Boyfriend Material(52)
Kind regards,
Barbara
*
I was just composing a devastating reply, because I absolutely had one and it was absolutely a good use of office time, when my phone buzzed. It was a text from Oliver which, the preview helpfully informed me, began with the words Bad news.
Oh fuck. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.
Without my telling it to, my brain started filling in a hundred different ways that sentence could end. And it probably said something about what a messed-up place I was in Oliver-wise that it went straight to “We’re breaking up” rather than “My grandma’s died” or “I have syphilis.”
He was though, wasn’t he? I’d been a total maniac last night. He’d had to rescue me from reporters and then cuddle me until I went to sleep like I was a highly strung puppy. And in the morning, I’d woken up sprawled all over him, and made a huge fuss about him leaving, which had obviously been because I was still half-asleep and not thinking straight, but given how sleep-halved and not-straight-thinking I’d been, I remembered making some pretty forceful arguments. After all that, I wanted to break up with me, and I was me.
In the end I did the mature thing: put my phone in my drawer without reading the message and went for coffee. Under normal circumstances, I would never have been relieved to see Rhys Jones Bowen doing anything, but the fact he was already installed at the coffee machine meant that this whole operation was going to take about three times longer than it would have otherwise, and that was exactly what I needed.
“Thank goodness you’re here, Luc,” he exclaimed. “I can never remember. Is it water in the front and coffee in the back, or the other way round?”
“Coffee goes in the little basket that’s got leftover coffee in it. And the water goes in the bit at the back that’s already half-full of water.”
“Ah, you see, that’s what I was thinking. But you know when you get one of those things and you always get it the wrong way round, and then even when you get it right, you trip yourself and do it the other way anyway.”
I was about to say “no” in my most withering tone but actually, that was kind of a thing. I got it myself with the number of m’s in accommodation. And the number of c’s for that matter. Besides, Oliver would have disapproved. Oliver who’d just sent me a text saying he had bad news, which I was going to have to look at some point, and deal with, and probably be hurt by and—shit, what was the point of a displacement activity if it didn’t displace anything.
“I know what you mean,” I said. And slid into a useful waiting position, while Rhys Jones Bowen navigated the intricacies of the, to be fair, somewhat complicated coffee machine.
“Oh bother.” He knocked the back of his hand against the steamer nozzle. “I always forget that’s there. It’s going to blister now, and that’s my typing hand as well.”
I stifled a sigh. “Why don’t you go and see Alex for some aloe vera. I’ll finish up here and leave your coffee on the desk.”
There was a bewildered pause.
“That’s very decent of you, Luc.” For someone paying me a mild compliment, he sounded worryingly surprised. “Is everything all right? Have you been visited by the ghost of office workers past?”
“What? No. I’m…I’m a helpful person.”
“No, you aren’t. You’re a total pillock. But I’ll take the coffee anyway, thank you very much.”
He ambled off in search of a burn remedy, and I finished reloading the coffee machine. While I waited for it to percolate, I searched the sink, cupboards, and draining board for any clean mugs, and found none. This was the problem with good deeds: they escalated. I was in the middle of scrubbing a particularly stubborn ring from Rhys’s prized Welsh dragon mug when Dr. Fairclough stuck her head through the door and said, “Black, no sugar, since you’re making.”
Gah. Except no, not gah. Perfect.
Still waiting for the coffee to percolate, I went back to my office, really seriously intending to check my phone like an adult with a sense of proportion. But, fuck, what if bad news meant the papers had taken last night’s outing and spun it into something awful for both of us? Drunk Rock Kid Abducts Lawyer Shock. Or maybe one of Oliver’s exes had flown back in from Paris to say “Darling, I’ve just remembered you’re the most wonderful person I’ve ever met, and I should never have left you. Let’s run away together immediately.” Well, I’d never know unless I looked.
I didn’t look. The drawer sat accusingly shut while I fired up Outlook and through gritted fingers typed a much more conciliatory reply to Barbara.
Dear Barbara,
Please forgive my earlier rudeness. I’m making a round of teas/coffees for the office. Would you like one?
Luc
*
Dear Luc,
No.
Kind regards,
Barbara
*
On this one occasion, I’ll admit I deserved that.
Olive branch returned to sender, I sloped back to the kitchen where I poured two coffees—black for Dr. Fairclough, milk and too much sugar for Rhys Jones Bowen—and went about my deliveries. I was holding out some hope that I could wring a few minutes of idle conversation out of them which, in Dr. Fairclough’s case at least, I should have realised was a hope so vain that Carly Simon could have written a famously enigmatic song about it. Normally, I’d have been able to count on Rhys Jones Bowen, but he was distracted getting a botanical burn treatment from Alex. All of which left me with no option but to read Oliver’s text. And when I put it like that, I felt really silly for reacting to it so strongly.