Chapter Fourteen #2
To make herself feel even worse, she was watching Wilde’s latest TikTok on a loop.
It was a day in her life. The usual. Get up at some ungodly hour.
Clack her nails all over her morning skincare.
Set her intentions for the day. Do some yoga in a sleek greige sports bra and leggings set (which would have made Tess look like sausage meat spilling out of its casings).
Clack more bottles and pots pre-post workout shower.
Yet more clacking as Wilde served up her favourite breakfast of chia seed and blueberry overnight oats and an iced matcha latte; and on it went.
Without breaking a sweat, Tess could find a thousand other DITLs exactly like this one. Yet none of them would come even close to taunting and torturing her. Because none of them had a cameo of the ex-boyfriend she thought she was going to spend the rest of her life with.
One moment, Wilde was clacking her nails against her greige Stanley cup (‘Who doesn’t love a well-hydrated queen?
’) on the kitchen counter, the next, a man in an expensive-looking grey suit and black shirt entered the frame.
Just his torso, but Tess would have recognised that chest anywhere.
It was even more buff than it used to be, his biceps straining against black cotton.
‘Babe,’ he said. ‘Have you seen my charger?’
Wilde looked to camera, a smile on a face that was naturally beautiful even before she contoured the fuck out of it.
Cut to her nails clacking on a drawer before she opened it.
Inside, neatly arranged in a rainbow array of perfect coils, were all manner of leads and chargers.
Wilde ran a perfectly manicured finger along the row, before selecting one.
Then Tess could hear Sean say off camera, ‘Thanks, Babe. Don’t know what I’d do without you. ’
In Tess’s day there had not been a drawer of beautifully organised, colour coded and labelled chargers and leads.
There had been a snarled tangle of white cables that all looked the same on the floor on her side of the bed, which Sean used to nag her about.
Especially when Tess found it easier to use his charger than look for her own.
When she occasionally and accidentally took his charger to work with her, he’d vibrate with rage.
Also, he’d never once called her Babe. Or a babe.
Tess was just about to force down another tonka bean noisette and watch the video for the twentieth time when she was saved by the welcome chime of a WhatsApp.
Even seeing that it was from Gabriel Sharma couldn’t dent her relief at the distraction.
Gabe Sharma: Hi Tess. Just wanted to see how you were after the other night. Hope everything is okay with you.
Tess was not the sort of woman who could leave a message on read, not even for the time it took to gather her thoughts. She just wasn’t wired that way. Then she wondered what kind of person used ‘okay’ instead of OK?
Tess Hardy: I’m fine. Don’t worry. I said I wouldn’t write it up for the paper and I meant it.
She was about to go back to her actual ninth circle of hell; Born To Be Wilde, when her phone chimed again. Turned out that Gabe was also the sort of person who replied to messages instantly, though there was not one thing about him that suggested he was a free-flowing, spontaneous kind of guy.
Gabe Sharma: That’s not why I’m messaging you. The date with Rochester was challenging and you seemed quite upset when you left, so I thought I should check in.
It was so unexpected that Tess had to swallow past the sudden lump in her throat. Someone, a man, had looked at Tess and really seen her. Had been perceptive. Was now concerned about her emotional well-being.
After the terrible night she was having, being seen was sorely needed.
Tess Hardy: That’s very kind. Really I’m all right. Just chalking it up to one more bad date!
Now all her attention was fixed on the italicised ‘typing …’ and she was remembering that there had been some good things about the bad date.
Like the way she’d asked Gabe for help and he hadn’t hesitated to come rushing over and act as a human shield between Tess and Rochester.
He’d also had the foresight to have their food packed up to go.
Nor had he once told Tess off for damaging library property by chucking water over it and when they’d walked back to the library, he’d done that slick little move so that, again, he was between Tess and Rochester.
Then there had been that straight-faced wink, which had done something vague and fluttery to her insides, which was nothing compared to what had happened in the region of her solar plexus when his thumb had drifted into the dip of her collarbone.
