Man Crush Monday Read online

  My mum would check out compatibility and make her judgment from that.

  “I don’t know.”

  “When’s your birthday? Did you say it was recent?”

  “Yeah—24th September.”

  My eyes widen as everything drops into place and makes sense. “You’re a Libra.”

  “Is that good?”

  I shrug and nod, aiming for nonchalance, but I’m secretly thrilled with this little sliver of information. I’m an Aquarius, and while the two star signs are not a total match, it is known that Aquarians can fall in love with Librans immediately. That was literally me with Jared on the train. I fell for him before I even knew him. The two work well together and balance each other out. My mum will love to hear this and analyse every bit of it.

  “Your star sign means you’re a balanced person, a thinker, someone who doesn’t rush into anything, decisions especially. You like facts and figures; you’re a problem solver and someone to come to when something needs to be done.”

  He opens one eye and looks at me, seeming a little shocked at my analogy. “That’s …”

  I smile smugly. “Accurate, am I right?”

  He nods, reaching up to rake a hand through his hair. “Yeah, pretty accurate. But you know, even though you just nailed me, I don’t believe in any of that stuff. I’m a grounded person. I believe in only what I can see in front of me—science, facts, numbers. Astrology and psychics and stuff”—he shrugs almost apologetically—“I just don’t believe in it.”

  “But you believe in magic; that’s not science or facts,” I counter, thinking back to him doing tricks on the train for the little girl.

  He shakes his head. “Nope.” When I frown in confusion, he continues, “I believe in tricks and sleight of hand. With enough practice, anyone could learn to do ‘magic.’ ” He uses his fingers to put air quotes around the word magic for emphasis.

  “Oh.” I must admit, I’m kind of disappointed by his answer. I was hoping for a real-life rabbit from a hat kind of magician believer.

  “Sorry.” He winces. “But we can agree to disagree, right?” His eyes meet mine, and one of his eyebrows rises in question as he reaches out and brushes a strand of my hair away from my cheek.

  My heart stutters, and my skin flushes where he touched me. “Yeah, we can.”

  He doesn’t answer, just leans in and presses his lips to mine, rendering words unnecessary.

  ten

  By the time I arrive at my mum’s house, after a one-hour train journey and enduring a taxicab that smelled like stale Saturday-night-out puke, it’s after three in the afternoon. After paying the driver and watching him speed off up the quiet street, I look over at the three-bedroom semi-detached bungalow I grew up in. The smile slips onto my face as I let out a happy sigh. Home. I love it here; it’s my safe place.

  I don’t bother knocking on the front door. I know they won’t answer. Instead, I head down the little alley that leads to the back garden. I can already hear Mum’s dog sniffing and snorting at the gate as I approach.

  As I let myself in, Puzzle, the overweight pug, skitters around my feet, yapping happily as he announces my arrival to the world. I grin and bend down, picking him up and giving him a stroke and a scratch behind the ear. His big black eyes meet mine, and his tongue flicks enthusiastically, trying to lick my face.

  “Hey, Puz. You a good boy?”

  “Amy, don’t let him lick you! He’s been eating his own shit again,” Nanna calls.

  I groan and feel my stomach roll as I pull him away from me and set him back down on his feet, disgusted. “What? Why? Why would you do that, Puzzle? Why?” I groan, gently pushing him away from me when he tries to jump back up at me again.

  I look up just in time to see Nanna laughing into her teacup. She’s sitting at their little, round garden table with a big, floppy straw hat on her head and a pretty, flowery dress hanging off her scrawny frame. Her azure-blue eyes, the exact shade of mine, lock on to me, and a big smile stretches across her wrinkle-lined mouth.

  I drop my overnight bag and march over, planting a noisy kiss on her cheek as she wraps her arms around me and gives me a big squeeze.

  “Oh, Amy baby, I’ve missed you, sweetheart.”

  I hug her back, feeling guilt bubble inside me. I’ve missed them too. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve made the trip back home for a visit. “You too, Nanna.” I pull back, and my eyes flick around the garden. I’m shocked not to see my mother bent over a flower bed with a trowel. “Where’s Mum?”

