to bet on it Kent?”
“Oh, really now?”
“Come on, put your money where Jake’s mouth is,” she chuckled.
“Why not, a nice friendly bet? Jake will not let me down when it comes to food.”
“Let’s choose some stakes shall we? If you win, what do you want from me?”
“That you do your impression of Tina Turner, on this table, tonight, in front of everyone,” I said, thinking of the one thing that would freak her out the most. She gulped nervously but rallied pretty quickly.
“Okay, I want you to be the first person to sign up to the app once the site is up and running, and I want you to date at least one girl from the site a week for a whole month.”
Now it was my turn to gulp. That was a pretty big stake.
“That’s not very fair…” I grumbled. “If I win you only have to be embarrassed for a max of five minutes, but if I lose I’ll have four night’s worth of torture to contend with!”
“Chicken?” she asked as she poked her tongue out. “Hey, think of it as you’d be doing us a favor. The girls who sign up will be ecstatic to get a date with you Cole. The feedback from them could be amazing for us. And you never know, you might even find the woman of your adult dreams, not just your childhood ones.”
“Fine! Sure, why not.” I crossed my fingers under the table and prayed I would not regret it.
2
Lucy
“You did what?!” I yelled as Alison just grinned at me inanely. “How could you do something so stupid? I am not lonely. I do not need you to try and fix me up with your hairdresser’s sister’s cousin. And I certainly do not need you to put my details into an app like ‘Wooed and Won.’ I mean, what a ridiculous name. What do they know about how to match anybody in real life? I bet they end up pairing me with some physics nerd who couldn’t get a date if his life depended on it. That app is probably full of cheating husbands and the kind of guys that nobody would go near with a ten-foot pole!”
“Take a breath before you pass out, you’re turning purple! They don’t do the matching on this one. I know how fussy you are, and I’ve given up on pairing you off with anyone, but this might be cool. You browse the site, and you see what interests you,” she teased me, clearly not moved one bit by my outburst.
She wasn’t even trying to control her laughter. That just made me want to throttle her even more. Alison is great, really. She’s my best friend and I adore her, but sometimes she gets these crazy ideas in her head. Most people would just shove them to one side, but no, my kooky and cute buddy just has to act on them.
“You work too hard, and you don’t ever see anyone but me. For God’s sake Lucy, you’re only twenty-two! You need a life. You can’t keep living like a hermit! We are supposed to be out there having fun, meeting guys, getting swept off our feet!”
I growled at her and she laughed again. “Alison, I don’t have time for fun or casual encounters, let alone a crappy app which will just waste more of my time. I don’t have enough clients as it is, and if I don’t keep hustling I will never make this business pay.”
Alison threw up her hands at me in despair.
“I need to do this Ali. I love my interior decorating work, but it cost me a lot of money to take my exams, and you know I’m still trying to finish my postgrad work off – which means more fees, and more materials for my portfolio work. I am really struggling to make ends meet as it is. If I take any time out right now I will lose everything I have worked so hard for,” I said and sighed.
“Honey, I know just how hard you work. I see you every night hunched over those books and magazines, sketching and making up mood boards for your classes and your clients, but look at you.” She got up from our battered couch and dragged me to the mirror in the hallway. “Look, you are skin and bones, and have bags under your eyes that a new mom of quintuplets would be proud of.”
I tried not to look because deep down I knew she was right. I’d been avoiding reflective surfaces for months now. I wasn’t taking care of myself and it showed. My once lustrous and curly auburn hair was tied back in a greasy ponytail. I hadn’t been able to afford to get it cut in over six months. And my clothes were hanging off me. I so rarely found the time during the day to eat at all, let alone make a healthy choice if I did, and my skin looked pale and gray from all the time I spent trapped indoors.
“Okay, so I’m a bit of a fixer-upper, but couldn’t you have at least let me get fixed before you signed me up to a dating app?”
“Just take a little look through. You can’t keep mooning over the past and letting it get in the way of your future, Luce.”
She had never dared to be so blatant before. There had been hints, sure, but she had never come out and said it like that. She was talking about Cole of course. Just one of the taboo subjects around me, and I hated her for making me think about him, about any of that stuff from back then.
Gorgeous Cole Kent who had made high school bearable, who hadn’t left my side when my mom died of cancer, who had been the cutest and sweetest boy I never got to kiss more than once. My best friend, my rock, and the guy everyone else would have to live up to and never could – right up until he became my stepbrother and my entire world crumbled into dust.
Alison kissed me on the forehead and pulled on her coat. “Think about it Luce, maybe it’s time to let go of the past and at least have some fun in the present. And don’t yell at me again,” she said hurriedly as she saw me about to try and defend myself. “I know what happened back then, and I know how much it hurt you. But, you can’t let it fester any longer. For God’s sake, get some help, go out on a date or two, and build a life that makes you happy so you can really leave it in the past if that is truly where you want your family to belong. Stop dragging it all around with you like a giant ball and chain all the time. Not for me, but for yourself. You don’t deserve to be so damned unhappy all the time.”
Her words penetrated my weak defenses. God, I hated it when she was right.
She opened the door, and looked at me tenderly. “I love you Luce, and you deserve better than you are letting yourself have. I’ve got to go to work, but think about what I’ve said while I’m gone, please?”
I nodded, but knew that this conversation would be shoved down into the file marked ‘Just Don’t Go There’ in my head, at least not yet.
I slunk back into the living room, and crashed heavily onto the couch. Thoughts about Cole started to escape the confines of the locked box where I had imprisoned my entire past. I tried to banish them back into the black hole, but the harder I tried the more they just kept bursting like bubbles in front of my tired eyes.
He had been one of those guys who was just simply perfect. Though deep down inside beat the heart of an all-out geek, he was also a bit of a jock, a swimmer. He had sun-kissed skin all year round from being in the pool every day, his back a perfect V of muscular perfection. His washboard abs made everybody drool.
All the girls were hot for him, including me, despite his reputation for being super smart and
