Juliette squinted at the screen, then, after scrolling for a few seconds, she thrust her phone in front of me.
‘This is a photo of him speaking at a conference about seven months ago. I must ask why there are not any more recent pictures. Look at him!’ she beamed. ‘Is he not the most beautiful man ever created?’
I was about to do a mental eyeroll becauseof courseevery mother thought their son was beautiful. But when I caught sight of him, my jaw dropped.
Wow.
Juliette wasn’t lying.
He reallywashandsome.
Very, very,veryhandsome, with a capital H, underlined, bolded and then highlighted in luminous yellow.
‘Th-thisisGabriel?’ I stuttered as I picked my mouth up off the floor.
What a difference several years could make.
I didn’t remember him looking likethat.
Not long after Juliette moved to London, Gabriel used to visit almost every month. He must’ve been around twenty then and was gangly and slightly awkward. But about a year later, he stopped coming over because they fell out. She never said why.
Although they’d started talking again last year, I hadn’t seen him in person for ages and he lookedtotallydifferent.
Gabriel had short, dark hair, olive skin, thick dark brows, a gorgeous smile and there was nothing gangly or awkward about him any more.
Nope.
The man in this photo was standing confidently on a stage in front of a huge audience, wearing a crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, exposing his muscular forearms.
Excuse me, but when did forearms become so sexy?
Shame washed over me.
I shouldn’t be perving over Juliette’s son.
Yes, he was a fully grown man. At a guess, I’d say he must be twenty-eight now, or maybe twenty-nine? Anyway, it didn’t matter. It was still wrong. If Juliette knew I’d even thought about her son in that way for a millisecond, she’d kick me out of her house in a heartbeat.
‘Oui, this is my Gabriel,’ Juliette beamed proudly.
‘He’s…’hot, ridiculously handsome, gorgeous… ‘he’s… changed alotsince I last saw him,’ I said diplomatically. ‘It’s a lovely photo.’
‘It is. His father may be useless, but he was very attractive. With two beautiful parents, it was inevitable that Gabriel would be stunning. So will my grandchildren. Sybille, his ex, is also very beautiful.’
‘Well, I hope Ricky waits a while before making me a grandma!’
‘You feel that way because you put your life on hold for your son. But now he has left, it is time to start dating again!’
Ugh.
Just thinking about going through the rigmarole of trying to find a man made me want to break out in a cold sweat.
When I fell pregnant at nineteen, it was a shock. I know that sounds crazy, considering I knew how babies were made, but I wasn’t expecting to get knocked up the second time I had sex. Ricky’s dad was shocked too, hence why he didn’t stick around.
Although I knew being a single mum would be hard, I vowed to give Ricky the best life I could and make him my priority. So for the first seven years of Ricky’s life, I decided not to date at all.
But when a cute colleague started flirting with me at the call centre I worked at, I was so flattered that we ended up having a fling. Which led to me losing my job because work relationships apparently weren’t allowed.
I’d dated on and off since then, but it never lasted more than a year. They’d either cheated, lied or ghosted me.
