Page 43 of An Unexpected Kind of Love

Can’t wait, I text back.

And, after a futile search for beans, I give up. Who knew there were so many kinds? What do the different beans symbolize? Like some kind of Victorian flower code. Except for violets and tulips, we have legumes.

I fall asleep again.

Later comes. And goes.

I don’t wake up with any bean or Blake-related insights. Or any texts, aside from the reminder I programmed to place a grocery order.

The evening technically stretches into tomorrow; it’s just past midnight when I wake again. Again, there’re no messages on my phone. Glum, I check the shop email, and then because I can’t help myself, Blake’s Instagram for the latest post.

Unfortunately, there’s no recent update—but the last photo was posted over twelve hours ago, showing a spectacular sunrise over London’s skyline.

Chapter Eleven

When I wake up in the afternoon, everything’s still. There’s no commotion downstairs.

Dust motes hang in the filtered sunbeam through the mostly drawn curtains. My cat sleeps beside me. It’s early for the filming to have wrapped. For a while, I stay there, unmoving, in case they’re in the middle of a quiet shot.

Eventually, I sit up. Bare-chested with the heat, my skin’s so ghostly that I’m practically translucent, an indigo dragon winding from my shoulder to my arm, its tail and talons around my bicep. I reach for a black T-shirt and pull on my jeans.

I find my phone to check for any more texts. Unfortunately, no texts from Blake, with or without bean banter. Disappointed, I tell myself he has to be busy, getting on with things. He’s only in London for a few days before he has to go back home to America.

Don’t get too invested, I try to tell myself. There’s some niggling worry that it might be too late for that.

After thirty minutes of creeping around my flat, I decide no one’s downstairs after all, and I go to investigate.

Everyone’s gone, along with all of their film equipment. Shelves are out of order. Books are also out of order. Most troubling of all, there’re deep gouges and chips in my hardwood floor.

I gawp unhappily. Furniture’s clearly been dragged over the floor. To add further insult to injury, there’s a hole cut into one wall, including through the wood lathing—a hole that has absolutely no business being there, where no hole existed before.

There’s an envelope on the counter addressed to me. I open it and pull out the letter.

Dear Aubrey,

My sincere apologies about the damages to the floor and wall. We’ve finished with this location for the filming. We will arrange for repairs. We see that the floor is quite old and has previous repair patches. I’ll send you an email tonight and let’s chat about how to proceed before bringing the lorry back with the rest of your shelves and books. We received your post while you were away today, which I’ve placed on the back counter.

Kind regards,

Alice

I want to ball the paper up and chuck it against the wall. Or scream. Or do something else dramatic as I stare at the obvious chunks taken out of the floors. Sure, the floors are old and worn in places, but they had done a great job in refinishing them a few days earlier, making them look as good as they could. Now it looks like they put even more effort into wrecking the floors than buffing them to mirror polish.

These were the floors my father installed. The damages make me feel like I’m letting him down. That he’d be disappointed in me. Plus, there’s definitely no money for repairs. God, I can’t even afford to fix the damn kitchen sink properly, never mind replace all of the floors, which would probably cost a small fortune. Or a mid-sized fortune.

Sure, the film people say that they’ll cover the cost, but will they cover all of it? Would the floors be as nice? Plus, the disruption in sorting this out means more delays in reopening the shop, and all the time to put it back together again. Which means lost sales.

Lost sales leads me to thinking of reopening. Reopening leads me to—

Gemma.

She was supposed to be watching the film people.

I text her.

The shop’s been wrecked. What happened?

If nothing else, she’s a prompt correspondent. But then, she lives between apps and scrolling, so I shouldn’t be that surprised.

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