Page 56 of The Love Hack

And then we were on the floor, the scratchy carpet tiles harsh on my bare back, and he was on top of me, his hands on me, his penis thrusting hard against my thigh and then pushing inside me. I gasped, but the pain was brief and soon replaced by pleasure – here it was. This was what I’d longed for, happening right now.

Afterwards, he held me close.

‘Was that all right for you, Lucy?’

I nodded, unable to find words for what I was feeling. It had been all right. It hadn’t been the magical experience I’d hoped for – but it would get better, surely? We’d learn each other’s bodies, learn what worked.

‘How about for you?’ I asked shyly.

‘The best,’ he said. ‘The very best shag with the very best girl.’

And then he said the words he’d said each time before, in the office after work.

‘We should get you home.’

‘Lucy?’ Ross’s voice jolted me out of the memory, making me jump and blush, as if he could somehow guess what I’d been thinking about. ‘You got a second?’

‘Sure.’

Feeling half-dazed still, not certain whether I was here in the Max! office with Ross or there, back then, with Kieren, I stood and followed Ross away from our desks. He gestured to the door of one of the meeting rooms – not the one with the glass walls that anyone could see into, but the smaller one, where people went for confidential events like performance appraisals.

In that second, I suddenly felt as nervous as if I was going in for a performance appraisal myself.

Ross held the door open and I followed him in and sat down. He sat opposite me, and we looked at each other for a second, both apparently tongue-tied.

Then I said, ‘So how was the rest of the party? The pub and the meal and everything?’

He shrugged. ‘It was good. It was – you know – a pub and a meal.’

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t join you.’

Ross looked down at the surface of the table, as if he was wishing he’d written what he was about to say in a notebook and brought it in with him for reference. Then he said, ‘Lucy, I have to apologise.’

‘You what? Apologise for what?’

‘For making you feel uncomfortable. What I did yesterday – I didn’t think at the time. It was inappropriate.’

‘What you – I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’

He looked up again, his eyes meeting mine. ‘In the escape room, touching your… uh… your legs. Without asking. And then talking about it in front of the others. It wasn’t cool. I’m sorry.’

I couldn’t help it – I laughed. ‘Ross, me leaving after the escape room was nothing to do with what happened in there. And you did nothing wrong. You were helping me. I didn’t mind. If I had done, I’d have said something.’

He blinked. He looked like a flat-earther who’d just seen images of the planet from space, or something. Or maybe, not, because I don’t think flat-earthers are that easy to persuade, even when confronted with reality.

‘You mean you… Then why…’

I cupped my hands around my water glass. I didn’t owe Ross an explanation – I’d already explained myself to Greg, who was after all my line manager and whose business it was. But suddenly I felt the need to explain – more than that, actually. To confide.

I said, ‘My sister called me. I don’t know if you remember, she got married a couple of months back?’

He nodded. ‘Is she okay?’

‘Here’s the thing,’ I went on. ‘We – her friends and me – we hadn’t heard from her in a while, and we were worried. She and her husband are living in New York for a bit, because he’s working out there. And we’ve been trying to get hold of her for ages, but she wasn’t really answering our calls. And then yesterday, when I came out of the escape room, I saw she’d been trying to ring me, so of course I had to call her back.’

Ross nodded, that dawning-comprehension look still on his face. ‘Is she okay?’

I shook my head. ‘Not really. She’s having a shit time out there, as far as I can tell. She’s really bored, and I think really lonely. Zack – that’s her husband – is working long hours and she’s stuck on the apartment on her own and she hates it, and she’s homesick, and missing me and her friends, and…’

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