[18+] Mark just wants a quiet life. With plenty of action at work, he has no interest in bringing the drama home with him. But he does need a flatmate, and when blonde bombshell Zoe crashes onto the scene, she's more than he bargained for.
Zoe is a...
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October 2016
MARK
I'd booked the day off far in advance, like I'd done every year for the past decade. This time, though, Zoe has done the same. She'd known what I'd needed back when it happened, then when she'd invited herself to his funeral, and now is no different.
"Do you ever visit him?" Her soft voice drifts up from my lap.
Lying lengthways along my sofa, her eyes are shut, a curtain of blonde spread across my thighs.
"Sometimes." I twist a strand of her hair around my index finger.
"Does it help?"
"Sometimes."
She sighs, then reaches for my hand that's playing with her hair and pulls it down onto her stomach instead, threading our fingers together.
"I think about you on this day every year, you know," she murmurs.
"I know," I say, because I believe her.
"Do you want to talk about him?" Her eyes flutter open and meet mine, gentle and cautious. "We don't have to, if you'd rather not."
I swallow. The anniversary of Ben's murder is probably the one day of the year where she won't begrudge me for not opening up. Where we won't have an argument that results in me shutting down and her storming out.
And the greatest irony is that he's the one thing I like talking about. It keeps his memory alive. That's the least I can do for him.
"He'd have liked you," I say.
A tiny smile lifts the corner of her mouth. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." I squeeze her hand. "I used to tell him about you."
The smile develops into a grin, and it soothes some of the aching in my heart.
"I bet they weren't nice things you were saying back then."
"No," I admit. "I said you were annoying. Messy. A people-pleaser."
Chuckling, she closes her eyes again. "Did you have anything nice to say about me?"
"You made great cookies." I can still taste the crunchy oat as I say it. "Ben liked them, too."
"Well, they say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach..."
I smile. "Mm. Ben saw straight through me anyway. He had a knack for cutting out the bullshit. We were opposites in so many ways, and yet I couldn't have wished for a better partner."
"In what ways are you opposites?"
My spare hand winds its way into her hair, silky strands slipping between my fingers as I absentmindedly play.
