Page 19 of Lovers in Lockdown

CHAPTER TEN

Noah

Honey is nowhere to be found when I wake up in the morning. She must have gone to some effort to creep past without waking me, because she normally sounds like a fucking elephant stomping around the flat. Although, she didn’t last night.

I didn’t hear her at all.

Didn’t know she was standing there until after I’d emptied the contents of my ball sack all over my stomach.

Christ, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks exhausting myself to keep my behaviour in check and not flirt with my best friend’s little sister and nowI’ve only gone and blown my load in front of her.

I didn’t even think she was real when I saw her. Thought she was just my imagination playing tricks on me. Only seconds before, I was picturing the way her nipples pebble when she’s cold and imagining what they’d feel like in my mouth, on my tongue, between my teeth.

But there she was. Standing there. Watching me. With flushed skin and startled eyes and a look of humiliation scalding her delicate face.

Jesus, she must have been so freaked out.

Apparently, she still is, since there’s no trace of her in the apartment at all. I don’t know where she’s gone, or when she will be home. I don’t even have her number to text her and find out.

But since she isn’t around to keep me entertained, I guess I may as well get started on ideas for the restaurant’s new menu. Although, frankly, I’d rather inject myself with disinfectant than bust my ass coming up with delicious recipes for a man who pays me too little and will undoubtedly be taking full credit for the ideas anyway.

And to make things worse, there’s barely any food in the house, which means I’ll have to battle the panic buyers and stockpilers at the local supermarket.

Bleh.

I head out wearing plastic gloves and a mask that covers my nose and mouth, and makes me uncomfortably aware of the smell of my own breath. I won’t miss dressing like I’m removing asbestos every time I leave the house when this is all over, that’s for fucking sure.

Every person I pass on the way is donned in the same get-up, so at least I don’t feel out of place. But it does feel as if I’m living inside an apocalyptic zombie movie. When I’m at home, I can almost ignore what’s going on in the world at the moment, but there’s no ignoring it when I have to stand outside the supermarket for fifty million years before finally being allowed inside.

The new normal means queuing, apparently.

And finding it more embarrassing to cough in public than to fart.

By the time I’ve finished shopping, stopped myself from yelling at every dickhead stockpiling toilet roll, and made it back to the flat, it’s well past midday. Nearly three hours have passed since I left this morning and there is still no sign of Honey.

Is she avoiding me? Or has she got herself into some kind of Honey-style trouble and now needs rescuing? Like getting lost and following her GPS down a public footpath in her car, or deeply offending someone with one of her unsolicited diagnoses and getting arrested on harassment charges.

But I can’t rescue her from whatever bizarre situation she’s got herself into, because I have no idea where she’s gone and I don’t even have her number to find out.

Bollocks.

I fire off a text to Reid asking if he’s heard from his sister. He hasn’t.

Double bollocks.

I’m dialling the local police station to ask if they have anyone in custody for assaulting the public with medical advice when the front door swings open to reveal a dishevelled Honey with rain-soaked hair and torn clothes.

‘Jesus, Honey, what the fuck has happened to you?’

She wipes some dirt off her cheek with the back of her hand and stomps into the flat, leaving a puddle of water in the hallway on the other side of the door.

‘I went for a walk,’ she shrugs.

‘For three hours?’

‘Yeah.’

I’m not buying it.

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