Page 51 of The Wedding Pact
‘You’re naked?’ August screamed.
‘Ah relax, I’m not naked, I have boxers on.’ He rolled onto his side to face her properly. ‘All right, so the landlady is coming on down tomorrow morning.’
‘At 10 a.m. You’ll be up, right?’
‘I sure will.’
‘Our biggest problem is that we’re going to need this pigsty to look like we share it. And my room to look like the spare.’
Flynn scanned his room again. ‘Luckily, this is all just surface mess because I’ve not had a minute to breathe this week. It’s actually pretty clean and tidy underneath.’
‘But even cleaned, it still doesn’t look like the room of a married couple.’
‘How should a married couple’s room look?’
She thought about it. ‘It’s fine that all my clothes are next door, if she comments on it we just say we each had too much stuff to fit the built-in wardrobes, so rather than split it we use the spare room – i.e. my real room – as my walk-in closet, as it were. But … ’
‘But?’
‘I don’t know exactly what it needs, I just know that right now this room feels one hundred per cent “Flynn” and zero per cent “August” ’.
‘You could just move in here with me permanently, and then it would always feel like you,’ Flynn joked, and immediately looked as if he regretted it, like he’d given away his subconscious.
‘Flynn! What are you suggesting?’
‘Nothing, I’m just messing with you.’ He sat up and she followed suit, pulling the duvet higher to cover them both.
August didn’t quite know what to make of all this. He seemed extra flirty today. But was it teasing, was it his tired, sleep-deprived mind trying to make jokes she wasn’t quite getting? Either way, it was having an effect on her, and now she couldn’t shake the thought of sharing a bed with him every night, what that would potentially lead to, and—
Stop it, August.
‘Right,’ said Flynn, getting a hold of himself, and running a hand through his hair. ‘So, let’s put your dressing gown on the back of the door along with mine, and bring in your bedside table. Then we should also put a little pile of your scripts or books on the windowsill. That looks like you’ve been in here practising, which you wouldn’t do if it weren’t your room … would you?’
‘Of course not! If I was rehearsing for something and you were out, and I had this whole beautiful apartment to myself, I’d hardly come and stand in here and clog my nostrils up with your aftershave.’
‘Hey, you don’t like my aftershave?’
‘Well, actually I do, I was just including it for dramatic emphasis.’ She mused for a moment. ‘I think I’ll get a bunch of flowers and a vase, to go on your windowsill.’
‘Uh-oh,’ Flynn said. ‘Watch out, flowers.’
‘All right, all right, we both know I have the least green fingers in the world but I’m sure I can keep them alive for one day.’ It seemed like overkill, and slightly clichéd, to try and make the room look ‘girly’ by putting flowers in there, but August figured that Mrs Haverley and her old-fashioned ways might consider it proper to have fresh flowers around, so August was willing to play the part.
‘Come on, then, get up,’ she instructed, climbing out of the bed. ‘I’ll go out and get everything we need for some great bacon sandwiches, and you make a start in here. Ugh, I sound so bossy.’
But Flynn just laughed lightly and sat down, the duvet dropping back down to his waist again. ‘No you don’t, you’re just the boss. I’m on it, in just five more minutes,’ he yawned, and after she left his room he snuggled back down under the duvet with a smile on his face.
Chapter 33
Flynn
By early afternoon, the apartment had transformed from a flatshare into a marital home. August had cleared the decks in her room, throwing everything into her drawers and wardrobe, and put some spare towels and a box of tissues neatly on the side, so it looked like they were ready for weekend guests at the drop of a hat. The living room was much as it always was, but with their new ‘wedding’ photos prominently printed and framed, and a card on display that August had picked up that morning that said ‘Husband, just to say I love you’. Flynn had laughed at that.
Flynn’s room was looking, well, quite inviting actually. It was neat and tidy, like he usually was, to be fair, but now it had accents of August dotted about. Some of her books on his shelf. HerNorthanger Abbeyscript plus a few older ones and the flowers on the windowsill. A few select pieces of makeup and toiletries on her bedside table that they’d moved in. She’d swapped his big, framed, signedStar Warsposter for a print that usually hung in her room, a photo of the crest of a wave taken from the side, the sunshine streaming through. It actually went well in his room, coordinating with the Japanese artwork he had up ofThe Great Wave.
They stood at his doorway now, surveying their work.
‘I think we did well,’ said Flynn. ‘Although I might wake up tomorrow morning and forget whose room I’m in for a moment. Let’s not drink tonight.’
