Charlie's Web (A Romantic Comedy)

Chapter 3

Fast forward to Friday, and Charlie was systematically working her way through a bowl of shredded wheat when Thea skidded into the kitchen, hair looking genuinely bed-head and her blouse almost completely undone. Oh, and only her knickers on her bottom half. This was not an unusual occurrence.

"I'm late," she panted. Somewhat redundantly. Thea was never on time. She operated in a different time zone from everyone else, approximately ten minutes later than GMT. Or, in today's case, fifteen minutes later. "Have you any idea where my black skirt is?" She glanced around, then did a double take as she spotted what was actually in Charlie's cereal bowl. "Are you eating that cereal without milk?" she asked.

Charlie looked down at her bowl absently. "Oh yeah, I think I'm intolerant to milk protein," she said, wrinkling her nose. "However, it's so dry by itself that I think it's scratching my throat."  As if to corroborate her statement, she coughed on a mouthful. "I think your skirt is on the radiator in the living room."

"Cheers!" Thea switched on the toastie maker and rushed into the living room to retrieve her bottom half. Running back with the skirt unzipped, she assembled together four slices of bread, a tub of low fat spread and some ready grated cheese. "Shit, he's already out there," she gasped, looking out of the window, as she rapidly put together two sandwiches and stuck them in the machine.

"Who, Dave?" Charlie shrugged. Dave was Craig's best friend and, as he worked in the same suburb as Thea, he gave her a ride to work most mornings. On the provisio that Thea provided some sort of breakfast as payment. Hence the toasted sandwiches.  "He's used to having to wait for you. He told me once he's got some sort of special arrangement with his school that he can turn up twenty minutes late if it's your fault."

"What???" Thea demanded, looking up in shock. Then she realised her friend was joking. "Yeah yeah, very funny." She picked up the black court shoes that were sitting, for some unknown reason, on one of the kitchen chairs, and shoved her feet into them. "Bag, bag, where is it?" She looked around frantically.

"On your shoulder?" Charlie sniggered, choking on another piece of shredded wheat. She watched Thea efficiently wrap the sandwiches in foil. "So, is our plan for tomorrow pretty much in place?" she asked curiously.

"Yup." Thea checked her bag for her keys and purse and grabbed her jacket. "I just need to fill a couple of the girls in on what's actually going on and get the venues finalised and then we'll be good to go."

"You're so efficient." Charlie was impressed. "I suppose I'd better get my part of the plan sorted out today then."

"The ring?" Thea queried. "Well, make sure it looks real-ish, okay?" Charlie gave a mock salute in response. "Good girl." And with that she was gone.

Charlie bit her lip. She should probably have reminded Thea that she still hadn't buttoned up most of her blouse.

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"What a lovely view first thing in the morning," was the first thing Dave said to Thea as she clambered into the passenger seat of his car. At her confused look, he laughed and pointed towards her chest,

"Shit!" she gasped and chucked the foil wrapped sandwiches at him as she fumbled to make herself decent. "Sorry about that, Dave."

His blue eyes twinkled at her merrily. "No harm, no foul," he laughed. "In fact, it made my day."

Thea nudged him and grabbed one of the sandwiches back. "Man, I'm ravenous," she muttered through a large bite of bread. "Do you know my crazy flatmate was actually sitting there eating bite sized shredded wheat from the bowl without milk? She's obviously on some insane health kick again."

"Why eat something so bland when melted cheese tastes so damn good first thing in the morning?" Dave pulled out into the traffic. "If it wasn't for these sandwiches, I wouldn't bother to make myself late for you every morning."

"You don't mean that." She nudged him cheekily. "You would miss my fabulous company and stunning good looks too," she fluffed up her bedhead hair to prove a point, and as her fingers got tangled in it, she realised she should actually get herself looking presentable. Leaving the remaining half of the sandwich for now, she pulled out her compact, hairbrush and make-up and started to try and sort it out.

So preoccupied was she that, as they pulled up at a traffic light, she didn't see Dave glance at her sideways, she didn't noticed the sigh he quickly stifled, or that, when he turned back to face the road, there was a muscle slamming in his cheek.

She didn't realise how close she actually had been to the truth. If she had . . . she would probably have been horrified.

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Thea had actually first met Craig and Dave at university, when they had all done a post-grad teaching course together. She hadn't really known either of them for most of that year, but one night at a punch party, she'd got talking to Dave.

The university punch parties were infamous. You paid five quid and had unlimited supply of a vast bowl of punch, the drinking of which could virtually cause a person to become flammable. And, naturally, extremely drunk.

Thea and Dave had chatted for a long time. What about, Dave couldn't really remember. He just knew there had been a frission of something between them. And that they'd  never ran out of things to talk about. 

For some reason, Craig hadn't been there that night. He couldn't remember why, but he'd remembered being relieved about it, because as far as he was concerned, Craig had always been the more confident of the two, the more good looking, and the most likely to pull in the females.

But that night, it had been Dave who had kissed Thea.

The next day though, Thea hadn't remembered. She barely even remembered talking to him. And so he'd gven up. Especially when, four years later, Craig had randomly ran into Thea on a night out, remembered her from university, and asked her out.

It wasn't a big deal. Craig didn't know Thea was the girl that Dave had kissed all that time ago. Thea didn't remember.

No one needed to know how Dave felt about it. It was irrelevant.

Right?