Page 83 of Not That Impossible

“All right,” he’d said, leaning back in his chair and peering at me over the top of his glasses. “I’ll bite. What’s happening? Why aren’t you bugging me anymore? What’s wrong?”

I’d dropped in on my way to work. “Nothing,” I said, fiddling with the strap of my gym bag.

He sighed. “Will you please sit down and stop looming?”

“Uh, actually, no. I have to be at the gym in twenty minutes.”

Ralph blinked. “Right. Well. What are you working on?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

I shuffled. “Yep.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said after a long minute. “You’re working on something. Something big.”

“I’m really not,” I said with a shrug.

“You finally get your front page, you finally get into print, and, what? That’s it?”

“I’m kind of busy right now. With life and stuff. I’ve got a load of new clients, I’m teaching a couple of new classes.” I shrugged again. “I don’t have the time.”

“Okay.” He still looked suspicious. “Well. Keep your eyes and ears open out there. I’m ready to hear any pitches you come up with.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But unless another body is discovered in Chipping Fairford, I probably won’t be bothering you for a while.”

“Can’t imagine that happening twice. All right. Get going, then.”

Unlike the Liam fanfic, I hadn’t made the deliberate decision to stop trying to write for the paper. It just sort of happened. Being honest with myself, I was having doubts. They’d been circling for a while. Did I even want to be a journalist anymore? People changed. Dreams changed.

Out of the fanfic and the journalism, I definitely missed the fanfic the most.

I missed fictional Liam almost as much as I missed real Liam.

I missed, most of all, the days when the thought of Liam wanting me back had been pure fantasy.

Now that he was no longer married, now that I knew he was into men, that he was into me—at least physically—and yet Istillwasn’t enough, it was a special kind of torture to run into him when I was out and about.

Over the past couple of months, I’d seen him at the pub with his old rugby mates. I’d bumped into him in the Co-op once. More than a few times, I’d seen him driving around town.

There had been an electric moment at the gym where I nearly embarrassed myself to actual death when I turned around in the locker room, all unsuspecting, and came face-to-butt with a half-dressed Liam.

He’d been changing and chatting to a friend. Slammed with the unexpected vision of all I yearned for, out of nowhere, I’d frozen, and stared.

After I’d made some sort of inappropriate noise.

His friend scowled at me. Liam turned to see what his friend was scowling at. I turned purple with embarrassment and ran out.

I’d run straight back in when I remembered I was only wearing my jockstrap and my trainers.

It wasn’t a great moment.

That had been last week, and I’d been fighting the urge to rewrite the sorry event into a sexy gym story ever since.

I had a feeling I was going to lose that fight. The story was an itch under my skin.

And I liked it.

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