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Oh no he didn’t. In all our time together, sexting has never been a part of our thing – hell, regular texting is hardly a part of our thing. Will always said it was too risky. It’s when he says stuff like that, that this feels wrong, like I’m a dirty little secret. I remind myself that I know the score, but there’s always this little niggling feeling somewhere at the back of my mind that this is wrong.
I glance down at my pink flannel PJs.
Me: Pink lace bra and pink French knickers.
Another lie, and one that no female would ever believe because we all know how uncomfortable going to bed in a bra is, especially an underwired one.
Will: Send me a photo.
As I read this, I feel my eyebrows jump up and my eyes widen. He’s never said anything like that to me before. I think for a moment. It’s weird and I know it, but one thing that has always served me well is to wonder: ‘What would Stephanie do?’ when it comes to Will. So not to make any mistakes, I always consider my actions and whether they make me worthy of Will, and I am fairly certain that swapping sexy photos is not something Stephanie would do – and that’s Will’s type – but he’s asking for it. It’s not like I’m sending him one out of the blue. I don’t think it’s the kind of thing the type of lady Will goes for – the type I have painstakingly forged myself into – would do, and there’s a voice in my head telling me that it’s not the kind of thing I would do anyway, so…
Me: Nice try ;)
Will: Come on. I’m alone and I’m fantasising about you. Need a visual and I miss you.
Me: You’ll be seeing me tomorrow. Surely you can wait until then? Hehe.
When Will talks to me and interacts with me like I am a human being, it’s the greatest feeling in the world. Not the business-related stuff he says at work or the blunt texts he sends me to try and keep me sweet, but when he says things in a way that makes me feel like he’d probably be a bit bothered if I died. Those are the moments I live for.
On the flip side, when he doesn’t text me back, it hurts like hell. Being able to see that he’s read my message, but hasn’t replied; it doesn’t feel good and it makes me do stupid things. I try and think of reasons to talk to him, to coerce him into replying to me, just to get a message from him, just to have a moment where I know he remembers that I’m alive. On the occasions I don’t hear back from him, I’ll double-text him. I know it’s a needy thing to do, but I can’t help it. Our conversations that end with a goodbye and a kiss leave me feeling on top of the world – another successful interaction – but when he doesn’t reply, I can drive myself crazy wondering why not. Is he with his wife? Playing with his kids? Does he really think that much about me when he isn’t with me? Because I think about him a lot. I often wonder how his day is going: if he’s feeling OK, if he’s happy or sad, if he’s having fun. I see things in shops and think that he’d love them, or it will occur to me to forward silly internet memes to him, because he might find them funny (even though I usually decide that he won’t find them funny and don’t bother), but does he feel that way about me?
Even if it is because he’s fantasising about me, the fact he says he misses me means the world to me. What’s interesting is that, although I often fantasise about Will, it’s rarely sexual. I imagine what it would be like to cuddle up on the sofa and watch TV with him, to walk down the street holding his hand and to be able to take him along to parties with me as my plus one.
Amy’s wedding is coming up and I’m dreading it. I hardly ever get invited to these things, but it would be nice to have someone to go with. Someone to support me, someone to complain about the food with and dance with until the small hours. Someone to get drunk with, go home with and have them take care of me and make me breakfast the next morning. That’s the kind of thing I fantasise about.
Will: OK. Will see you tomorrow bright and early.
Me: Sweet dreams. Love you xxx
Will: You too.
I place my phone back down on the table, ecstatic about hearing from Will outside of work hours. In a way, I’m lucky that Will has such a busy job. It means he spends more time at work than he does at home, but it’s always nice to hear from him during time that is not ours.
I grab the remote and hit play. Now, where was I…
Chapter 7 (#ulink_912b72d3-3acc-561e-b2e1-03a21d9ccde9)
As if it wasn’t bad enough that I’m a little bit late for work today, I have just sat down at my desk and there is Charlie’s leaving card staring me in the face, the one I was supposed to have everyone sign yesterday – the one that is for her leaving party at lunchtime today, which, thanks to my lateness, is not that far off.