  “I’m up here!”

  I squint in the direction the voice came from, seeing the bottom of a ladder propped up against a tree. A huge branch drops to the ground with a crunch of leaves, and I jump, shocked as I run for the ladder, holding it steady as my mum descends awkwardly, holding a savage-looking saw in her hand, wobbling precariously.

  “Mum, that’s not safe!” I scold, frowning and carefully taking the saw from her as she climbs down the last couple of rungs.

  Sometimes, I think my mother forgets that she’s sixty-four years old. She was late to motherhood, almost forty when she got pregnant with me, and I swear she still thinks she’s a teenager sometimes.

  “Oh, stop. Trees don’t prune themselves you know. Someone has to do it.” She rolls her eyes and wipes the sweat from her brow as I drop the saw into her tool bag that she left at the base of the tree.

  I grin over at her.

  My mother is beautiful, inside and out. I got my eyes from my nan, but I got my thick, wavy blonde hair and my bust from my mother. Today, her hair is pulled back into a stylish bun; she’s wearing cream capri pants with a white shirt tucked into it, open at the throat, with a navy ascot scarf tied at her neck. Elegant ladies-who-lunch attire—while gardening. That’s my mother all over.

  “Now, let me look at you.”

  Her eyes make a long, slow sweep of my body, and I purse my lips to fight my smile, tilting my head to the side, wanting to see if she will guess correctly. I wasn’t lying when I told Jared that she was good at reading people.

  “There’s something different,” she says, tapping her finger on her lips, thinking. Suddenly, her eyes widen. “You’ve been on a date!”

  I laugh and wrap my arms around her, crushing her against me. “I have,” I confirm happily.

  “What? What date? Don’t stand over there, yapping where I can’t hear. Come and give me the gossip too!” Nanna calls, dramatically waving her hands to the empty chairs at the table.

  Mum wraps her arm around my waist, and we make our way over to the table where Nanna is happily pouring more tea from the teapot into her posh bone china cup. She’s abandoned her book now, and I look over at the front cover and wrinkle my nose. My nanna’s choice of reading material is decidedly racier than mine. Don’t get me wrong; I love Fifty Shades as much as the next girl, but Nanna’s choices are decidedly more … risqué than mine. Now that she’s in her eighties, her hunger for erotica novels hasn’t diminished. It’s awkward, especially when she reads them so unashamedly in public.

  “So, who is he?” Mum asks excitedly, pulling off her dirty gardening gloves and setting them on top of the book when she catches me staring at it.

  “More importantly,” Nanna chimes in, “does he give your vagina a heartbeat when he walks into the room? Because if not, then he’s not the one.”

  “Nanna!” I burst out laughing, my face burning. I don’t tell her that yes, yes, he does.

  “What? A good physical connection will see you through a lot of bad points and make up for them lacking in other areas, like when he farts at the dinner table. Sometimes, you have to put up with things if you’re getting physically satisfied,” she explains, dismissively waving her hand. “Your granddad—”

  But thankfully, my mum cuts her off, “I don’t want to hear about your bedroom antics with my father, thank you very much.”

  “Wasn’t limited to just the bedroom,” Nanna mumbles under her breath.

  I fake gag, and
we all laugh. Puzzle comes wandering over, so I bend and pick him up, settling him on my lap—facing away from me, of course. I decide then that I definitely do not want to smell his breath for the next couple of days that I’m here for.

  “Wait there. Let me go make a fresh pot and get some cake, and you can tell us all about the new man,” Mum says, sending me a wink, standing quickly, and taking the teapot with her as she marches inside.

  Nanna and I talk about the dog eating his own faeces and how he now has a farting problem that my mother refuses to admit. When my mum comes back with a tray laden with tea and an assortment of shop-bought Mr Kipling cakes (none of us are particularly skilled in the kitchen!), she looks at me expectantly.

  I can’t contain my grin. “Okay, so remember the guy I told you about? My crush from my train?”

  They both nod in unison, Nanna looking at me with wide eyes. “The guy you’re hopelessly smitten with?”

