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“Yep, that’s Josh. That’s why I love him so fucking much.”
It’s clear she’d fight to the death for him if he needed her, and that’s lovely to see. I get to hear from her side just how long they’ve been friends and how things first went down between them. She shakes her head and laughs at the memory.
“Honestly, if you’d have seen me as a teenager. I looked at Josh like he was a god, just a few years senior than me in high school. He was as hot then as he is now.” She tips her head. “Actually, that’s bullshit. He’s hotter now, but regardless, he was absolutely fucking gorgeous, right from the moment I set eyes on him. I followed him everywhere at school, desperate to hang out with him. I might have seemed like some kind of stalker psycho, but his family kinda knew mine, and it turned out we got on mega well when he finally started speaking to me. We were like two peas in a weirdo pod when we moved up towards college.”
“I can imagine that.”
I’m not lying. I can.
“You were together, weren’t you? You and Josh?”
“Yeah, for about three weeks. I was going on and on and on at him for ages, about how I wanted him to be my first and all that jazz. I was convinced we were soulmates for all time, but he wasn’t having any of it while I was still a youngster. He wouldn’t even give me a kiss as a taster. Nothing. He said he’d think about it after my eighteenth birthday. He’s always been a bloody gentleman.”
“He thought about it, then? When did you get together?”
She smirks. “His cock was my birthday present, and it was worth the wait.”
I smirk back. “Wow, what a birthday present.”
“Yep. Shame it didn’t have the ladder on it then. But, oh well, I landed lucky with it.”
So did he. That’s clear to me. Tiff is a superstar, confident in her curves with her big, fake lashes. Her scarlet hair is a beautiful cascade of curls, and she has a much bigger cleavage than me – even though I have quite a rack on me.
It seems like a good time to push deeper, carbed up on pizza, and comfy downing prosecco.
“What happened after that? Once he’d fucked you on your birthday? Didn’t it turn into the soulmate dream you were hoping for?”
“Not exactly, no. And I was so disappointed. I think we both were. For years, I’d been dreaming about how Josh and I would be the kind of couple that romance myths are made of, but of course we weren’t. We were best friends by then, and yeah, it was hot, and horny, but it didn’t take off in the fire and flames I wanted it to. Josh was just Josh, and I was still just Tiff, and we both wanted to chase after dreams we weren’t finding in each other.”
“Friend zoned.”
“Yeah. Both of us. Three weeks in, and we were sitting on the sofa on a Sunday morning, watching some utter crap neither of us would usually be watching, and I looked at him, and he was already looking at me, and it was so bloody stupid. So boring. So flat, and platonic and not like we usually were at all.” She smiles. “We both started laughing, and it turned into hysterics. It just seemed so ridiculous we’d ended up there, like that. So, we made a pact from that point onwards. Friends for ever, no more ridiculous attempts at being more.”
I focus on her eyes as she speaks, soaking in the obvious love she had for Josh.
Friend zoned.
I can’t imagine ever friend zoning Josh in a million years.
“Plus, I’d seen someone else I kinda liked at college,” Tiff says. “He was a lot more standoffish, and I liked that. I have a habit of chasing things I can’t have. Crazy infatuations. I had morning after syndrome with clients so many times after landing this job that it was insane. I felt like I was a kid in a toy shop, falling in love with my fantasies every single day.”
“Did you ever fall for any clients, for real?”
She shakes her head. “No. I just lived the fake version in my head until I got bored and another new client came along.”
I think back to the clients I had before Christmas. So many hot fantasies to dive into, and filth to unravel, and such a thump in the guts some mornings when I realised it was over.
“When was your last relationship?” I ask Tiff, and she turns back to the TV.
I feel her walls come up, just a little.
“The guy at college, actually. We were together for ages, and he, um. Yeah. It didn’t end well. It fucked me up so bad when he left, that I dreamt about him every night for over twelve months straight. Believe me, I thought I was going mad. I had a psychotherapist and everything, but no matter what happened, I couldn’t let it go. In some dreams I was even grabbing his fucking leg and begging him to speak to me.”
“Wouldn’t he speak to you?”
“No. Call it unresolved. That’s what the psychotherapist said. I hurt him, and he hurt me, and it was one big fucking mess.” She sighs. “But life is life, and look where I am now. If it wasn’t for Kian, and things hadn’t gone tits up, I wouldn’t be an entertainer, and neither would Josh. We wouldn’t be here, in Belgravia.” She nudges my leg with her foot. “And he wouldn’t have you.”
“It’s a bit early to put me in his category of life successes.”
