The Cheap Dates Club by Lottie Brook

Author:Lottie Brook [Brook, Lottie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2023-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

24

Isla could never have imagined that painting over graffiti on a housing estate could have such aphrodisiac effects. The way Leigh had taken the lead with those god-awful overalls had completely dissolved her own panic about how terrible she’d look in them. From then on, they’d been so relaxed in each other’s company, covering all kinds of topics in their chat, from family and the time he visited the flats as a kid, to politics to music to their favourite TV shows. He had a smile and an ‘eh up’ for anyone who passed them. He’d downed tools at one point so he could help a young woman with a pram and too much shopping, rebalancing it all for her, offering to carry it if she preferred. The point at which he crouched down to hand the toddler in the pram his teddy back, making the teddy talk and the toddler laugh, may have been a move too far for Isla’s ovaries, which had for so long lain dormant. She’d asked him after the interaction if he’d thought about having kids, worried it was a bit of a gamble question, not everybody wanted to talk about that stuff, but he’d been so direct: yes, he liked them, he’d love to be a dad one day, if he was lucky enough to be so. How he talked just lit a fire in her belly again. How he looked at her and waited until she’d finished speaking before he said what he had to say. She loved how he teased her, too. He’d initiated a paint fight by dashing her overalls with council beige, and she’d finished it by drawing her brush down his cheek as he held her tightly in his arms, before they sneaked off to a quiet corner and snogged like teenagers again. God, she hadn’t been kissed like that in so long. His body pressed up against hers, his hands holding her face while she traced the line of his shoulders and back. She remembered how, when they came up for air, her head was spinning and they agreed they should probably get back to what they were actually supposed to be doing. He’d kissed her gently, one last time, then taken her hand, fingers clasped through fingers, back to the paint pots and the spot of graffiti they’d basically just been adding to. Tags and swears replaced with blocks of beige and cream in varying sizes.

After all that, getting ready for her fifth cheap date had reduced her to a jumbled mixture of giddy and nervous and shaky and determined. Butterflies thrashed in her stomach and when Sophie popped over to offer her free access to her Spotify sexy-time playlist, the butterflies turned into a herd of elephants stampeding in her chest. Because for all the dates she’d been on in recent months, it had been a while since she’d actually got intimate with anyone. Apparently sex dreams about Harry Styles didn’t count.

And it wasn’t that she and Leigh were definitely going to have sex today.

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