“This isn’t funny. It’s going to be embarrassing.”
“How can I help?”
It was the first time I’d properly looked at him since the kiss. He looked the same as always, bright eyes, bushy tail. Exuberant. Callum.
“You can’t. This is nothing to do with you.”
He tipped his head to one side. “Have you checked social media?”
I hadn’t. I’d either been too busy or too tired or too lost in my thoughts.
“Wren, look at my Instagram.” He passed me his phone, leaving me to open the app, find his profile.
There were videos and pictures from the last few days, all getting thousands of comments and tens – if not hundreds – of thousands of likes. There were pictures of me, operating on a rhino out in the wild, petting a baby cheetah that had been orphaned and rescued before it died itself and a couple of close ups that I hadn’t known he’d taken of me.
The comments, the ones I saw when I clicked on the picture, were complimentary. That wasn’t the problem.
Most of his pictures had me in them. If I was looking at this, I’d suspect Callum had a crush on me, or we were in a relationship.
“Why are there so many of me?” I handed him his phone back, things making sense. Matt knew who I was out here with, he knew Callum and I had been friends at university but he’d never questioned it. It wouldn’t occur to Matt that I was interested in someone else when he was available.
“You made a good subject.”
“Oh.”
He laughed. “That’s your default response when you don’t know what to say. ‘Oh.’”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Take the piss. You’ve done everything you can for the last four days to not be alone with me and now your social media feed is full of pictures of me.”
Push. Pull.
“I wasn’t trying to take the piss. They were genuinely good photos. I’m just wondering what Matt would think if he saw them.”
“He’d think you had a thing for me.”
He didn’t respond, the jeep pulling into Harare airport, nearly missing a driver with a death wish.
Then we were being shunted into the air-conditioned building, our luggage with us, the masses of equipment being guarded by the crew.
Matt was unmissable. His size, his pale skin, his suit. The ever-present suit. I saw him near our check-in desk, checking his watch and glaring.
My stomach filled with churning darkness.
“Do you want me to help you with this?” Callum was beside me, taking my luggage.
“Trust me, I can handle this.”
I saw him nod and I walked away. This wasn’t his battle to fight and I’d never needed anyone to rescue me anyway.
Matt didn’t smile when he saw me. Instead he looked at his watch and then to my hands.
“Where’s you luggage?”
“With the crew. How come you’re here?”
