Free About a Girl by Lindsey Kelk Page A

‘I am not a schoolboy.’
    ‘Oh, you clever man,’ I said, gratefully accepting the bottle and taking a deep drink. I had never been a very good drinker. I loved a drink, but drinks did not love me. The two mugs of wine I’d enjoyed on Monday, post-sacking, were the first alcoholic drinks I’d had in a month, but while we were rebranding, I had to consider all my options. Maybe the new Tess would be a drinker. Maybe she’d learn how to make elaborate cocktails and have her friends over for parties. Maybe she’d be a whisky drinker and keep a decanter on her desk like Don Draper. Or maybe she’d do a shot of cheap supermarket vodka by the duck pond and retch in her own mouth.
    ‘Keep it down.’ Charlie rubbed my back and took the bottle from me. ‘Keep it down.’
    ‘Oh, bugger me, that’s disgusting,’ I coughed, feeling the burn in the back of my throat. Maybe if I was going to be a drinker, I shouldn’t start with four-quid cava and vodka that cost less than a Tube ticket. ‘Thank you.’
    ‘You’re very welcome.’ Charlie took a shot without wincing and passed the bottle back. The sun was already setting across the pond, and the bad side was getting considerably more traffic than the good. ‘So, what are we going to do with you?’
    ‘I have no idea,’ I replied, turning to give him my best attempt at a smile. ‘I was just trying to work that out myself.’
    ‘Well, if you were a client and I was trying to sort you out, I’d start with what you wanted out of your campaign,’ he reasoned while I took a second shot. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him rubbing the centre of his left eyebrow. That meant he was thinking. Rubbing his chin meant he was confused. Nodding and scratching the back of his neck meant he was listening but not really paying attention. There wasn’t a thing about this man I didn’t know. ‘What do you want?’
    This was why we were soulmates. He was trying to solve my problems in exactly the same way I was trying to solve my problems.
    ‘My job,’ I replied.
    ‘You can’t have your job.’ He slapped my bare thigh and I had to remember to be offended and not turned on. ‘As account manager, it’s my role to give you honest feedback and tell you what is and isn’t possible. Your old job, off the table. What else do you want?’
    ‘I really do just want my job,’ I said, clutching the warm bottle between my knees. ‘If I had my job back, I could just put everything back how it was and carry on. That would be perfect.’
    ‘If this week has taught us nothing else, it’s that things were not perfect for you,’ Charlie said. He turned on the bench until his knee was pressing against mine. ‘People lose their jobs every day, Tess. They don’t take to their beds for four days and fall apart. They turn to their friends, they go on holiday, they ? I don’t fucking know ? read the great novels or something. Write a great novel. Start a blog. Tell me what makes you happy, aside from work.’
    I tried to think about something other than his knee on mine.
    ‘You?’ I said as quietly as humanly possible.
    ‘Me?’
    ‘You and Amy?’ I wanted to slap myself.
    Charlie nodded for a moment and took the bottle back from me without words. The ducks on the pond, full of stale bread, started to make their way over to the rushes looking for their beds.
    ‘I think the problem is, you’re so used to being in your head and solving the problem that you don’t know how to present it back to the client. That’s my job,’ Charlie took hold of my hand. His were almost as soft as mine, but so much bigger. I turned, flushed with vodka, proximity and my ridiculous outfit, and looked into his big brown eyes. He was adorable. ‘So here’s what I see. You are a beautiful, clever, funny woman. You work too hard, you take on too much, and you’re far too concerned with other people’s expectations. You worry too much about your friends and you live with a mentalist, but aside from