I sit down at my desk, without so much as a ‘good morning’ from Sweet Caroline, and stare at the card thoughtfully, wracking my brains for who Will said was left to sign it. Rick in the warehouse and the IT department – I’m pretty sure that was it.
As I sip the cup of tea that I picked up on my way into work, I catch Caroline’s attention. She spies the drink that obviously made me that bit more late than I already was, and narrows her eyes over the tops of her tiny spectacles at me. Caroline is in her late sixties, and is pretty much a permanent fixture here at the firm. She’s known Will since he was young, and as such they have a mutual level of respect. When she was his dad’s secretary, Will told me she would always be nice to him when he would visit the office, so as soon as he started working here and moved up in the company, he never stopped respecting her as one of his elders, like the well-mannered man he is. This means that he finds it very difficult to boss her around, and when he wants to shout at her (in that way bosses with stressful jobs do when things aren’t going right) you can see him suppress it, almost to the point of discomfort – a skill he seems to lack when it comes to me, his girlfriend. I guess he just doesn’t have the sweet spot for me that he does for Sweet Caroline.
Caroline’s look is interesting. Her short, auburn hair is always flicked out at the sides, with the tips highlighted bright red, which I don’t like. I’ve never been a fan of unnatural hair colours. It’s not that I’m against having hair coloured as a thing, but if you can tell that it’s not natural then it’s not for me. Caroline always dresses like a Loose Women panellist, that is until there is work do, then she really goes to town and goes all Truly Scrumptious on us.
As Caroline stands up and walks around her desk, I see this as my opportunity to shift a little of my already light workload onto her.
‘You on the move, Caroline?’ I ask.
‘Yes, why?’ she replies curtly.
‘Oh, it’s just Wi- Mr Starr,’ I stop myself from calling Will by his first name, because this ‘display of disrespect’ always seems to irk her, ‘asked that Rick and the IT boys sign Charlie’s card.’
As I say the words I remember the other person who I was supposed to have sign the card: me. I grab a pen and quickly scribble something inside.
‘Did he ask you to do it, Candice?’
‘He just said it needed doing. He didn’t say that he needed me specifically to do it.’
Caroline carries on walking.
‘You know what they say,’ she lectures me. ‘If you want something done right, do it yourself.’
‘I don’t care if it’s done wrong,’ I call after her hopefully, but she’s gone. Crap. I’ll just have to do it myself.
I drain the last of my tea before exhaling deeply. It’s not that I don’t want to do any work, it’s just that I can’t face the ‘banter’ of the warehouse, nor the weirdness of the IT department.
I stand up and smooth out my dress before grabbing the card and a pen, and making my way along the corridor towards the warehouse. The nauseating yellow corridor walls seem especially harsh on the eyes today. Yellow is very much the colour of the company, and it’s clear that a variety of marketing experts over the years have really abused the fact the company name is Starr. Queue lots of space puns to do with storage and light speed in relation to deliveries. The logo is a little yellow shooting star, going round in a circle, which is OK, but the idea of having yellow walls to match is just too much. They would’ve been better having dark walls, with little twinkling lights in the ceiling to look like stars in the night sky – but I was removed from the marketing department, so what do I know?
‘…and you know how hard bloodstains are to remove.’
As I walk into the warehouse office, I catch the end of whatever Tommy is telling Rick, and it doesn’t sound great, does it?
As I enter the room, they both pause and stare at me for a second.
I try to be well mannered at work, well, with everyone expect Caroline and now the new guy, I guess, but with everyone else I do quite well. I keep myself to myself, but most of all, I keep my bitchy comments to myself. That said, if someone were to put a gun to my head and force me to break character by asking me what I thought of the warehouse staff, then I’d most likely admit that I thought they were all probably serial killers, with a couple of sex offenders thrown into the mix for diversity. OK, maybe the term sex offender is a little harsh, but only because charges were never filed. Matt, one of the warehouse minions, has been spotted touching himself on several occasions and everyone here at the flagship Manchester branch knows it. I, personally, have never seen him at it, and Will tells me it’s an urban legend, but I’m not so sure. I just passed him on my walk through the warehouse – he always looks so shifty.
