Chapter 20
Dear Adam
I’m 27 and I recently moved in with my girlfriend. We’d been dating for six months and it felt like time to take things to the next level. I’m not gonna lie, I thought I was the luckiest man alive when she agreed to go out with me. She’s a fitness influencer and she’s absolutely gorgeous – my mates couldn’t believe I managed to find a girl like her and neither could I. But there’s a problem. When we were dating, she always made the most of herself, and every time I saw her she looked stunning. When I went round to hers, her flat was spotless and she cooked incredible food. But now we’re living together, things have changed. She spends the weekends in her workout gear with no make-up on. She plucks her eyebrows over the bathroom sink. When she’s on her period she cries all the time. She leaves empty protein shake containers all over the flat. Basically, my hot girlfriend has turned out to be a hot mess. What can I do?
Karl, Belfast
I emerged from the stairwell into the office the next morning, out of breath as usual from the six-storey climb, at exactly the same time as the lift doors opened. Marco stepped out, laden with carrier bags from McDonalds, a cardboard tray holding five cups of coffee balanced on one hand and a clanking blue carrier bag looped over one arm.
‘Morning, Lucy.’ He looked briefly surprised to see me, then his normal megawatt smile broke out. ‘You missed the hangover cure order. I’ve got sausage and egg McMuffins, extra hash brows and a double cheeseburger for your man Ross. This is a dark day. We’d have been better off with bloody Marys all round if I’m honest, but Greg takes a dim view of drinking at work, especially at breakfast time.’
By the time this little speech had concluded, we’d walked the full length of the office. I put my bag down on my desk and surveyed the scene. Simon and Barney were unshaven, and I was pretty sure Barney’s shirt was the same one he’d been wearing the previous day. Neil’s usual pallor had taken on an almost green tinge. Ross was hammering away at his keyboard, then he paused, moved his finger to the Delete key, and held it there.
‘We’re not in a good way,’ Marco continued. ‘Not at all.’
‘I can’t remember getting home last night,’ Simon said.
‘I didn’t get home last night,’ said Barney.
‘Our struggle is real,’ Neil said. ‘We’re suffering.’
‘Except me,’ Chiraag chipped in. ‘I did a twenty K cycle this morning, and I feel great.’
‘No one likes a show-off,’ said Marco.
‘What happened to you, anyway, Lucy?’ Neil asked. ‘One minute you were revelling in your moment of glory, the next – poof.’
‘The mysterious case of the vanishing agony aunt,’ said Chiraag.
Ross looked up from his keyboard. He didn’t look at me directly – in fact, he seemed to be avoiding looking at me at all. And he wasn’t blushing; in fact, his face was pale and set.
‘Something came up,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to bail on the drinks bit. I messaged Greg and said I’d catch up with you guys later, but – well, I guess I didn’t. My bad. Looks like I had a lucky escape from the team hangover, though.’
‘Speaking of which,’ Marco dumped his burden of bags and cups on his desk, ‘the cavalry has arrived. First aid all round. Coffee for you Barney, tea for Simon, Diet Coke for you, Chiraag – smug git – full fat Coke for you, Ross.’
Everyone collected their orders, thanking Marco before sitting down, the cloying smell of warm grease seeping into the air. But Ross didn’t move from his chair.
I hesitated for a second, then passed the can of Coke, slippery with condensation, across the desk to him.
‘Thanks, Lucy,’ he said, but he didn’t smile.
‘You’re welcome.’ I sat down and switched on my computer, puzzled and hurt. Yesterday, I’d thought everything was okay between us – good, even. Today, it was apparently anything but good.
But as soon as I opened my email, I found myself distracted from my thoughts of Ross – and even from the other thoughts that had been plaguing me since the previous day. I needed – with or without the help of his chatbot assistant – to get my Adam head on, and the letter from Karl seemed as good a place as any to start.
My first reaction to his letter was annoyance – anger, even. Yeah, Karl, you found a girl you thought was some sort of perfect Insta persona, and she turned out to be human – boo hoo, poor you, I thought. I wonder how different you are when you’re slobbing round the house in your boxer shorts leaving dirty coffee mugs all over the place and farting in bed to the guy she fell in love with?
I read the question again, and rolled my eyes. Honestly, men – what was even the point of them?
And then I remembered Ross yesterday – his kindness, the way we’d vibed together completing the escape room challenges. You saw the point of him all right, didn’t you, Lucy?
