chapter 1

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Kate looked up from her book. Her husband was staring at his phone with a concerned expression on his face, typing and retyping a message in response to whatever he had just received.

“What’s wrong, darling?” she asked, getting up from her chair and crossing the room to sit next to him. “Who are you talking to?”

Instead of answering her, Max gave up on typing his response and passed the phone across to let her read the messages. Neil, his friend since high school, had just broken up with his girlfriend. She’s kicking me out tonight, the last text read. I’ve got no money and no place to go. I know it’s a big ask but if I could crash at your place for a week or so you’d be doing me a huge favour.

“What do we do?” Max asked when she had finished reading. Kate put the phone down and raised an eyebrow in response.

“Is that even a question? Come on, sweetheart, he’s your oldest friend. Of course he can come and stay with us.”

“See, I knew you’d say that,” Max said with a wry smile. “You’re too nice for your own good.” He sighed before continuing, “I think this is going to end badly. Neil… well, you haven’t seen him since school. He always had a thing for you, he was so jealous when we got together… He’s going to take advantage of this, I just know it.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being nice, Max. Text Neil and tell him to come over tonight. I’ll make up the guest room. You know, my mother used to say that kindness is it’s own reward.”

“Seriously? Your mother used to say that?” Max asked incredulously. Kate laughed and stuck out her tongue before kissing him on the forehead and getting up to prepare the house.
***
By the time Neil arrived later in the evening, Kate had not only made up the bed with the best linens and towels, but she had also gone out and stocked the kitchen with plenty of beer, snacks and a couple of pints of ice cream, ready to console their heartbroken friend. As the car pulled up in front of the house, she went over to the window and looked down. The man who stepped out of the taxi looked completely different to the teenager that she remembered from their time together at school. Neil was chubby and slightly dishevelled, wearing an old band tee and too-tight jeans. Kate stared at him. The shirt rode up a little as he fished his bags out of the back of the taxi, displaying soft love handles when he bent over and the bottom of his belly as he stretched back up. As he did so, he looked up into the window and made eye contact with Kate. She smiled and waved at him awkwardly, feeling as though she had been caught watching something intensely private.

Downstairs, Max opened the front door, and she could hear him greeting Neil with a comiserative tone of voice. She blocked out her embarrassment almost as quickly as it had occurred to her. She hadn’t been doing anything wrong, after all. She was simply taking in how much Neil had changed over the years - no doubt he’d do the same to her. Time had certainly been kinder to her, and although she was definitely squishier around the middle than when they had been at school, most of the weight that the years inevitably brought had blessed her in all the places a girl could hope for, giving her a dramatic hourglass figure. She preened in the mirror a little self-consciously, before she descended the stairs. Neil had already made himself at home in the comfy armchair and was cracking open a beer when she walked into the living room. He looked up and grinned at her.

“Katie! It’s good to see you again. You look great.” His expression seemed to suggest that he had noticed her lingering eyes when he had got out of the car. He turned back to Max. “If you’d told me when we were at school that you’d be the one who ended up with such a hot wife, I’d have said you were talking out of your arse.”

Max snorted at that. “You’re in my hot wife’s chair, Neil,” was his only response.

“It’s okay, really,” Kate said quickly as Neil had begun to lever himself out of the seat. “I’m so sorry to hear about you and Daisy breaking up. What happened?”

“Ah. That.” The expression on his face clouded over, as though he had only just remembered that he was supposed to be sad. “Yeah, I guess we just wanted different things. She said a whole speech on the matter but I sort of blocked it all out… She said I wasn’t the guy she fell in love with any more. As far as I’m aware the only thing that’s changed is this.” He slapped his stomach with his free hand and took a swig of beer from the other. Kate felt her cheeks go pink.

“Shit, man, I’m sorry,” Max said awkwardly. “That’s a pretty shallow reason.”

“Ah, fuck it, it’s not as though I’m not guilty of that either,” Max replied. “We didn’t have that much in common, in the end, except for looks. Didn’t have that much to talk about but man, was she gorgeous. Heh. Now I guess I’m ruining her image. I don’t blame her really. Just wish that I hadn’t moved in with her so quickly.”

He drained the beer and leaned back in the chair, the belly that had apparently caused him so much trouble peeking out from under his shirt again. Kate slipped off the arm of the sofa where she had been perching and fetched him another from out of the fridge, popping the cap off for him as she crossed the room. He flashed her another grin, his glum expression slipping away like a mask.

“Thanks Katie,” he said, “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate both of you letting me stay.”

They talked long into the night, catching up and shooting the breeze, and Kate quietly kept the beer flowing and snacks on hand. By the time Max was insisting that he had to go to bed - he had work in a few hours - the living room was full of empty bottles. The majority of these were haphazardly littering the floor around Neil’s chair, and his soft stomach had a serious bloat to it. When they stumbled up to bed, Max grabbed Kate’s arm, his eyes narrow.

“I knew this was a bad idea,” he slurred. “He’s all over you. And you’re encouraging it!”

“Go to bed, Max,” she replied coldly. “You’re talking rubbish. Everyone’s just drunk, that’s all.”

Still, as they went to sleep, she couldn’t help but keep thinking about the way Neil had smiled at her, and the way his stomach had jiggled when he had finally rolled out of her chair.

***
Neil, it turned out, had called in sick to work in advance. When Kate came downstairs the next morning, he was lying on the sofa with his feet up. He looked tired and hungover, and only opened his eyes and looked up when she greeted him.

“Morning. Do you want me to make you some breakfast?” she asked gently.

“Ugh, more than anything,” he mumbled. “Don’t make a fuss though, I’m a little off my food this morning.”

Despite this, he managed to polish off three eggs, three sausages, bacon and baked beans without so much as breaking a sweat. As he ate all this at the kitchen table, Kate dropped thick slices of bread into the pan and fried them in the bacon fat, placing them one by one onto his plate to very little resistance from Neil. He used the third slice to mop the sauce and grease up from the finally empty plate and leaned back in the chair, full and groaning quietly. He suppressed a belch as politely as he could, his face flushing a little. “Pardon me,” he grunted.

Kate poured him another coffee and sat down in the chair next to him, ignoring his lapse in manners.“I was going to warm up some cinnamon rolls,” she said airily, and smiled at the moan that this suggestion produced from her guest. “Do you think you could manage one?”

“I mean… if you’re making them I’ll take a couple of them on,” he said, hiccoughing, “Max never told me how good of a cook you are. Shit, if we were together, I reckon I’d be twice the size he is.”

“You are,” Kate said with a laugh, and then clapped her hand over her mouth in horror. “Oh god, I’m so sorry, that was really rude! I don’t know why I said that!”

Neil smirked and said in lofty tones, “Don’t act like you don’t love it, sweetcakes. I’ve seen you checking me out.”

Oh my god! Kate felt her heart skip a beat for a second. From the expression on his face, he was joking, but there was a little glint in his eyes that suggested that they both knew there was more to it than that. Standing up a little quicker than she wanted to, she prodded Neil in the chest with a wooden spoon. “Cheeky!” she reprimanded, thankfully sounding a lot less flustered than she felt.

She gave him three cinnamon rolls and tried hard to resist making eye contact with him when he licked the sugar off his fingers.