Chapter 3

• I wander over to the large arched window overlooking the park. It’s just on dusk. Large magnolia trees surround the manicured lawn, which has four stone benches in the centre. An old man is reading the paper on one of them. It’s a beautiful haven in the middle of a city. I’m lucky to have this view from my office. I blow out a breath as I take out my ponytail and redo it. What are you doing now Joshua? Who are you with? Why do I remember him in technicolour but live my life in black and white? I drag myself up and change my clothes. I feel like going out like a hole in the head. Why do I constantly agree to do things I don’t want to do?
• Saturday at Mum’s is always the same. Bridget, my younger sister, who also moonlights as my best friend, goes on and on about her dickhead boyfriend. Mum and I always sit and listen while she vents or at least we pretend to listen. We drink coffee, eat cake and read the papers, roll our eyes at each other and occasionally add our two cents’ worth. Which goes unnoticed I might add. It’s a Saturday morning ritual, an excuse to catch up.
• “Oh,” Mum claps her hands in excitement. “I got my outfit for the wedding.”
• “Oh yes,” I answer, blowing out a deep breath as I brush the crumbs off my shirt. My inability to get excited about anything is beyond rude.
• “Don’t listen to her Mum—she’s in a shitty mood this week,” Bridget snaps. I open my eyes wide at her. Implying Shut up. “What?” she snaps.
• “Don’t start,” I scowl.
• “Well, what’s with you this week?”
• “You are very preoccupied lately, honey. Is everything all right?” Mum asks.
• “Yes,” I roll my eyes and blow out a breath.
• “Is it work?” she questions, cocking her head to the side and resting her coffee cup on her chest.
• “Anything juicy?” Bridget asks excitedly.
• “You know I can’t answer that,” I sigh.
• “God, you’re no fun. Can’t you tell me about some hot nymphomaniac sex god you’re treating, one who’s looking for a blonde travel agent? You know I’m living vicariously through you,” she smirks. Mum rolls her eyes.
• “I wish I did treat sex gods,” I mutter. “I could do with a sex god or two in my life. Besides only women are called nymphomaniacs, men are called satyriasists.”
• Bridget rolls her eyes and I can’t help but smile. “I don’t care what they’re called. Just find two and arrange a double date.”
• “Sure—you’re on,” I smile. Feeling guilty I look at Mum, “Go and put your outfit on, Mum, let me see what it’s like.”
• “Ok.” She jumps from the chair excitedly and disappears down the hall towards her bedroom. Bridget carries on reading the paper. Moments later Mum breezes back into the kitchen in a beautiful, layered plum number. She looks amazing.
• “I love it.” Bridget claps her hands in excitement.
• “You do look beautiful,” I nod.
• “You don’t think it’s too tight?” she asks as she turns around and checks out her behind in the oven door, standing on her tiptoes.
• I shake my head. “No, it’s perfect,” I smile at her.
• “Oh, Natasha, what colour did you say the dress you are wearing is?”
• “Not sure yet, I have two to choose from.”
• “OMG,” Bridget holds up both of her hands as if to say stop. “Listen to this,” Bridget exclaims as she reads an expert from the gossip pages.
• “It seems our shores are soon to be graced with the return of the App mogul and millionaire playboy Joshua Stanton. Our spies reveal he is returning to the shores of Australia to be the best man at his brother’s wedding and will be staying for three months to reorganise his working visa. Look out for him and his entourage, ladies, he’s quite the catch.”
• Oh shit. My heart sinks.
• Bridget is so excited. “Holy crap! He’s like famous now, in the gossip pages. Just how rich is he?”
• “He’s a multimillionaire,” Mum answers.
• “Entourage—what, so he travels with an entourage?”
• “I suppose,” she nods and shrugs her shoulders. “I know he employs a lot of people.”
• “Margaret said he has a PA and a bodyguard now.”
• I feel sick to my stomach. No one knows about Joshua and me. It happened on a holiday when I was seventeen and he was nineteen and he was just a regular sex–charged teenager— before he went to America. Our parents would have freaked; they would still freak if they knew. This man is frigging haunting me. What is the hold he has on me? This is what I’m lost about—is it that he was my first? Or that he is forbidden to me? Even the memory of him raises my pulse. I have been putting myself through self–inflicted torture for years when I put a google alert on him. Every goddamn girl he’s ever gone out with is splashed all over the internet. Models, actors, socialites, sluts.
• However the hell you put it, he has long forgotten me. My heart sinks.
• “Oohh,” Bridget gasps, “has he got a girlfriend?”
• Mum hunches her shoulders. “I have no idea. No one special I don’t think. His mother would have loved gloating if he had.”
• A cold shiver runs down my back. His mother, piece of work that she is, loves nothing better than to gloat to me how great Joshua is doing. How wealthy Joshua is. How many beautiful models Joshua dates. If I didn’t know better, I would say she is rubbing it in my face. Although I know she has no idea about what happened between us. Nobody does. Maybe that’s the problem—I’ve lived all these years without telling a soul. I need to vent. My feelings swing from lovesick to angry, to resentful to hateful, and back to broken–hearted, all within an hour.