Page 55 of Long Story Short

Once at the airport, we got out, grabbed our bags and made our way through all the checks to the first-class lounge. It was still early and the airport was quiet, which suited me as my head ached. I grabbed coffee and a pastry and sat down, hoping I could sleep on the flight.

Jake went to the buffet and when he came over, hovered near my table, unsure whether to join me or not. I stayed silent as I watched, wondering what he was going to do. Jake started towards me then but he didn’t see there was a slight bump where the lino floor turned into carpet tiles and his shoes caught the line. He tripped forward, the tray shook and as if it was happening in slow motion, it slipped out of his hands, sending the coffee, plate of scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon and beans, and the pot of fruit and yoghurt all over the floor, shattering the plates and the cup, and even though Jake managed to right himself and stop falling to the floor along with it all, he did get splashed by the baked beans.

Everyone in the lounge looked over at the noise.

Jake cried out ‘fuck’ as his trousers got covered in food. And I bit my lip hard to stop myself from laughing. The sight of Jake like this was priceless, though. I had embarrassed myself spectacularly in front of him on the way here and miraculously, the universe was throwing me a bone for once and this time, it was him.

Jake looked at me biting my lip. ‘Don’t say anything,’ he growled before turning and half-running for the toilets. A member of staff came over to clear up the mess with an annoyed titter. I turned away and let out a snort. We had talked about my falling over in front of him as a meet-cute situation. Things could have been very different if we’d just met this morning. I would have likely swooned at meeting someone so good-looking and equally as clumsy and chaotic as me.

But I knew this was an anomaly. Jake wasn’t like me.

Still, I would remember this moment and if I felt sad about us ending whatever had started in New York, this would help.

If only just a little bit.

* * *

The flight from New York to London was a parallel of the flight from London to New York. Jake and I sat in our separate pods and did our own thing for the hours spent in the sky. Before our trip, I didn’t know that Jake could be different to the man I thought he was when we first met. Back then, he said he was bitter from his dad’s betrayal, and I completely understood why. Like me wondering if love was all a lie, Jake had thought love was real and then that belief had been shattered. By the person closest to him. It had made him cold, reserved, stand-offish even.

But in New York, he had finally been honest with me and himself, then his readers. All of that felt completely pointless now because when I looked over at him on the plane, he had shut down again. Maybe I had just imagined him changing. Or it had happened but after our agreement, he had gone back into his hard shell?

Jake closed up his pod soon after take-off so I couldn’t even glance over to see what he was doing. I tried to sleep or watch a film on my screen but I was too restless for either. I couldn’t even enjoy first class the second time around.

When the plane started its descent to Heathrow, Jake opened his pod and put his seatbelt on without looking over at me. That told me he hadn’t been thinking about me on the flight like I had been thinking about him. I put my seatbelt on, looked out at the fluffy clouds over London and resolved to put him out of my mind. I would think of him as someone I had had a fun holiday fling with, and that was it.

‘You are a good girl, aren’t you, Freya?’

I shook my head to try to clear it of dirty thoughts about our time in my hotel bed. Great sex didn’t equal a great relationship, did it?

The plane dipped again and the approach to Heathrow began. I breathed a sigh of relief that soon, I would be off this plane and back in my room in my flat, far away from Jake. And when I next saw him, it would be for work, and I needed to go back to being just professional with him.

And not think about being in Jake’s arms ever again.

37

‘You won’t believe the gossip I have for you!’

I jumped as Liv made her announcement the following day, suddenly appearing by my table in Starbucks, sounding far brighter than I felt. ‘What?’ I asked sleepily as I took another long drink of my vanilla iced latte. She sat down opposite me with her iced coffee and handed me one of the muffins she had bought. I felt sluggish with jet lag. Once I’d got through Heathrow and found my case, Jake had disappeared so I got the Tube by myself to my flat, where I slunk into my bedroom, closed the door and flopped on my bed.

I had felt a weird twinge then. There was no one in my shared flat waiting for me to come home, no one to debrief the trip with, and I had let self-pity wash over me. I’d slept most of the day so I’d struggled to sleep at night. Liv had suggested a coffee so I’d crawled out of my flat to meet her at lunchtime, keen to see a friendly face again. And to talk about work tomorrow because I was really nervous at having to see Jake again and act like we’d been nothing to one another in New York. Hayley could never find out about us but it was going to be so hard to move past the feelings I’d been starting to have for him.

Liv had a sip of her coffee then propped her elbows up on the table to look at me. ‘It’s about our least favourite person – Davis Mulberry.’

‘What about him?’ I asked, pushing through my sluggish mind in a panic. I didn’t want to ever see or hear about Davis Mulberry again but if he had been gossiping about me and Jake… ‘What happened?’ I demanded of Liv.

‘After we left the end-of-conference party, all hell broke loose, apparently. Tessa phoned me before I came to meet you to tell me about it. We missed a scandal. Typical that I had to leave for my flight and you… Actually, why did you leave the party early? Were you with Jake?’ She wriggled her eyebrows suggestively.

‘No!’ I snapped.

Her face fell.

I couldn’t bear to tell her about me and Jake ending just yet so I waved my hand. ‘Sorry. Jet lag is killing me. What did Davis do and say?’ I asked, really hoping he hadn’t mentioned us. Hayley hadn’t said anything, though and surely, she would have if she had found out?

‘Well, according to Tessa, Davis got more and more pissed as the night went on. And he started telling the conference organisers the whole event had been rubbish and crime events are so much better, and maybe they should come to one so they can improve their conference. Then a few attendees got involved to tell him he was wrong and he got really angry and pushed over one of the tables with drink on. It was chaos, apparently.’

‘Blimey. I knew he was a bit of a twat, but that takes the biscuit! He didn’t say anything about me and Jake, did he?’

‘No.’ Her eyes widened. ‘Why, did he know about you two?’

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