I immediately dismiss all my notifications from Dominic before blocking him, not seeing a single message from Rain. I navigate to his profile and…well, fuck!
“He posted! Well, he’s tagged in a post,” I exclaim, completely shocked. Emma tilts her head, as though she wasn’t expecting it either.
“What did he post?” she asks, crawling over next to me and looking down at the screen. I tilt my phone so she can see the picture better.
Rain is sitting in what looks like a café or bakery with two beautiful women. One is a brunette, and the other has long red hair. They’re all clearly a bit tipsy, if the empty bottles of wine and almost empty glasses are anything to go by.
I smile at the picture, relief filling me at seeing Rain’s smiling face. He seems to have landed on his feet. I don’t know who the women are, but they look kind, and they both have theirarms wrapped around Rain and are squishing him between them like he’s their mascot.
“He looks happy,” Emma whispers. I can feel her looking at me, but my eyes are stuck on Rain. He looks good.
“I mean, do you really think these twin twats are going to be following you guys? Or tracking you or something? D’ye not think they’d’ve caught up with ye by now?” She seems unsure, and if I’m honest, I have no clue.
“I don’t know, to be honest. But I wouldn’t put it past them. The thing is, they don’t care about us as people or as partners. We’re property, and they’re exactly the kind of people who just want possession of everything they see as theirs.” Emma shakes her head in disgust at my description of them.
“Ugh, fucking cunts.”
“Precisely. They’re the kind of blokes who’ve never been told ‘no’ a day in their lives. Their parents are rich, and their dad’s like a viscount-twice-removed or something, but they’re just so spoilt.” I think about the backpack I now keep safely in my locker at the gym, and my damp sleeping bag I stole from Dominic’s flat before I ran away. “Like, they spent an arm and a leg on sleeping bags and camping gear whenthey decided they were going to climb Kilimanjaro, but none of it’s ever been used. They didn’t think about the fact they’d have to get a license and a guide, but even before they got to that point, the prospect of actually having to train and commit to something was too much for them to comprehend, so they just wasted hundreds of pounds on a wardrobe full of fancy Mountain Equipment gear that’s never seen the light of day.”
“Gross. Like, tell me you’re an entitled brat without telling me,” Emma sneers as she pushes her now-empty plate aside and polishes off another glass of wine. I wobble a bit when I lean forward to top her up and realise the second bottle is also empty. Whoops. I hold it up to the light to make sure, and she catches my eye. We burst out laughing with a groan when we realise we’ve basically sunk a bottle of wine each tonight, again. This seems to be pretty standard behaviour for us at this point. Looks like Rain won’t be the only one feeling the hangover in the morning.
It’s a silly thought, but it makes me feel closer to him. Ugh, I miss his stupid jokes, his obsession with the Great British Bake Off, and his retro Spotify playlists. OK. That’s it. The wine is making me emotional, and while the prospect of returning to my cold, damp tent isnot appealing, if I don’t go now, I’m not sure I’ll make it.
“OK, time to go,” I say, my feet feeling heavy and like they’re not attached to my body when I stand.
“You’re not going anywhere in this state. Sleep on the couch tonight, and we can go to work together in the morning via Beryl’s Baps for a bacon roll. I’m gonnae need the grease.”
I’m too drunk not to accept, and after giving Emma a hug of thanks, I take a quick shower and change into the borrowed T-shirt she gave me to sleep in. It’s huge, at least a 4XL, and I smile at her.
“Like a big boy, do we?” I ask cheekily as I come back into the living room. She just winks at me over her shoulder before closing herself in her room for the night.
As I tuck myself under the blankets she left for me on the couch, I smile to myself, my head slightly swimmy still, despite the shower. Rain definitely isn’t my only friend anymore. I pick my phone up from where I placed it on the floor and navigate to his picture again. I want the chance to have nights like this with him, so we can get to know each other the way we were never able to before.
Determined now, I do something that may come back to bite me on the arse, but may also mean the difference between reconnecting with Rain or not.
I hit ‘like’ on the picture, then close out of the app, signing out again just in case. I pull the blanket up under my chin and snuggle down into the cushions with a feeling of lightness in my chest. I drift off to sleep, warm, safe, and dry, with a full belly and an even fuller heart for the first time in weeks.
The next morning, Em and I make our way to work, both ever so slightly – completely and utterly – hungover. Emma seems to be a bit worse off than me, so while I get started on opening up, she leans over the kettle, willing it to boil itself while she eats her greasy bacon roll. I managed to eat mine while we walked from the sandwich shop to work, but she’d still been too queasy.
Once the gym is open and the first few clients are starting their early morning workouts, we huddle together pathetically behind reception. Honestly, people who voluntarily get sweaty from exercise before 7am on a weekday blow my mind.
Emma fusses with her hair and groans.
“Jesus Christ, I must look like twice-baked shite.” I scoff at her. She looks tired, sure, but I don’t think she could look like shit if she tried. She’s wearing a pair of burnt-orange cord trousers and a tight-fitting black bodysuit with an oversized, loose-weave, knitted jumper over the top. Her Dr. Martens finish the look and ensure her cool status is well and truly intact.
“You look fine. A bit tired, maybe, but not like shit, babe.”
“I look like I’ve been dragged through a bush backwards.” I shake my head at her dramatics as I reach beneath the counter and grab a towel for the client who just came in.
I finish up my early morning tasks, cleaning the showers and toilets in the men’s locker room, having already done the women’s last night as Em was closing up. Then I make sure all the protein snacks and drinks are fully stocked. I check on the few clients working out, then make myself a fresh cup of tea before finally sitting behind the reception desk next to Emma, who is looking a bit more lively after her bacon bap and tea. The door opens, and I look up as John enters.
“Morning,” I say with a smile. John maybe grumpy on the outside, but he’s a genuinely good person. He’s conveniently brought too many leftovers on more than one occasion, and he always shares with me. Not only that, but he didn’t hesitate to offer fairly informal and very unofficial terms of employment when he could clearly see the state I was in. He offered me somewhere to sleep, too, but I couldn’t risk him getting caught up in my mess if Dominic did somehow find me. So, I stuck to the job and the leftovers and didn’t risk it. I can’t say I won’t take him up on it if he offers again, though, especially now the weather is getting colder and colder by the day.
The gym is quiet after the initial pre-work rush, so Emma takes John’s car to Costco to stock up on the snacks and protein shakes we sell at the gym.
Taking the opportunity to check my phone before the lunch crowd appears, I log back into my Instagram. After blocking Dominic last night, I’m not expecting to see any red dots on my notifications tab, and I don’t. I navigate back to Rain’s account to look at the photo of him again, only to discover it’s been deleted. I refresh the page to see if I’m missing something, but no, it’s definitely not there. What the fuck? I consider that maybe he didn’t know it had been posted with him tagged, and when herealised, he panicked.
The thought hasn’t even fully formed before I see a DM pop up while my phone is in my hand, the tell-tale red dot sending dread rolling through my whole body. Nervously, I open my messages to see an unread one from the same account that posted the photo of Rain. Jesus Christ.
