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Of course he would have his own lawyers. Of course he was going to be busy. Any idea of them actually spending time together regularly folded itself away, embarrassed, into a corner of her mind.
‘Can we have two iced almond milk lattes please? And the gluten-free chocolate brownie for the lady.’ Brody smiled at the barista, and Helen could swear it made her blush.
He tapped his phone down to pay, picked up their coffees, and casually pulled out a bench for Helen to sit on. Helen perched down gingerly and folded her hands primly in front of her, her body language somewhere between scary job interview and debutante.
‘That sounds amazing, I’m so happy for you. You must feel so proud?’
Brody put Bean down gently on the floor. The dog turned around three times under the table, then started determinedly licking something on Helen’s foot. She suspected it might have been the vegan chicken nugget remnants from last night.
‘Well it’s not all good news; they’ll probably try to make me do an earn-out for a couple of years, so we’ll have to figure that out …’
‘Earn-out?’
‘It’s when you have to work at the company that acquires your business for a certain amount of time, it’s like they’re also buying you as “human capital”.’ Brody used inverted commas with his fingers and shook his head. ‘But I want to avoid that. The last thing I want is to be an employee at a big London company for the next two years: this could be my opportunity to really travel. You know I’ve never worked for someone else? I bet you must be the same?’
Helen’s head swam latching onto all the new pieces of information. Brody was selling his company? I guess that meant he was technically even more successful, but it also sounded a little like humble bragging? Had he just spoken about himself for the first five minutes? Also he wanted to travel? For how long? That wouldn’t be with her right?
‘No, I mean, yes, I’ve never had a “real job”.’ Helen winced to find herself mimicking his inverted commas with her fingers over the words ‘real job’; it wasn’t like she was anti-establishment. If anything, she was totally conventional, and the whole freelance thing had really been an accident born out of being utterly unemployable. ‘So where do you want to travel?’
Helen shook her hair out over her shoulders, and leaned over to take a long sip from her straw. Maybe if she channelled Elle, she’d start to feel more comfortable? She started to realise how she never really felt comfortable when Brody was around. She felt … on edge? Like she was being judged (though of course she wasn’t) and that if she said the wrong thing, or wore the wrong outfit, that his attention would fly away from her, leaving her like a forgotten house plant on a dim window sill.
‘That’s a big question.’ Brody leaned back in his chair, did he like being interviewed? ‘I guess I’d like to start in Europe, skiing in Slovenia, that would be incredible this winter, if I can get things tied up …’
Of course he would like skiing. Helen stirred her iced latte with her straw, watching the cubes of ice disappear into the whirlpool she was creating.
‘… then maybe down into Croatia, Montenegro … I’ve always wanted to backpack through Transnistria.’ Brody leaned in, conspiratorially. ‘That’s not even a recognised state, it’s meant to be wild …’
Backpacking through an illegal country, what could go wrong? Helen inwardly rolled her eyes, and noticed the pendant glinting out from under Brody’s T-shirt.
‘It sounds like quite the journey …’
‘You’re coming with me, right?’ Brody’s eyes met Helen’s and her heart skipped a beat. Brody held her gaze for a moment too long like he was watching for her reaction.
Helen pushed Elle’s words to the front of her mind. ‘Travelling the world with you, blah, blah, blah, yeah right!’
‘I’ll have to check my schedule.’ Helen braved a flirty smirk – how she came up with that quip she would never know.
This wasn’t at all true of course. If Brody was really asking her to travel the world with him, that would be something; but she sensed it was just words he was saying because he liked to watch the effect they had on her.
‘Damn, you got me …’ said Brody as he leaned across the table and slipped his hand into Helen’s hair pulling her in for a kiss. Was he enjoying this? The uncertainty? The game?
Their lips touched, and Helen inwardly rippled with excitement, or was it just plain old anxiety?
It didn’t matter; her body reacted to him like a bad habit; she wanted to lean into his smell, tingling. She felt her skin harden as he pulled her closer, but should she really be kissing him like this in public? It was a bit embarrassing … the queue of people …
Helen pulled back, Brody’s fingers tangled in her thick hair, nearly dislodging a hoop earring.
‘You know the festival …’ The words popped out of her, like they’d been barely contained since the last time she’d seen him. With Brody her radar was starting to feel off, like she couldn’t quite pin down exactly who he was, and at this stage she just needed to know.
‘Yeah that was awesome,wild, especially bumping into you again …’ Brody’s voice was smooth, but Helen noticed he sat back on the bench now, and pulled Bean up onto his lap, sort of like a Bond villain.
‘Do you do that often? You know … out on the cliffs?’
‘She asked me if I do this every day, I said often …’
Wait, did he just answer her with a song lyric?
‘No I’m serious, I know I’m maybe a bit …’ Helen stopped short of apologising for being too square, too serious, too uncool. ‘But I just wondered if that was, well, normal extracurricular activities for you?’ she pressed.
