The Wake-Up Call(78)

“All right. But I have a rule, too.”

I turn back to him. He’s hazier this morning: there’s a brush of stubble on his jaw and a tired glaze to his eyes. His hand dropped from my waist when I shifted, but he places it back there, one thumb sliding up and down my bottom rib.

“No seeing other people,” he says.

This doesn’t entirely surprise me.

“You mean no Louis?”

He says nothing, just watching me. I am struck by the total bizarreness of having him in my bed, and it sends a shiver through me. He feels it and tightens his grip on my waist for a moment, as if to steady me.

“You are so weird about Louis,” I tell him, trying to gather myself.

“Do you like him?”

I hesitate. I know precisely why I’ve held back on telling Lucas that there is nothing between me and Louis. For all my talk about red flags, a little, guilty part of me likes that he’s jealous.

“No,” I say eventually. “I’ve been clear with Louis that there is nothing romantic between us and there never will be. Happy?”

After a long moment, Lucas gives me the ghost of a smile. “Happy,” he says.

I look away, reaching for my phone to check the time. “We should go to work,” I say, and another shiver goes through me, because I’m going to have to stand side by side with Lucas at the desk, and he’s going to be pedantic and rude, and all this—this slow hot dream of a night—will be gone the minute we get out of this bed.

I watch him get ready. How he changes from the man who unravelled me to the man I see every day: shirt perfectly tucked, jaw perfectly shaved, back perfectly straight. As he pulls on his waistcoat, I open Instagram on my phone, looking for distraction, and scroll past a dog video, a book recommendation, and a post from Drew Bancroft.

I pause. Scroll back up again. She’s different. Her hair, once long and bouncy, is now cropped short around her ears, and she’s changed her big, square glasses for a pair of round ones. Can you believe this face can’t find work rn?! the caption reads. If you’ve got a job going, hit me up please, I promise you I’m fabulous and NEVER late (lol no but really I am working on that).

Looking at her makes it a lot easier to remember the humiliation of that night. Seeing Lucas’s hand on her hip as they kissed in the very spot where I’d dreamed of kissing him, screaming at him across the lawn and watching his face turn disdainful . . .

“You’ll be late,” Lucas says, looking at me in the mirror.

I switch off my phone screen. “I won’t.”

He glances at his watch. “You will.”

“I won’t.”

I pull the duvet up to my chest and try to slow my breathing. I can’t believe he stayed here all night. I can’t believe I’ve agreed to doing this again. I can’t believe how badly I want to.

I’m freaking out a bit. Understandable, maybe, but I’d rather do it when Lucas isn’t standing right there in front of my bedroom mirror.

His face is blank as he turns to look at me over his shoulder.

“Izzy. It’s quarter past. I am going to be late. You are still naked under that duvet.”

“Just go, Lucas, OK?”

He frowns, reaching for his duffel bag. “Fine. If that’s what you want.”

As he walks out of my bedroom, I tell myself I’m an adult. I can do this if I want to. And there’s no denying I want to.

I just have to keep my walls up, that’s all.





Lucas


Every night we spend together, I learn something about her. The small formation of freckles on her ankle; how she’s ticklish there. The way her voice lifts when certain people ring her—Sameera, Grigg, Jem—and how it tightens for anyone else. The photograph of her parents on her bedside table, and how she touches it absently sometimes, the way you might stroke a cat.

By the week before Christmas, I am gone. I am out of my own control. Every time we touch, I feel myself tumble a little further, and every time she gives me a bright, professional smile at work it hurts a bit more. I had imagined the danger in this arrangement would be Izzy losing interest in me after we had sex. But it seems the real danger is me falling in love.

We stick to the rules, but as far as I’m concerned, they’re no protection at all. We may not fall asleep together—aside from that first extraordinary night at her flat. But we still hold each other, move together, wrap each other up almost every night. She shows no sign of getting me out of her system, and I’m more addicted to her than ever.

One night she messages me at three in the morning—she’s woken and can’t get back to sleep. I suggest a change of location. She’s outside my flat within twenty minutes, in my bed within another two, and when dawn breaks, she’s naked in my arms, dozing, satisfied. I watch the sky lighten in the gap between my curtains and savour the feeling of her body against mine.

“Can we talk?” I say.

I feel her go still. “What kind of talking?”

“I want to say that I’m sorry for being jealous when you went to the Christmas market with Louis.” My heart quickens. I’ve wanted to tell her this for days. If I want Izzy to see me as a human being, to take me seriously, then she needs to know my story. “He makes me . . . You make me . . . I am,” I say, correcting myself in frustration, “I am on edge when you’re with him. My last relationship . . .”