Page 54 of The Love Hack

By the time this little speech had concluded, we’d walked the full length of the office. I put my bag down on my desk and surveyed the scene. Simon and Barney were unshaven, and I was pretty sure Barney’s shirt was the same one he’d been wearing the previous day. Neil’s usual pallor had taken on an almost green tinge. Ross was hammering away at his keyboard, then he paused, moved his finger to the Delete key, and held it there.

‘We’re not in a good way,’ Marco continued. ‘Not at all.’

‘I can’t remember getting home last night,’ Simon said.

‘I didn’t get home last night,’ said Barney.

‘Our struggle is real,’ Neil said. ‘We’re suffering.’

‘Except me,’ Chiraag chipped in. ‘I did a twenty K cycle this morning, and I feel great.’

‘No one likes a show-off,’ said Marco.

‘What happened to you, anyway, Lucy?’ Neil asked. ‘One minute you were revelling in your moment of glory, the next – poof.’

‘The mysterious case of the vanishing agony aunt,’ said Chiraag.

Ross looked up from his keyboard. He didn’t look at me directly – in fact, he seemed to be avoiding looking at me at all. And he wasn’t blushing; in fact, his face was pale and set.

‘Something came up,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to bail on the drinks bit. I messaged Greg and said I’d catch up with you guys later, but – well, I guess I didn’t. My bad. Looks like I had a lucky escape from the team hangover, though.’

‘Speaking of which,’ Marco dumped his burden of bags and cups on his desk, ‘the cavalry has arrived. First aid all round. Coffee for you Barney, tea for Simon, Diet Coke for you, Chiraag – smug git – full fat Coke for you, Ross.’

Everyone collected their orders, thanking Marco before sitting down, the cloying smell of warm grease seeping into the air. But Ross didn’t move from his chair.

I hesitated for a second, then passed the can of Coke, slippery with condensation, across the desk to him.

‘Thanks, Lucy,’ he said, but he didn’t smile.

‘You’re welcome.’ I sat down and switched on my computer, puzzled and hurt. Yesterday, I’d thought everything was okay between us – good, even. Today, it was apparently anything but good.

But as soon as I opened my email, I found myself distracted from my thoughts of Ross – and even from the other thoughts that had been plaguing me since the previous day. I needed – with or without the help of his chatbot assistant – to get my Adam head on, and the letter from Karl seemed as good a place as any to start.

My first reaction to his letter was annoyance – anger, even. Yeah, Karl, you found a girl you thought was some sort of perfect Insta persona, and she turned out to be human – boo hoo, poor you, I thought. I wonder how different you are when you’re slobbing round the house in your boxer shorts leaving dirty coffee mugs all over the place and farting in bed to the guy she fell in love with?

I read the question again, and rolled my eyes. Honestly, men – what was even the point of them?

And then I remembered Ross yesterday – his kindness, the way we’d vibed together completing the escape room challenges. You saw the point of him all right, didn’t you, Lucy?

But now it seemed he couldn’t see the point of me any more. Perhaps what had happened between us the previous day had just been a one-off – a never-to-be-repeated forty minutes of friendship. Perhaps all I was to him was an escape-room team-mate – useful in the moment, then to be relegated to the status of the geeky girl who sat opposite him in the office. And anyway, I reminded myself for the zillionth time, Ross had a girlfriend. Ross was off limits. Any man I worked with was, but especially him.

So I’d just have to carry on as usual – being smiley and polite, and not allowing any sort of closeness to develop between us, ever.

Grimly, I turned to Karl’s letter on my screen and started typing.

Dear Karl

Well, you’ve had quite the rude awakening, haven’t you? The perfect woman you thought you’d found turned out to be – newsflash – a human being. How disappointing for you. Maybe it’s time you moved out and left her to be human in peace? Or buy yourself a blow-up doll for company, who’ll be just the same every single day and who’ll let you use her as a wank sock with a permanent smile on her plastic face. Perhaps you…

Then I stopped. It was no good – I mustn’t allow myself to take my own moods out on Adam’s correspondents. It was unprofessional – it was unfair. The shadow of gloom and worry that was hanging over me mustn’t be allowed to cloud Adam’s judgment. If necessary, I’d have to turn to GenBot 2.0 and get it to compose a less trenchant reply – although that always felt like a bit of an admission of defeat, as if I wasn’t capable of doing Adam’s job – my job – myself. I sighed, eased a knot of tension from my shoulders, staring down at my keyboard as if it would somehow spring to life and type the words I couldn’t find.

It didn’t, of course. Instead, I found myself picturing the note I’d found from Kieren, after that second night when we kissed: the pale blue lines on the white paper, the darker blue slashes of the descenders of the capital K. I could almost feel how my heart skipped had skipped seeing it, and the stomach-lurching excitement I’d felt when I read it.

Lucy

You’re so beautiful it hurts my heart. And I want you so much it hurts my – well, never mind. Again, tonight?

K

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