Page 93 of The Life-Changing Magic of Falling in Love

‘Maybe we could sell art by local artists in the bakery,’ Oz muses. ‘It’s an idea, right? I mean, the Oscars are only on that one wall at the back.’ He breaks off as his phone alerts him to a message. He opens the message then shoves his phone back into his pocket, with a, ‘Yeah … no way I’m asking you that.’

‘Ask me what?’

‘Nothing. Forget it. Ignore that,’ he says as his phone sounds again.

‘You shouldn’t ever ignore phone messages,’ I say quietly, unable to help myself. ‘What if…’ I lick my lips. ‘What if it’s Carlos with something important.’

He stares at me a moment and then sighs. ‘Okay, I’ll take a look.’ He opens his message and rolls his eyes. ‘It’s essentially a repeat of the first message.’

‘He’s okay, though?’

‘Debatable,’ Oz says and silently holds the phone up for me to read:

HAVE YOU ASKED HER HOW THE SEX WAS WITH ZACH???

My mouth forms the word, ‘Oh.’

‘I keep telling him you’ll tell him when you’re ready,’ Oz says. ‘I mean, you said I didn’t mess things up for you with all my “He’s not where he says he is at the weekend” but … it went ahead? Because Carlos said that was how you were spending your evening the other night? When you didn’t come into the bakery the next morning, we figured it had gone well – that you were still there. But when you didn’t come in yesterday, either…’

‘I didn’t – that is – we didn’t.’

‘Didn’t?’

‘Have the sex. Couldn’t.’

‘Couldn’t? Right. Um … I’ll just put…’ He starts replying to Carlos’s messages. ‘She says they couldn’t have sex because…?’ He looks helplessly at me.

‘His penis was too big?’ I say and then as he goes to type I put my hand out to stop him. ‘That was a joke. Do not tell him that.’ My own phone goes off and laughing I say, ‘You should have typed faster. That’s probably him demanding the tea on Zach and me. No way he’d ever trust a PG version from you anyway. Oh…’

It’s not Carlos.

It’s George:

I’ve worked out why you peed on your boss. You were part of a trial to find some sort of non-bleach cleaner and the experiment went horribly wrong. Before you shrug my hypothesis off, if that isn’t what happened, consider there’s a well-known drink product that started off as toilet cleaner, so it’s not that far-fetched.

I grin and message back:

And being the expert, how would you go about advertising something like that, exactly?

A few seconds later I get the following response:

Well, you’d be the face of the product, obviously!

I message back:

Obviously! Except I already told you what happened. In detail. It’s not my fault you fell asleep.

I hesitate but then turn my message more personal with:

How are you doing today?

The response comes back:

Fine. Sorted out lots. Meeting with work on Monday!!

I message:

Great, but how are you doing today????

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