find him attractive. Not me, obviously. But hypothetically. If you were into that sort of… square-jawed, aggressively symmetrical thing. Which I wasn’t. Most definitely not.

“Brad and Chaz, though…” He drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. “It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

No. No, I do not think.

I turned back to the window. Fields rolled past, green and brown patchwork under grey skies. Cows dotted a hillside, living their best bovine lives, blissfully unaware of the human torture of forced interaction.

“So, what’d you do before this?” Brad asked.

Cold ice shot straight to my core. Here we go.

“Bit of this and that,” I mumbled. “Consultancy work. Admin. Some travel stuff.”

“Travel? Like a tour guide?”

“Sort of. Project coordination, mostly.”

Lies. All lies. Well, not entirely. I had done admin work. For three months before they’d let me go for “attitude issues.” The travel thing wasn’t a lie if you counted my brief stint at a call centre booking coach trips to Blackpool. And the consultancy… okay, that had been one weekend helping my mate’s dad reorganise his filing system.

My mind drifted, as it always did during these conversations, to that final year at uni. My music production degree. I’d been so close. Just half a year left. But Dad had died, Mum was too depressed to work, and it wasn’t long before the mortgage company had started circling like vultures. The life insurance company had found some conveniently vague clause about undisclosed health issues—something from years ago that Dad had either forgotten or didn’t think mattered—and paid out exactly nothing.

The bank let Mum defer payments for a bit, but her wages as a carer for the elderly, when she resumed working, barely covered the essentials. By that final year of uni, the interest had piled up like weeds choking the garden.