Chapter Eighteen
I’ve never been one of those people who feel like they’re clairvoyant—in fact, anything “woo-woo” has historically received my deepest scorn.
And yet, as I approach my flat one Wednesday after grabbing dinner with Lachlan, I know—I just know—that I’m going to find Fiona and Oliver together in my bed.
I know it like I know the sun will rise in the east and Wotsits will never be quite as good as actual Cheetos.
Maybe that’s why I’m extra quiet as I slip my key into the lock and push the front door open, a millimeter at a time.
And maybe that’s why I’m not even shocked as I bang open the door to my bedroom and catch them in the act, Oliver pumping away on top of Fiona, his hairy ass grinding up and down against my comforter.
And honestly, I’m not even that mad. Despite the fact that they are fully naked all up in my sheets, I’m somehow still a little bit happy that Fiona and Oliver have found people they are so voraciously compatible with.
I run down this thought in my head as they hasten to clothe themselves: I think it shows a great deal of emotional maturity, of growth, of acceptance, compared to where I was after Steven left.
Either that, or it shows I’m an enormous pervert.
Oliver has the decency to scamper out of the flat, leaving Fiona and me to have a little chat in the kitchen, just us girlies. As is the British custom, she offers to make me tea, though I’m not sure even her best mug of Yorkshire Gold is going to smooth over the situation we find ourselves in.
“So,” she starts, lamely.
“Not great, Fiona. Not great.”
To her credit, she looks properly sheepish. “I know. I’m so sorry. We just…we just got carried away.”
“And I’m happy for you, but did you have to get carried away all over my freshly washed sheets?”
“Your duvet is much softer than mine. Oliver prefers it.”
I squeeze my eyes shut tight. “Please, please do not tell me that you’ve had sex in my bed before.”
She at least has the decency not to confirm it, allowing us both to live in the lie a bit longer.
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Okay, so where do we go from here?”
Fiona taps her fingers against her mug, a little number that says, “I wish this was wine.” Her assortment of rings clinks against the ceramic and my nerves.
“Well actually, we’ve been wanting to talk to you about this for a few days.
Ollie has just got promoted at work and things are going so well between us that we thought maybe… ”
“You want him to move in?” I consider it for a moment. He basically lives here anyway, and it will help with the rent. I’ll just have to get a padlock for my door. “That’s fine with me. It’ll be a bit crowded, but we’ll make it work.”
She flushes a shade of puce to match her chipping nail polish. “Oh, um, actually, we wanted to live, you know, just the two of us.”
My heart drops to somewhere near my ankles as I process this curveball.
The image of the Westlife boys flies unbidden into my mind.
“Oh.” It’s all I can say. What leverage do I have—and, honestly, why would I want to stay anyway?
I’ve been the third wheel in a relationship before, and look how that turned out. “When would you want me gone?”
“Oh, take your time, babes. End of the weekend is absolutely fine.”
Four days. How generous.
“Cool. Cool. Okay, cool.”
Fiona looks at me over the rim of her mug, eyes expectant. “Yeah?”
I just nod at her and pick up my bag from where I dropped it (I thought it would be more dramatic that way when they realized I’d caught them).
I can hear her asking several logistical questions I’m not prepared to answer, but I’m already out the door and back down to street level.
The bus to city center is pulling up to the stop, and I jog a bit to catch it before taking my seat, breathless, next to an old woman with one of those plaid grocery store trolleys nestled between her knees.
She gives me a kind smile, but she also smells deeply of wet dog, and my mood sinks even lower as I remember how much bus time living with the Iqbals adds to my commute.
I know Amina would let me crash on her couch, but she’s just entered her third trimester and I don’t want to get in the way.
So the Iqbals are my only option, at least until I can find a new place.
I should have known Lachlan would have a different opinion.
“Why don’t you move in here?”
He suggests it like he’s proposing we go get a cup of coffee, like it’s nothing at all—but it’s not nothing to me.
I’m pretty sure all I do is blink for a solid thirty seconds—but maybe that’s just my brain trying to clear out the insistent buzzing noise that’s reverberating around my skull.
“Move in…here?” I ask, like I’m parroting back vocab words in a language class. “Here here?”
His grin widens. “Yes, Abigail. Here here.”
