The Next Forever by Alix Kelso

Author:Alix Kelso [Kelso, Alix]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781913098018
Publisher: Lake Falls Publishing
Published: 2019-09-17T16:00:00+00:00

Half an hour later and they were still sitting in the living room. The bottle of vodka had taken a beating, mostly at the hands of Janice. Keith had drunk no more after his first pour, and Chrissie had only swirled hers around in the glass after taking a single sip. Keith suspected she probably wasn’t a vodka drinker. Even when he’d offered to add juice or cola to her glass, she’d refused, but had kept the drink in her hand in a gesture that struck Keith as unfailingly kind.

Although it wasn’t clear if it was a gesture that Janice had noticed as she’d repeatedly refilled her own drink and proceeded to give Chrissie chapter-and-verse of the whole Stuart saga. Keith had tried to intervene, but once Janice got started it wasn’t easy to shut her down. During a brief lull in Janice’s non-stop storytelling, Keith had stood up and announced that it was time for them to leave, but Janice had only resumed talking again as if nothing had happened, and Chrissie had sent him a quick head shake and a nod in the direction of his ex-wife. It was extraordinarily generous of her, Keith thought, given how the evening had gone.

“…and I wish all this was different,” Janice was now saying as she slumped into the sofa with her vodka tumbler clasped between her hands. “I wish I could have my Stuart back. I wish that leggy blonde would… sod off. I wish… I wish I wasn’t broke. And I wish…”

When she said nothing further, Keith glanced over and saw that her eyes were closed.

“Janice?”

She responded with a noisy snore.

“Thank God,” Keith said, rising gently from the sofa so as not to wake her.

“Poor woman,” Chrissie whispered. “I feel terrible for her.”

Keith carefully removed the tumbler from Janice’s hands and then manoeuvred her against the sofa cushions before tucking a throw over her to keep her warm.

“Do you think she’ll be okay?” Chrissie asked.

“She’ll be fine once she sleeps off the vodka.”

“We shouldn’t have let her have so much.”

“Maybe not, but she needs to start getting all this out of her system,” Keith said. “Believe me, I know. Anyway, shall we get out of here and get that drink together?”

“Um, well…” Chrissie set her glass on the coffee table and checked her watch. “It’s quite late now, Keith. By the time we go to the bistro and have our drink and head home again, it’s going to be later still, and I’ve got an early start at the shop tomorrow.”

Keith’s face fell and he beckoned her out on to the landing to avoid waking Janice.

“Surely we could manage a quick drink and half an hour together in peace and quiet?”

But Chrissie shook her head. “I think that ship has sailed. And anyway, look at my shirt. I can’t go out like this, covered in mascara smears.”

Keith sighed. “I’m sorry, Chrissie. I should never have let Janice railroad me.”

“That’s not what happened. She’s hurt and alone and just needs someone to talk to.

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