Christ! She was so skin-starved, so single, that no man was safe from her treacherous thoughts.
Not even someone like Gabriel Sharma, whose shapeless tweed jacket and supercilious expression couldn’t hide his innate hotness.
Plus, he was very, very intellectual. Always referencing dead philosophers with complicated foreign names with the same frequency that Tess quoted her favourite Real Housewives.
Could two people be any more incompatible?
While all this angsting was happening, Gabe had replied.
Gabe Sharma: Talking of bad dates, I have a proposition for you.
Gabe Sharma: That sounded inappropriate. I mean a proposition which involves having good dates. Rather than bad dates. Fun, flirty dates. No pressure. No expectation. Is that something you might be interested in?
Was Gabe asking her out?
Why? Why would he do that?
No, he couldn’t be.
Tess Hardy: I’m confused.
Tess Hardy: We are talking about The Love Library, right?
Gabe Sharma: Of course! What else would we be talking about? I have an idea that I’d like to run past you.
Why was Tess experiencing the faintest pinprick of regret that Gabe was only contacting her on official Love Library business? It was probably too much tonka bean having a weird effect on her brain.
Tess Hardy: Go on then!
Gabe Sharma: Quite hard to explain via the medium of message or even email. Shall we meet up?
Really, if he wanted Love Library advice, then Tess should charge him a consultancy fee. Although nobody had ever wanted to consult her about anything before so she had no idea what the pricing structure should be.
Then again, she really needed to tell him that she wasn’t some dating guinea pig that he and his sister could keep road testing fictional romantic heroes on until they got it right.
Gabe Sharma: I hope I haven’t been presumptuous or that you’re worried that I’ll simply open a random book and present you with another unsuitable match. Quite the contrary, in fact.
Gabe was much kinder and much less stern when he was WhatsApping.
He also seemed very keen to pick Tess’s brains, which again was almost unknown territory for Tess, unless it was advertorial clients who wanted to meet for coffee only so they could try to persuade her to write them a pitch deck for free.
‘I’m afraid there’s no money in the budget, but it will be great exposure,’ was a sentence Tess had heard far too often.
But Tess’s interest had been piqued. There might be another article in Gabe’s non-presumptuous proposition.
After an evening of rejections then brooding over Boyfriend Past and his nail-clacking happy ever after, it was a little bit validating that a man wanted to spend some time with her.
Even if really he should be paying her. No, that sounded wrong.
Tess Hardy: I am intrigued. I suppose I could come to the library. I finish early on Fridays.
Even Claire the Officious started getting antsy by Friday lunchtime and often claimed that she had an appointment with her podiatrist. ‘I’m a slave to my bunions,’ she’d say so no one wanted to question her any further.
Gabe Sharma: Let’s take this off site. The library can be a little oppressive. I finish early on Fridays too. The university is quite close to the Sentinel building. Maybe we could do a walk and talk along the river?
This was sounding quite date-like in a Richard Curtis movie kind of way. Tess checked the forecast. Friday afternoon promised that it would be ‘Sunny with a gentle breeze.’
Tess Hardy: OK. Yeah. I can do that.
Gabe Sharma: Shall we meet outside the bookshop next to the Royal Festival Hall at say 3 p.m.?
Tess Hardy: Great. It’s a date!
Gabe Sharma: I’ll see you then, Tess.
Tess Hardy: Not a date! I know it’s not a date. LOL.
Tess Hardy: Yeah. See you, Friday.
Even though Tess hadn’t got laid (not that she’d wanted to) and had eaten so many miniature tonka bean desserts that she felt quite sick, she had a non-date on Friday.
With a man who was intellectually far out of her league; but he needed something from her, which was a novelty.
He absolutely wasn’t her type, but her eyes liked looking at him, so there had to be much worse ways to spend a sunny Friday afternoon.