There was a knock at the door, and Rhiana slowly climbed down the stairs. She didn’t have high hopes for Beelzebuddy’s success, but she certainly wasn’t expecting to open the door and find her ex-lover standing there.
Panic seized her stomach. She felt like she was going to be sick.
‘Go away!’ she spat, slamming the door shut before Evelyn could say a word.
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‘Why, hello there! I’m Beelzebuddy, or “Buddy” for short! And I am very short… At your service. No spill, no stain, no mess is too much for me to clean! Just give me a cloth and a bucket and I’ll get right to work!’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Rhiana. ‘I don’t need you to clean. I need you to get rid of some nasty people—and a dog—from my life.’
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‘Fergus.’ She took my chin and pulled my face towards hers. ‘There’s a simple way to get around all this. I don’t want to fire Cassandra, of course.’ She was moving closer. Her breath smelt of whisky and cigarettes. My heart screamed at me to get out. ‘So just do what I say…’
‘No.’
She froze, inches away from kissing me.
‘No?’
‘No.’
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Our classes are over. Clearly, you’re doing fine without me, and I’ll just break your ‘nice pen’ if you try to help me. We’re colleagues, anyway. Let’s keep it that way.
The handwriting was completely different, back to being a drunken spider, and it only got messier as my tears fell on the page.
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‘Now,’ she said, pulling off her gloves. ‘You still have to teach me about poetry. I really don’t know very much. Do we write with a pen, or our bodies?’
I grinned. ‘We can use both.’
And we did.
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‘You have such soft hands,’ she said.
‘You like that?’
‘Yes.’ She moved her thumb over the back of my hand, but she continued to look in my eyes. ‘And your lips are, too…’
I leant forward, ready to kiss her.
And then the door to her apartment flew open.
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And there it was: PING! Attraction.
Here’s the thing. When I told you that I don’t wear makeup and lift weights, you probably assumed I only liked women. And you wouldn’t be wrong, 99% of the time. But that 1% of the time, I see men who just have something in their eyes. Like a frightened animal. And for some reason, the IT part of my brain says, ‘Well, let’s fix that.’
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Diana was surprised. ‘You don’t make resolutions? But you’re the most serious person I know! You go to the gym, and cook healthy food, and read books… How do you do all that without New Year’s resolutions?’
Minerva drank some wine. ‘Let me ask you something. How much are you planning on drinking tonight?’
Diana frowned. ‘You plan how much you’re going to drink?’
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CLANG! The gate to the car park closed behind Bella. She was trapped.
Uh-oh.
She had gone past the apartment building on her day off work. She had had one date with the man, but she was impatient. She just wanted to look at him through the window, because she couldn’t stop thinking about him. But his curtains had been closed, so she decided to sneak into the car park so she could do… something? Break into his car and leave him a love letter? She didn’t know what she was doing.
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Once upon a time, there was a talented cello player. She loved her cello like a son, and practised on it for hours every day. Sometimes, she concentrated so hard that she could practically see the notes floating in the air around her.
But one day, as she sat down to practise before breakfast, she was met with a rude surprise: as she put the bow to the strings, the cello spoke.
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