This is a Love Story Read Online Free

know who he is. ‘Lydia, who the hell is that?’ I whisper into her ear, my right leg trembling a little.
    ‘It’s Nick,’ she whispers back, giving me a wink.
    Of course. Bollocks.
    Nick went away just before my first day, so he’s the only person working at The Cube I haven’t yet met. I do know, according to the kitchen rota, that it is his turn to get the milk and sugar on a Tuesday, and that he drinks peppermint tea with caraway seeds. I always thought he sounded like such a pretentious shit from the way people talked about him.
    Apparently, since Nick’s been away, Kevin in accounts has been screwing up invoices and wandering around listlessly, Tom in editorial has tried to take on the role of leader of the pack and failed miserably, and Rhoda has even taken up smoking again. The lads all think Nick was incredibly funny before his girlfriend left him for someone else . If I hear one more account of the time Nick dressed as a tree and spent two hours in reception unnoticed, I may actually cry.
    His girlfriend and the guy who ‘snatched her away’ both worked here, I’m told. What a mess.
    Now I am no longer faced with working alongside someone who is a hysterical jackass (which would have been bad enough) but instead – even worse – a heartbroken shell of a man who will probably leave a trail of teary snot wherever he goes.
    And this heartbroken shell of a man is the guy I almost fell in love with on the train this morning.
    Gutted.
    Nick
    Usually, eturning to work is pretty dull, especially after a break in Ibiza. It certainly wasn’t this time.
    I have managed to avoid budget, boozy lads’ holidays in recent years. Scarred by trips to Spanish islands in my early twenties that were great fun at the time, I now feel like they’re the last places I would want to be. I’ve spent enough time spewing in cheap hotels, falling into swimming pools and twisting limbs while attempting drunken stunts on holidays like that. No more Shagaloof for me, thanks. It just isn’t my cup of tea any more.
    I prefer city breaks now, if I’m going away with the boys. We still have a hunger for exactly the same things – pulling hot girls, drinking too much and dancing – but we have more money these days so we do it in a different setting. Our recent trips have involved smoking weed in Amsterdam, eating the best steak imaginable in Paris, clubbing in Brooklyn, stuff like that. We aren’t kids any more.
    So it’s either overindulgent stuff in cool cities, or exciting adventures in tropical climes like Fiji. I love sharing my favourite life stories under the stars with random backpackers I’ll never see again.
    But many of my friends are hurtling towards thirty, and I’m getting there too. The prospect of a milestone birthday and a stag party do funny things to the male mind.
    ‘Come on, mate, you’ll love it – and it’s my stag do. So you have to come, really, don’t you?’ said Ross, punching me hard on the arm like an American jock when the idea of Ibiza was first floated. He acquired the habit of punching me on the arm at university and he’s carried on ever since. He does it for pretty much anything: birthdays, holidays, Tuesdays . . . It’s slightly annoying and he’s definitely too old to do it now, but it’s his trademark so I guess it can stay. I always reckoned if we failed to find nice women, we could live together as bachelors and never have to grow up, punching each other all over the nation’s golf courses and the bingo halls of west London. But that was looking pretty remote now.
    Ross is my best mate, who I met at university. I thought he was a bit of a dick at first – he was the loud, rowdy one who always had to drink more than anyone else and he was more successful with women, too, which made me massively jealous. He’s a big bloke – not fat, but burly, with broad shoulders and messy hair that makes him look as if he’s just stepped off a rugby pitch. Girls love that, I’ve