  I shrug one shoulder. “Yes, him. Well, on Tuesday morning, I bumped into him—literally—at a coffee shop. We got to talking, and he asked me out!” I squeak with delight and hunch my shoulders before letting out a dreamy sigh. “His name is Jared Stone. He’s twenty-eight. I’ve seen him several times this week already. He’s smart and funny, and he sent me a cheeseboard.”

  “A cheeseboard?” Nanna queries.

  I nod.

  She purses her lips and narrows her eyes. “You should marry him.”

  I chuckle and pick up a Battenberg slice. “If I get the chance, I will.”

  “And how’s it going, love? Is he everything you thought he would be?” Mum questions, leaning forward, watching my reactions.

  I nod, swallowing a bite of cake. “It’s going great,” I admit. “Jared’s absolutely adorable. He’s smart and a real, proper gentleman, so he pulls my chair out and stuff, which makes me swoon. He’s a good listener, and he has these wicked one-liners that make me crack up. He’s gorgeous, and he smells divine. Also… he’s killer in bed.” I sip my hot tea, grinning from ear to ear. I know my face is flushed from thinking about Jared, but I hope they won’t notice in the slowly darkening afternoon light.

  “He sounds lovely. When do we get to meet him?” Nanna asks.

  I wince at the thought and take a large swig of my tea. “Never.”

  Mum nods sadly. “It’s true. You should keep him away from your nanna; she’d frighten him away for sure. Let him fall in love with you too. Shouldn’t take too long,” Mum replies, smiling smugly. “How could he resist you? Look at you! You’re marvellous!”

  “Ah, but you have to think that; I’m your kid. Mothers have to think their kids are the best thing since sliced bread; it’s the law.”

  Nanna snorts. “Not true. I don’t think that about my kid.”

  But then she winks at my mum, and we all crack up laughing.

  We hang out, chatting and laughing. It feels easy and wonderful, catching up with these ladies who mean the world to me, and it’s just like I never moved out five years ago. We talk about the garden, mum’s job, and the elderly neighbour who threatened to call the police on Nanna when she wouldn’t stop sunbathing in her garden—topless.

  As day turns to night, we’re still in the garden. Mum pulls out fluffy blankets and turns on the outside light and gas patio heater, and we switch from tea to wine. Nights like this remind me of home. It’s all I’ve ever known, hanging in the garden with these two ladies.

  “Let me grab my cards, and I’ll give you a reading, Amy. We’ve not done one for ages,” Mum says, standing and walking off before I can even protest.

  She’s back in record time, a pack of well-worn tarot cards in her hand. Nanna reaches out and moves the glasses out of the way as my mum shuffles the cards.

  I roll my eyes. My mum can’t resist. I tend to steer away from a reading as much as I can. I mean, it’s like seeing spoilers for a book.

  “Just a small one, three cards at most. Just give me the highlights. I don’t want a proper reading.”

  A frown lines Mum’s forehead, but she doesn’t protest as she hands me the pack and asks me to cut them. Nanna leans in, watching eagerly. She loves this stuff too. As much as she says she had enough of it and wanted to retire, she can’t just turn it off, as she hoped.

  Mum dishes out the three cards, arranging them on the table in her usual pattern. I look down at them, hoping that they’ll make sense but they never do. I tried to learn once, but I just don’t have the talent for it. They’re just pictures, and I might as well be playing cards for all I know.

  Mum purses her lips. “Okay, interesting. I can see you’re content at the moment, both in your work life and personal. But this one”—she points one finger to a card—“it’s change. There’s something coming, some sort of decision you’re going to have to make. You’re at a crossroads, two distinct paths, and you have to navigate between them.”

  I sit back in my chair. “At work or in my personal life?”

  She looks over the cards again. “Personal life, definitely.” She points to another card. “I see you struggling with the decision. But your well of luck is full at the moment, so just know that neither path is the wrong answer; you just have to work out which way you want to go.”

  I scrunch my nose and shrug my shoulders. “Well, that was helpful.”

  Mum laughs and shrugs too. “I just tell it as I see it, love. Maybe I should do a full reading? Get more clarity on it?” she offers, picking up the cards and adding them to the deck again, shuffling them.

