Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 80651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Her flat was tiny. Her kitchen barely qualified for the title.
“Parker asked me to move in with her and Tristan again the other day when we went for lunch in the park.” She laughed. “As if.”
“You don’t want to?”
“I don’t want to share with a couple. And a fairly new couple at that.” She pulled out some boxes. “I got Lebanese.”
“We should spend more time at mine,” I said. “I’ll get a key cut so you can come and go as you please.”
She turned to me, half smiling, half frowning. “Are we ready for an exchange of keys?”
I shook my head. “No offense, but I don’t want a key to this place.”
“You mean you don’t want to enjoy my basement view of the car park? How dare you.” She smiled as she got out two plates and set them down. “A key though? Is that . . . I mean, we’ve only been dating a few weeks . . .” She was cautious, bordering on suspicious of things between us, or me. I couldn’t decide.
“Is there some rulebook you’re working with that I’m not aware of? Because if you are, I think I need a copy to see what’s meant to happen when. I don’t want to miss a milestone.”
She prodded my arm. “There’s no rulebook.”
“My place is a little more spacious. And I have a kitchen we can cook in. It makes sense to spend more time there. And if I give you a key, it means you don’t have to leave with me at the same time, and you can come round early. It’s not a ring. It’s a key.”
She handed me a plateful of food and held up a fork. “Okay, if you put it like that, I’ll take the key.”
“Good,” I said.
“Good. I really don’t know why you had to make a big deal about it.” She grinned at me and I shook my head.
We padded back into the living room-slash-bedroom, where Aha! was playing softly in the background. We sat on the floor, our plates balanced on her small coffee table. “So how was lunch with Parker, apart from her asking you to move in with her?”
“Good.” She sighed like it was the opposite of good.
“That doesn’t sound good.”
She shrugged and ripped off some of the flatbread. “I told her about us.”
“And that’s bad?”
“Why would you think that’s bad?”
“Oh, I don’t know, the look on your face?”
She stayed silent for a beat too long as she chewed and swallowed her flatbread. “She just thinks that I’m stupid for not wanting to take our relationship public.”
I sighed. Okay, so the best friend was weighing in on the relationship. “And what do you think?”
“I think she doesn’t understand the stakes. For either of us.”
“Right,” I replied. “So, what’s with sighing and the expression of doubt?”
“Things are complicated.” She shook her head. “And I’m overthinking.”
“Not like you,” I said sarcastically.
She rolled her eyes. “She just made a joke about how we’d be forty with two kids and we’d still be pretending to everyone in the hospital that we weren’t dating.”
I laughed. “Forty is only four years away for me. Not so inconceivable.”
She wasn’t laughing. “I guess she just got my brain whirring. I started to . . . think about stuff.”
That didn’t sound like a positive thing, certainly if the look on her face was anything to go by. “Maybe we don’t need to think about four years from now.”
“Exactly,” she said, not sounding very convincing. “We’re just borrowing trouble, right?”
“Right. Except I’m not sure you’re entirely convinced.”
“Oh, I completely believe trouble is just around the corner. I don’t need any convincing. I just need to . . . relax.”
I couldn’t imagine what it was like to live ready to fight. It must be exhausting. I wanted to take that away from her. Shield her from everything bad.
“Sutton, tell me what’s on your mind. What’s really bothering you?”
“I’m not bothered exactly, it’s just . . . I like you. And I don’t see that there’ll ever be a time when it’s okay for us to be a public couple.”
“I don’t think we need to worry. Right now, it’s difficult. I’m trying to position myself for this promotion; you’re trying to prove yourself. It doesn’t work at the moment but things shift and change. We can’t pre-empt anything. We can’t see into the future. Things have a way of working themselves out.”
“Says you. Things just don’t ‘work out’ for everyone.”
“No, you’re right. We’re surrounded by evidence of that all day long. But in terms of relationships and two people being together—we will make it work. If you remember, we were both determined to stay away from each other. Look how that turned out.”
I put down my fork, shifted to outstretch my legs and then pulled her onto my lap so she faced me. I got the feeling this was about more than us—that she was braced for bad things to happen. It was understandable, and it broke my heart a little.