AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Well then, thank you. For keeping me safe.’
‘You’re our boss. I think it’s in our contracts,’ he tells me.
I smile. We all have our jobs in our little work family and Leo is my reliable, dependable one. I hired him to bring balance to our IT universe. He’s the person who I can always send out into the office and know he won’t say anything mildly offensive to the people in HR who don’t know how to save their work (Jasper) or get distracted by food and the fellow geeks in the mail room (Frank).
‘I apologise. We shall blame the tequila. Where did you sleep?’ I enquire.
He looks down to the base of the bed, where there’s an inflatable mattress with a sleeping bag and pillow.
‘Really? That’s awful. I’m so sorry. You could have topped and tailed it with me?’ I suggest, not really thinking about the words that have just come out of my mouth. He blushes, pretending he’s not heard them. ‘Or bunked in with Frank.’
‘Frank talks in his sleep. It’s like a low-key horror event. I wouldn’t have coped,’ he jokes, and I’m glad he’s managed to change the tone in the room.
‘Can I ask why you’re so sprightly this morning? I saw you do the shots too.’
I have hazy memories of last night. We all cheered when sizzling pans of fajitas were brought to the table. There were churros and tacos too, but overriding my memories of the food are images of Jasper with a sombrero singing ‘Despacito’ using bottles of habanero sauce as a microphone. It made a child on a neighbouring table cry.
‘I’m Northern,’ he says, gritting his teeth.
I laugh.
‘We’re bred hard. I also know tequila is the devil’s liquid. After a while, I started topping my glass up with water.’
He’s smarter than I give him credit for. I continue to look around the room, searching for a mirror so I can see what sort of disrepair my face is in. I predict it’ll be giving sad raccoon vibes. ‘Am I allowed to say your room is pretty tidy for a bloke?’ I don’t know what the wrong or right thing is to say anymore but given I have my legs underneath his duvet, it feels like we’ve crossed a certain line in our relationship.
‘I try,’ he says.
‘Can I ask who the girls in the picture are?’ I say pointing to the noticeboard in the corner.
‘My sisters, Claire and Gabby.’ He puts emphasis on the word sisters in case I thought they may have been anyone else.
‘They look like fun.’
‘They look like trouble. Gabby’s back in Kendal, Claire lives in Ilkley.’
I nod as I take in the information, too ashamed to say I really do lump the North together as one big area past Birmingham. ‘This is terrible. I’m in your bed, I work with you every singleday and I feel I should have known something like that. I thought they were girlfriends or something.’
‘You thought I had two girlfriends?’ he laughs. ‘Who pose together for photos?’
I shake my head, giggling. ‘I knew you were dating someone. I just…’
‘I was but it fizzled out a few months ago,’ he explains.
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. For my birthday, do you know what she got me?’
‘I’m hoping a cake?’ I tell him, suddenly quite engaged in this story.
‘She got me a T-shirt with her face printed on it.’
I try to hold on to my laughter. ‘Please tell me you kept it.’
‘I did not,’ he says, suppressing a grin. ‘So, seeing as we’re now bedfellows, do you need to know anything else about me?’
I blush when he says this. I guess we’ve shared a bed, just not at the same time. He slept on the floor last night like a faithful puppy. I get it. ‘I’m good. For now. Is there anything you need to know about me?’
He shrugs. ‘No siblings, London born and bred, likes a pint of shandy in the summer, has a scar on her left shoulder from when she went the wrong way down a water slide, bit snobbish about chocolate chip cookies,’ he reels off.