  I hold up a hand to stop her. “No, thanks. I like surprises. I’ll deal with my crossroads choice when I get to it.” I roll my eyes and pick up my wineglass. “To surprises and paths yet undecided.”

  They both pick up their glasses and chink them against mine, and I gasp as Puzzle lets out a huge fart and then runs away from himself.

  Nanna tsks her tongue. “Well, that ruined the moment.”

  eleven

  I spend four amazing days with two of the most important ladies in my life before I make the trip back home again. I’m sad to be back. I had a nice break, but it is always hard to leave my mum and nan. My flat—after staying in a crazy, busy, loud household for four days—feels small, empty, and a little depressing. It’s times like this that I miss Heather being my flatmate.

  However, I couldn’t have stayed there any longer. Tequila Thursday is a must, and a girl cannot break tradition, so I had to come home yesterday morning to spend time with the other most important lady in my life that night.

  I’ve missed Jared to the point of ridiculousness while I was away. We’ve been texting back and forth—and I love it—but nothing beats seeing him in the flesh, feeling the warmth of his skin on mine, the taste of his lips, or how I feel when I fall asleep in his arms. Because of all of that, we arranged for him to come straight over after work tonight, a Friday, and spend the weekend with me.

  So, picture me now, sitting on the sofa, knees bouncing in anticipation, trying to control my breathing and kerb my excitement all because he just texted me and told me he was now leaving work and would be here in fifteen minutes.

  When he knocks on the door, I squeal in delight and run for it. As I fling the door open, grinning from ear to ear, he raises one eyebrow, and a small smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.

  “Did somebody order a booty call?” he jokes.

  Impossibly, my smile widens, and I reach out and grip his tie, pulling him inside. He drops his overnight bag, and his arms slip around my waist—one hand heading up to tangle in my hair, the other warming the small of my back. I sigh in contentment as his delicious scent surrounds me. When his head dips and his mouth presses against mine, my body slackens, and I’m secretly glad he’s holding me so tightly.

  God, I missed this.

  Jared bends his knees, tightens his arms around my waist, and stands back up, lifting me with ease. My feet dangle around his shins, and I beam as he steps further into my flat, kicking the door closed behind him in one swift, sexy
movement.

  “Hi.” His breath blows across my face, and my mouth waters at the scent of strawberry sweets he must have eaten on the way over.

  “Hi.” My voice comes out a husky, needy mess, which makes him smile.

  When he makes no move to put me down, I wrap my legs around his waist and clamp myself to him like a baby monkey. This is now officially my most favourite place in the world.

  He smells incredible, and I lean in and press my face into the crook of his neck, inhaling before letting out a little groan of appreciation.

  “Jeez. I forgot how good you smell.” I want to rub myself over him like a cat, cover myself in that scent until I’m drowning in it.

  He chuckles, and I pull back to look at him, my arms tightening on his neck. His eyes flick over my face, and a little sigh leaves his lips, which makes the hair on my arms tingle.

  “That seemed like a long few days,” he admits, pressing his lips to mine again.

  I nod in agreement as he walks over to the sofa, carefully sitting down with me still attached to him like a limpet. I can’t help but smile smugly as I feel how excited he is to see me again. Just the fact that Jared fancies me so much makes me feel incredibly desired and beautiful.

  After a long make-out session, his hands stroke my back as we talk about his day and mine and my margarita-drinking session last night with Heather. The whole time, he is so interested in what I have to say, listens so intently, that it makes me feel like the most important person in the world. With Jared’s full attention on me, I feel a hundred feet tall. I revel in it, greedily soaking it all up.

  “Have you eaten?” he asks after he’s been here almost an hour, and I haven’t even moved an inch off his lap. When I shake my head, he smiles. “I brought some food with me. Figured I’d cook for you.”

  My mouth drops open. “You’re going to cook for me? You want me to blow you again tonight, don’t you?” I joke, raising a teasing eyebrow.

  A muscle in his jaw tightens as his eyes darken. “Well, I hadn’t even thought about that, but now that you’ve mentioned it, yes, yes, I do.”