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‘Yeah, her purse-in. I want one. Where can I get pursed?’
Melanie was about to offer some sage auntie advice, along the lines of, “Wait until you’re older” but Paige beat her to it.
‘Pretty much anywhere, Alf.’ Melanie watched as Paige sat herself down on the floor and pointed to her ears. ‘I have my ears done, and look the inside bit done too. I’ve had this one under my lip done, my eyebrow is done. You can pierce pretty much anything.’
Alf looked all serious as he studied Paige’s face, and Melanie smiled as Paige let him. Paige only ever spoke to Alfie in the same way she spoke to everyone else, the grunts, the nods, they were all there.
‘Will you read me some stories, Pwaige?’ Alfie asked, giving the full please face with the eyes and the hands on his cheeks. It was a power move he had perfected in the last six months, but Paige seemed unaffected by it.
‘Depends on what books, Alf.’
‘I’ll show you, wait there. Are these OK?’ he asked all serious as he cascaded a dozen books all around them.
‘You’ve got good taste, Alf. I like the Disney books.’
* * *
It was nearly half-eight by the time Alfie had settled and been read all the books. Paige appeared to have endless patience when it came to reading bedtime stories. She may not have done the voices like Melanie, but she had read them all as if they were the most incredible literature that ever existed.
‘Can I ask a question?’ Melanie started and waited until she had a Paige nod before continuing. ‘What do you do about bad reviews on things like your Facebook page?’
‘I don’t look.’
‘What do you mean you don’t look?’
‘I don’t look. Ever.’
‘We don’t have that luxury unfortunately.’
‘No, you probably don’t especially given your socials niche. Why, what’s up?’
‘We’ve been getting the odd random bad review that’s all. I’ll just ignore it for now. I don’t want to turn it into a bigger thing. Anyway’ — Melanie looked down at her phone — ‘We’ve only got about half an hour until my sister turns up. I’m really sorry. That’s not going to give us long.’
‘No worries let’s do what we can and then book in for some more time.’ Melanie had to agree, and if the flutters in her stomach were any judge, she was excited at the prospect of spending more time with Paige. Even if they had absolutely no business doing that.
She gestured for Paige to take a seat at the kitchen island and as she went past, Melanie noticed Paige’s undercut had been freshened. She also noticed Paige smelt divine, the faintest hint of something slightly spicy, and if Melanie had to guess, it was either Paige’s shower gel or shampoo and she almost leaned closer, but held herself back at the last minute. The image of Paige in a shower flashed through her mind, and good God. She needed to pack that in. Paige was on the ‘to not do’ list, but her mind and her libido had other ideas, because once they were settled on the kitchen island barstools, their knees touching, leaning towards each other, their iPads and phones on the table, Melanie found herself wondering about Paige’s long legs. They were almost always covered in some sort of ripped denim.
Paige knocked her knee with Melanie’s. ‘Won’t you need your to-do list if we’re doing this?’ Paige suggested, and Melanie felt her whole body flush with embarrassment, mortified at being caught checking out Paige, and not at all subtly. But Paige was smirking, her green eyes bright with mirth. Melanie straightened her skirt and pushed her glasses up before reaching for her iPad.
‘Right, did you see the erm, the updates from Councillor Houghton? And he wants an update at the Neighbourhood Business Alliance meeting next Thursday.’
‘Then maybe he should do it himself,’ Paige muttered.
‘I think as we know we’re not going to get through everything tonight, we should prioritise putting in a second date,’ Melanie suggested.
‘A second date?’ Paige asked.
Melanie kept her head down, opening up the calendar section of the app. Why was she so bad at this? She could talk to people, she did it all the time. But Paige made her feel like every word out of her mouth was loaded and could go off any minute.
‘You know what I mean,’ Melanie said as she saw Paige unlock her phone.
‘A second date then. While I don’t mind coming here, Alfie kinda cut into the time a little bit. So why don’t we make this a weekly like quick update thing. And we can put another day in with more time, maybe at mine?’
Melanie still couldn’t look up. Her breathing was a little fast, but hopefully not noticeably. Paige had just uttered what was possibly one of the sexiest things anybody had ever said to her, and she was sure that Paige had no idea.
A weekly catch-up update date. Oh, it was organisational bliss to know that they were going to regularly catch up. It was more than bliss, it was perfect. As for having a bigger meeting at Paige’s flat. Or a second date as Paige had insisted. There was only one thing hotter as far as Melanie was concerned and if Paige suddenly pulled out some post-its Melanie was going to strip off right there at the kitchen island.
‘It looks like next Tuesday might work for our second date. Why don’t you come round to mine whenever you finish, and we’ll get through as much as we can?’