But now it seemed he couldn’t see the point of me any more. Perhaps what had happened between us the previous day had just been a one-off – a never-to-be-repeated forty minutes of friendship. Perhaps all I was to him was an escape-room team-mate – useful in the moment, then to be relegated to the status of the geeky girl who sat opposite him in the office. And anyway, I reminded myself for the zillionth time, Ross had a girlfriend. Ross was off limits. Any man I worked with was, but especially him.
So I’d just have to carry on as usual – being smiley and polite, and not allowing any sort of closeness to develop between us, ever.
Grimly, I turned to Karl’s letter on my screen and started typing.
Dear Karl
Well, you’ve had quite the rude awakening, haven’t you? The perfect woman you thought you’d found turned out to be – newsflash – a human being. How disappointing for you. Maybe it’s time you moved out and left her to be human in peace? Or buy yourself a blow-up doll for company, who’ll be just the same every single day and who’ll let you use her as a wank sock with a permanent smile on her plastic face. Perhaps you…
Then I stopped. It was no good – I mustn’t allow myself to take my own moods out on Adam’s correspondents. It was unprofessional – it was unfair. The shadow of gloom and worry that was hanging over me mustn’t be allowed to cloud Adam’s judgment. If necessary, I’d have to turn to GenBot 2.0 and get it to compose a less trenchant reply – although that always felt like a bit of an admission of defeat, as if I wasn’t capable of doing Adam’s job – my job – myself. I sighed, eased a knot of tension from my shoulders, staring down at my keyboard as if it would somehow spring to life and type the words I couldn’t find.
It didn’t, of course. Instead, I found myself picturing the note I’d found from Kieren, after that second night when we kissed: the pale blue lines on the white paper, the darker blue slashes of the descenders of the capital K. I could almost feel how my heart skipped had skipped seeing it, and the stomach-lurching excitement I’d felt when I read it.
Lucy
You’re so beautiful it hurts my heart. And I want you so much it hurts my – well, never mind. Again, tonight?
K
And so it happened again – that night, and the night after, and almost every night for the next three weeks. The kisses in the silent office, the tumult of desire that swept over like a tsunami, Kieren eventually, gently, insisting that we stop and go home; the notes on my desk the next day.
I didn’t tell anyone what was going on – partly because I didn’t fully understand what was happening between us. We weren’t dating; we hadn’t slept together. We’d only kissed. If Kieren had bundled me on to the floor and had sex with me, there’s no way I’d have objected – I wanted it more than I’d wanted anything in my life.
But he didn’t – not until almost a month after our first kiss in the lift.
It was a Wednesday afternoon and we were all on deadline, stressed and snappy. As a junior, my role was to step in and help whenever help was needed – and try to look busy when it wasn’t. So when an email arrived in my inbox, I sprang into high alert – first with alarm and then with a kind of dizzy excitement.
It was from Kieren. The subject line was, ‘Can you stay tonight once everyone’s done?’
He’d never emailed me before. He’d communicated either by those hand-written notes, or by walking across the office to find me.
My hand trembling so much I could barely control the mouse, I clicked on the email.
I don’t think I can wait any longer, Lucy. I want you so much. Do you want me?
K
I fumbled for the Reply button and typed one word: ‘Yes.’
The rest of the day passed in an agony of anticipation. Every time it seemed we were about to be able to sign off and go to press, someone would find an error and it would have to corrected, checked and re-checked, the pages processed again and sent off. Every time I turned to look for Kieren, his head would be bent over his work, a dark line of sweat staining the back of his shirt.
At last, at almost nine o’clock, we were done. No one cheered – there was nothing to celebrate, just another Wednesday, another edition put to bed. But I felt no release of tension – it had been building in me all day, a mix of anticipation and nervousness, and now I felt like it was reaching its crescendo. I waiting, barely daring to breathe, as the office gradually emptied.
At last, some sixth sense told me that Kieren had got up from his desk and when I turned to look, I saw I was right. I stood up too. Our eyes met across the empty office and he smiled – a smile full of promise.
My weariness melted away. I stood up, my knees stiff from sitting for so long, and walked over to him.
‘My God,’ he said, ‘you’re the sweetest thing I’ve seen all day. A sight for sore eyes – literally.’
I laughed; my own eyes were dry and burning.
‘Lucy,’ he said, his face serious, the harsh light casting shadows on his skin, making him look older, and tired. ‘Will you promise me something?’
