‘Heather. Heather!’ Archer’s mouth moves, but the voice is not the same. And where is that banging coming from?
‘For God’s sake, girl. You need to get out of bed!’
‘Mum?’ I sit up, raising my hand to shield my eyes as I squint at the room. White blinds, a Parker Knoll chair, and a dressing table that’s seen better days.I’m home. My parents’ home.‘What the hell am I doing here?’
‘I think it’s safe to say you gave your Uber driver the wrong address last night. Again.’
‘Ugh.’ I flop back against the mattress, my heart and stomach seeming to jostle for space, between my legs aching yet unsatisfied.
‘It’s not like we’re over the moon about it either,’ comes her muffled response. ‘First, your brother comes rolling home at eleven o’clock as drunk as a lord, and then you start throwing stones at our bedroom window because you didn’t have your keys. You know why you didn’t have your keys, don’t you?’
‘Because I don’t live here,’ I reply flatly.
‘I’m glad to see you remember now. I’m thinking of having your address printed on some labels and sewing them into your clothes.’
‘Okay, Mum.’
‘Like when I used to do the same for your things when you were little so they didn’t get lost.’
‘Yes, I get the picture.’
‘I don’t hear you moving in there.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ I mutter, pushing my hair from my forehead.
‘I’m not sure he’s going to get you to work on time.’
Oh, fuck. I have to go to work and face Archer after I just dreamt he had his hand in my underwear.
4
Archer
‘There she goes.’
I look up from my phone just in time to watch the woman I now know as Heather, not Holly, saunter past the meeting room, her blue-haired intern trotting alongside her.
‘Do you reckon she does that on purpose?’ Jay, one of the junior statisticians asks, his head almost twisting from his neck as he watches the pair disappear.
‘What, walks?’
‘It’s not that she walks but the way she walks. She’s like . . . sex on legs.’
I think that’s the kind of way a girl walks when she has an arse that looks like it’s been sculpted by the hands of God. Or months of squats. But she’s one of those girls who seems to possess an innate, unconscious kind of sexy. She probably thinks she doesn’t dress for attention and is confused that she gets it anyway because she wears her skirts to her knees, and from neck to arm, she’s almost always covered.
‘Redheads are supposed to be hottest in bed. Think it’s true?’
What I think is the only way he’ll find that out is second-hand, sort of qualitative data. I also think he needs a slap.
‘I have a thing for girls rockin’ a vintage vibe.’
True, Heather dresses a little retro, but she’s less Rosie the riveter and more va-va-voom. She has these deep grey eyes that seem older than the rest of her, and the kind of voice from another era that’s all smoky depths and husks. A cigarette and whisky voice, I think you’d call it. She’s not the kind of girl with provocative kinds of wiles, but she’s the kind who would get in your head all the same. If you’d let her.
And Jay has.
‘She’s just got the kind of air of mystery I really dig.’ He blows out a long, whistling breath.
‘You do know we’re in the year 2020 and not 1970, right? Sexual harassment is an actual thing.’
