“Hey.” Anvita gave her outraged eyes behind her horn-rimmed glasses. “I believe in you. I believe in you loads. That’s why I’m telling you to go for the hottest guy on the show.”
“While not listening to me when I say I’m into a different guy.”
“Oh God. I’m a chauvinist. No wonder you won’t date me.”
“I won’t date you because you’re taken and straight.”
Anvita thought a moment. “Okay, but otherwise let’s be clear. You’d be all over this.”
“Yes,” said Rosaline in her deadest deadpan voice, “in that very specific alternate reality we’d be totally doing it on this bar right now.”
“That’s what I like to hear.” Anvita finished the rest of her drink. “And now I need to go wash the sourdough out of my hair. Before I do, though, I’m going to say a thing. And you might not like the thing, in which case I’m sorry.”
“I’m not liking this already.”
“Tough. Here it is. From my vast experience in the realm of perving on hot men I’m not going to go out with, I think Alain is one of those guys that you’d feel really good for having got. But who might not be that much fun to actually have.”
And Anvita had been right. Rosaline hadn’t liked that one little bit. “For the record, I’m having quite a lot of fun having him right now.”
“In which case, good for you.”
She bounced off and Rosaline decided to order a second drink in quiet celebration of her love life looking up even if her baking was still looking resolutely straight ahead. Sure, her master plan to reboot her life by winning a TV show was stalling out a little, and it felt the tiniest bit regressive to be taking solace in the fact that she’d found a boy who liked her, but she’d long ago got used to taking her victories where she could.
Besides, at the very least, if she didn’t get distracted by eyes and arms and an accent she was starting to find oddly comforting and wound up with Alain in the medium-to-long-term, it would be something her parents wouldn’t be able to shit on her for. Well, until they broke up, and then it would be Whatever happened to Alain, he was such a nice respectful young man, and—oh what was wrong with her, they’d had sex on exactly one occasion and she was already imagining a world where she had to explain their hypothetical future breakup to her parents at hypothetical future family gatherings.
Although maybe at that point, she’d have gone back to university and become a doctor and be the one who went a bit off-book for eight years rather than the one who ruined everything. Which should hypothetically have made the hypothetical gatherings more hypothetically bearable. So why didn’t it? Had she just got so used to failure she was incapable of imagining success?
“If I said you had a beautiful body,” drawled out Alain, resting his elbows on the bar beside her, “would you file a restraining order?”
Despite her profound case of the existential floops, this drew a laugh from her. “You must be tired. Because you were running round a ballroom all day.”
“It’s handy I have my library card because I’m a big supporter of state-sponsored literacy programmes.”
“For the record,” she said, “I can do this all night.”
He slanted a half-smile at her. “Is that another terrible pickup line or are you telling me you’re sick of exchanging terrible pickup lines?”
“Little from column A, little from column B.” She sighed. “Honestly, I kind of maybe think we should go back to one of our rooms and, you know, have the sex?”
A pause. “I’m beginning to think you’re only after me for one thing, Rosaline-um-Palmer.”
He was joking, wasn’t he? He was definitely joking. Still, Rosaline felt a little bad that she’d jumped from zero to bang without so much as a By the way, how are you?
“Sorry, am I being too much?”
“No, no, it’s refreshing.” Reaching out a hand, he tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “I wish I knew more people like you.”
“Um . . .” This was good, right? “How?”
“I think so many of us get stuck in our ways. We’re afraid to step outside ourselves or take a chance or try something new. But you’re different, aren’t you?”
Okay. On the one hand, she liked hearing how cool and special she was. On the other, this was all setting her up to be a massive disappointment later on. “What if I’m not?”
“Don’t be silly. Now come on—use me for my body.”
It was better this time. Not that it had been bad before, but she’d learned and he’d learned, and some of the self-consciousness that always accompanied a new partner was beginning to fall away. That was sex for you—it only got really good when you didn’t care how undignified the whole business was. When you got sweaty and urgent, and you forgot to worry that your face was doing funny things, and your legs were all over the place, and you were showing someone bits of yourself that you couldn’t quite guarantee the attractiveness of.
She tried, but with a kid, a job, and a baking competition, she was ever so slightly busy. On top of which, she hadn’t super been expecting to get laid that weekend, which meant Alain was getting more of an unfiltered experience than she would have liked. There was definitely a patch of hair she’d missed on the side of her knee. And her moisturising routine could have been way more rigorous. And probably best she didn’t raise her arms too extravagantly above her head because, while she was sure she hadn’t completely lost control, there was definite prickle under there.
All of which suggested real person.
Rather than the silken sex goddess vibe she’d ideally have wanted to convey.
Still, she came more easily than last time—once before he did, and once after. And then they lay together in the cooling sheets, her head against his chest, and his fingers playing up and down her spine, tracing the wings of her butterflies.
“Christ”—he gave a long exhale—“I needed that.”
“Me too.”
“I wanted to catch you earlier, but I took a walk after filming to clear my head.”
She craned her neck so she could look up at him. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. I mean, mostly. The blind bake didn’t quite go my way.” Like her, he’d done okay. And like her, he wasn’t the sort to think okay was good enough.
“You’ll get through.”
“Oh, I know I’ll get through. That’s not the point. I’d expected to do better, and people pay attention to bread week.”
“It’s a baking show, Alain. People pay attention to the pretty scenery, the nice cakes, and Grace Forsythe’s increasingly blatant innuendo.”
She’d intended this to be reassuring, but Alain rolled away, tucking his hands behind his head and frowning at the ceiling. “Bread’s never been my thing. It’s for old men, housewives, and people who buy a machine, use it twice, and then flood Instagram with stories about how fucking rustic they are. Nobody with anything actually happening in their lives has the time to make their own sourdough. I just . . . I was relying on other people finding it more of a challenge than I did.”