Page 4 of Breakaway Heart
“Lucy, good morn…”
Bill’s sentence got stuck in his throat before he could finish as he took in the mess in front of him.
“Unbelievable!” I’d screeched, half at Bill and half at the empty space where the taxi and my perpetrator of coffee-based crimes had once been.
“Um, let’s get in and try to get you cleaned up, Lucy,” Bill said, clearly having other things on his mind than dealing with this.
“Lucy,” Bill had said, once we were upstairs and I was rubbing pointlessly at the dark coffee stains on my blouse, “You haven’t taken a day off in what, three years?” he asked.
“Four, Bill.”
“Yeahhh. So, look. Seeing as you will not do it unless you’re told to, I’m ordering you to take a vacation. It’s not healthy, Lucy. Take some time, book somewhere nice for two weeks. We can handle things without you, I promise.”
A break was not what I wanted. Work had filled up my life, papered over some of the gaping holes I would rather ignore than try to deal with. It gave me purpose and a good enough reason to roll out of bed each morning.
But, as I looked at Bill’s concerned expression, I had supposed that maybe, justmaybe, there might be more to it than all this. So, a few short weeks later, I’d boarded a flight to Mexico, arrived at Adonis Escapes, and quickly decided that I was wrong about that, very wrong. And even if I wasn’t, this absolutely was not where I was going to find it.
I should’ve guessed on the flight over. All the clues were there. First, there were the gooey-eyed, freshly married or engaged couples, smiling at each other in a way you only can when you have a fulfilling and thrilling sex life.
Something I would have to drown out the sounds of later in my room with a blaring television. Another not-so-subtle reminder that you were alone and loveless. That no one was going to help you put your bags up, hold your hand during the take-off, or whisper exciting suggestions of mile-high meetings in the bathroom.
Then there were the family vacationers, tired and frayed at the edges, with smudged fingerprints on their once fresh holiday clothes, handling toys and herding children that had grown to the point where they now had opinions they would beat their sleep-deprived parents with relentlessly, or else kick up a public wailing fuss to enforce their demands.
After the first day, I’d even started eating in my room. The breakfast buffet and themed dinner nights had only served to highlight how completely and utterly single I was. Sat on my own in the restaurant, surrounded by those same gooey-eyed couples and noisy families, I was seated at the only sad little single table available. Buried in a corner by the doors to the kitchen, each wild swing of the porter doors made me jump every minute or two, accompanied by a rush of steam and a busy waiter bustling past.
While everyone else talked, I sat in silence. Just me, a plate of something suspicious, and a mini-anxiety attack every few moments as another order came out. How I’d made it through the first week was more down to endurance than my willingness. And now, I was at the bar again, alone and unsure quite what to do.
Sipping on my disturbingly sugary drink, I looked up at the TV screen. Harry, the British soccer player with messy hair and a tattoo on his chest that saidNowt mate, was chatting away in the Love Villa interview booth.
“Jemma is well fit. Right up my alley, that one. I was going to go for it, but Randall is hanging about like a bad smell, man! It’slike he’s trying to bag every girl in here. Leave something for the rest of us, yeah?”
The footage then cut away from Harry to a long shot of the villa and a short promo video for the show, made just to remind you how ridiculously attractive everyone was.
“Six single guys. Six single girls. One villa in paradise, but only one couple can be crowned the King and Queen of Celebrity Love Villa…”
The nauseating music and luridly bright images of thongs, tan thighs, and toned arms painted a picture of the characters from the show, with cheeky looks from the muscled shirtless men, and girls in impossibly small bikinis blowing kisses or giving sassy looks at the camera.
“Tonight… A spicy challenge gets the Villa all worked up, and passions run wild as one Villa member stirs up trouble in paradise…”
“Babes!”The impossibly lovely Tina was now suddenly squealing,“I found a new envelope in the Love Den.”
The other villa members came bounding over to hear her read aloud from the card in her hand.
“Villa members, get ready for your next challenge… Truth or dare!”
When they’d assembled for the task, Kent was up first and chose dare. Which was to kiss the girl he would most like to bring into his coupledom with Tina for a threesome. Being Kent, though, he messed up the fun and simply went and kissed Tina. So the threesome idea quickly petered out, drawing groans from the boys and some soft cooing from the girls. Tina then skipped onto the next card.
“Randall. Truth or dare?”
“Truth.”
“Who was better in bed, Debs or Dana?”
Randall smirked, before saying, “Gabi.”
The faces of the villa members were suddenly open-mouthed. All apart from Gabi, who looked like she wanted the ground to eat her up. Gabi’s Villa Hubby, David, loosened his hold on Gabi’s hand and turned to her in disbelief.“Gabi…?”
Randall licked his lips as he watched on, relishing the moment.