If anyone were going to put a gun to my head and force me to do something, it would be Tommy. Tommy is truly terrifying, and I always seem to catch little snippets of his conversations that make him sound like his hobbies involve strangling women before chopping them up and dumping them in the canal. Tommy is Scottish, and a retired semi-pro rugby player. He’s very tall and broad with big arms, perfect for choking the life out of women. Thanks to his bald head, bulging eyes and big ears, he looks like a pale version of Shrek, and thanks to his accent he sounds like him as well. Apart from being bald too, Rick is Tommy’s polar opposite. He’s short with very little muscle, but he doesn’t have to do the heavy lifting Tommy does. Rick is the manager down here so he mostly just tells people what to do and ‘rides’ the forklift. He always has a helmet on, making him look like an old, Mancunian Bob the Builder.
With no one prepared to explain the blood remark to me, I decide it’s best to get the card signed and get out of here before I end up in pieces, in a crate headed for the seabed.
‘Rick, I need you to sign Charlie’s card, please.’
He beckons me over with his hand and takes the card from me. Rick is the very serious, silent type around women. I have witnessed him laughing and joking but it’s very much a with-the-lads kind of thing. Around women, he just clams up. Not Tommy, though. No one is safe from his banter.
‘How’s tricks at the top of the banana with the boss?’ he asks me.
The banana is what we call the yellow spiral staircase and subsequent corridor up to Will’s office. Were it not for the fact everyone calls it that, I might wonder what he meant by it.
‘Fine, thanks,’ I reply. ‘How’s…’ I glance around, taking in my surroundings. Even though we have a lovely canteen and staffroom here, this place doubles up as both Rick’s office and a sort of man cave for the warehouse workers. The walls are covered with posters and pictures, and the only ‘piece of art’ that doesn’t involve a naked lady or a car is a framed photo of the warehouse team doing Movember last year. They’re all standing huddled together, clutching the massive cheque that shows just how much money they made for the cause, and it was a lot, in spite of the fact most of them have moustaches all year round anyway.
Other than Rick’s messy desk, there are two tables. The first is in the centre of the room, surrounded by chairs. This where Tommy and Rick are sitting, with both playing cards and dominos laid out in front of them. There’s a work surface at the side of the room that looks a bit like a pop-up amateur meth lab (or maybe I’ve just been watching too much Breaking Bad) where they have all their protein powders and bars and all the various bottles and mixers and tools they need to remain ‘hench’ and ‘make gains’ and all the other stuff I hear them say before going back to my desk to google what the fuck it all means.
‘How’s…this?’ I ask, unsure what word to use.
‘All good. Just killing time before the meeting with the pricks from HR,’ Tommy tells me. ‘There’s been a few complaints.’
I decide not to ask, nor tell him that he probably shouldn’t refer to the HR team as ‘pricks’.
Rick hands me back the card so I thank him and head for the door. As I close it behind me I hear Tommy resume their conversation.
‘So I’m scrubbing at this bloodstain with that meat tenderiser powder shit that Sharon cooks with, because I read online that it helps…’
I decide not to stick around and listen to the rest of their conversation, lest I become an accessory to something unsavoury – and I’m not talking about whatever it is Sharon cooks with her ‘meat tenderiser’, whatever the fuck that is.
Next up I head for the IT department, which, unlike Rick’s office with its big windows that look out over the warehouse, has no windows at all. I knock on the door before stepping inside. All six of them are gathered together as Garth, who is head of IT, animatedly tells them a story.
‘…and I looked down at my chest, and this sword was sticking through it, bloody everywhere! I look up, and there’s an army of them in front of me as well as behind me, and I desperately need an adrenalin shot to get my health up…’
Garth pauses as I enter the room but, unlike Tommy the serial killer, he feels he should probably explain himself to me.
