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“Wow! That’s awesome! You love him!” Amanda said. I felt the blush rising and there was nothing that I could do to stop it.

Amanda was looking at me funny. “What’s going on, Mel?” she asked hesitantly. I looked away and took another sip of my tea.

“Nothing, why?” My voice sounded suss as I shook my head too hard.

“Oh, Mel, you’re in love with Joel, aren’t you?”

I choked on a mouthful of tea and almost spat it across the room. “No! God no! What made you think that?” My voice was on the edge of hysteria.

“Uh, apart from that reaction, every time you say his name your voice gets all sweet.”

“I’m not in love with him,” I insisted, sounding less certain about that than I would have liked.

Amanda shrugged. “Well, if you say so.” She didn’t sound convinced.

The need to confide in someone suddenly overwhelmed me, and the words started spewing out of me.

“I had sex with Joel while we were in England. And not just once – lots of times. And it was the best sex of my entire life. And then when we got home, we had sex again.” I didn’t tell her it was on the lounge she was sitting on, because she’d probably be horrified.

“And the reason that I haven’t answered any calls from Brad is that I just don’t know what to do. I feel things when I’m with Joel that confuse me. I hate being confused. And I don’t want to drag Brad into this mess until I’ve worked it out. ”

I stopped blathering and looked at Amanda properly. She was gaping at me. I took a gulp of my tea and waited in intense embarrassment for her to say something.

“You … had sex with Joel?” she whispered. I nodded, looking down into my cup, where I could see some tea leaves floating about in the bottom. If a gypsy was here to read my fortune, I wondered what those leaves would say.

Amanda laughed. I looked up, wondering what was wrong with her. She was grinning at me like a fool.

“Well, it’s about time! You have no idea how painful it’s been for the last few years wondering when you two would finally admit that you are totally in love with each other!”

I plonked my teacup down on the coffee table and glared at her. “He’s not in love with me. And I’m not in love with him. It was just sex. He’s made that perfectly clear.”

“But you want more.” She didn’t pose it as a question. I shrugged.

“I don’t know what I want. I don’t know how I feel. It’s awful, Amanda. And I’m scared to talk to Brad because I just … can’t handle his feelings for me right now. I’m too much of a mess.”

Amanda sighed. “You’re in love, Mel. Just admit it – you love Joel Herbert. You’ve been in love with him for years, but you’ve been in denial.”

I continued to shake my head.

“You need to tell Joel. You need to be honest with him. Believe me, I think you’ll be surprised by his response.”

I gave her a withering look. “Amanda, I know Joel. I know what he’s like. I know that he’s not interested in love. Not with me anyway,” I added, remembering that he’d told me he’d been in love but that the girl hadn’t been interested.

“Just tell him.”

I shook my head. “I’m not telling him something when I’m not even sure it’s true! I’m not going to say, ‘I love you’ to him when I don’t even know if that’s the way I feel!”

“You’ve never been in love before, have you, Mel?” Amanda asked, leaning back into the lounge .

“What’s that got to do with it?” I snapped.

Amanda shrugged. “How do you know you’re not in love, if you’ve never felt what it’s like to be in love?”

I had no answer for that.

“Even if you don’t tell him you love him,” Amanda continued, “you need to at least tell him that you’re interested in more than just sex with him. Take it slower and see how things go.”

I groaned. “I can’t fucking do that. I just can’t. I won’t.”

Amanda stood. “Be honest, Mel. It’s scary, but it’s the only way you’re going to get past the way you’re feeling now.”

She walked calmly to the door. I couldn’t get up – I was paralysed with fear at the thought of doing what she suggested.

Amanda turned at the door. “Just be honest. And if you can’t be honest with yourself, or with Joel, at least be honest with Brad. You owe him that much.”

She closed the door quietly, the muted click as the latch clipped into place giving emphasis to her departing words.

No, I wasn’t in love with Joel. Maybe I wanted to have sex with him exclusively, but I wasn’t in love with him. Maybe I wanted him to have sex with me exclusively. But that wasn’t love. Was it?

I just couldn’t go for five minutes without DJH being in my brain. I stood and walked to the door, lifting my bike from where I had left it leaning against the wall.

I’d go to the gym, work out like a fiend, and hopefully forget about it all for an hour or so.

I love the feeling of a really hard workout; when I feel the burn in every muscle in my body and the endorphin high is intense.

I wished I felt like that today. But nope.

For starters I hated the way everyone looked at me out of the corner of their eye. They knew who I was and they just wanted to stare at me, but they knew it was rude, so they didn’t. I would have preferred them gape openly at me than sneak surreptitious glances my way .

I was sweating a hell of a lot too, and that wasn’t an attractive way for curious people to be seeing me. I imagined them going home to their friends and loved ones: “Guess who I saw at the gym today, smelling like the north end of a south bound camel” …

And yet for all of these bad things, working out at the gym was infinitely more preferable to being with DJH at the moment.

Yep. Definitely not able to go for more than a minute or two without thinking about him.

I finished my workout and went to take a shower. The hot water was soothing on my skin, washing away the slickness of workout sweat. I towelled briskly and dressed in clean clothes to head home, my hair wet and tangled around my shoulders.

The girls at the reception counter gave me a pair of giant grins and asked shyly if I would pose for a picture with them.

I smiled mechanically and dropped my bags.

One of the girls called a PT over to take the snap.

He winked at me, reminding me of another PT who I was supposed to be keeping out of my head.

Like that was even possible. The trainer handed the camera back to the girls and turned to me.

“Hey, Melanie, can you tell Joel that Andrew said hello? He’s coaching you now, isn’t he?”

I nodded stiffly. “I’ll tell him,” I promised, leaning down to pick up my bags. A child was squatting beside them looking up at me curiously, his brown hair flopping around his blue eyes.

“Oh, hi there, mate,” I said, trying to be nice because he was only a little kid, even though he was unzipping my bag as he stared at me totally unabashedly. “Are your parents around?”

“Shaun! Stop that now!” a familiar voice rang out. I winced. I knew that voice and I wasn’t in the mood to deal with its owner. The little boy stood up, a sheepish look on his face, and he trotted away. I unenthusiastically followed his steps with my eyes.

“Oh, hi Mel,” Julie greeted me.

“What are you doing here?” I asked warily.

“I work here,” she replied in a short tone. The child was standing at her feet, tugging on her shorts.

“In the crèche?” I asked in disbelief .

“No,” she replied reluctantly. “I’m the physio here. Joel put in a word for me.” She bent down and picked the child up, resting him on her hip in a very motherly way.

“Oh,” I replied. I actually took a good look at the child then, and I felt my legs start to tremble under me.

“Is that your son?”

Julie looked tenderly down at the child in her arms. He looked about three to me.

“Yep, this is Shaun. Shaun, this is Mel.” The boy looked at me with serious eyes. Serious eyes that were horrifyingly familiar to me. I clutched at the counter as my legs threatened to give way.

“He looks just like his father,” I muttered breathlessly. That’s when the world went black.