At First Sight by Hannah Sunderland (latest novels to read TXT) 📕

‘We don’t have to.’ He exhaled loudly through his nose and looked back to his beer. ‘You’ve finished work for the day. You don’t want to be talking to me about this kinda stuff now.’

‘I met you before you called today. This isn’t work, this is me helping a friend.’ I tentatively threw the idea out there. Sure, we hadn’t known each other for very long and I felt my heart go a little haywire whenever he met my eyes, but why couldn’t we be friends?

‘A friend?’ he asked, his crooked smile bringing a cheeky look to his face. ‘Do you even know my last name?’

‘No. But you only really need to know last names if you’re going to be sleeping together, don’t you?’ My cheeks burned as I realised what I’d just said. ‘I … I mean, isn’t that the rule?’

He laughed under his breath but his face was blushing a little too. ‘Don’t get ahead of yourself; you’ll have to buy me a drink first.’ He looked from me to the beer in his hand with mock surprise. ‘Well, would yer look at that.’ His eyes were playful as he sipped from his glass and looked at me over the rim. ‘It’s Stone, by the way,’ he uttered after swallowing. ‘My last name.’

‘That’s a good last name,’ I babbled. ‘Strong. Both in the sense of how it sounds and, you know, stone.’ Oh God, shut up! I looked down at my hands lying limply in my lap and prayed that no more words would fall out of my mouth. After a few moments of awkward silence, I thought of something to say and opened my mouth to ask him a question, but before the sound could find its way out of my mouth, he was already speaking.

‘So, Carrick is this upbeat, annoying, in yer face kinda guy. I think that maybe he was meant to be a twin and, in the womb, he absorbed enough personality for two people.’

‘And he’s changed?’

He nodded solemnly.

‘Any reason?’ I asked. I noticed how my demeanour had changed, my voice got lower, more authoritative but not too much to be off-putting. My brow took on a pensive furrow and my hands clasped in my lap.

‘Heartbreak, feelin’ lost in life, the whole shebang really.’

‘Do you think he’d talk to me?’

He shook his head with certainty. ‘No, I highly doubt it. But I can ask.’

‘Please do. Sometimes the most unlikely of people are just waiting for someone to ask them how they are. Think of it like a bottle of champagne. The cork is always jammed right in there, keeping it all inside, but all it takes is a little shake and it all comes spewing out.’

He chuckled. ‘I’ve never heard anyone speak like you before.’

I looked at him from under furrowed brows. ‘Is that a good thing?’

‘I think so.’ His mouth curled into a one-sided smile and it did things to me that I never thought a smile could do. ‘So, tell me about yerself. Seeing as we’re now wholly committed to this friend business. What’s your family lookin’ like?’

‘My family is a little bit unconventional.’

‘Right, that sounds like a gold mine of conversation. Start from the beginning.’ He leaned forward a touch, holding his beer with one hand, while the other messed, idly, with a loose thread on the hem of his shirt.

‘Erm, okay, well, my mum is this really intelligent, beautiful woman. She went to uni in London and became a geologist. She’s one of the people who find the best places to build off-shore wind farms. But when she was twenty-one, she had the first, and only, irresponsible night of her entire existence with a man that she didn’t recall the next day. Nine months later, I arrived, hence no brothers and sisters.’

‘Firstly—’ he held up a finger and leaned forward a little more ‘—that sounds like an awesome job. Secondly, you don’t know who your dad is?’

‘No idea. Neither does she.’

‘Does that bother you?’

‘Not really. It did when I was younger and I saw my friends with their dads, but I had my uncle to fill that role. I lived with him when my mum was off working, but he died when I was sixteen and so it was just me and her after that.’

‘Sorry to hear that.’ He looked a little saddened.

‘It’s fine … now,’ I said as he took a swig of his beer. ‘Then there’s Ned, the guy I live with.’ I don’t know if it was just wishful thinking on my part, but I think I saw his shoulders sag. ‘We work together, that’s how we met, and when I broke up with Joel, I moved in as a lodger.’

A sudden loud cough came as Charlie seemed to choke on some of his drink, cleared his throat several times and lifted a balled fist to his mouth to cover it. ‘You live and work with this guy? This Ned?’ he asked with furrows forming on his brow.

‘Uh-huh,’ I replied.

‘So, yer live with this man, but you’ve never … yer know?’

I scrunched up my face, horrified by the mere thought of it. ‘Absolutely not! He’s old enough to be my dad. He could be my dad for all I know. Oh God, what a distressing thought.’

‘Okay, so no nookie with the co-worker. And you’re not married or betrothed?’ he checked. I shook my head. ‘No boyfriends that are gonna come up and start a fight with me for having a drink with their girl?’ he carried on.

‘Nope, not anymore.’

‘Sounds like there’s a story there.’

‘Not really. There’s only ever been the aforementioned Joel.’

‘And who is Joel?’

Wow, we were really getting the exes conversation out of the way straight out of the gate, weren’t we?

‘Met at uni. I was with him for seven and a half years. Now I’m not, but he’s eager to get back together,’ I said simply, leaving out the occasional booty call part that made me ashamed of myself.

‘Who broke up with who?’

‘Me with him.’

‘Why