AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Ask your husband,” Jack said waspishly. “He’s the one who’s been stalking the poor guy.”
“I want to hear what you think.”
Jack could imagine her curling her legs up underneath herself on the vividly pink sofa she had bought when they moved into their house. Jack had spent a lot of time on that vile sofa, eating dinner or watching Marvel movies with his friends. When Stuart had started dating Darcey, Jack had been wary of her, unsure of how this interloper would change the dynamic of his relationship with Stuart.
He shouldn’t have worried. Darcey was awesome.
“I think,” Jack said, “it doesn’t matter what I think. His shop will be closed in a couple of weeks and I can get on with building my own.”
“No, you’re totally wrong. That’s why you have to make a move now, before it’s too late.”
“I just don’t find him attractive.”
“Liar,” she snorted. “I’ve seen his pictures.”
“Stop stalking him! I’m serious.”
“Okay, okay. Fine.”
“I’ll see you on the weekend?”
“Definitely.”
Jack smiled. “Oh, and Darcey? Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” she said, and he could hear her smiling too. “Love you.”
“Love you too.”
Jack ended the call and pressed his fingertips to his eyelids. He could do without his straight friends meddling in his love life, even if they had good intentions.
Totally without meaning to, Jack’s thumb landed on the link for Rowe’s Instagram.
He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t this.
The feed was a riot of colour, combining whimsical character designs, bold experiments with paint, and delicate landscape studies. He didn’t seem to have one particular medium, instead moving between watercolour and pen and ink and paint, with the occasional pencil sketch.
He was ridiculously talented.
From the few selfies he’d posted, Jack had to admit, too—even if it was just to himself—that Rowe was attractive. In a wholesome, clean-cut kind of way. He wore a lot of corduroy trousers and plaid shirts and occasionally, some gold wire-rimmed glasses. That wasn’t Jack’s usual type, he usually went for guys who were edgier, tattoos, some thick biceps in the mix.
But he could be tempted to make an exception.
Jack listened to the weather forecast on the radio the next morning and changed his outfit before he’d even started getting dressed, adding a long-sleeve shirt and taking away the T-shirt he usually wore underneath one of his jumpers.
Icy rain, turning to sleet across the south-west, with snow expected before the end of the week.
Ugh.
He could do without snow, if he was honest—not from a business perspective, but because he was pretty sure he’d been designed to spend his life half naked on a beach, sipping something alcoholic from a coconut shell. Not huddled up against icy rain and sleet and freakingsnow.
Winter was not his season.
He pulled on boots, too, ones his nan had bought him last Christmas and Jack had been avoiding wearing, knowing once he put them on there was no turning back. It would be cold now until March and he was not emotionally ready for that.
“I need a holiday,” he muttered to himself as he worked a pinch of wax through his hair, styling it into its usual effortless mess.
He used the last smudge left on his fingertips to smooth down his eyebrows and cleaned his hands before shoving them into gloves.
