“I know,” I said, taking another sip of my squash.
“Plus you deserve to have fun! When was the last time you went out anyway?” Marissa asked with a pointed look. I smiled at her over the rim of my mug.
“Do you really want to know that?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I? We’ve always talked about this stuff.”
She had a point. Nothing had ever been off-limits between the four of us. My sisters had always been close and they’d just folded me into the conversations with them. I’d never considered not telling them anything about my life because I knew everything about theirs—from their favourite period snacks to which of their exes sucked in bed to all of their fears and worries about life. I’d even been in the room when both Sophie and Leigh had given birth, holding their hands as they attempted to break my fingers.
They’d known I was gay since I was nine and developed my first proper crush, given me oral sex advice at sixteen when I had my first boyfriend, cried with me at seventeen when I’d had my heart broken, and taken me clubbing in Ibiza for my twenty-first.
They were my family, and I loved them fiercely with every piece of my heart.
“Two weeks ago,” I said quietly. “I had a free weekend, so I went out, met someone, spent the whole weekend at his place, then left Monday morning. It was fun.”
“See, that’s what you need.” She tried to look smug, or at least triumphant, but her face mask had set and the only emotion she could display was indifference.
“Maybe. I’ll think about it,” I said, biting back a laugh as Marissa tried to move her face.
“Will you?”
“Yeah, I will.” Maybe if I took Marissa’s advice, I’d be able to distract myself from thinking about how sexy Matty was. It shouldn’t have been something I’d even noticed, but here I was, wondering what his beard would feel like on the inside of my thighs.
I blamed Sophie for making us watchThe Lord of the Ringsso much. Yes, Aragorn was the obvious choice but sue me, I’d always thought Gimli was kind of hot.
The only problem would be making sure my weekend of distraction didn’t cause me too much pain, which intense sex could sometimes do, because trying to explain to Matty why I was struggling would be absolutely mortifying. And definitely wouldn’t improve our already fragile relationship.
“How’s everything with you?” I asked, hoping to distract her away from further interrogating me about my life. “How’s things with your new boss? Is he still being a dick?”
“Oh my fucking God, don’t even get me started on that asshole!” Marissa rolled her eyes and I grinned, knowing she was about to vent for the next forty minutes without taking a breath.
Distraction achieved.
Later that night, when I probably should have been asleep, I tiptoed down to the kitchen because I realised I’d left my phone charger in the corner near the fridge, and since my alarm was on my phone, I was worried about being completely screwed over if I didn’t retrieve it.
Even if I could count on one hand the number of times I’d needed it to wake me up in the past five years.
Being an early childhood nanny meant I’d developed some sort of nanny-senses about when my charges were awake and ready to cause mischief, like some sort of low-budget Spiderman. I’d lost track of how often I’d sat bolt upright in bed and muttered, “Something’s not right” to myself, only to open the door to find everything from vomiting, fevers, and chicken pox to a half-eaten birthday cake and a baby covered in excruciatingly expensive Dior lipstick.
But it was better to be safe than sorry, so an alarm was always necessary, just in case.
“Everything okay?” The sudden gruff voice startled me, and I squeaked with fright as Matty stepped out of the utility room holding a basket of clean washing with a tub of ice cream balanced on top.
“Sugar beans! You startled me!” I clutched my chest, doubled over with shock that had started to melt into laughter—my default response to stress. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you to be up.”
“It’s all right. I forgot to fold this earlier,” Matty said, hefting the washing basket. I tried not to stare as his low-slung joggers slipped and his T-shirt rode up, revealing a wide strip of skin with a trail of dark red hair leading into his waistband.
I shouldnothave wanted to run my tongue through it as much as I did.
“I, er, I thought I was going to be doing Jack’s washing?” I asked slowly, trying to get my brain in gear. Luckily, Matty didn’tseem to have noticed me staring. Hopefully, he just thought my lack of ability to construct a sentence was still due to shock.
“Er, yeah. Maybe? But I don’t always have a lot since the club washes most of our kit. I can always throw it all in together. Or I mean, we can split it? I don’t know how you usually do it. Do you usually put your clothes in with the kids’? I mean, it won’t be difficult to tell stuff apart if everything gets mixed up.” He sighed and scrubbed his face with a broad hand. “Fuck, now I sound like a creep asking about how you prefer to wash your pants.”
“You’re fine, I promise.”
“Look, Jack’s dirty stuff usually goes in the wicker laundry basket in the bathroom. We can both keep an eye on it and put a load on when we need to. Does that work?”
“Sounds good,” I said. I was pretty sure I’d end up doing most of it, but if Matty needed this to feel like he was still in control of something or helping out, then that was fine with me.
