On the fateful night of Charlie and Thea's massive fall-out, they'd decided in the aftermath that they both needed A Break from Men.
"Let's get fit, find hobbies, go travelling!" Thea had said dramatically. A little too dramatically. They decided a health kick would be sufficient for now.
"Girl cannot live on cheesestrings alone I suppose," Charlie had shrugged, although she had admittedly succeeded pretty well at that herself for a while.
They'd drunkenly detoured into the supermarket on the way home from the pub, picking up avocados and eggs and every so-called "superfood" their local tiny Tesco Metro had to hand. (Spoiler alert: not many). They food-prepped and meal-planned. Then they had ordered a Dominos because they still had a couple of hours before their new healthy life started, of course.
Charlie went into work the following day with a jar of overnight oats, a tub of tuna salad, and a determination to just get the fuck over Aaron.
He appeared beside her approximately ten minutes later, having not received that memo himself.
"Do you have a minute?" he asked quietly. She nodded wordlessly and he pulled up a nearby chair. So it was work-related. Fair enough, what else could she expect, after all? It's not like they were really friends.
"It's just about the big night out, I just wanted to catch you up on it quickly since you were the only one who actually even tried to help out," he rolled his eyes in the direction of their other useless teammates.
She'd practically forgotten about the night out, even though it had been less than a week since that moment they had shared on the boat. That moment she had clearly read far too much into, she realised how. But she guessed there was still work to do on it, which would force them to work together closely and she wasn't sure….
"So the good news is, we don't need to do anything else to organise it," Aaron interrupted her thoughts. Oh. He spread out a few pages of an email printout in front of her, as she admired his tanned lean hands and tried not to imagine the things they could do to her. "The date is set for three weeks on Friday and Sasha has confirmed they will pick up the catering/dj etc as part of the booking." He smiled. "And she may have managed to wangle a wee bit of a discount which definitely gets us off Josh’s naughty list."
Charlie couldn't miss that reference to the Christmas night out right there but her emotions were all over the place. Should she be reminiscing about the kiss, sad and/or relieved that she wouldn't need to work with him on the night out any longer, or annoyed that Sasha had signed off the email to him with three kisses? He has a girlfriend, Sasha!!!
She opted for an attempt at neutral and friendly. "That is good news," she replied, smiling back. It was hard to resist that dimpled grin. "Although I feel bad taking any credit when all I did was skip work for an hour or two for the boat tour."
"Believe me, that helped." His eyes darkened for the briefest of seconds as he looked at her and then he stood up. "So all that needs to be done now is sending an email around everyone with the details, which I can take care of. So you're free!"
"You're my hero," Charlie joked. He laughed and moved to walk away, but hesitated.
"It's . . . a shame you couldn't join us for a drink last night," he said, much to her surprise. She looked up in shock, not expecting him to address the Kayla incident. "Hope you had a good night though." Then with one last quick smile that didn't quite meet his eyes, he walked back to his desk.
He'd left her the email, presumably as her own copy to prove she was off the hook. Pretending to look busy, she scanned through it, her eyes narrowing again at the three kisses, followed by the words PS Say hi to Kayla and Peter for me!
Pretending to suck up to his girlfriend and their dog when she clearly wanted Aaron for herself? What a fucking sociopath. Charlie scoffed as she pushed the pages of the email back together and stapled them, stuffing them in her bag without really thinking.
It was definitely time to move on.
YOU ARE READING
Charlie's Web (A Romantic Comedy)
ChickLit"We met earlier, kind of," he smiled at her. "I'm Jake." "H-hi!" How had she missed him before? He was delightful. Dark blond hair, slate grey eyes . . . and oh my goodness, that smile!!! To be fair, back in the bar, all of their faces had been merg...
