Page 24 of Last Dance, Second Chance

“Thanks, Mum.”

The call ended and Jessica had to admit that Nathan had been right: she did feel much better now that she’d told her mum the truth.

Nathan popped his head around the door. “Just checking you’d finished. How did it go?”

“Really well — thank you.”

“Not a problem. Can we finally get started on some Fable II now, please?”

“Absolutely!” Jessica said with a huge smile.

“Also, it’s Saturday tomorrow, so I don’t need to get to work.”

“You shouldn’t have reminded me of that. Now there’s no chance of you getting to bed at anything like a civilised hour.”

* * *

Jessica woke up the next morning and smiled. The previous night had been so much fun. She couldn’t believe that such a terrible thing had happened to her career, the kind of thing she’d always dreaded happening and she’d heard horror stories about, and yet she was waking up with a smile on her face having spent another lovely evening with Nathan. It wasn’t that he had ignored her injury or the magnitude of what it meant for her career, but he’d instead helped her to focus on other things and not become overwhelmed by her broken foot. She was doing the best she could to help it heal as quickly as possible, and that was all she could do.

And now it was the weekend and he didn’t need to go to work for the next couple of days. Yikes, Jessica suddenly thought to herself. They were going to be together for the next two days. What would they find to do and talk about? They couldn’t play video games the whole time, surely. Maybe he’d already made some plans that didn’t involve her. That would be completely understandable. It’s not like he was obliged to hang out with her for the entire weekend. He must have friends. He could even have a date. That’s what regular single people who weren’t obsessed with their careers did on a Saturday night, wasn’t it — go out on a fun date? She’d only been staying with him for a few days so it was completely probable that he’d made plans for the weekend before knowing he was going to end up having her stay.

Well, if he did already have stuff planned, she’d just have to entertain herself. She was a grown-up, after all... Goodness, it was frustrating not being able to exercise. For someone used to spending a vast portion of her day pushing her body to its limits, sitting around with nothing to do didn’t come naturally.

She heard Nathan moving around upstairs, opening up curtains and then what sounded like opening drawers. His footsteps came down the stairs and he was greeted enthusiastically by the dogs before going into the kitchen.

A few minutes later, Jessica heard the now familiar knock on her bedroom door and she called out, “Come in!”

“Good morning,” Nathan said cheerfully. “I come bearing coffee and happy tidings.”

“Are you always so chirpy on the weekend?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Do you want to hear my happy tidings?”

“Go on, then. Thank you for the coffee.”

“It is now well over forty-eight hours since you had your accident, so you are officially allowed to move around more!”

“Hooray,” said Jessica, sarcastically. “I get to be fractionally more mobile on crutches!”

“And, you don’t have to keep your foot elevated all the time, although you still should as much as possible.”

“The excitement’s too much!”

Nathan threw her a mock glare. “I guess you don’t want to hear about what I thought we could do this weekend, then...”

“You don’t have to spend your whole weekend with me...”

“Have you got better things to do this weekend?” teased Nathan. “Do you have a whole gang of friends around here that I don’t know about?”

“No,” admitted Jessica.

“Neither do I, so we may as well spend the time together. As painful as it appears that would be.”

“It wouldn’t be painful at all,” said Jessica, quickly. “Unless I tried to run on my bad foot. I just don’t want you to feel obliged to spend the whole weekend with me if you’ve other stuff you’d rather do.”

“I really don’t,” said Nathan. “Because I only moved back here recently, the only people I know are from the surgery. It’ll be nice to have someone to hang out with.”

“All right, if you’re sure . . .”

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