Page 74 of The Wake-Up Call

“Damn right,” he says to her, and then he winks.

I sigh.

“What?” he says.

“You are making it harder for me to think you’re sensible. Sensible men don’t wink,” I say, thinking gloomily of Louis, who winks at least once a day, and is definitely an idiot.

“Why the hell would you want to be sensible? You want this girl, don’t you?”

I nod into my Yowza smoothie (ginger, rocket, orange, carrot).

“So take her!”

“Pedro...”

“I just mean—she is offering you something. Not everything you want, sure, you want the marriage and babies...”

I glare at him. He grins.

“But it’s a start.”

“It’s a start.”

This is what I told myself last night. Izzy seems programmed to think the worst of me—the reason everything I did yesterday backfired was because she assumed at every point that I was trying to make her as miserable as possible. By the time we got to my flat, I was so defeated, and then she was walking out on me, and Iknewshe’d kiss me back if I kissed her. Resisting any longer just seemed impossible.

“Her rules are a good idea—they’ll stop you catching feelings,” Pedro says. He wipes down the coffee machine and throws the cloth over his shoulder.

Those rules. They infuriated me. But I know Pedro is right: I’m developing dangerous feelings already, and if there aren’t any boundaries when I spend the night with her, I am at real risk of harm.

“You’re a big boy, Lucas,” Pedro says. “What is it you’re afraid of?”

I close my eyes. “I think I was holding back the only card I had, and now I’m playing it,” I say eventually. “I have one thing she is interested in and I’m about to give it to her.”

The next woman in the queue is ordering. Pedro ducks his head to listen to her, then spins on his heels to start conjuring up a white chocolate latte.

“You’re talking like an American girl about to give up her virginity,cara,” Pedro says, and then realises he’s speaking English and laughs as the entire queue turns to stare at me.

“Thank you for that.”

“Sorry. I’m just saying, you’re not giving anything up. Sex with her means closeness. It means pillow-talk and all those hormones that women get when they have sex with you.”

“Pedro,” I say, rubbing my forehead.

“OK, if you want to be romantic about it, you’re showing her how it could be between the two of you if you were together. So many great love stories started in the bedroom. My brother’s wife was his one-night-stand rebound girl! And now they have a horrible number of children.”

This is actually quite helpful. “Thank you, Pedro,” I say.

“No problem! Now remember, be safe,cara—condoms are your friend!”

This, of course, is in English. I drink the last of my smoothie, shoot the sniggering Pedro a filthy glance, and head for the door.

•••••

When I arrive at Forest Manor for my shift, I realise that this feeling in my stomach is actually quite familiar: getting to work and wondering what Izzy will throw at me today. But it’s new, too. The excitement, the anticipation for tonight. Thinking about her body, and knowing Ican, because within a matter of hours—unless she’s changed her mind—I’ll be holding her.

But it’s not Izzy who walks in next, it’s Louis. He’s wearing an open-necked white shirt under an expensive wool coat, looking every bit the modern Englishman.

“Lucas, hey,” he says, tapping a hand on the front desk. It’s strewn with old cigar cases—Mandy was photographing them for “those little Instagram videos with songs on them” at the end of her shift. “Izzy about?”

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