‘I – yes, of course.’
‘Don’t tell anyone in the office about this. About us.’
It hadn”t occurred to me to – up until that night, there’d been nothing to tell.
‘I won’t, if you don’t want me to,’ I said. ‘But why?’
‘You know what it’s like. A hotbed of gossip. I’m older than you. I don’t want to damage your reputation. I don’t want people talking about you – seeing you like that. You’re precious to me, and I want to keep this special, just between us. All right?’
‘Pinkie promise,’ I said, and he laughed.
‘You’re so cute. Come here.’
Pushing aside my apprehension, I stepped into his arms, waiting for his kiss. Except tonight there would be more than a kiss – I was about to have sex. Not for the first time ever, but for the first time in absolutely ages, with a man I fancied who must, surely, fancy me back – otherwise why was I here?
His lips met mine, and immediately I felt reassured – that familiar, magical kiss, the kiss I’d dreamed about for weeks. Just the same as it had been in the office, although now there’s be no disappointment, no reluctant moving apart and going home.
This was the start of something new – something special, like he’d said.
I closed my eyes, letting myself get lost in his kiss, feeling the surge of desire it always awoke in me, tinged this time with additional excitement. My fingers found the buttons of his shirt and fumblingly undid them until I could slip my hands onto his chest – that smooth skin I’d yearned to touch, the hard arc of his ribs, the slight softness around his waist. He eased my dress up over my head and unhooked my bra, gasping as he touched my breasts.
‘God, you’re beautiful,’ he said. ‘Like a flower.’
He eased my tights over my bottom and down my legs, kneeling to remove my shoes. I heard the clink of his belt buckle and the swish of fabric against skin as he took off his jeans.
And then we were on the floor, the scratchy carpet tiles harsh on my bare back, and he was on top of me, his hands on me, his penis thrusting hard against my thigh and then pushing inside me. I gasped, but the pain was brief and soon replaced by pleasure – here it was. This was what I’d longed for, happening right now.
Afterwards, he held me close.
‘Was that all right for you, Lucy?’
I nodded, unable to find words for what I was feeling. It had been all right. It hadn’t been the magical experience I’d hoped for – but it would get better, surely? We’d learn each other’s bodies, learn what worked.
‘How about for you?’ I asked shyly.
‘The best,’ he said. ‘The very best shag with the very best girl.’
And then he said the words he’d said each time before, in the office after work.
‘We should get you home.’
‘Lucy?’ Ross’s voice jolted me out of the memory, making me jump and blush, as if he could somehow guess what I’d been thinking about. ‘You got a second?’
‘Sure.’
Feeling half-dazed still, not certain whether I was here in the Max! office with Ross or there, back then, with Kieren, I stood and followed Ross away from our desks. He gestured to the door of one of the meeting rooms – not the one with the glass walls that anyone could see into, but the smaller one, where people went for confidential events like performance appraisals.
In that second, I suddenly felt as nervous as if I was going in for a performance appraisal myself.
Ross held the door open and I followed him in and sat down. He sat opposite me, and we looked at each other for a second, both apparently tongue-tied.
Then I said, ‘So how was the rest of the party? The pub and the meal and everything?’
He shrugged. ‘It was good. It was – you know – a pub and a meal.’
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t join you.’
Ross looked down at the surface of the table, as if he was wishing he’d written what he was about to say in a notebook and brought it in with him for reference. Then he said, ‘Lucy, I have to apologise.’
‘You what? Apologise for what?’
‘For making you feel uncomfortable. What I did yesterday – I didn’t think at the time. It was inappropriate.’
‘What you – I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’
He looked up again, his eyes meeting mine. ‘In the escape room, touching your… uh… your legs. Without asking. And then talking about it in front of the others. It wasn’t cool. I’m sorry.’
I couldn’t help it – I laughed. ‘Ross, me leaving after the escape room was nothing to do with what happened in there. And you did nothing wrong. You were helping me. I didn’t mind. If I had done, I’d have said something.’
He blinked. He looked like a flat-earther who’d just seen images of the planet from space, or something. Or maybe, not, because I don’t think flat-earthers are that easy to persuade, even when confronted with reality.
‘You mean you… Then why…’
I cupped my hands around my water glass. I didn’t owe Ross an explanation – I’d already explained myself to Greg, who was after all my line manager and whose business it was. But suddenly I felt the need to explain – more than that, actually. To confide.
