Page 29 of All the Right Words
Gina was left alone at last. She wasn’t sure how to feel about the note it had ended on. Or rather, she wasn’t sure howOliviawould feel about it. It sounded like things had gone awry, mid-snog. Hard to say precisely why, but Gina could make an educated guess. Harper hadn’t been feeling it. Olivia was going to be very embarrassed come Monday morning. And an embarrassed boss could be a dangerous thing.
As Gina went to the kitchen to put her rough-looking food in the microwave, she was annoyed. She should never have agreed to do this. It was not going to end well for anyone.
The microwave pinged a minute later, and Gina took her soggy food back to the living room to eat in mild misery. A fitting end to a miserable evening.
Eighteen
It wasn’t a bad kiss as such. Harper didn’t exactly know what the problem was.
They’d pushed past Olivia’s slightly stuffy exterior. And Harper liked what she’d found. She’d been wondering whether a kiss might be on the cards. Only when it happened, something felt off. It wasn’t technique. It was a perfectly fine kiss in that respect. Not too much, not too little. No tongue in the first minute. Textbook.
After a few seconds of lip-locking, a strange idea popped into her head. That she wasn’t kissing the person she thought Olivia was. She didn’t know what that thought meant. But once it lodged itself into her brain, she couldn’t shake it. The kiss started to feel laborious. She could tell Olivia was into it, but she had to stop it. She pulled away from it. ‘Oh, sorry, I just…’
‘Is everything OK?’ Olivia asked, looking surprised.
‘Yeah, of course. Fine,’ Harper said, stalling for time.
Olivia blinked and then abruptly said, ‘Hang on, I think my phones, doing a, err...’ She took her phone out of her breast pocket - which struck Harper as a strange place to keep it - and pressed a button. She put the phone back, but in her trouser pocket. ‘Sorry, it was vibrating. I’ve stopped it.’ She looked anxious. ‘Is everything OK?’
‘Yeah, I just…’ Harper had a choice here. Say she wasn’t into the kiss or make up some bullshit. ‘I just remembered I need to get home. I need to feed my cat.’ She didn’t know where that had come from. She didn’t have a cat.
‘Oh!’ Olivia said with palpable relief. ‘God, sure, let’s… Shall I come with you?’
‘I’ve got an early one, so I should probably just call it a night,’ she said. Adding silently to herself,So I can figure out what the hell went wrong.
Olivia nodded, apparently satisfied. ‘OK, let’s get you in a cab then.’
***
The cab deposited Harper at her place. She was thankful that Olivia hadn’t tried to talk her way in. She needed to get forensic on the date.
When Harper thought it over, she knew one thing. She was starting to like Olivia. So what had gone wrong? Was it a chemistry issue? Because chemistry could be worked on. Harper truly believed that. Her mother had told her a story on that topic when she was younger that had stayed with her.
‘He was a writer who showed up at my office, looking for an agent. I told him I didn’t have space. My books were full, which was true. I was up to my eyeballs. So after I told him I wouldn’t rep him, he decided to ask me out for god knows what reason. I wasn’t at all sure. He was average looking.Buthe had nice hands, and I’ve always been a sucker for a good pair of hands. So I said, 'OK, one coffee, thirty minutes.' I was pretty sure it wouldn’t go anywhere. I spend all day around writers; I’m going to date some unpublished nobody?’
Harper rolled her eyes.
‘But anyway, we go, we sit, we chat. And I’m very meh about the whole thing. He seems nice enough, but he’s a bit dull. At the end of the date, he still tried to kiss me. We bumped teeth.Dreadful. So I said thanks for the coffee and left. I thought I’d never see him again. But he called the next day and asked me out again. I was annoyed he was even trying. He’d been on the same dateIhad. He must haveknownit hadn’t gone well. But hewasasking, and I thought maybe he didn’t realise, so I decided to give him honest feedback. I said I wasn’t interested; I didn’t think the chemistry was there and that I was looking for someone a bit more dynamic. I thought that would shut him down pretty quickly. But then he said something I’ll never forget.’ Her mother got a faraway look in her eyes. ‘He said, “Look, I know I was boring. I know the kiss was awkward. I know I’m an average looking guy. But if there’s one thing you should know about me, I’m very good at oral sex.”
Harper’s eyes widened in horror. ‘Mum! What the hell are you telling me that for?’
‘Because he convinced me. And it turned out he was telling the truth,’ she smirked. Harper fought the urge to throw up. ‘And afterthat, things fell into place between us. So never close a door. Even after it goes wrong, it can go very,veryright.’
‘Mother, this isnotan age-appropriate story about my father.’
‘You’re twenty-five,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘That’s the real story, Harper. I’m being honest. You want romance, read a Mills and Boon.’
In her twenties, Harper had been slack-jawed with horror. But now, at thirty-six, mulling over the date she’d just had, she remembered - whilst trying not to recall the story intoomuch detail, only the general message - that Harper existed because her mother had left room for error, which meant that Harper had to think long and hard before she decided to walk away because a brief kiss had been off. Harper supposed it might depend on what happened next. How would she feel when she woke up tomorrow morning? Would she be thinking about Olivia? Would she feel a strong urge to see her? Maybe so. Olivia was amusing, complex, and good at what she did. Those were not qualities to be tossed aside.
Nineteen
‘Colin, that’s crazy,’ Olivia said in a dreamy tone, her voice travelling through to Gina’s office the following day.
Gina was utterly baffled to hear how bloody chipper she sounded. Considering the note that things had ended on last night, she expected Olivia to be in a foul mood today. But she had floated in like a Disney princess this morning, and even an angry call at one minute past nine couldn’t dent it. She was Princess Sleeping Jasmine Snow, floating through her day.
Gina fetched some coffee for Olivia so that she had a pretext to go in and get the actual tea.
Olivia waved her in happily, looking about as happy as you can whilst taking calls from an angry printer about someone accidentally sending through a collection of cat memes instead of a novel meant to go to print. ‘Colin, Colin, Colin,’ Olivia crooned. ‘I’ll sort it now. You’ll have the correct copy inside ten minutes.’ She paused. ‘Yes, I probably will sack them,’ she said with a wink at Gina.
