When the Bus Stopped

Chapter 5

Carlos had been heading into the Moonshine Manor for the evening when he'd seen Lucy standing in the reception.

She'd been wearing a short purple jersey dress and he'd noticed the hood was full of soot. His eyes narrowed, she was covered in the stuff!

He had got back from performing at a private function, and had been in a rush to sit in silence in his suite.

But he'd seen her.

He wanted to walk straight past, to have a shower and lie on the bed.

But his feet had found a will of their own and had drawn him to a standstill behind her.

Even as he'd waited for a break in the conversation, he had wondered why he was attracted to her.

He'd worked with more than his fair share of beautiful women. So many, in fact, that he was basically immune to them. He knew how much effort went into looking that good... If they gained too much weight they could have all their work dry up. Keeping slim became their whole identity.

In the past, he'd heard women chattering about what restrictive diet they were on, and how much weight they'd lost. But nowadays it was how many mls of weight loss medication they were injecting.

Some of the same women who bulked at the idea of getting a flu vaccine once a year, or a Covid 19 vaccine once in their life — because they didn't know what was in it — were eager to inject themselves daily with something just as foreign.

Lucy though, she was in amazing shape.

She would never be cast as his love interest, because she wasn't a size zero, but that waist to hips ratio was out the gate.

It should take more than a tiny waist and pair of remarkably green eyes to get him in a state.

Instead of a night of peace and quiet, he'd managed to corner her into having dinner with him. Why did he do that? She didn't look that enthralled at the thought of spending time with him.

Was it his mummy issues? Did he need to go back to his therapist again?

His mother wasn't the worst woman in the world, but she just wasn't interested in him.  Which was why he'd reached out to the winery to see if he could play there... He'd felt it could help the mother son bond if they spent a week together, and she could watch him sing. Maybe she could feel something close to pride as she saw his fans screaming.

But then three weeks earlier she'd told him she wouldn't be in town on that date.  She had been invited to Auckland to speak at a church about how she'd transformed her life with prayer.

He wasn't even sure when she'd become religious.

So he'd booked at the Moonshine Manor instead.

What a pathetic life he had. A non existent dad, an uninterested mother, no partner, not even a dog.  No wonder he'd never been offered a contract with a reality show. Filming him sitting alone in different locations, and working out in empty gyms, was too depressing.

He didn't want to be part of a reality show any way. He had seen segments in the past, and found them to be incredibly mundane.

If tonight's escapade was anything to go by, a good number of people at the Moonshine Manor would be tuning in to a reality show about Lucy.

Especially if it involved more phone calls with her dad. 

He'd seen the confusion playing across Lucy's face as she'd struggled to comprehend what most of the first world took for granted.

He'd noticed everyone in the foyer had strained forward, desperate to catch every word.

It wasn't every day that a luxurious establishment like the Manor (and the older richer clientele) saw the likes of Lucy Falkwell.