Hunger in my Heart

Chapter 18

Cheryl checked her phone for the fourth time in the last hour and let out a loud sigh before flopping back on the sofa with a disgruntled pout on her face.

Observing the clear impatience and aggrieved look of her friend, Sarah smirked in amusement. They were having a bit of a girly night in with all the girls of the band, except Nadine who had flown back to LA last week. Sarah had arrived in the afternoon to keep Cheryl company as Kimberley was taping her show all day and Nicola was busy in the recording studio. Both were due to arrive anytime now and Chez had become pretty obviously edgy about an hour ago.

"I'm sure they'll be here soon Chez," Sarah informed her as she casually flipped the page in the gossip rag she was reading.

"Yeah, I'm sure," Cheryl replied absently.

It had been a bit of a crap week, she'd hadn't seen Kimberley even once since staying over at her house last week after her and Justin broke up, since then her friend had been busy, suspiciously, deliberately busy. If she was the paranoid type, she would think that Kimberley had been avoiding her. And it really hadn't helped that she had been on doctor ordered rest and had no commitments whatsoever, so she had been rambling around the estate going a little out of her mind. She had wanted to have a serious talk with Kimberley but so far hadn't had a chance and now her time was almost up. Sundraj had arranged an 'exclusive' look-Cheryl-is-still-alive paparazzi excursion tomorrow and then the day after that she was due to fly to Los Angeles to finish recording her album, then after that it was right back into the X-Factor until almost Christmas.

Maybe it was a good thing she reasoned, it would hardly be appropriate to essentially ask Kimberley out when she had only just broken up with Justin, on the other hand she didn't want to go to LA for a month without implementing at least part of her plan. Although her plan was a bit fuzzy, it pretty much relied on at least showing Kimberley she was interested, trying to woo her, although she would admit to being well out of her depth. But that could hardly happen if Kimberley never came near her, though she had to grudgingly admit that Kimberley had actually seemed to be genuinely busy. She'd had tapings three days in the last week, she had a photo shoot another day and she had gone with Justin to Bristol for a day to break the news about their break-up with his daughter in person. Then her and Justin had been at the flat together to sort out the various entanglements in their life and divide things up. All this meant that she hadn't seen Kimberley in eight days, she was going mad.

"Well, will you look at that," Sarah piped up with a note of amusement in her tone.

"What's that Sarah?" Cheryl asked absently, suddenly realizing that she was being a crap host.

"Look's like Kimberley already has a new beau," Sarah said sarcastically while pointing at a page in the magazine she was reading.

Cheryl sat up at that with a frown, what was she talking about? Sundraj had issued a brief statement to the press last week saying Kimberley and Justin had parted ways mutually and amicably and it had received a little bit of tabloid interest, with some retrospective pieces of the two of them with pictures through the years, but after that it had died down. She really didn't expect the papers to be making up new men for Kimberley to date already.

Frowning Cheryl held out a hand for the tabloid, which Sarah handed over with a smirk. There on a full-page spread was a series of pictures of Kimberley with that Will guy from her new show in an apparent serious conversation on a London street. Picture one had Kimberley talking with one hand intimately on the guy's arm, picture two showed them in a hug and picture three showed him planting a kiss on Kimberley's cheek, all accompanied by the headline, "Is This The REAL Reason Kimberley Walsh Dumped Her Long-Term Boyfriend." Cheryl's frown intensified, it did actually look kind of coupley, surely Kimberley wasn't interested in that guy, she would have said something to her. Then again, Kimberley hadn't really said anything to her at all about her future plans in the few conversations they had this week.