It’s official. I’ve been surfing the online dating wave for four nights and it’s already bleeding into my offline life.
I have fifty-two matches, all hot leads. At this rate, I’ll need CRM software to manage all the conversations.
Today, his highness is going to meet us to discuss his vision for the Motor Works factory and I’m absolutely exhausted with swiping fatigue. I’m also a bit anxious about the awkward way Jack and I left things after the wedding.
I sip my coffee sifting through emails when a meeting invite pops up from Max.
Catch-up 09:15 Happy Bean Cafe
Strange. His meetings are usually anally scripted. Even for a quick catch-up, he’ll bullet point his agenda.
And we rarely do them outside the office.
“I’m away to give Darren a kicking,” Nisha says, getting up from her desk. “I’ll meet you back here to walk over to the Lexington office at 10, okay?”
I nod, getting my coat. The meeting with Jack Knight isn’t until 10:30 but since it’s on one of the top floors of London’s version of a skyscraper and we have to get through security, we need to go early. “See you at 10. I’m popping out to meet Max first.”
“Wait up!” she calls from the opposite direction. “Why do you have your Facebook status set to Jack Knight?”
“Huh?” I wrinkle my nose. “What are you on about?”
She strides back and shows me her phone, with Facebook open.
I do a double take, clamping my hand over my mouth.
No. Shit the bed.
“I haven’t,” I whisper.
“You have, you fool. Hurry up and remove it.”
All the air leaves my windpipe. I must have set it last night.
“Were you creeping over Jack Knight, naughty girl? Bit strange for someone who claims to dislike him so much.”
“Oh, God, it’s been like that all freakin’ night,” I whimper, jabbing my phone code in.
I might cry.
“Calm your tits. I only just saw the notification that “Bonnie is feeling Jack Knight.”
“This is horrendous.” I quiver as the damn status is finally wiped. “I’ve been feeling Jack Knight all night.”
“I wouldn’t worry. Your profile is boring. No one will look at it.”
“Gee, thanks, even my fake life is boring.”
“This is why I need to supervise your online dating.”
I screw up my face again.
What a start to the day. This is a bad omen. I knew I should have worn my black obsidian crystals, the stone of protection.
***
Max is waiting in the back corner of the Happy Bean Cafe, a cafe full of stressed bankers and executives psyching themselves up to join the Canary Wharf rat race.
“Morning!” I take a seat opposite him. “It’s dark here. You know there are seats out front beside the window?”
He shrugs and runs his hands through his hair. “It’s quieter here. How are you?”
“Can’t complain for a Thursday. You?”
“Yeah, not too bad. Not bad.” He leans forward, putting his hands in the prayer position on the table. “Did you have a good time at the wedding?”
“Great time, you?” I respond, confused by the small talk.
“Fantastic. Really good day.” He keeps smiling at me, and I smile back, unnerved.
Oh, shit.
Of course, it’s obvious what Max wants.
“Max, the status has been cleared,” I say in a rush. “I was doing investigative Facebooking for the project when I accidentally set Jack Knight’s name as my status.”
“Status?” He frowns. “What are you on about?”
Oh. “Never mind.” I titter. Sounds like Nisha’s right. “Just a thing on my Facebook profile.”
“I don’t look at your profile. Anyway, Bonnie, I, uh.” He clears his throat like he has something trapped in it. “I wanted to wait until after the wedding to talk to you.”
“Okay.” I swallow. “Go ahead.”
“You know how important your happiness is to me.” He pauses for a long beat. “We were together for four years. You were, still are, an extremely important part of my life. I still have a lot of affection for you.”
My eyes widen.
Shit.
This is actually happening.
I shift in my seat, drawing in a sharp breath. As much as I had fantasised about Max asking me to get back together—the grovelling, the begging on his knees, the strangled wailing of a tormented man—I’m not prepared.
I didn’t think he’d bloody well do it in a cafe beside the office.
“Go on,” I say breathlessly.
“I want you to find someone who makes you happy, like I have.”
Like he has.
Like he has what?
Three subtle words slipped in at the end.
The three simple words that grow legs and kick me hard in the belly.
“Come again?” I ask in a strangled voice.
“Recently, I’ve been spending time with someone.”
“Danielle.” I quiver. “I know this.”
He blinks. “What? No. No, not Danielle. We were just messaging, I never met her. That was a mistake.”
“Pretty intimate messaging if you are talking about your dick.” I scowl.
His jaw ticks. “It was a private message you weren’t supposed to see. I learned my lesson.” He pauses to adjust his cufflinks. “It’s Olivia.”
“Olivia?” I repeat slowly as if I’m trying to learn the English language. “Okay. Who is she?”
His frown deepens. “Olivia. In our admin team.”
“From the office?” I freeze. “The admin at Bradshaw?” I add because he must be talking about another admin in another office.
He looks at me wearily.
“Are you fucking joking?” I choke out. “You hooked up with someone from the office, Max?”
This is a joke. Sometimes Max’s humour is off.
“You’re joking.” My voice cracks.
“No,” he says firmly. “Bonnie, I—”
“Could you not have looked farther than across the boardroom to find happiness?” I cut him off in a high-pitched squeak.
I think of all the meetings I’ve sat through with Olivia and Max and feel sick. With her blonde hair and fair complexion, she could be Danielle and my younger sister. “God, you’re so predictable, Max.”
Silence.
“As I said, we’re spending time getting to know each other.”
“Stop talking in riddles. Sex. You’re having sex with her.”
