Page 176 of Double or Nothing

I walk over and stare at it.

It’s so aggressively sleek, it looks less like a toastie maker and more like a device designed to launch sandwiches into orbit. I hate how I love it so much.

Twelve deliveries of Elite Cheese boxes are already on order. The first is coming on Tuesday. I picked the subscription with the good French selection because Bryce likes Comté, and Alice said something about wanting to try a truffle brie.

I should have ordered twenty-five different types of cheddar instead.

I switch on the coffee machine, since I’m not going back to bed and lying there like a sleepless tosser. The machine is dispensing the first cup when I hear footsteps behind me.

Light ones.

Alice.

She appears at the kitchen entrance in one of my shirts, yet again, blonde hair loose and unkempt around her shoulders. Her eyes move over me, then the coffee machine, then the empty stool beside the Toastique Pro.

“What are you up to?” she asks.

“What does it look like? Performing emergency maintenance on the coffee machine?” I crack a fake grin. “Do you want a cup?”

She nods and takes a seat, folding her arms around herself.

“Why can’t you sleep?” she asks as I grab a second mug from the cupboard.

I look at her.

“Why can’t you?”

“I asked first.”

“And I own the coffee machine. Do you want a cup or not?”

“You can’t blackmail me with a latte, Jack.”

“Yes, I can. I own the beans.”

She gives me a tired smile, and it almost gets me. Almost.

I turn away and start up the machine for round two.

We’re in silence while the coffee machine grinds and churns and does its thing. Not a comfortable silence. Not one of those warm little pauses we’ve started having lately, all of us living in the fake world of domesticity. This one has Christopher Otley’s diarrhoea stinking the hell out of it.

Amazing, really. The man isn’t even in the country yet, and he’s already taking up more space in my apartment than I am.

I take a seat and slide Alice’s coffee towards her.

She wraps her dainty hands around the mug.

“Thank you.”

The Toastique Pro sits between us. Domesticity’s smug little memento.

I hate the thing as much as I love it.

Alice runs a finger around the rim of her mug. “Bryce is asleep.”

“Only just.”

“You noticed?”