All the Lost Pieces by Lara Martin

Author:Lara Martin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lara Martin
Published: 2023-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

WANTING NO REPEAT OF the Ariadne debacle, Nina arrived in Barracat twenty minutes early for her interview. Following the GPS directions to the town center, she couldn’t stop yawning. She hadn’t had the best night’s sleep. She’d tossed and turned for ages, Brian and Tahlia taking it in turns to hijack her dreams. It had been horrible. Tahlia kept hiding Lucas’s bathroom in different locations throughout the city, taunting her to try to find it. And Brian kept screaming “Push! Push!” right before his face exploded into thousands of tiny canapés.

She needed a coffee. A double shot, she decided, remembering Tammy’s text message—How’d it go with Brian? Details!—that had woken her up at a hideous hour this morning. Nina hadn’t replied to Tammy because a) the details were too embarrassing to recount, and b) surely Tammy had known of Brian’s mother fixation, as well as his “nervous stomach,” but had elected not to tell her. Why had Tammy set her up with someone so unsuitable? As a result, Nina wasn’t feeling too happy with her friend right now, particularly when she pictured that friend blissfully enjoying the Italian Alps, far away from the fallout of her recommendation.

Nina’s phone hadn’t known what had hit it last night as it attempted to cope with the flurry of texts. There had been texts from her mother, demanding an answer as to why she’d turned down Ariadne (old news, Mom, more scandalous developments had transpired since then). Lots of weird texts from Ryan with lines and lines of exclamation marks and emojis of... Really, Ry? Her brother’s infantile self was so easily activated. After Ryan’s texts had come Olivia’s. She’d instructed Nina to ignore all Ry’s messages and then she’d sent her links to online dating apps and web sites: Tinder, eHarmony, Match, Plenty of Fish, OkCupid, Oasis... How many were there? It was like stumbling onto a hidden civilization.

There had been no messages from Lucas. He was most likely too busy saying goodbye to Tahlia, and Nina didn’t want to think of all the ways one said goodbye.

Sighing, Nina turned up the volume on the radio so Zendaya could drown out the thoughts in her head. From what she’d glimpsed so far of Barracat, she was surprised. And impressed. Yes, it was out in the sticks, as the city slickers would say, away from everything hip and happening, but it seemed Barracat wasn’t so much cattle country now, not with the rash of housing developments and the decent-sized mall that had sprung up.

She’d always loved living in the city, but the rush and racket of traffic and people, the drab grayness of all that concrete was simply no match for Barracat’s wide expanse of blue sky and explosions of green. The only rush here seemed to be the succession of jacketed dog walkers and children heading to school.

Nina parked in the town center and walked down the main street on the hunt for coffee. She felt dull-witted with fatigue and knew she’d be no good in the interview if she didn’t get a caffeine fix.

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