Short Excerpt from “A Wounded Heart”, Chapter 2:Summer Job
You can read up to and including Chapter 4 of A Wounded Heart on my Patreon right now, but to whet your appetite here’s a very brief extract from Chapter 2: Summer Job.
“You should ask her out,” Imogen said as we walked towards the front door of our house.
“Ask who out?”
“Paige, silly.”
“Paige?”
“Yes, Paige. You know, cute blonde with big boobs you’ve just spent a couple of hours sitting next to and flirting with.”
“I wasn’t flirting.” I opened the door and stepped inside.
“You weren’t?” Imogen said as she followed me in. “Well, the next time you are can you let me know so I can see the difference? Because it sure looked like you were flirting to me.” She took her coat off and hung it on one of the hooks by the doorway. “And she was definitely flirting with you.”
“Was she?”
Imogen sighed. “They’re right. They are all right. You really are clueless.”
We went into the lounge to find Mark sitting on the sofa watching cricket. I’m sorry, but I don’t get cricket. I don’t get the attraction of standing around playing the stupid game—if that’s what you can call it when you’re just standing around waiting for the ball to come near you—and I definitely don’t get the attraction of sitting around watching other men standing around playing the game.
“Who’s clueless? And who’s flirting?” Mark asked without taking his eyes off the screen.
“Him,” Imogen said, hitching her thumb in my direction. “Clueless. This really cute girl has been flirting with him all week, then asks us to join her and some of the others for a drink after work and carries on flirting with him, and he claims not to have noticed.”
“Oh, right,” Mark said, not sounding the slightest bit interested.
“Look,” I said as I sat down. “Paige is a nice girl. And, yes, I’ll give you that she’s cute. But she wasn’t flirting with me. She was just being friendly, that’s all.”
Imogen sighed again and rolled her eyes. “Clueless,” she muttered as she took her phone out of her pocket and turned to leave the room.
“You making a brew?” Mark called as she left.
“Make your own,” she called back as she went upstairs. “I need to text Chloë.”
Seriously, what had I done to deserve this?
I looked at the TV. “Can we watch something else?”
“It’s a T-20 match!”
“And?”
Mark looked at me like I’d asked him to eat a puppy. “You don’t like football. You don’t like cricket. There’s something wrong with you mate, I swear.”
I shrugged. “It’s my telly.” That had become a standing joke between us. He rolled his eyes and tossed me the remote control.
“Here. Have it. I need to go and get ready anyway.”
“Get ready for what?”
“Going to the pictures with Gen.”
“What? Like a date?”
“No. Not like a date. Just friends.”
“Why didn’t you invite me then?”
“Because you make too much fucking noise when you eat popcorn.”
I picked up a cushion from the armchair next to me and threw it at him, but he dodged it and ran upstairs.
