AllFreeNovel
Share Us
At the beautiful woman in all of them.
Who looked the way people expected a footballer’s girlfriend to look.
“She’s very glamorous. And I am really massively not glamorous.”
“Well, that’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be. But still not great.”
“How is it not great? Just look at her. She’s like a posh Christmas decoration.”
“She is. But you don’t have to be that. I’ve dated other types of women.”
He turned his face away from her as he spoke. But she caught the reason why. She saw the side of his face quirk up, and knew he was scrunching one eye. That he was wincing, in the way that suggested he knew he wasn’t going to get away with that.
And of course he was correct on that score.
In fact, he got a snort of derision.
A loud one, which rang right through her scornful words.
“Like heck you have. They are all glorious glossy goddesses. Every one of them is accomplished and polished and pretty and rich. I mean Lord, look at this one’s eyebrows. They’re so sleek and tidy. You could fit five of hers into one of mine,” she said, and then measured them with her fingers. She pinched them around the photographic evidence and applied said pinching to her own.
And now it was his turn to be derisive.
“Okay, first of all, that’s a ridiculous way to back up your claim. And second of all it doesn’t even matter, because I like big eyebrows as much as I like small ones. More actually, because I’ve got a bit of a thing about hairy women that we’re not going to go into.” He held up a finger when she tried.Don’t you dare, it said. Then she had no choice but to let him continue. “But what wearegoing to get into is the fact that none of this fucking matters, seeing as not a one of them could stand me for more than five minutes. We were not compatible, we were never compatible, compatibility is never a thing that happens to me. So who gives a fuck?”
I give a fuck, she thought at him. But as the thought was about his yawning loneliness and not about the point, she did her best to steer away from it. “Alfie, what you think about eyebrows and compatibility issues just doesn’t count here. What looks right to other people is what counts. And if I go out to the place we’re going to, exactly as ordinary as I am, I won’t look convincing to these other people as your date.”
To which he clearly did not want to agree.
But had to, grudgingly. And annoyingly.
“Well probably not with your dress on backward, no.”
“It’s not my fault that it’s on backward. I couldn’t undo the zip.”
“Yeah, that was my top guess, love. Want me to help you out of it?”
“No. I want you to come back tomorrow, after I’ve maxed out my credit cards at Monsoon and cleared out the L’Oréal stand in Boots,” she said, and sighed. She even sank down into a chair that wasn’t covered in crap.
But he had no good news for her.
He just gave her some gritted teeth.
And a shake of his head.
“You don’t want Monsoon and L’Oréal.”
“Oh Jesus. Because they’re not even good enough?”
“They’re fine. You’d be fine in them. You’d be fine in anything, honestly. You always look amazing. But if what you’re wanting is super polished, we can achieve that very easily. Just give me an hour and try to pretend you don’t mind a single thing I now say,” he said. But he was being ridiculous because what else was she going to do? Scroll Twitter? Twitter hadn’t stopped asking her if Alfie Harding could really go for hours, for the last week. She now had ten thousand followers, and they had separated into two factions. Those who hated her, and so had a snide comment about everything she said. And those who loved her, and now cheered on everything she said.
And both of these made her unable to log on.
Though even if she could have, she wouldn’t have.
Because she knew what he was going to do. And she was going to stop him, no matter how much he tried to block her efforts. Which he blatantly did—he walked away and turned his back before he got out his phone. Then he put out a hand when she got close, as if to hold her at bay.
And that would have worked.
