Page 3 of Rescuing Rosie
She sighed, staring at it. ‘I guess I’ll tuck it away at the very back of a drawer.’ She dropped it into the bag with her trainers.‘Maybe one day I’ll be able to look at it fondly, instead of wanting to melt it in a furnace wishing it was in fact Reuben’s head.’
The gardener chuckled. ‘Way to go, Rosie. Or maybe keep it ’andy, in case you meet a Ben.’
Her eyes went to the name tag pinned to his chest:Lysander.
‘Nope – it’s the single life for me for the foreseeable,’ she said, squaring her shoulders.
Rosie watched, wincing as the gardener set about the rest of the padlocks, hacking them off then dropping them into his wheelbarrow with a clang.
‘I’m worried you’re messing with Fate,’ she said, feeling uneasy. ‘It’s like you’re an anti-Cupid.’
‘I know, right?’ He read from a heart-shaped padlock: ‘David and Victoria, Viva Forever …’ He looked up. ‘Hey, you don’t think …’
Rosie gasped. ‘God, I hope not – imagine being responsible for ending that!’
He threw the padlock in with the others and lifted the wheelbarrow handles. ‘Well, Rosie, it was nice talking to you. I hope you have a lovely week. At least, I ’ope it improves.’
‘You have a good week too, Lysander.’ Rosie gave him smile and a little wave and set off back the way she’d come.
‘My middle name’s Ben,’ he called.
‘Oh!’ She stopped and swivelled. ‘Is it?’
He grinned. ‘Nah, just joking. See ya!’
She laughed out loud, and it felt like a long time since she’d done that. ‘Goodbye then, and thanks for the cheer-up!’
As she set off back along the towpath, Rosie wondered what it would be like to date someone who wasn’t a lawyer, or something in finance, or anexecutive.Someone who worked outside, not in an office. (Parental approval was an insidious thing.)
Maybe she’d been doing it all wrong.
Chapter Two
The fun chat with the gardener had topped up the endorphins. Or was it dopamine? Or serotonin? The feel-good hormones, anyway. They probably wouldn’t stick around for long; would likely vaporise the minute she entered the office lift, but she felt a whole lot better than she had an hour ago.
Rosie noticed the trees either side of the canal coming back to life, their unfurling leaves a fuzzy, lime-green haze stretching in parallel into the distance. Buffered by those endorphins, she allowed herself to revisit this week’s double-whammy, hoping that an initial, brief dip of the toe might enable her to begin processing those events so that she too could come back to life.
Reuben. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment as a little knife stabbed her heart. Had she missed any warning signs? There had certainly been a growing sense of impatience on his part. She’d been stressed about her book; it had been clear its progress to publication was faltering. Her former editor, a woman in her forties, had been replaced by a younger one who was focused on the Booktok subculture. Her expression during their initial Zoom call, when Rosie had said,I don’t reallyengage much… had been pained. And then camethatcomment, about the World War II trend being over.
Rosie’s resulting distress had made her snappy and distracted, and Reuben had only seemed exasperated with her. ‘You should have talked yourself up,’ he said, as she sat staring into space over dinner that evening, ‘dropped in a few stats to prove World War II’salwayson trend. If it’s a new editor, you should have basically re-pitched, gone in with all guns blazing. Has she even read it?’
Had she?
His words filled her with dread, rather than hope. Self-promotion wasn’t her forte.
‘I need to have a proper think, about what to do,’ she’d said.
‘Well, given the speed things are changing, I’d say time isn’t a luxury you can afford,’ he’d replied. ‘And you’ve probably only got a year or two before AI’s writing all the books, anyway.’
Had that been a joke? Not helpful.
‘What an arsehole,’ she said to a duck on the canal.
Reuben, a lawyer who worked with media organisations, didn’t seem to get how an author’s investment in their book wasn’t all about money. In his world, the deal was what mattered, and if necessary, she could renegotiate or simply go after another. Relentlessly positive and pragmatic, he was unable to understand how such a setback might impact on a more sensitive person’s ability to carry on.
But … to be fair, his upbeat personality, his unwavering self-confidence, had been what had attracted her to him. Along with his beautiful, long-lashed blue eyes, fit bod and lush dark curls, of course.
Once they’d moved in together, however, his positivity had begun to feel more like nervous energy, and it had rubbed off on her, making her uneasy, often tense. He rarely sat still for long; his attention span was short, and his phone was never far fromhis hand. Thinking back, she realised she’d never seen him relax with a book, or enjoy a gentle hobby, like … what did other men do to relax? Her father loved fly fishing, spent quiet evenings tying flies from feathers and colourful thread. Her brother, a librarian, took close-up photographs of bugs which he shared on Instagram. She thought now, how gentle, weird little hobbies suited some men.