‘This must sound well weird.’ He laughs. ‘We talking about the Oculus Rift,’ he tells me, like that makes things crystal clear and this not seem weird. I remind myself to google that as soon as I get back to my desk.
‘Cool,’ I reply, only managing to fake enough sincerity to make me sound super sarcastic. ‘I won’t keep you long, I just need you all to sign Charlie’s leaving card before the party this afternoon. You guys are the last ones.’
The new guy is staring at me and smiling. It’s a friendly smile, but I still feel awkward about yesterday, just in case he could hear Will and me.
‘Roger that,’ Garth replies, taking the card from me. ‘I’ll pass this around if you do me a favour – have a play around on this.’ He plonks a silver MacBook on the desk in front of me. ‘We’ve had some complaints that the UI is affecting the UX.’
With that, Garth leaves me to it. I stare at the screen in front of me and scrunch up my face as I try and work out what the fuck that could possibly mean. I look left then right, like the answers might be on the walls amongst all the design plans, code and posters for things I am too ‘cool’ to get. As I look right I see the new guy still smiling at me. He pushes off the desk next to him, which sends him flying across the room to me on his desk chair. That’s the kind of thing that, if I did it, would see me crashing through a third-storey window, but Geordie Shore makes it seem cool and effortless.
‘That’s just his pretentious way of saying that people think how it looks affects how it works,’ he explains to me, and put like that it sounds simple.
‘Oh,’ I reply. ‘Thank you. Well, yeah, the yellow is too much.’
‘Ever since I got here, I have been telling them to go easy on the yellow crap,’ he tells me, relieved at least one other person shares his views. ‘I keep telling them that clean and minimalistic is on-trend right now, but they’re pushing the stars. We get it, the company is called Starr, but enough of the pretty little yellow things with five points – that’s not what a star looks like. A star is a big ball of exploding gas. They’re orange or, if they’re really hot, they’re blue. Although I suppose a big ball of exploding gas might not be the best option for branding considering our guys drive around in trucks all day.’ He laughs.
I chuckle. ‘I guess not.’
There’s silence for a few seconds before Garth hands the card to new guy to sign.
‘What did you think?’ he asks me.
‘Mate, she said same as me – too much yellow,’ new guy answers on my behalf.
‘Candice has been here long enough to know that this company and yellow go together like Jaime and Cersei Lannister.’ Garth laughs, taking his laptop and returning to his desk.
‘Yeah.’ I laugh, before turning to the new guy and staring blankly. He looks up from signing Charlie’s card and sees my puzzled, expectant look.
‘Oh, so I’m your dork translator now, am I?’ He laughs.
‘Something like that,’ I reply sweetly.
‘They’re characters from Game of Thrones,’ he informs me.
‘Oh, I see. I’m guessing they’ve been married a long time then,’ I reason.
‘Not quite,’ he replies. ‘So, will I be seeing you at Charlie’s leaving party?’
‘Maybe,’ I reply. I always seem to clam up a little when we start getting on, an involuntary reaction, I think, probably because I worry what Will would think if he saw us together.
‘Maybe?’ he gasps. ‘Candy, it’s Charlie’s leaving do; you can’t swerve it!’
‘First of all, my name is Candice,’ I correct him, as always. ‘Second of all, you’ve been here five minutes; you don’t even know Charlie.’
‘How dare you,’ he gasps dramatically again. ‘Charlie is one of the nicest blokes you could hope to meet. He’s been great with me while I’ve been here – even if it’s only been five minutes.’
I purse my lips and nod my head. It was a nice try, but I’m not buying it. ‘Charlie is one of the ladies who works in the canteen.’ I laugh.
‘Oh,’ he replies. ‘Oh! It might seem weird that I wrote “good luck, pal” in the card.’
‘Yeah, you might want to change that.’
