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I knew who was standing on my doorstep before I even opened the door. I recognised the jaunty knock. I could practically feel his perpetually happy mood beaming through the solid wood, trying to irradiate me with good humour and cheer.

“Hi, Charlie!” Jasper was wearing grey sweatpants and a tight, peach-pink t-shirt that showcased his insane body, and also demanded that the viewer GIVE ME MORE!!! “I thought I’d swing by and pick you up, since we’re both going to the gym and you’re on my way.”

That was Jasper-speak for, Hi, Charlie. I knew that you were going to try and squirm out of our gym date for the fifth time in a row, so today I decided to kidnap you and make you do it.

Before I could start arguing, nails clicked on the parquet floor in the hall behind me and Jasper folded to his knees, cooing, “Well, hello to you , big boy.” He shoved me aside and opened his arms wide, ready to receive Phil for their customary lovefest of a greeting.

Phil continued his steady plod towards the open door, and didn’t stop plodding until he was nose to nose with Jasper, panting happily.

I sighed. “You’d better come in.”

All three of us got tangled up in the doorway for a moment. I bent down and fitted my hands around Phil’s barrel chest. Heaving his front end up with a grunt, I pivoted him on his back paws a good forty-five degrees and made room for Jasper to squeeze through into the hall.

“Look at your beautiful face,” he said. To Phil, not me. “ Look at you. Why are you so cute? What are you trying to do? Are you trying to kill me with your cuteness? Because I think you are. Yes, you are. Yes, you are .”

He glanced up and his cheeks pinkened, even as he continued to fuss Phil, who’d sat his big furry butt down and was leaning into Jasper’s hands. Phil let out one of his deep and happy groans. “Right.” Jasper stood up reluctantly. “Are you ready to go?”

“I thought I’d get my exercise in by taking Phil for a walk, actually,” I said. I craftily tacked on, “Why don’t you join us?”

“I’d love to take Phil for a walk,” he said with enthusiasm. “When we get back from the gym.”

“Or instead, maybe? Walking is the best exercise.”

“Walking’s great,” Jasper agreed. “Low impact, easy on the joints, decent cardio. But since Phil has the top speed of a three-year-old child, it’s not going to cut it.”

It was worth a try.

“All right,” I said with resignation.

I had to do this. I’d promised my doctor.

I hadn’t promised that I’d like it, though. Or that I’d do it with good grace.

“I’ll go and change. D’you want a drink or anything, or are you happy to hang with Phil?”

“Always happy to hang with Phil!”

I dropped a hand to the top of Phil’s head, gently tugged the weird little fluff patch growing there, and ran upstairs to change.

When I came back down, self-conscious and itchy in my brand-new gym kit, Phil had Jasper on the floor. Despite the fact he was the size of a small bear, he’d crawled into Jasper’s lap to mash himself up against Jasper’s chest and rest his big head on Jasper’s shoulder.

“I’m covered in dog hair,” Jasper announced once he’d extracted himself.

I kept a lint roller for just such an occasion on the hall table alongside the bowl for my keys and my stack of junk mail. I grabbed it and passed it to him.

Since a significant portion of Phil was St. Bernard, Jasper probably had a fair amount of drool down the back of his t-shirt as well as all that hair. I didn’t mention it.

He rolled the fluff off his t-shirt and sweatpants with practiced efficiency, made kissy noises to a disappointed Phil, and chivvied me out the front door. He waited while I wrestled it shut and then fought with the latch—the old wood had a tendency to swell up and stick in damp weather, and you had to know how to jiggle the latch to get it to engage—and escorted me down the drive and into the passenger seat of his car.

I’d done the right thing in asking Jasper to be my personal trainer. There was no way I’d ever have made it to the gym under my own steam, and even though I didn’t want to go, I knew that I had to.

Things had got on top of me in the last couple of years since I’d bought my house, and it was starting to show. I had dark circles under my eyes that never went away, if I had a bad night there were definitely bags the next morning, and my naturally wiry frame was shading towards scrawny.

Barely two months after I’d bought the house, my parents had decided to sell The Chipped Cup to me and my younger sister, Amalie, and flew off to Spain to live a life of leisurely retirement in the sun.

That had been unexpected enough, but barely a month after that, once I’d sunk every spare penny I had into buying my share of the business, Amalie had suddenly decided that the family legacy could stuff it, her destiny was not slinging brew to people she’d known all her life, and she’d run off to find herself somewhere on the other side of the planet.

It was her loss, anyway.

