Free What a Girl Wants by Lindsey Kelk Page B

common: getting hammered in the middle of a work day.
    ‘Nothing,’ I replied as fast as I could, quietly glad that Amy had taken away my wine. I was not a good drinker. ‘One hundred per cent work talk only.’
    ‘If you really want to go for the advertising job as much as you say you do, maybe you should go for it.’ Paige casually glanced over at the shirtless men, flickered an eyebrow and shook her head. ‘Photography won’t be the easy option.’
    ‘Yeah, and maybe you could even go from working six days a week to the full seven?’ Amy replied. ‘I’m sure it would only freak you out to have to spend your birthday with your friends instead of in the office. Or Christmas. Or New Year.’
    ‘You work over Christmas?’ Paige looked horrified. Then took a drink. Then looked horrified again.
    ‘No, it’s fine,’ Amy said, waving her hands and her wine around in the air. ‘Tess isn’t normal. Tess is a martyr. She’s happiest when she’s miserable.’
    Paige nodded. ‘That explains why she went for Nick.’
    ‘I’m happiest when I’m busy,’ I said before Amy could pounce on the mention of his name. ‘There’s a difference.’
    For the want of a better plan, I picked up an empty glass and poured in a couple of slugs of wine. I was not a big drinker for good reason. More than three drinks and I could not be held responsible for my actions. More than four and I couldn’t remember them anyway. But this definitely felt like a legitimate wine-to-the-rescue moment. Amy took hold of my wrist, raising the glass to my mouth, and I drank obediently, disappointed in my appalling lack of willpower.
    ‘How do you feel right now?’ Paige asked. ‘If you had to make the decision right now, pick one and never do the other ever again, which would it be?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said, wishing I didn’t see Nick and Charlie in my head when she asked that question. ‘I had a plan, you know? I knew where I was going and I knew what I wanted. And now it’s like, boom! decision time. But if I make the wrong decision, what happens then? I’m buggered. Completely buggered and miserable and I die alone with seventeen cats all called Steve. It’s too hard.’
    ‘Have I missed something? How does picking the wrong job leave you as a crazy cat lady?’ Paige looked swiftly from me to Amy and back again. ‘Were you drinking before you got here?’
    ‘She’s not drunk,’ Amy said, patting my hand as though I was a deranged nana. ‘She’s just not really thinking about the jobs, are you?’
    ‘Oh, bloody hell.’ Paige rolled her eyes. ‘And we were doing so well at avoiding the subject of cock. OK. Hang on a sec, I just need to set up this last shot and then we can get trashed and talk about this properly.’
    Trashed? I looked at my watch. It was barely even three o’clock.
    Amy looked at me with a ‘well?’ expression, an already empty wine glass in her hand. I genuinely didn’t know where she put it; the woman was miniscule and drank more than Lindsay Lohan on the average Thursday.
    ‘What?’ I picked up my glass and gave my wine one more sip. ‘Spit it out.’
    ‘Have you explained it all to Charlie?’ she asked.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Have you heard from the other one?’
    ‘No.’
    Just then, my text message alert sounded loudly in the bottom of my handbag and every internal organ jumped. Even my spleen wanted to know who was it was from. It was Charlie.
    One by one, my organs settled back into their usual positions, consoling each other on their way down. I didn’t know why I was surprised. Nick wasn’t going to call. Nick wasn’t going to call. Nick wasn’t going to call. And no matter how many times I told myself that, it did not feel any better.
    ‘Speak of the devil,’ I said, my voice unexpectedly scratchy. ‘Charlie wants to know where we are.’
    ‘Tell him to fuck the fuck off, we’re talking
about
him, not
to
him,’ Amy replied. ‘You thought it was Nick, didn’t you?’
    ‘It’s