According to the diary on my phone – which thankfully uses face ID to unlock – I have a ten o’clock meeting at the office. I have no idea with whom. Or what it’s about. It was easy to pretend everything was normal over the weekend. I have a suspicion today is going to be a total nightmare.
There is only decaf coffee in the kitchen.
I scream quietly, not wishing to disturb whoever lives in the flat above in this twilight zone without caffeine.
I’ll have to stop on the way in.
‘Peppermint tea?’ the perky barista calls out as soon as I walk inside the café next to my office building.
Who the hell is this Bethany? Peppermint tea is what I drink when I’ve eaten too much pizza and feel queasy from too much cheese. It is not a breakfast substitute. ‘Double shot latte,’ I say.
The barista doesn’t even try to hide her surprise. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Long day ahead.’
‘Ohh-kayy.’ She elongates the syllables.
I spot him the second I walk into the lab. What the actual fuckety fuck is Tyler Adams doing in my reception? I scuttle past, pulling my phone from my pocket and peering at it intently, trying to look the epitome of busyness and importance and no doubt failing at both.
Alesha meets me with a glass mug filled with a suspiciously murky brown-looking liquid and a slight grimace on her face.
‘That had better not be some kind of tea,’ I say, pointing at the mug she’s holding out in my direction.
‘It’s your favourite,’ she says, frowning at me. ‘You told me two months ago that this was …’ she pauses for effect ‘… the absolute tits.’ She affects my tone as she says it. It does sound like the kind of thing I’d say. Just not about camomile tea.Especiallyabout camomile tea. Which – fun fact – isn’t even a tea. It’s a herbal infusion, a tisane made from the decoction of plant material in hot water. It sounds as revolting as it smells.
There’s an awkward pause when I don’t take the mug from her, leaving her holding it out at an angle. ‘Right, wellthen,’ she says pulling it back towards herself. ‘Umm. I think he’s here.’ She grimaces.
Please please please do not tell me that Tyler is here to see me. But the look on Alesha’s face says that is exactly the case. Tyler Adams is my mystery ten a.m. appointment. Fuck my life.
Or at least, fuck this weird messed-up version of my life.
He knocks on the outside of my door, the width of his shoulders almost filling the frame as he lounges oh-so-casually against one side of it. ‘Can I come in?’ he says. ‘Or do I need to keep a suitable distance.’ He smirks and I want to slap him.
‘Come in.’ I’m prim in my reply. I will not let him see that he gets to me like this.
He sprawls on one of the chairs, legs open to take up as much space as possible, an air of relaxed comfort in his own skin that makes me irrationally angry.
‘Why are you here?’ I ask, tone brusque.
His face breaks into a slow smile. ‘I need your help,’ he says simply.
It is not the answer I was expecting. ‘You need my help?’ Internally I make a face at myself. The inflection should have been on the ‘my’, the inference that I wasn’t sure why he thoughtIwas the person to help. Instead, I put all the emphasis onto the ‘help’. As if I thought it might be something else he wanted from me. I can’t stop myself from blushing.Idiot.
It turns out that in this universe, the book – the ‘what popular culture gets wrong’ series – is further along in development and, apparently, I’ve already agreed to work on it with him. So that confirms this is definitely an alternate universe, as there is no way – even if I had a psychotic break or was suffering from a brain tumour – I would ever have agreed to work with him in my own world.
The specific help Tyler needs is to write the proposal so his agent can get the idea out on submission to publishers.
‘Why me?’ I ask him.
‘Fishing for compliments?’ he shoots back.
‘No … I ju—’
‘I’m kidding.’ He grins at me, and I feel myself spin off centre a little. ‘You don’t need to fish for them. All I ever hear is how brilliant Bethany Raven is and how she’s going to set the science world on fire.’ He sounds genuine.
‘Pfft,’ I reply awkwardly. I’ve never been good at accepting compliments, even the most banal ones like someone saying they like my dress.Oh, this? Primark. Ten quid. Absolute bargain.I constantly feel I should apologize or explain myself. It’s frankly exhausting and it drives Cesca up the wall. She’s the total opposite.Oh thank you, you’re such a sweetheart. I just love the colour of your jumper. Is it cashmere?I do worry she’s too trusting, though, and takes people at face value when she should be a bit more wary.
‘Honestly, Bethany,’ Tyler says, breaking me from my thoughts of my sister. ‘I can’t do this without you.’ He looks almost bashful and – as much as I might hate myself for it – I can’t help but warm to him, just a teeny bit. Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to just go with the flow, to put aside my animosity towards him for an hour?
