‘Thank you for that, pal.’ This time, it was the good kind of ‘pal’ and she meant every word. ‘But I didn’t need you to fight my battles, you know.’
‘I know,’ he said with a shrug. ‘But, to be honest, it was a pretty good distraction. I’ve never understood what you saw in him.’
‘His abs,’ Ginny said, with perfect, matter-of-fact comic timing. ‘He’s got great abs. Anyway, what did you need a distraction from? Apart from the fact that my good friend dumped you today.’
They were almost at Moira’s door now.
‘Ah, bit of a situation back at the reception. Calvin and Sandra are in there ejecting Bryony Browne. Turns out she’s the one who’s been spreading all the rumours about me having an affair. I had a hunch it could be her but I wasn’t sure. She’s been emailing me pretty much every week since she did that class here for the students, suggesting we meet up, so I figured she wanted something else out of it. I ignored her and it seems like when she didn’t get my attention, she started dropping anonymous hints to the gossip websites that her and I had a thing going on for years. Just another hustler looking for clicks.’
‘Shut up!’ Ginny’s eyes widened. ‘But why? I mean, I suppose some people might think you’re a catch. Or so I’ve heard. Not my type though, obviously. I appear to have a penchant for pretentious, arrogant twats.’
That made him laugh. ‘Cheers. But, anyway, it was something to do with manifesting. That’s her thing, isn’t it? Apparently, she believed that if she put out there that her and I were secretly together, it would happen. Don’t ask. I don’t get it either. And I don’t think it works – unless she manifested Sandra ejecting her through the fire exit tonight.’
‘Yeah, well I’m going to manifest a large cocktail, just in case it does work,’ Ginny said as they reached Moira’s office door and opened it. ‘What about you?’
Ollie sighed, ran his hands through his hair as he followed her through the door. ‘I’m going to manifest a taxi to take me over to Stevie’s place. I need to see her, Ginny. I need to try to convince her that…’
His sentence was suddenly interrupted by the voice of the woman sitting on the office sofa.
‘You won’t need that taxi.’
MIDNIGHT…
33
OLLIE
Ollie wasn’t often stunned into silence, but right now all he could do was stare at Stevie and hope that he wasn’t having a Prosecco-fuelled hallucination.
‘Wellllllllll, I’m just going to make myself disappear and leave you two to it,’ Ginny said, confirming that it was real, as she went over, leaned down and hugged Stevie.
‘Ginny, thanks for today,’ Stevie said. ‘Are you good? Did you get the job onJudas?’
Shit. Ollie realised that he hadn’t even asked her that.
Ginny nodded, and Ollie immediately reacted to salvage being a shit friend. ‘That’s great. I’m so happy for you. You deserve this…’
‘And I’m going to knock it back,’ Ginny said with a sunny smile as she headed for the door. ‘It’s a long story. I realised it didn’t want it. And I didn’t want Caden either.’
Stevie sat forward, wide-eyed. ‘Noooooo. You ended things with Caden?’
‘I did.’
‘Oh, Ginny I’m so sorry. How do you feel?’
‘Relieved.’
Ollie saw Stevie do a cute nose-wrinkle thing and he knew exactly what she was about to say. ‘Me too. I never liked him.’ Yup, that was it.
Some people would have been upset by that, but Ginny laughed.
‘Okay, next time, can you both give me a heads-up before I devote years of my romantic life to someone you hate? And I’m just warning you – I now have no big break and no boyfriend, so you two are stuck with me. Sooooo… it would be really nice if you figured your shit out so that you don’t need to fight over custody of me. That’s all. Love you both and goodbye.’
With that, she was gone, closing the door behind her.
Stevie was still staring at the door. ‘I fricking love her.’
‘I fricking love you,’ Ollie blurted, realising it was probably one of the most un-smooth lines he’d ever delivered, but he couldn’t stop himself.
