“We don’t sleep together or follow through on the touching. We don’t sleep in the same bed again. I don’t know. I know we’ll still be friends afterwards.” She lay her head against the top of my chest.
“I don’t think we need rules. We’ll sleep in the same bed if we stay over in Manchester because having separate rooms or a twin would get out somehow. Especially if this fuckwit hacks into places.” We both knew that if we went out in Manchester someone at least would take a photo and it’d be on social media immediately. Peter Cash would know where we were – he’d have alerts set for any mention of Zoey’s name on the internet and probably mine now.
“Okay. We can build a pillow wall.”
“You won’t do that. You’re a cuddler and you hate sleeping in strange beds by yourself.” I was one of the few people who knew she had a teddy bear in her luggage that she held onto in bed when she was sleeping on her own. “How is Monty?”
“Due a good wash. He’s in the suitcase I haven’t unpacked yet. You’re right, a pillow wall wouldn’t work, but that’s because you’d burrow through it to spoon me like you were this morning.”
I’d wondered if she’d bring that up. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You weren’t aware of your huge erection this morning? It was pressing into my arse.” Her grin was wide, her words almost hushed by the weight of the rain.
“A bit of morning wood’s perfectly normal.”
“Okay. I accept your excuse.”
She shouldn’t. A bit of morning wood was perfectly normal, but this morning it had been more than that. My cock hadn’t got the message that this was just a friendship and the word ‘just’ was insufficient. Friendship was what was important here; I just had to keep repeating that to myself.
“When do you want to go to Manchester?” I needed to change the direction of this conversation, although the rain was starting to ease off.
“Next weekend? I’ve sent a photo from us in spring for my PR team to publish on socials. They’re going to put it up tomorrow. Today was the statement about taking a backseat from performing or recording any new material. People will put two and two together and think I’m giving it up for you, or we’re pregnant or something more dramatic.”
“Let them make whatever number they want. Come on, I think we should head back to the flat before this starts again. It looks like it’s set for the night. Then I probably need to speak to my dad about how much his phone’s going to blow up.”
My dad was in the Puffin Inn when we got back, going through emails on his mobile phone. Zoey headed upstairs to the flat to get changed; I decided a pint was in order to break the news to my father that he wasn’t about to get a daughter-in-law.
“You in here for the night?” I asked. Amelie was nowhere around, probably because she was with the Callaghans.
My dad nodded, accepting the pint of IPA made by the Holland brothers’ brewery with a grin that made him look even more like me. I knew that in twenty years I’d look like he did now, the similarities between us becoming more obvious as I got older.
“Just so you’re aware, Zoey is now my fake girlfriend.” I sat down next to him. The pub was about half full with locals, most of the tourists gone for the season now. It’d get busy at tea-time, especially with the weather like this, before people headed back home for Saturday night TV.
My dad half raised an eyebrow. “Want to spell that out?”
I gave him the background with Peter Cash and the photo taken in the sofa showroom. “So there’ll be a few photos that make it look like we’re together. We’re not. Feel free to pass that onto Clover and Fleur so the rest of Puffin Bay knows that.” When I was growing up, Mavis had been the one to spread any news. She’d passed away the same year as my great grandad, a year when Puffin Bay lost two of its main characters. They both lived on in different ways.
“I’ll tell Amelie. You sure it’s fake?” My dad wasn’t one to mince his words and despite not knowing him until I was fourteen years old, he knew me better than anyone, apart from maybe Zoey.
“No. I’m not sure.” I sipped a mouthful of my IPA. “But can we not talk about it?”
“Amelie said Zoey’s thinking of living here permanently.” He wasn’t going to drop it.
“She is. But it could be because she’s burnt out and wants to escape. A statement’s gone out today to say she’s no longer planning to perform or record after this last contracted album, but she hasn’t put a timeframe on it. That could change when this shit with Peter Cash is sorted.”
“Well, as they say, the meaning is in the waiting.”
I frowned. “What does that mean?”
“Think about it.”
I shook my head at him, unamused at his current craze for speaking in riddles. I wasn’t always sure how Amelie tolerated him given that his main occupation was to find new ways to make her swear at him.
“You need to stop trying to sound more intelligent than you actually are.”
He grinned at me. “You’ll work it out. What are the plans while Zoey’s here? She’s staying with you in the flat?”
“Yeah. Thank you.” Alys passed me a pint. “I guess we’re just winging it. We’ll go to a few places where people will want photos of her and make it look like we’re a couple. Provoke this dickhead.”
