Including, to my astonishment and indignation, Fraser.

He texted, and I was foolish enough to open it. I’d removed him from my contact list and his number came up as unknown. I had to check it, as it could have been a prospective client. I didn’t read the whole thing—the moment I realised who it was, I hit delete.

I didn’t want to talk about it with anyone, let alone Fraser.

So. Denial.

I ignored it, I ignored the curious looks I got for a few days as I went about my business running errands in town, and crazy though it seemed, that was it. Drama over.

When I was ten years old, Giselle moved in with us. Her huge Norwegian forest cat, Holly Golightly, also moved in. Holly was nearing the end of her long life and she did very little other than nap in the sun and occasionally kill something if it wandered too close. Apart from her bottomless appetite for death, I thought she pretty much had it made.

I loved that cat. That cat loved me. A little too much; she flat-out dumped Giselle as the recipient of her love gifts and started leaving them for me instead.

I never did get used to waking up to dead mice on my pillow. Or birds, toads, and on one memorable occasion a slow worm, which I thought was a small bronze snake. Whenever this happened, I would scream, Giselle would roll her eyes and take care of it, I’d change my pillow case, and all was forgotten until the next corpse showed up.

It felt wrong that discovering an actual human being in my house should play out the same as coming nose to nose with one of Holly’s presents, but that’s how it went.

It was distressingly easy to get over. In fact, a month later, I didn’t even think of it at all.

That wasn’t the problem.

Adam was.

I couldnotstop thinking about him.

It was one thing to replay that disastrous night when he’d left me high and dry, obsessing about every little detail and imagining how else it could have gone. I was a champion overthinker. That was par for the course.

But when I caught myself daydreaming about him—about his smile, about that frisson of panic/lust I felt whenever he looked at me, about the heat of his body hovering over mine—that was when I began to think I had a problem.

It got worse.

Even if I was the sort of man who was well-adjusted enough to actually be able to control his thoughts, it wouldn’t have helped.

Adam was everywhere.

Sometimes it was a random sighting. I’d see him idling at the pedestrian crossing on his Triumph, or catch a glimpse of him in the Sainsburys car park, striding on his long legs toward the shop, or I’d walk past him having a pint outside The Lion with a group of friends.

Mostly, though, I saw him at the coffee shop. Which was weird.

I went to The Chipped Cup every day at eleven for a latte. I loved my job and I loved working from home, but if I didn’t make the effort to get out and interact with people in real life, days could pass with no social contact beyond Zoom meetings and phone calls and emails.

I’d been making that effort like clockwork for five years. I’d never once seen Adam there.

I’d have noticed him.

You couldn’tnotnotice him, sitting in his loose-limbed and graceful sprawl, his lean body obnoxiously relaxed, like he owned the place and everyone in it. If he didn’t arrive with friends, someone would inevitably show up or rush over to join him. He drew the light itself to him. It refracted off his cheekbones, off his laughing smile, off his shiny red-gold hair in its ghastly perfect curls.

The first time I saw him, I’d been sketching furiously on my iPad, trying to shake loose some ideas. I paused for a sip of coffee, glanced up, and my eyes clashed with his.

He stood with his back to the counter while the barista, Amalie, made his coffee. He had his elbows propped on the counter and pelvis tilted out in a casual stance that displayed every one of his aesthetically pleasing angles to perfection.

It displayed more than his angles. He was wearing extremely tight jeans.

When he caught me looking, he smirked at me.

He did it mean.

Sexy-mean.