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“And what did you say to that?”
“I agreed.”Judith nodded emphatically to make her point.“In fact, I said to him, thatobviouslyI—I shouldn’t be getting involved with anyone this quickly after Mark.”
Polly looked baffled.“Why not?”
“How could I take Carts back to my place…?There’s still a bottle of Mark’s shampoo in the shower, and some of his work clothes in the wardrobe.It wouldn’t be nice.”
“Oh, fuck a doodle, is that all?”Polly waved an airy hand.“Forget nice.Nice gets you nowhere.Alice wasniceto Aaron, and he repaid her by sleeping off his hangovers on her couch and getting her advice on how to escape his latest dating disaster.”
“But he fell in love with her?In the end,” Judith said eagerly.She’d heard part of the story from Polly before.“Something must have changed?”
“She seduced him.”Polly smirked and tapped a finger on her chest.“With a little advice from yours truly.He’d been in love with her all along, but men’s brains don’t always connect to their hearts.Something to do with their dicks interfering with the wiring.”
Judith laughed; her mood already lifted.Polly had a knack of making you take things, even tragedies like Friday night, more lightly.
Polly leaned her elbows on the desk conspiratorially.“So what’s your next move?”
“I think taking it slow is very sensible,” she lied, trying not to let her mind revisit the purple-hued fantasies she’d been having all weekend.
Polly cast her a disbelieving look and Judith opened her mouth to solidify her stance when the door opened, and Solo’s head popped around it.
“Ah, Judith, here you are.I’ve been looking everywhere for you.I need you to come and talk to a patient about anxiety management strategies.”
Judith glanced at Polly.Her face had gone blank as her eyes snapped back to the computer screen.The room felt like someone had blasted it with icy air.
Solo ignored Polly.Polly ignored Solo.
Awkward.Very, very awkward.
Her gaze pinned to the screen, Polly said flatly, “Doctor’s orders must be obeyed.”
Judith thought Solo gave a snort.
What was wrong with these two?
But there was no point questioning it because the frostiness was turning into a blanket of icy tundra that was quite unpleasant to be around.
Solo lifted an eyebrow.“Was I interrupting something?”
Judith jumped to her feet.“No, nothing important,” she said and followed him.
Carts droveto work listening to the Ramones on full volume to try and keep all thoughts of Judith out of his head.Which failed miserably when “Baby I Love You” blasted at full volume through the speakers.
He stabbed it off with a snarl.
The problem was the whole disastrous evening had been on replay inside his head all weekend.And none of his favourite music from the eighties seemed to alleviate the situation.
After his hard-on hash-up, they’d made stilted conversation until they reached Judith’s car.She’d been searching for her keys in her bag, head bent when he’d decided to give her a quick kiss on the cheek.He’d missed and hit his chin hard on the crown of her head.She’d rubbed at the spot, and he’d reached out and rubbed it too, rather like he used to do to Avery when she’d bumped her noggin as a kid.Which might be the right thing for an older brother to do… but with the woman you were so hot for you could barely get the words out, let alone your dick to behave, it was wrong—as—fuck.
Sure enough, she’d given him a tight, polite smile before peckinghimon the cheek in what could only be described as asisterlyway.
Doomed, utterly doomed.
After moping around the house all of Saturday, ending up half-cut at the Shamrock with Dan and Carts’ new housemate Solo, who incidentally had been in a mighty foul mood this past week, he’d finally plucked up the courage as he zigzagged a path home at midnight to thumb into his cracked phone,Thanks for a lovely evening yesterday.Hope to see you at yoga.
He hadn’t got a message back until halfway through Sunday morning.He swore his fucking stupid screen had got even more cracked, because reading it had been a challenge, but he’d managed to decipher,Thank you, I really enjoyed it.See you at yoga.x
His mood had leapt at the words “really” and “enjoyed”.Then sank as he decided thatxwas definitely lukewarm.xxxwould have been okay.An emoji of a heart would have been fantastic.Actually, amend that;xwas probably cool, verging on cold.He guessed it was not as cold as her not replying at all, not in the super cold territory like when you were searching for the hidden pressie as a kid and your parents kept shouting cold, colder,freezing.
