Page 9 of One for the Road
“Oh, you mean the time he requested you stop putting out your bins in your underwear? Hardly worth the ten years you’d serve for arson.”
“It wasn’t my underwear.” I cringed, squeezing my eyes shut as I pictured the thigh-grazing T-shirts I wore to bed.“And how was I supposed to know the view from his window extended that far?”
“You remember he’s a doctor, right? He could get up and personal with your anal fissures and not blink an eye.”
“Then why the complaint? He hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you – I don’t think Alistair has the ability to truly hate anyone. He’s . . .” She searched for the word. “Reserved. Always has been. And I think he’s stressed, not that he wants to talk to his family about it. Ever since he took over Dad’s surgery, he’s been snarling like a bear at anyone who looks his way.”
Right. Because it had barely been four months since their dad died.
I might have felt sorry for him.Might have. Okay, I did feel sorry for him. But the weekly complaints were starting to get out of hand. “I swear, all I have to do is breathe and he thumps on the wall. You’d think I was throwing raves over here, not watching reruns ofBlueywith a seven-year-old.”
“Want me to talk to him?” she offered. “And by that, I mean kick him in the balls and tell him to be nice to my friend.”
I grinned. It still felt strange on my face. “And that will help my living situation?”
“Well, no, but it would make both of us feel good. Speaking of feeling good, do you think anyone has died from lack of orgasms?”
“What?” I coughed out at the subject change, sliding the apple pie onto a wire rack, along with the strawberry cheesecake croissants I’d dragged myself out of bed at four a.m. to put in the oven.
Jessica Brown, the owner of Brown’s Coffee & Cakes on Kinleith’s high street, had taken a risk in hiring me, with zero actual work experience besides an incomplete pastry chef apprenticeship eight years out of date.
Falling pregnant at twenty had put a sudden halt on any long-term goals until they were so far in the rearview mirror I hadn’t even considered picking them back up. I was determined to not give her a reason to regret it.
“All I’m saying is, you’re starting to look a little . . .tightly wound.”
“I’m not tightly wound, I’m exhausted.” I felt like I’d aged thirty years in the past four months.
“Been there and bought the T-shirt, sweetie.” She tossed the chopped carrot sticks into a lunch box a little harder than necessary. “Being a single parent can be soul-
destroying—”
“I’m not a single parent. Cameron lives fifteen minutes away.”
“And the last time he took care of Teddy for more than an hour was?”
I bit my lip. We both knew the answer.Never.“You’re basically a single parent, and do you want to know what helped me?”
“What?” I waved my spatula at her. “Don’t say orgasms—”
“It’s unfortunately orgasms.”
“Did Mr Summers finally pluck up the courage to ask you out?” I asked, picturing the kids’ perpetually kind school teacher who — for reasons that were glaringly obvious to some — adopted the personality of a garden gnome every time he called Heather into his office. Which was often. Her girls were adorable little hellraisers.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She sniffed.
“Oh please, you’re so hot for teacher.” I couldn’t say I blamed her. It was pretty hard to resist a perfect ten who ran a guitar club for children and somehow made seasonal sweatshirts look hot.
The tattoos didn’t help.
“No, I’m not!” Her cheeks flushed. “Not even a little bit. I’m sure it’s like . . . illegal to date your kids’ teacher. And even if it wasn’t, he acts like the girls are delinquents, pushing unsuspecting old ladies down staircases.”
“Didn’t Emily cut another student’s hair last week?”
“It’ll grow back!” she burst out, and I laughed. “Thank god it’s the first week of the summer holidays. Six weeks free from Mr Summers’ judgementalI think it’s better we discuss this in my officetone.” She paused chopping to point the knife at me. “And I’m not talking about my orgasms, I meant yours. It’s been months since Cameron. Maybe it’s time you got back in the saddle.”
“I wasn’t ever in the saddle, so to speak. Cameron always said he felt emasculated when I was on top.”
