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I didn’t know if it was the words, or the way his blue eyes stared into mine with such intensity and benevolence, but I felt like I was about to spontaneously combust. My eyes began to sting. Embarrassed, I did what I always did… “You won’t be saying that when you go to wear this T-shirt again,” I joked, stretching out the material even more over my belly rolls. “My tits alone have distorted its shape to the point of no return. You’ll look homeless if you put this on now.”
Perfect. Forcing humour into the situation had distracted the tears away.
“I’ve got more clothes than I can possibly ever need. Don’t worry about it.” I knew that already, seeing as he’d left a Gucci suit in a crumpled, wet heap on my bathroom floor the night he returned. Frigging Gucci. It should’ve been an arrestable offence to treat a piece of pure art that way. “I’m taking you home tomorrow,” he added, tone insistent. “Then I’ll leave and you can go work out, pack, meet with friends, whatever.”
I put my head back on his chest, smiling against his skin. I wasn’t going to argue. It would mean an extra hour with him, after all. “Guess what I’m thinking now,” I said. Unfortunately, my stomach betrayed me, growling the answer.
“Now? Now you’re definitely thinking about dinner.”
“Umhm. So, what are we going to do about that?” I asked, too comfy to move.
Hugo slid carefully from the bed, using his hand to gently transition my head onto the pillow. “Wait there. I know just the thing.”
My eyes narrowed with both curiosity and excitement, and I did just as I’d been told. I stayed in bed, rolled onto my back, and relived my favourite parts of the day in my head. Life couldn’t get any better than this.
In the gym, I gave Zac the best evil eyes I could muster while trying to stay alive at the same time. My knees had started liquidising, I was certain of it, as my feet pounded the treadmill. “I think this is broken,” I said, panting like a dog in the frigging desert.
“I increased the resistance,” Zac replied. I didn’t need to see his smile. The smugness in his voice was unmistakable. “Two pounds on, Helen. Doesn’t sound like our chat had much effect.”
Fuck you. I’d have yelled it if I’d had the strength. ‘Our’ chat. I assumed he meant the one where he’d basically ordered me to get my shit together and I hadn’t severed his bollocks in response. “Slow it down,” I choked out. “Need to get off.”
“Two more minutes!”
“I’ve got a stitch,” I lied.
He kept his eyes on his watch, ignored my plea. “Breathe through it. Come on, He-”
“Turn the bloody thing off, Zac!” That got his attention, and that of several fellow-gymgoers, too. Thankfully, he tapped the screen a couple of times, immediately easing the tension in my calves. “Better?” he asked once I’d slowed to a stop.
No. I didn’t feel better. I felt pissed off. “I’ve been going through some shit, okay? I haven’t had the headspace to be as all in as I wanted. I don’t need reminding every three seconds.”
“Helen, I didn’t mean-”
“But I ate some broccoli. Tasted like shit but I ate it.” I grabbed my towel from the bench under the window, wiped the sweat from my neck and forehead.
“It wasn’t my intention to upset you,” Zac said. “I was just trying to encourage you. That’s my job.”
“Well I don’t like your job,” I spat, pouting to give it the full effect. “And I don’t like running, either.”
“You finished?”
I couldn’t decide whether to slap the smirk off his pretty face or laugh at it. Eventually, I went with the latter. “Yeah. I think so.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
Yes. I wanted to tell the whole gym, yell out on the street to random strangers, that I was jetting off on a spontaneous, crazy, probably irresponsible adventure with Hugo Hayes…but I couldn’t. Not yet. “Nah. I need to talk to Chr-”
“Helen!” Chrissie’s voice blasted my name like a foghorn at the exact moment I’d been thinking about her. Does that stuff actually happen in real life? Apparently so. Zac and I spun around in unison to find her charging towards us. “You’re not working out your notice?” she said to me, alarm raising her pitch.
“Uh…” I wondered how she knew, given I wasn’t supposed to start my shift until later in the afternoon. I’d emailed our boss the night before, as soon as I’d made the decision with Hugo, but I hadn’t expected the news to be passed around at the coffee machine. “I was going to talk to you about that tonight.”
“I was worried,” she said. “Thought you were sick, but then I tracked you here on Find my Friends. What’s going on?”
