Invisible string (Robin Le Normand)

Chapter 16

One thing their trip to San Sebastián achieved was for people to fully believe Leire and Robin were back together. Because of course everyone had assumed they were together before so this was their second chance at love. Leire was the one who was supposed to write made up stories and yet social media was full of those too. Made up stories about her life as well.

"My TV channel is doing a little segment about your hot love story", laughed Fran when she met Leire to have a cup of coffee.

"Great".

Leire had a chat with Gorka and Jesús. It was convenient to them that everyone believed there was a love story. That included Fran so Leire couldn't tell him the truth and she felt horrible about it.

"Honey, no one is going to judge you. I'd be climbing Robin like a tree if he played for my team", he winked and Leire couldn't help but laugh. "Off the record but...how good is he in bed?"

"I'm not going to talk about that!", said Leire, covering her face so Fran wouldn't see her blush. Also, she couldn't talk about that...because she didn't know. She had imagined it many times but that didn't count.

"You're so sweet...and he's here".

"Who's here?"

"Your man".

Leire looked behind her to where Fran was pointing and Robin noticed her immediately. They stared at each other for a second and Robin thought he couldn't leave without at least saying hi. He wasn't looking forward to talking to Fran but there was no escaping the meeting.

"Hey".

"Robin, hi!", Leire stood up and didn't really know how to act so she looked from Fran to Robin. "This is Fran. Fran, this is Robin".

"Nice meeting you", said Fran, standing up too to shake Robin's hand. "Wanna sit with us?"

"I don't want to bother you".

"You wouldn't. I would love to chat with the it couple".

"It what?", laughed Robin, looking at Leire.

"Just the media being stupid", she said. But they had to play along with the lie so Robin knew he had to do something.

"Come on. Don't listen to them. I know that always bothered you".

Leire was staring at his beautiful smile and took longer to noticed how Robin lifted his hand to caress her cheek. Her immediate reaction was to move her face away from his hand. It was so dangerous to get so close to him again. But then she looked at Fran and noticed him frowning.

"I don't like PDA, Robin. I've told you".

"Sorry. I gotta go. You two have fun and I'll see you home later, ok?"

Leire nodded and tried not to flinch when Robin grabbed her hand to give it a quick squeeze. Her heart was going to get out of her chest if it kept beating so fast.

Fran was acting a bit strange after that brief encounter with Robin and had tried to bring it up a few times but Leire changed the subject. She couldn't lie to her friend. She didn't want to lie to her friend. But didn't seem to have any other option.

At least Leire was writing again. Her usual routine was to outline the story well, followed by doing little profiles for each character so she was sure of who they were. That meant lots of post-its and highlighters. It was fun. Probably the most fun part of the writing process. The least serious and demanding.

She also would write random stuff she never published to warm up. The usual plan was to open a new document on her laptop and write. Not thinking about what she was writing at all and just allowing her imagination to start working for the day. Once she was done, she'd read the four or five pages written and see if anything actually was decent enough to use in her current or future projects. It rarely was. She also never wrote smut and yet...

"What the heck is this?", she asked to herself, staring at the words on the screen. She had written smut. And not just that. She had written smut about Robin. "Oh faboulous! I'm fucking losing it!"

But it was well written so she'd give her dirty consciousness that. And it was so related to when Robin touched her the previous day, when she was hanging out with Fran. In this story, when Robin grabbed her hand, he didn't squeeze it and let go. He placed it somewhere else. Interesting placement for sure.

A part of her wanted to delete the whole thing but what if she kept it? What if she wrote more and made it a full story? Not one to publish or not under her own name. That was what pen names were for. Or she could just write it to allow all of her fantasies about Robin to be channeled in a somehow healthy way.

"What are you doing?"

"Oh my God!", she screamed, closing her laptop. "You scared me!"

"Sorry? I was making plenty of noise on my way here so I thought you knew I was around".

"I...".

"Why are you so flustered? Are you ok?"

"Yes. Just...you scared me", Leire's hand was still on top of the laptop, protecting her dirty thoughts about the guy who was currently staring at her wondering if she had lost her mind.

"I'll leave you alone so you can keep writing then".

"Thanks".

Leire opened up the laptop again and started to change all the times she had written Robin for another name. The female main character had now turned into Laura. She'd change the names again in the future but what she needed first was to remove their real names.

"Do you think your friend bought that we're together?"

"Stop doing that!", yelled Leire, placing her hand on her chest.

"Why are you so jumpy? Did something happen?"

"Just a bad anxiety day. Can I get some time alone to write?"

"Yes, but answer my question first".

"He seemed a bit suspicious", admitted Leire. "But who cares?"

"He's a journalist. The channel he works for talks about us".

"It'll be fine. Don't worry and let me write".

"Ok...".

Leire knew Robin was right in worrying about Fran but she'd sort that out. For now, what she had to sort out was how crazy she was going while writing this smutty book about Robin. By the time she was done for the day, she felt so bad about not writing one single word for the real book she was working on.

And when she saw Robin, looking so incredibly sexy even though he wasn't doing anything special, she blushed again and ran upstairs to hide in her room.