Page 50 of Best Man
“Because just as I know you’ve always fancied him, I equally know he’s always fancied you.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. Whenever we’ve been at parties, you’re the first person he seems to look for, and he watches you when you don’t know it.”
I feel warmth fill my chest. “So, how is going out going to solve it?”
“He won’t know where you are, and that’ll drive him mad. Let him have a day of having to ponder what he’s done. It’ll do him good.”
“But what about when I get back?”
“Well, that’s up to you. You can collect your stuff and fuck off because you’ll be leaving the agency soon anyway, or–”
He pauses. “Or what?” I ask, not liking the first option.
“Or you can fuck his brains out and see if he can replace them with enough common sense to know what he’s going to lose if he carries on being a twat. And Jesse, whatever you do, you know you’re always welcome here, don’t you?”
Gideon says something in the background, and Eli mutters a reply. Then he comes back on the line. “Gid says for you to come and stay with us for a while. Get your head on straight. We’d love to have you.”
“Won’t that interfere with your twenty-four-hour-a-day sex fest?”
“Nah, Gideon really needs to find a hobby apart from my arse.” I can hear Gideon say something, and Eli laughs. It’s the same laugh I’ve heard most of my life that got me into trouble constantly. “Come to Fowey if you’re sad,” he says. “I miss you loads.”
“I miss you too,” I say, touched by the conviction in his voice. “Thanks, babe.”
“Anytime. You know that.”
I end the call and stare at the lake, contemplating my options for a few minutes. Then an evil smile crosses my face. I’m not a quitter, so that really leaves me with only one option.
ZEB
It takes me an hour to get back in the room, during which I’m humiliated by the receptionist’s smirk when I have to descend to the lobby dressed only in a sheet to ask for a spare key.
However, after grabbing a shower and dressing in jeans and a dark green T-shirt, and sending at least ten messages to Jesse which are ignored, I finally make my way into the breakfast room and look around anxiously for him. I slump as I realise he isn’t here.
“Can I get you a table, sir?”
The voice comes from my side, and, as I turn to the waitress, I spotMax. “No, it’s okay,” I say quickly, giving her a weak smile. “I’m going to sit with him.”
“He’s a popular man this morning,” she says, smiling.
“Oh, erm. Oh,” I say in dawning realisation. “Was my friend sitting with him, by any chance? Tall with brown hair.”
“You mean Jesse?”
I smile because that’s so him. Everyone always seems to know him, wherever he is. “That’s the one.”
“Yes, he sat with the other gentleman before he left.”
I toy with the idea of asking her where he’s gone, but abandon it as a couple come in behind me. Leaving her to seat them, I walk quickly over to Max.
He looks up and smiles coolly. “Ah, here’s Casanova. I’m surprised you could walk this morning.”
I groan and throw myself into the seat opposite him. “I take it Jesse told you, then.”
He shakes his head. “Zeb, you’re a bloody fuckwit.”
I blink. “Please don’t hold back.”
