Total pages in book: 184
Estimated words: 176002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 176002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
“Yeah, I am. Because clients are clients, and it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just filth and then home, with a healthy looking bank account. This is…” My voice trails off. I’m scared of dive bombing again, but I don’t need to. His grin is… amazing.
“I’m glad you were the one to say it, because seriously, I’ve been shitting myself. I’m right with you. Clients, piece of piss, I’ll do whatever they want and not even break a sweat anymore, but this.” He’s looking right at me. “It’s different.”
Different. Yeah, it is.
He raises his glass of wine for a clink, and then I take another sip of mine, careful not to glug too much in case I start blurting out more amazing romantic crap ahead of schedule.
It’s so tempting to ask him about clients, but I don’t want to talk about that side of his life. Not yet. It would be so easy and fascinating to dig into Weston and hear about all the true hardcore filth he gets up to, right here in the flesh, without the distance of messenger – whispering quietly so the tables around don’t hear us. But tonight isn’t about work, or being a hardcorer, or working in the same job role. I don’t want to know Weston, I want to know Josh.
“Your parents in Australia. How was it visiting them?” he asks.
“It was out of this world. I cried at the airport when I arrived, and cried again on the way back. I hadn’t seen them in years, and video call is cool, but seeing them in person was…” I laugh again. “Different.”
He laughs back. “You’re an only child, right?”
I realise then how our messaging has become more of a running commentary than anything really deep. We both pulled back a bit after the initial soul bearing messages we started up when I first went away. Like we’ve been trying to keep things at surface level, playing it safe. I know plenty about him, yeah, but not enough yet. I don’t know him.
“Yeah, I’m an only child. My parents had me really late. I was a surprise. A welcome one, apparently. They’d kind of given up.”
“Do you wish you had any brothers and sisters?”
I shrug. “I dunno really. Sometimes I think it would be cool to have that kind of close bond people can have with siblings. Friends but family at the same time. You must have that? You’re one of five, aren’t you?”
He takes a swig of wine and raises his eyebrows.
“Yes, one of five. I’m the fourth in the chain, and was the baby until my youngest sister came along when I was nearly seven. I thought I’d milked the toddler tantrums to the max. Everything from not liking broccoli and screaming about it, to knocking paints all over the dining room table. But then my final sibling arrived. She outdid me. She outdid all of us.”
“Are you close to them?”
“Some more than others. Emma is married, and she’s great, but her time is mainly taken up by Polly-Anne now. Her daughter. I’m closest to Sasha, who works in finance over in Canary Wharf. She lives with her girlfriend, Georgia, and they both have a wicked sense of humour. Then there’s Scott, who’s quite the online gamer, and we don’t have all that much in common. He keeps telling me to watch him on live feed and join in, but it bores me shitless.”
I try to keep track of the names. Emma, Sasha, Scott, Josh. Emma, Sasha, Scott, Josh.
“Then the youngest came along,” he says, and leans back in his seat. “Caroline. She’s great, but she’s barely twenty, and she can be such a pain in the ass. She hasn’t grown out of the look at me stage from when she was about five. Look at me, look at me, look at me.” He does an impression with a sassy wave of his hand, and I burst out laughing.
“She sounds quite something.”
“She is quite something.” He pauses. “No, honestly, she is cool. She’s just a bit of an attention seeker. Wants to be queen of the universe with a million adoring fans. Or on the arm of the king of the universe. Some rock star, or pop icon, or movie star. Right now it’s rock star. She’s been in a goth phase for a few years now, trying to outdo Tiff on the attention scale. It would be quite a hard climb for her to get there, but she’s trying her best.”
“A goth phase?” I grin. “Well, I’m still in one, so maybe we’d get on.”
“Hopefully you’ll never grow out of yours. It suits you too much.”
I get a round of butterflies.
“Yeah, well I hope you never get sick of your hot, purple streaked hair brilliance, either.”
“Don’t worry about that. The purple streak is staying, and so are the piercings. The clients love them too much for starters.”