Chapter 5 Freddie
Freddie
My phone buzzes as I turn the corner onto my street. Hands waxy with cold, I pull it out and see a text from an unknown number:
Hi Freddie, it’s Shaun at Cream most of it seems to be pictures of fancy coffees and nice food. A bit further down there’s a picture of a men’s rugby team and I spy Shaun in the back row, a big smile glinting from within his full beard.
I raise an eyebrow. A rugby lad, eh?
I scroll down a bit further and— holy shit.
There’s an action shot of Shaun from a rugby match, bulldozing his way through a player from the other team.
The picture has well over a hundred likes, and no wonder.
His T-shirt is doing nothing to hide the thick muscles of his torso and his shorts, well, quite frankly I’m surprised this picture hasn’t been flagged as pornography.
The way they ride up his arse, giving me a full view of not just the cake, but the whole damn bakery, is bloody indecent—obscene even!
I zoom in. I defy anyone with eyes not to zoom in. Shaun’s rear is so galactically chonky, it’s like a planet with its own gravitational pull. And here I am, a helpless space twink, perving from my rocket ship, unable to tear my eyes from the smooth round surface of…
I guess, Uranus?
I scroll through the rest of Shaun’s photos, looking for other hidden gems. One post catches my eye, something jarring amid the blur of images. I go back up slowly, looking for what I thought I saw, hoping I’m mistaken—
But no. There it is.
It’s Shaun with his arm around a woman. A pretty, auburn-haired woman in a biker jacket. She’s kissing him on the neck as he takes the selfie. He’s beaming.
My hand goes slack and I let the phone fall forward onto my chest.
A girlfriend? That’s a surprise. I could’ve sworn he swung my way. I guess he could be bi, but that’s irrelevant if he’s in a relationship. Freddie Young will do many things, but homewrecking isn’t one of them.
Still, I can’t help but feel a bit disappointed. I was looking forward to instigating a scandalous workplace romance with my hot new boss. Now I feel like a bit of a tit for being such a flirt with him in the first place.
I lift my phone and take another look at the photo. It has a hundred and fifty-one likes and a whole bunch of comments. I open them up and read a few:
Gorgeous you two! Couple goals! (15 weeks ago)
Lara looking fab girl xx (15 weeks ago)
Looking like a lumberjack these days, Shauny boy. Lucky lady Lara (15 weeks ago)
They’re all like this. All except one.
Please delete (2 weeks ago)
This comment is from an account called @larabanana. I tap the link and the profile of the auburn-haired, biker-jacketed woman in the photo pops up. Her name is Lara Newton. According to her bio, she’s “a free spirit with an unquenchable wanderlust.”
Ew.
The next line reads, “Travelling our world with @bigvig. Current location:” and then there’s an emoji of a flag I don’t recognise.
I scroll down and suddenly all is clear.
Lara has hundreds of posts, gorgeous photos taken in all sorts of exotic locations, but all the recent ones have something in common: the guy sharing the frame with her.
While he looks a lot like Shaun and, one might even say, slightly more conventionally attractive, he very much isn’t Shaun. He’s “Bigvig.”
His profile tells me his name’s Viggo Jones and he’s a “six-foot-something spirit guide, son of mother nature and sweetheart to @larabanana.”
While I shed my hangover hours ago, fresh nausea roils in my stomach as I scroll through Viggo’s profile.
Lara and I might agree on physical type, but that’s about it.
While he legitimately has some of the biggest pecs I have ever seen—and is clearly not shy about getting them out for the world to see—this guy is clearly a colossal knobhead.