Page 44 of An Unexpected Kind of Love

Shit yeah meant to tell you Mercury’s in retrograde bad for communication and floors and all of that don’t worry they’ll fix it soon. x

Does that explain what happened to Blake? The lack of punctuation in her text? Mercury in retrograde? Is that really a thing?

Frowning, I shake my head to clear it and respond. Focus.

I don’t care what celestial events were unfolding. You were meant to watch them.

A moment later, my phone lights up.

They dragged a metal cabinet and scraped the floors but if it makes you feel any better I yelled at them. Gx

It doesn’t.

I rest the cool phone against my forehead like I can will Blake to message me. Also this is probably a good way to fry my brain. So much for Mercury and communications.

In a daze, I venture out into the blaze of the late afternoon sun, going for a walk to try to clear my head. At the café, and a flat white later, I see my barista friend Charlie, who asks if I’m all right.

“Yeah, good,” I say.

I should never have said yes to the filming. It’s just brought disaster.

When I check Blake’s Instagram again, I scroll through his feed, full of images of him looking all too gorgeous.

He certainly won’t remain a C-list celeb for long. Everyone will fall into serious like too, and then be laid to waste like me. At least then we can all be ruined together when he’s an A-lister.

In my misery, I walk the streets around my shop.

It’s too hot for food. Too hot for anything. I don’t want to sit in my tiny bedsit for the evening quite yet. I don’t want to look at the ruined floors.

Instead, I turn to go to the photography shop a couple of streets over, to admire cameras I can’t afford in an effort to cheer myself up, which probably is a bit twisted. Occasionally they get in some cool vintage cameras, which are more my budget. I have a few back in my flat. Even though they don’t cost as much as a new digital camera, the vintage cameras are all the more unattainable now due to the shop’s problems, like everything else. The shop and my dating life, it’s all a disaster.

As I reach for the door handle to go in, the door swings open and I nearly collide—yet again—with the person I least want to see when I’m out of sorts like this: Blake.

He didn’t text, which must mean he regrets our date.

Sometimes, Soho doesn’t feel any larger than a postage stamp, especially when trying to avoid someone.

“How can you possibly be everywhere at the same time?” I blurt. Frustrated, I manage to keep my balance this time and not end up flat on my face. My face is on fire.

“Aubrey? Are you all right? I was going to call you when I got back to the hotel. What are you doing here?”

“What areyoudoing here?” I retort sharply, crossing my arms tight across my chest. “This ismystreet.”

Blake’s eyes widen. He holds up his hands. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“Everything’s wrong!” I practically vibrate with all of the pent-up rage and frustration and please don’t let me burst into tears or totally lose my cool at him. But who am I fooling? Because I don’t have any chill and he’s nothing but. “No thanks to you and your stupid film.”

He steps onto the pavement toward me. My scowl is so fierce on him that it’s incredible he doesn’t burst into flames with my fury. Like everything is his fault. Concern is plain across his face.

“I don’t understand. What happened?”

“Of course you don’t.” I scowl. “You didn’t text back, for starters.”

His expression softens. “Aha.”

“Aha?”

Blake droops. “I’m sorry. I should’ve stopped by. Or left a note, or something. I was thinking of you, I promise. It was a long day of filming, and then I fell asleep. And then I think someone on the crew ‘borrowed’ my charger and I couldn’t text.”

---