“Huh.” I suddenly want to sit down—I barged into his house, told him about my flatmate’s jiggly boobs, and dumped all of this on his lap without even taking off my coat.
He scoots over and pats the bit of couch next to him. “Can you give me an estimate on when you think you’ll resume the capacity for speech? I’m wondering if I have time to go for a wee.”
Lachlan saying the word wee knocks me out of my trance and I plop down next to him. “Lachlan, it’s seriously so kind of you to offer, but I can’t move in with you.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t even know where to start!” I say. And that’s true, but only because I can’t, at this moment, come up with a single reason why I shouldn’t. I know there must be thousands, if I could just overcome that damned ringing noise…
“Abby, don’t be stupid. I have an enormous house that is currently bereft of sex-crazed marketing managers with asymmetric nipples.
You have a need for a bed where only you decide who gets to fuck in it.
I’m not asking you to put your name on the door, I’m just saying you could come crash for a while until you find your own place.
There’s literally a whole wing of the house you can have to yourself: bedroom, bathroom, even a little study which would be the perfect place to set up your shrine to me. ”
“I just…”
“No, stop. No ‘just’ anything. I won’t have you getting your apologies and second-guessing all over this.
Come on, Stripes, be reasonable. You’re here all the time anyway—what’s the difference if you also sleep here?
” His grin is cheeky, adorable, vibrant.
“It’ll be so fun, and I promise I’ll only sniff your dirty laundry on alternate Tuesdays. ”
I let that one slide. “But what about work? Won’t people notice? Would we tell anyone?” A frisson of panic pinballs its way around my chest at the thought of what Charlotte would do if she found out, how personally disappointed she’d be, how I certainly would not get a third chance from her.
Lachlan puts his hand on his heart. “I promise I won’t tell Mummy Collins. Anyway, she’s already taken you away from me at the training center, so really, she owes me this.”
“Well, what about—” I can’t say her name, but she’s there, hovering in the ether between us. The wife. What about the wife?! There’s a pretty good reason not to move in, Abby. He’s married.
His mouth flattens into a grim line, and I get the same shiver of nerves I do anytime we approach talking about her. “Don’t worry about her.”
“But…” I stammer. “But isn’t it…Isn’t it weird? Wouldn’t it be weird?”
“Hey, if it’s going to make you uncomfortable, forget I said anything.” He shifts away from me, and it’s like I can see a physical wall being built up in the invisible space between us. It’s this more than anything that makes my mind up.
“No, it doesn’t make me uncomfortable. In fact, it makes me incredibly happy. I’m touched that you’d offer.”
The wall crumbles and the only thing behind it is Lachlan’s enormous smile. “Yeah?”
“Okay. Yeah. Okay. Maybe this could work.”
“Maybe it could be fucking brilliant.”
There’s a little fluttering sensation winging in my heart that must be squashed. “It’s just a few weeks, though. Just until I can find a new place.”
He nods, solemn, but the light in his eyes isn’t diminished one bit. “Agreed. Why don’t we say a week, as a trial period? Come over on Saturday, then bugger off next weekend—if we don’t kill each other before then.”
“Or if I catch you sniffing my laundry on a Wednesday.”
“I would never.”
I laugh and the mood is light, but for a moment it’s like I’ve been tossed in an unexpected squall and I’m groping my way toward safety. Is this a terrible idea or a great one? I genuinely don’t know. I tuck my hair behind my ears and pick up my bag.
Lachlan watches me rise from the couch, and there’s something almost like desperation in his expression. “You could stay here tonight, if you don’t want to face your soiled sheets.”
“Thanks, but I should go back and deal with Fiona. And if they’re in my bed again, well, it’s been fun knowing you, but I will be walking straight into the river.”
“The only appropriate course of action.” He stands up and opens his arms wide for a hug; I gladly slide in.
“Thanks again,” I say, taking in the smell of his shirt, a fresh, clean scent. “You’re a good friend.”
“Aye, and an even better flatmate. Just you wait.”
—
I finally stop arguing with myself three days after Lachlan asks me to move in—just in the nick of time to actually, you know, move.
Since most of my worldly possessions are either in my parents’ basement or decorating the new apartment Steven is sharing with her, it only takes a few trips up and down the stairs of Fiona’s flat to cram everything into the back of the Range Rover.