I said, ‘My sister called me. I don’t know if you remember, she got married a couple of months back?’
He nodded. ‘Is she okay?’
‘Here’s the thing,’ I went on. ‘We – her friends and me – we hadn’t heard from her in a while, and we were worried. She and her husband are living in New York for a bit, because he’s working out there. And we’ve been trying to get hold of her for ages, but she wasn’t really answering our calls. And then yesterday, when I came out of the escape room, I saw she’d been trying to ring me, so of course I had to call her back.’
Ross nodded, that dawning-comprehension look still on his face. ‘Is she okay?’
I shook my head. ‘Not really. She’s having a shit time out there, as far as I can tell. She’s really bored, and I think really lonely. Zack – that’s her husband – is working long hours and she’s stuck on the apartment on her own and she hates it, and she’s homesick, and missing me and her friends, and…’
And I want to be there with her, but I can’t.
Just forming the words in my head made me feel like I might be about to cry. There was a box of tissues on the meeting-room table, I suppose for when appraisals were going badly. Ross got up and fetched it, his free hand hovering over my shoulder for a second before he moved it away, put down the tissues within my reach and sat down again.
‘New York’s an amazing city,’ he said gently. ‘I used to spend the summer there quite often. There’s so much to do. Why doesn’t she do the tourist thing, explore a bit, the Met, Central Park, shopping – all that stuff? She’d feel at home really soon.’
‘That’s what I said to her. But she said she feels nervous leaving the apartment, which is really weird. It’s not like her. I’m worried.’
‘So you had to speak to her yesterday and try and find out what was going on?’
‘That’s right. And afterwards – well, I was on Facetime with her for about an hour. And after that I didn’t really feel like a party. So I just went home, and let Greg know why. It wasn’t anything to do with you, I promise.’
Ross smiled, a slightly sheepish, dialled-down version the smile I’d seen the day before – but it was a smile, at least. ‘I’m sorry about your sister. But I’m glad I didn’t offend you.’
‘Thanks. I don’t know what to do, really. I offered to go out there and visit her, and I suggested if she hates it she could come back home for a bit, but she said no. She said she’s just going to have to get used to it. And besides – you know, work.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Work.’
We both looked towards the door, and then we both stood up, left the room and headed back to our desks. My concern about Amelie was still at the forefront of my mind, but I felt better for having shared it with someone. Ross knew something about me, now, and I got the feeling he understood, and I’d be able to talk to him again about it if I wanted to. And I knew a bit more about him, too – just tiny nuggets of information – his childhood in America, the family dog that had guarded the car keys each night. But it felt like something – like we’d been drawn ever so slightly closer to each other.
When I returned to Karl’s email, I felt quite different about it. Sure, he was being a dick and I needed to tell him that. But the tone of my response changed.
Dear Karl
Moving in with a partner is always challenging. When we’re dating, we show off our best selves, and now your girlfriend is showing you another side of herself. It’s good that she trusts you enough to let you see that, don’t you think? And don’t you find that when you two go out together, you get to see the glamorous, groomed side of her that first attracted you? Remember, Karl, women are people too. She’s not a blow-up doll. She doesn’t have to be perfect – or maybe she is, perfect just as she is, eyebrow tweezers and period pains and all. If you love her, you’ll embrace all those aspects of her.
And if you don’t – well, you’d be being a bit of a dick, wouldn’t you, Karl?
Yours, Adam
Full of a smug glow born out of having poured the milk of human kindness all over the possibly undeserving Karl, I saved the document and literally dusted off my hands against each other. A job well done, I thought. I should be filled with gratitude for Ross’s timely intervention proving that men could be – and often were – decent.
Then I thought, hold on. He felt bad about touching my legs yesterday. Presumably he felt bad about hugging me as well. What does that actually mean?
My mind whirled into overdrive. He regretted it, therefore he didn’t enjoy it. I’d checked the previous evening and my fears had been well founded – I hadn’t shaved my legs. That would have grossed out finnicky Karl for sure, and it had probably grossed Ross out, too. And besides, it wasn’t as if he was single and free to go around touching all the legs he wanted. He was still going out with someone, with Bryony. I needed to keep my guard well and truly up and save my interest in men for whichever dick-adjacent loser was next rash enough to confide his poxy man-problems in Adam.
But nothing could have prepared me for the email that landed in Adam’s mailbox the following day.