A few years down the road I’d own The Chipped Cup outright and be set for the future and she’d have, what? A camera roll full of glamorous locations and the smiling faces of strangers she’d met in various hostels all over the globe.

I was just thankful that she’d agreed to let me buy her out in monthly instalments rather than selling her share to the first rando who’d give her a lump sum for it and who didn’t mind getting an extremely pissed-off co-owner (me) as part of the deal.

Now I was thirty-one years old, all of my income went towards paying off loans, mortgages, and my sister, and the last time I went to the doctor for a checkup, I got a very stern talking-to.

I wasn’t okay, but until then I’d thought that I was at least successfully pretending to be. I hadn’t realised that someone would look at me and think, There is a man on the edge.

And yet, Dr Farrell had informed me, that was exactly what she’d written in her notes. Charlie Galloway, man on the edge. She’d scribbled out a prescription on a small pad, and handed it to me with a smirk.

Life: get one.

Coffee: cut it out.

Vegetables: eat some.

Exercise: ask Jasper!

I’d gone to school with Hannah Farrell from the age of five to eighteen. The woman thought she was funny.

She was not.

I read the prescription with a scowl and informed her that I had a life, I’d drink coffee until the day I died, I was open to the concept of vegetables, and I got plenty of exercise all day long, thanks.

“Work doesn’t count,” she’d said. “I’m talking about fun exercise. Something that’s good for your mental health and gets you out of that fucking coffee shop once in a while. You need to shake things up.”

“Shake things up? What are you, my doctor or my life coach?”

“I’m your doctor.” With none of her usual humour, she’d added, “Your genuinely concerned doctor.”

And that uncharacteristic seriousness, accompanied by the crisp instruction to come back and see her in three months rather than a year was the main reason I’d allowed Jasper to boss me out of my house and into his car.

Where I now sat, with my ears throbbing and my eyes watering as he straight-up murdered Lady Gaga.

“Jasper,” I said as we waited at the traffic lights, “I don’t know if anyone has ever told you this before, and I’m only bringing it up because we’re friends and I care about you, but you cannot sing like Lady Gaga, and I really think it would be best for everyone if you stopped trying. Or singing at all. Please and thank you.”

“You care about me?” Jasper said with a grin. “I love you too, Charlie.” He reached for a high note and missed it by a mile.

I winced.

I did love Jasper, deeply. I always would. I’d got over my romantic feelings for him a long time ago now, though, and it was because I loved him that I’d been able to get over him in the first place. He was, quite simply, made for his partner, Liam Nash. And Liam Nash was made for him.

They clicked, they fit, they vibed.

They were truly disgusting to observe out and about in the wild as a couple.

If you love someone you want the best for them. Liam was the best for Jasper, not me. End of story.

It took me threatening to open my door and get out of the car at the next set of traffic lights to make him stop singing, and by then we’d arrived at the independent gym where he worked.

If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought he was trying to distract me.

He parked in a spot reserved for staff and hustled me into the building. It had been converted about a decade ago from an old warehouse, and was situated at the edge of an industrial estate that was slowly catching up to the gym owners’ vision and undergoing a revamp.

I hoped that none of the warehouses got revamped into a Starbucks. Their nearest store was currently halfway between Chipping Fairford and Oxford, and that was more than close enough for my liking.

“I cannot believe you’re this old,” Jasper said over his shoulder as we walked into the building, “and have never set foot in a gym before.”

“Thank you. I, too, think it’s quite the achievement.”

“It would be like me getting to thirty-one and never having come into The Chipped Cup.

“Mm-hmm.”

“You’ll be coming here every day after work, you wait and see. Get your sweat on. Get your endorphins going. Burn the stress off. You’re going to love it. You’ll be hooked.”

Unlikely.

I clenched the fingers I had wrapped around the strap of my gym bag and nodded. “Yep.”

He checked me in as a guest, then said, “Come on. Let’s get you a locker.”

I followed him down the corridor and had to suppress a smile at seeing him here in his element, striding like a little king. Or not so little, since he was six-three and came with the kind of lean muscles you’d expect from a fitness professional.

Jasper had had his share of struggles a few years back, and seeing him thrive now did my heart good.

He led the way into the changing room and over to a bench that ran below a row of painted-metal, industrial-chic locker doors.

I’d been so busy feeling out of place that two very important things about the gym had slipped my mind.

One: the changing room was very likely going to have naked men in it.

Two: there was a non-zero chance that one of those naked men would be Kevin Wallis.

Kevin Wallis, who glanced up from where he was manspreading on a bench three feet away from me, smiled calmly, and said, “All right, Charlie?”