Page 56 of One Day and Forever
‘It does.’ It freaked her out when they spoke in unison.
‘Yeah, okay, Mr and Mrs Judgemental there. But I liked having a secret that didn’t have to go anywhere. The two of you are fixers. Action people. I’m the one who just goes with the flow all the time and that wouldn’t have been good enough for you. You’d have grilled me to death, and you’d have wanted me to act on it, to rethink my relationship with Josh, to make the thing with Zac more than it was. Kind of the way you’re doing now. But that was the whole thing about Zac – there was no pressure. We were just two strangers who met up by chance. Sliding doors. Coincidences that threw us together. It was romcom stuff. Without the riding off into the sunset thing at the end.’
Ollie seemed to be missing the point and introducing safety concerns into her romcom bubble. ‘A romcom that could actually have turned into a slasher movie if he’d been some kind of maniac stranger who lured you into a hotel room and then murdered you while you slept.’
Kara rolled her eyes. ‘You really need to work on your sunny optimism.’
Before he could say anything, Drea piped up. ‘So what happens now? Are you going to look him up and see if there’ssomething real between you? Something that could maybe become a thing?’ she asked, then got distracted before Kara could answer. ‘Ollie, are you okay? You’re looking really flushed.’
Now Kara could see it too, but Ollie shrugged it off. ‘Just warm in here.’
‘You sure?’ Drea checked. ‘Because not that I’m the only important one here, but if you drop down sick or give us all some mad flu and it affects my wedding, I will bear a grudge for the rest of my life, and it won’t be pretty.’
Kara exhaled, feeling the change of subject had finally taken the pressure off her.
Or maybe not. Drea was staring at her again. ‘You didn’t answer. Are you going to track him down or am I just going to have to book flights in and out of Glasgow on the second of January for you until the end of time?’
Kara shook her head. ‘Nope. That’s why I didn’t find an excuse to come here last night. I’ve given up on relationships. I’ve spent eight years in the same one and walked away with nothing, from a guy who let me down. What a total waste of time. So from now on, I’m officially off all that romantic stuff because I’m clearly crap at it.’
‘Or maybe you just picked the wrong guy,’ Ollie shrugged.
He was still a bit flushed. Kara couldn’t remember if she’d packed any paracetamol, so she made a mental note to pick some up at Heathrow, if they ever got there.
Just at that, a murmur of discontent went around the room, and they saw that it was coming from all the people who were now staring up at the information board on the far wall.
‘Oh no. Oh bugger, no.’ Drea was up and speed walking towards the board to find out what was causing it, leaving just Kara and Ollie.
‘Can’t believe you’re full of secrets, Miss McIntyre.’
‘Not full. Just one,’ Kara corrected him, but there was an edge of apology in her voice. Ollie was just being concerned about her safety and all the points that both he and Drea made were completely valid. ‘I’m sorry. Don’t hate me. It was just a special little interlude from real life, and I didn’t want anyone to burst my bubble… even for the right reasons.’
Drea returned and slumped down in her seat. ‘My nerves are shredded. Half of tonight’s flights have just been cancelled, but ours is still going, so we should still make it to the hotel at Heathrow for tonight, and be on schedule for the Hawaii flights tomorrow.’
Kara knew that Drea’s travel expert brain was all over this. She’d obsessed for days over the best way to get to Honolulu before settling on the Glasgow-Heathrow-San Francisco-Hawaii route, with the layover at Heathrow tonight. Kara was 100 per cent positive that the gods of the airways wouldn’t dare mess that up for fear of Drea’s ire.
‘They’ve delayed it another hour though, so we’re just as well hunkering down here. Any other deep dark secrets you want to tell us to pass the time? A side hustle working in a morgue? A bondage fetish?’
‘Only on the weekends,’ Kara said, making her sister grin.
‘Good to know,’ Drea retorted, before getting up and grabbing her bag. ‘I’m just going to go find Mum and tell her about the delay.’ She turned to Ollie. ‘If this one confesses to being a serial killer or having a stamp collection while I’m away, get it on tape.’
As she strutted off, Kara’s phone buzzed on the table, so she picked it up and turned it over to see an alert notification:
CLYDESIDE STUDIOS SHAKE-UP
What? Surely they weren’t making an announcement about her leaving? She was no one in the Clydeside sphere. There was no way they’d even notice she was gone, never mind send out a press release about it.
‘Hey Kara, the stuff Drea was saying… you know, about us being single at the same time… Do you ever think about…?’
She could hear Ollie speaking, but she wasn’t really paying attention because she was furiously clicking through to the article mentioned in the headline.
When she reached it, she gasped. ‘Ollie, look at this!’ She turned her phone so that he could see the article’s tagline on the screen.
Corbin Jacobs out. In a surprising move, the fan favourite’s contract has not been renewed, with the studio citing, a ‘new direction for the show’.
She scanned the rest of the story and got the gist of it pretty quickly. Whatever language they used to soften the optics, Corbin Jacobs had been fired and Casey Lowden had agreed to a new contract that would see her stepping up into a directorial role on one show per week, while still maintaining the spotlight on her current character.
Wow. Just wow.
