Page 33 of The Love Hack

He thought for a moment. ‘Maybe it does. It shouldn’t but it might. Guys are more territorial about shit like that.’

‘Oh for God’s sake. Don’t pull that caveman, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus stuff on me.’

‘I wasn’t! I was just saying, in my experience, a man might not take it as well as a woman. Women are more emotionally mature.’

I bristled. ‘Right. And we can’t read maps?’

‘Hey, I never said anything about maps. You asked me my opinion, and I’m telling you.’

Which was true, of course. ‘Sorry. Okay, thanks. I’ll tell the guy to talk to his friend and if he’s cool with it, give it a go.’

Ross raised an eyebrow. ‘Yeah. Sounds like a plan to me.’

I was saved from having to say anything more by Ross’s phone trilling softly on the desk next to him. He put down the remaining corner of his sandwich and answered it.

‘Hey, Bryony. How’s it going?’

Then he stood up so quickly his chair went skidding into the sub-editors’ pod behind him, and hurried off to the area by the lifts where we all took calls when we didn’t want to be overheard.

I bit my lip, remembering the conversation I’d had with Bryony the night before the wedding. I’d promised to put in a word for her, and I hadn’t. I couldn’t even tell myself I hadn’t had a chance – I’d just spent five minutes discussing Louis from Manchester’s love life (which I wasn’t convinced Ross believed wasn’t my own) with him. But that was different. That was – as I’d said – theoretical. His…. thing, whatever it was, with Bryony was anything but.

Still, I’d promised to do something and not done it. And that wasn’t cool. According to the code Ross has alluded to earlier, I should have been bigging her up to him at every opportunity.

So why hadn’t I?

I hadn’t wanted to. It would have been all kinds of awkward. He’d have blushed, I’d have blushed. The tenuous normality that had been re-established between the two of us would get thrown all out of kilter again. But then, it just had been, by me going and asking him theoretical questions about one of Adam’s correspondents.

I had a duty to say something. It was going to be difficult, but I was going to do it. Just as soon as an appropriate moment arose, whenever that might be. Maybe in a week or two.

My brain might have been all set to procrastinate, but apparently my mouth had other ideas. A couple of minutes later, Ross returned to his desk and sat down, glanced at me, then put his phone back where it had been, next to his keyboard. I could see the beginning of a blush stealing up his neck, but he picked up his sandwich and took what I guessed was meant to be a nonchalant bite.

‘Ross?’

He raised both eyebrows this time, chewing.

‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing. Was that Bryony you were talking to?’

He nodded and swallowed.

I felt myself starting to blush again, but pressed on. ‘I mean… that’s the girl you met when I was on my sister’s hen night. You know she’s a friend of my sister’s?’

He nodded again.

‘Are you seeing her?’ I asked. My voice sounded like it was coming from a long way away. ‘Not that it’s any of my business.’

‘No, you’re all good.’ He glanced at his phone as if expecting it to ring again and rescue him from having to talk to me. ‘We’ve been texting. We’ve been out. So seeing each other…? Yeah, we kind of are.’

‘You should go for it. Honestly. Bryony’s lovely. She’s really nice and…’ What the hell could I say about her? I barely knew the woman. ‘Lovely.’

Ross nodded, his face seeming to close off again. ‘Good to know. Thanks, Lucy.’

And then our eyes slid away from each other’s faces like ice cubes on a glass tabletop, and we both turned back to our screens and worked in silence for the remainder of the afternoon.

THIRTEEN

The following Sunday evening, I found myself – or rather, Adam found himself – with a clear inbox. I’d filed that week’s answers to Greg on time and received the usual monosyllabic response. I’d read through all the incoming problems and decided which of them was on the shortlist for a reply the following week, although I hadn’t drafted my answers yet, in case anything juicier arrived in the meantime.

So it felt like a usual Sunday evening at home – or what used to be a usual Sunday evening before Adam and his… followers? Clients? Patients? I wasn’t sure what to call them, had become part of my life. I was on the sofa with Astro lying on my feet. A half-eaten carton of chicken and cashew udon was on the coffee table next to me, the lid propped on top of it to prevent Astro rummaging through the bits of bean sprout and carrot for fragments of chicken, like a cat fishing for koi carp in a pond.

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