Faking with Benefits : A Friends to Lovers Romance(9)

“Okay,” Josh’s low voice says as I hit the last stretch of my run. “Here’s an email that I think must be meant for Zack. It’s from the pseudonym ‘Moist in the Midlands’.”

“Oh, this’ll be good,” Zack answers. “Hit me.”

Josh clears his throat. “‘The last few times me and my girlfriend have slept together’, he reads aloud, ‘she’s squirted. I think it’s great, but she’s horrifically embarrassed every time it happens, and it’s really affecting our life in the bedroom. How do I convince her that it’s normal… and that I actually really like it?’”

“Drink that shit up,” Zack says immediately. “You gotta get in there and SWALLOW, man. You can’t just tell her you think it’s hot, you gotta show her. So get between her legs and go down like you’re at a damn watermelon eating contest. Trust me, she’s gonna know you think it’s hot when you’re licking her clean like she’s a melting ice cream cone.”

I burst out laughing in the middle of the park. A passing woman pushing a pram gives me a nervous look and switches to the other side of the path. I try to push down my laughter, jogging over to a nearby bench to cool down. My phone has been dinging steadily through my run, so I pull it out and flick through the messages as I start stretching out my thighs.

They’re all from Zack.

ZACK: Yo L you up??

ZACK: we’re at the studio atm, but we’re getting lunch soon. Come join if you wanna talk about last night





I’m about to swipe the messages away, but then another text pops up.

ZACK: we’re worried about you. Don’t like to see you cry :(





Guilt twists me. Of course they’re worried about me. I cried all over them like a little baby. They’ve never seen me like that before. I usually try so hard to be in control.

I have to apologise.

Sighing, I start typing back a message.





SIX





ZACK





“I’ve been dating my three lovely boyfriends for almost a year now,” Josh reads into the mic, his eyes scanning the email on his phone. I yawn, trying to stay awake. “And it’s going great. The only problem is, it’s almost impossible for all four of us to spend time together because of our schedules. We’ve got a baby girl, and I really want her to get quality time with all of her dads. How do we handle our clashing timetables? From Beth Ellis in London.”

“Dude, that’s such a mood,” I say into the mic. “We ain’t shared a girl in a couple of years, but back when we were all dating Monica, we used to share an online calendar, so we could see when everyone was free.”

Luke nods. “And we tried to be as flexible as possible, trading shifts at work and such. Honestly, the best thing you can do is—”

My phone bleeps in my jacket.

Luke sighs loudly, and Josh closes his eyes. I swear, fumbling to unzip my pocket.

We’ve been in the recording studio since nine this morning, and we have almost no usable footage. Three Single Guys releases eight episodes a month; one a week, with an extra weekly bonus episode available for people who pay to subscribe. Normally, we try to get the recording out of the way during the weekend, and spend the rest of the week editing and doing admin. But today, nothing is coming out right.

First, we couldn’t find any of our mic covers. Then we recorded a full hour of footage, before realising that Luke’s mic wasn’t even on. Then we somehow lost the listener questions that Josh had spent all week selecting and filing. And now we can’t get through a damn sentence without stumbling over our words, or dropping something, or saying something stupid.

None of us can focus, and we all know why. It’s Layla.

I hook my phone out of my pocket, checking the screen. Layla’s face pops up.

Finally.

“Quit texting under the table,” Josh mutters.

I shake my head, thumbing open the message. “Hang on. It’s her.” I read the text aloud. “Can you please tell the guys sorry? I’m so embarrassed.”

Luke looks confused. “Why is she embarrassed? We’re her friends. I’ve seen you get drunk and do much more destructive things than talk about your feelings.”

“Uh, because she hates emotion?” I remind him. “Crying in front of people is probably her idea of literal Hell.” I swipe to respond to the text. “I’ll tell her we all suffered simultaneous traumatic head injuries and are now suffering from a very specific form of amnesia, yeah?”

Luke’s mouth presses into a firm line. He looks grimly back down at his notes.

I think we were all shocked by what happened last night. It was so out of character for Layla. I’ve never seen her cry. She’s usually so on top of her shit. I actually think that’s why she can’t find a guy — I reckon she’s intimidating them.

Hell, when we first met her, I thought she hated me. It was the day she was moving into the building. I heard a girl was moving into the flat opposite, so obviously I went over to see if she needed any help. She refused me with a tight smile, disappeared into her flat, and avoided me for the next month.

I thought she was cold. Aloof. Kinda stuck up. The more I got to know her, though, the more I realised that she’s not really any of those things. She’s just shy. Some girls are shy and soft; Layla is shy and hard. Because she acts confident, and dresses like a supermodel, and makes a shitton of money, people interpret her social awkwardness as being rude, but she’s really just a dork.