Chapter 9
NINE
Gracie woke with a start. In her drunken stupor she had forgotten to set her alarm. She was surprised that Lewis hadn’t woken her. She put her hand to his side of the bed. It was cold. She quickly checked her phone. Nothing. Groaning, she walked to the kitchen, still in full underwear regalia, to flick the kettle on. She glanced at the clock. Luckily it was only seven, so she wouldn’t be late for work. Although the way she was feeling, she was quite tempted to ring in sick.
There was a note by the kettle.
Gigi, get yourself dolled up tonight, for we shall wine, dine & 69 XX
Then in brackets:
( Sorry, got pissed after football and slept on sofa so as not to wake you. )
‘Aw,’ Gracie said aloud and got on with making her tea. He hadn’t called her Gigi for months. She found she wasn’t even cross now about him being late last night. By the time she had finished getting ready, she had downed a whole bottle of wine on an empty stomach, had cried her eyes out to her sister on the phone, and had crashed out by nine. She’d have been fit for nothing anyway by the time he’d got in after the pub had closed. The pleasure had been in making an effort. In making herself feel good.
She got back into bed and thought of Lewis. His note was so sweet. He was thinking of her, for once. Maybe the outburst the other night had cleared the air? He would have talked to Connor that night and chatted to his other mates after football practice. Maybe they had helped him through it. As a couple they had never been very good at communicating. Hopefully now they could emerge from the smog of grief and work things out.
They had met, bizarrely, at the bar during a Coldplay concert. If love at first sight was a thing, then she was sure they had experienced it. She thought back to the time that they first had sex, on their first date following the concert. They had met for a drink in Soho and couldn’t keep their hands off each other. The lust was so great that she saw no point in waiting. Sod all that ‘will he respect you in the morning’ malarkey. Lewis took her back to the house he shared in Brixton that Friday night and they didn’t make it out of bed until the Sunday lunchtime. Seven years on they were still together.
She bit her lip, feeling something she hadn’t felt in a long while. She texted Lewis.
69, you say? I take it that means times?