‘Well you said we were the last, so I sealed the card.’ He laughs as he scratches his head. As I watched him sign his name, it had occurred to me to maybe have a peep, to see what his name was. I didn’t really listen when he introduced himself, and no one ever seems to say his name. It seems rude to ask him now and I don’t want to make myself look like a bitch.
I hate to stereotype, but everyone in the IT department looks exactly as you would expect an IT department employee to look – not the new guy, though.
I’m not sure if I have a type, but I don’t think the new guy is it. Well, he’s nothing like Will, that’s for sure. That said, Geordie Shore is a very attractive man. I doubt he has any trouble getting girls, which is what makes me wonder why he tries so hard with me. I’d guess he’s about my age, he’s tall and thin. Not skinny though – he’s very well toned and it shows underneath the fitted V-neck T-shirt he’s wearing. God, I hate that I’m looking. He has tanned skin, big, deep brown eyes and brown hair, making him fit the tall, dark and handsome bill that most go for. He’s got one of those short, neat beards – not the dirty, overgrown hipster type, but the kind that’s almost just like long stubble, and his longish dark hair is twisted up into one of those topknot things that are so popular at the moment. It fascinates me how young men have embraced what is essentially a ballerina bun for boys, giving it its own name in an attempt to make it cool and manly. He wears thick-rimmed, black glasses, which only add to his cool look. He doesn’t look like an IT nerd; he looks like a Topman model.
The most striking thing about him isn’t even the way he looks, but the way he carries himself. He’s that guy all the warm-blooded females in the office have a crush on, the kind who flirts with everyone because he can. He doesn’t come across as smarmy though, not with those baby-faced dimples. He’s got the kind of face that could get away with murder.
‘So, which one is Charlie?’ he asks, snapping me from my thoughts and dragging my gaze from his muscular arms back up to his eyes.
‘Erm…blonde, curly hair. Early forties. Short,’ I babble, struggling to describe her without using her obvious identifier.
‘Oh, I know, the one with the big – ’
‘Heart,’ I interrupt him, to save him from having to state the (awkward) obvious. The thing with Charlie is that she wears these distractingly low V-neck tops that really accentuate her chest. And when I say they’re low, I mean they’re low. Even I can’t help but stare. It’s like her neckline is an arrow pointing down towards her cleavage, sucking you in like the Bermuda triangle.
‘Yes,’ he replies with a thoughtful nod. ‘Heart.’ The new guy thinks for a second before adding: ‘That must by why her tops are so tight, if her heart is so big.’
I laugh, shaking my head. ‘Well, I’d better get back to work,’ I tell him. It’s strange, but I kind of don’t want to go. Perhaps it’s because there’s such a nice atmosphere in here, even if I don’t know what anyone is talking about most of the time.
‘Well, I’ll see you at Charlie’s leaving do then,’ he tells me. ‘I imagine her boobs are already halfway out the door.’
I can’t help but leave the IT department with a big smile on my face, grinning to myself all the way back through the banana. For once, I’m actually looking forward to a work thing.
Chapter 8 (#ulink_e2278c5a-837f-515e-a2e9-4b43637443f6)
‘What kind of party is this?’ the new guy asks as he sidles up to me, disappointment in his voice. ‘There’s no booze.’
New guy. Again. I can’t get rid of him! The truth is, though, that I’m glad he’s here because until he came to stand next to me, I was just hanging around in the canteen on my own and it would have certainly stayed that way. I did catch the attention of my female fan club when I entered the room – minus Caroline who isn’t here – but her minions made me feel suitably unwelcome. You’d think Julie would show me a little solidarity considering we’re the only two young female employees, but I’ve been able to feel her burning a hole in the back of my head with her death stare since I arrived.
‘It’s lunchtime and we’re at work,’ I remind him. ‘Anyway, this lot don’t do well with drink.’
From where we’re standing in the corner of the canteen, we have a clear view of everyone. Well, everyone but Caroline – and Will, who is stuck in a meeting, so I decide it’s safe to tell the new guy a little bit about everyone.
‘That’s Charlie, the guest of honour,’ I say as I point her out.