Oliver is there, skulking in a corner until he works up the nerve to ask Lachlan for his autograph.
Lachlan takes the proffered slip of paper and spins me around to use my back as a table.
He returns it to Oliver, who frowns. “What does it say?”
“It says ‘Fuck in your own bed. xoxo, Lachlan Ramsay.’ ”
I stifle the biggest laugh as Oliver turns a deep red. Lachlan claps him on the shoulder. “Only joking, mate. You can fuck wherever you want now.”
I can’t keep my joy bottled up for a second longer, so I give Fiona a half-assed hug, I lie directly to her face about grabbing coffee soon, and then Lachlan and I are zooming into the city center.
Lachlan has a natural buoyancy that’s immediately apparent on meeting him—it’s what makes him such an asset in the dressing room.
But today, it’s even more palpable than usual.
He keeps glancing over at me at stoplights, a grin on his face like he’s a little kid on his way to Disney World.
It’s infectious, really, and enough to drive the final nail in the coffin of my doubts about this move.
Nothing that makes him this happy can be bad.
Back in his—our?—flat, Lachlan shows me my bedroom suite.
He’s got a devilish little smile plastered on, and I wonder if I’m about to be punked and there will be a child’s race car bed or it will be the laundry room or, somehow, through a wrinkle in the space-time continuum, Fiona and Oliver will be fucking each other’s brains out here as well.
But the door swings open and on first glance it looks like a normal, lovely, empty adult bedroom.
And then I see what’s tickling him so much: Leaning against the pillows are at least twenty bags of Wotsits.
I look at him and match his grin. “Nice touch, my friend. Very well done.”
He throws his arms around me from behind, his forearms crossing under my chin.
I give him a little pat as he squeezes me.
“If the Mersey nutritionist finds out I’m eating Wotsits, there will be hell to pay, so I hope it’s worth it.
And it goes without saying, but the cost will be deducted from your rent. ”
My heart does a little stutter step. Oh, right.
Rent. I dislodge his arms and turn to face him, the blush already creeping up my neck.
“I’m so sorry, I’m just now realizing we didn’t talk about what the rent would be.
Obviously this is way nicer than what I had at Fiona’s, but also, if you’ll recall, I am very poor, so I hope we can work out some sort of deal. ”
He bursts out laughing. “Abby, are you serious? You think I’m going to charge you rent?”
“I don’t want you to think I’m taking advantage of you.”
He puts his hands on my shoulders. He’s trying to be serious, but he can’t disguise the mirth that radiates from him like sunshine, a golden glow that’s tumbling forth from every pore. “I don’t want to be a dick, Stripes, but I make more in one week than you make in a year.”
“It’s actually more than I’d make in three years,” I mumble. I looked it up soon after meeting him, obviously, because googling rich people is why they invented the internet.
To his credit, he doesn’t laugh at my poverty.
“That is actually mad, and I have half a mind to talk to Charlotte about getting you a pay rise.” He does laugh then, at the look of bald panic on my face, then gives my shoulders a reassuring squeeze.
“Calm down, I won’t. My point is…actually, my points are, one: You should be paid way more and I should be paid way less, and two: I am not going to ask you to pay rent.
You’re doing me a favor, in all honesty.
I’m going mental rattling around in here all alone. ”
“Well, what about some sort of in-kind payment? I’ll make you breakfast every day or always take the trash out, or whatever.”
“Abby.” He shakes me. “I promise, all you have to do is let me watch you shower whenever I want, and we’ll be even.”
I laugh and shove his chest. “You’re disgusting, you know that?”
“You have no idea,” he says. “Now come on, we have a dinner booking in five hours and we have three, maybe four boxes to unpack before then. It’s a race against time!”
“Get out of here and leave me and my sad little boxes alone.”
He laughs and closes the door behind him.
As soon as he’s on the other side, the reality of what’s just happened hits me.
I’m living with Lachlan Ramsay. The Lachlan Ramsay.
Too many thoughts are colliding in my head and I can’t process them fast enough.
But one seems to be winning out, growing louder and louder as it squashes all the lesser thoughts: This is either going to be amazing…
or the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life.