“Calm down, Bonnie,” he says through gritted teeth. “People are listening.”
“Calm down? This is bloody disrespectful, Max! You don’t do this to someone you were engaged to. Could you not have picked one of the other millions of people in London? Not someone I see every day.” I search his face for some sort of emotion. “Can you not see how insensitive this is? Giving me a front-row ticket to your new romance?”
“We both need to move on, Bonnie.”
My arms flap like an agitated wasp. “This isn’t moving on! This is rubbing it in my face.”
“Well, that’s not my intention.”
Looking at him, I believe him. He hasn’t given me a second thought. Bradshaw Brown is a convenient hunting ground, and he just replaced me in a matter-of-fact way.
I should quit. I should quit on the spot. But who would that harm?
Me. Not Max.
“These things aren’t planned. Olivia and I want to do everything possible to make sure you feel comfortable.”
How dare he.
I laugh. A demonic laugh. “What do you expect us to do? Should the three of us skip around the office holding hands like the Teletubbies?”
I avert my gaze out the window and bite together my trembling lips to hold back the flood of tears. I feel like the last four years meant . . . nothing. If he really loved me as much as he said he did, this would be much more difficult for him.
When I look back, I catch him checking his watch. He only gave himself thirty minutes for this meeting.
“How long? How long have you been shagging her?”
“Don’t be abrasive.” He draws in another deep breath. “We started getting closer a few months back.”
“When?” I need precision. “A few is anything between two and eleven.”
“Three, maybe four.”
I make a noise like wind being sucked from a windpipe.
Four it is then. Maybe five. Only two months after our wedding was cancelled.
“You have to be fucking joking.” Unless…I stare at him, horrified. The timing is so close to our break-up. “Did you start seeing her before we separated?”
“No. You’re being ridiculous.” He scowls at me. “Don’t you know me at all?”
I breathe a little easier.
“I thought you were over me, Bonnie,” he says in a tone that sounds like he’s blaming me.
“I didn’t expect you to move on with someone in the bloody office as both of us,” I snap.
“That’s why I couldn’t tell you in case it didn’t work out. I didn’t want to unnecessarily hurt you.”
“Gee, thanks, you’re so considerate.” I stiffen. “Is she the reason that we broke up?”
His frown deepens. “No, of course not.”
“And you choose work hours to tell me. Right beside the office.”
He at least has the grace to look sheepish. “I apologise for that. I wanted to do it today before I’m out of the office tomorrow afternoon.”
“You have the sensitivity of a cockroach.”
He opens his mouth and then closes it, deciding arguing is fruitless.
I narrow my eyes. “Why is it suddenly urgent now?”
Now he looks really uncomfortable. “Olivia and I are taking a few days’ break. It may become more obvious around the office. I’ve informed Bradshaw and Brown, so it’s all out in the open. They’re fine with it.” He looks at me as if I should care what the partners think about my replacement.
Of course, they are. They’re both old millionaires. So long as we’re making them money, they wouldn’t care if we all have a massive orgy together.
Notably, the partners are higher up the list of people to be notified about the new happy couple than me.
I don’t know if I want more details or not. “Where’re you going?”
There’s a long, loaded pause. “This hasn’t been easy for me either, Bonnie.”
“Answer the question.”
“Since I had done so much research about it, we’re heading to Svalbard.”
No.
Pain funnels into my heart. I don’t understand this version of Max. “Our honeymoon destination?” The trip we lost a hefty deposit from. The trip of a lifetime we were due to go on in a few weeks as a married couple.
He stays silent.
“Svalbard’s mine,” I snarl.
“I’m sure Norway would beg to differ.”
It’s the damn twitch of his lips that makes me see red. Before I understand what I’m doing, my hand has connected with the open bottle and is spraying water over his face like a victorious Formula One driver.
He reacts too slowly. Water runs down his face and shirt.
There’s a collective gasp around me. I got him good.
He gawks at me open-mouthed, blinking water away from his eyes. “Are you out of your mind?”
“You’re an asshole. I hope your dick falls off.”
“Mature, Bonnie. Really mature.” He stands up, wiping his shirt down. “I don’t have time for this. I expected you to react like an adult. Do you realise we have to be at Lexington in thirty minutes? Lucky for you, I’ve got a clean shirt.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have time-boxed this.” I can’t even see him properly through my tears. I didn’t think I had any tears left for Max. But he keeps on delivering.
“I’m willing to forget this but pull yourself together before the meeting. Do you want me to send Nisha down?”
He hovers over me.
I shake my head.
“Let’s talk about this when you’ve calmed down.”
“It was our honeymoon,” I choke out as he walks away.
Eight weeks. Eight weeks was all it took to get over me. The first four weeks were spent cancelling the relationship. How did he have time?
And it’s not even a shag. Or a fling. You don’t go on holiday with a fling. No, a holiday is a promise of intent. An agreement in principle that this may be serious.
Svalbard. Out of the two hundred or whatever number of countries there are in the world, he had to go to the place we picked for a honeymoon destination? I hope he gets eaten by a bear. Or better, his dick gets gangrene and really does fall off.
When I track this on the mood spreadsheet my therapist is making me keep, the graph will go into a negative spike. I’ve been incrementally on the up. This will look worse than a crypto crash.
My phone vibrates in my bag. Nisha.
Max is probably back at the office already in work mode, rallying the troops. I cancel the call and message her saying I’ll walk to Lexington by myself.
At least there’s one thing I know for sure—this day can only get better.
