The Home for Broken Hearts (8 page)

Pete had invited Matt along to the photo shoot as soon as he walked in through the office door that morning. He’d barely had time to park his suitcase under his desk before Pete had whisked him out of the office.

“Mag rules,” Pete had explained on their way to the shoot. “We always get the rookies along to one of these as quickly as possible; stops them wasting time they could spend wondering exactly what goes on here. Truth is, it gets a bit dull after a while; you’ve seen one pair, you’ve seen them all—know what I mean?” Pete tossed his head back as he laughed. “No, of course you don’t, it’s the best job in the world! Play your cards right and I’ll get you in on the next casting. That’s when the models come in and we get them to strip in the office for us. Sometimes, if it’s a bloke’s birthday or some poor sucker’s stag night, we hold a casting for them when there isn’t even going to be a photo shoot. Brilliant, all these girls taking their clothes off for free, doing whatever we tell them without a clue that we’re just having a laugh and there is no job at the end of it. Brilliant. When’s your birthday?”

“Tomorrow?” Matt joked. This was his dream job: London, women, national-magazine journalism. This was what he had been working for, a room full of topless girls and a minibar in the corner. Some people might think that Matt was a little shallow, but he didn’t care. Maybe this wasn’t the kind of reporting that he’d had in mind when he set out on his writing career, maybe he had envisioned himself writing hard news from the center of the Gaza Strip, but life, his life, had brought him to a photo shoot for
Bang It!
magazine, and as far as he could see, there was no way a red-blooded man would complain about that.

Matt
had
been a little worried, as he entered the closed set in a photography studio in Ladbroke Grove, that he would let
himself down, that he’d drool, leer, lose the power of speech—or worse still, get an unwelcome hard-on, which would mean he’d have to cross his legs and stay seated until it abated.

As soon as he was on the set, though, Matt realized that if he had done any of those things, he would have been the only one to care. The girls walked about in nothing but G-strings, laughing and talking as if they were fully dressed. The photographer took an interest in them only when they were in front of the camera, and the makeup-and-hair girl, a pretty redhead called Carla, dusted their breasts with glitter with all the erotic tension of basting a turkey. Even Pete seemed more interested in checking his emails on his mobile than watching what was going on.

The real test came when, during a break, Lindsey, a twenty-one-year-old from Doncaster, came over to talk to him.

“You’re from up north, too, right?” she asked with a pretty smile. Matt tried very hard not to look at her breasts, which was difficult, because they were big and naked. And breasts.

“Yeah, Manchester—just got off the train this morning actually. You been down here long?” He attempted nonchalance.

“A couple of months.” Lindsey’s voice was sweet and light, which didn’t seem to fit with her impressive physique, which Matt knew had to be natural because
Bang It!
didn’t do fake, it was magazine policy. “It’s all right once you get used to it—a lot like home really, only everyone’s got a funny accent.” Lindsey laughed and her natural breasts jiggled in Matt’s peripheral vision. He prayed to all the gods he could think of that he would not blush. Until quite recently, all the women he was really attracted to made him go red from the tips of his ears to the ends of his toes. He’d literally boil with embarrassment, finding it impossible to make conversation with a girl he liked, unable to believe that any woman would take him seriously, even as a candidate to buy her a drink, never mind as a prospective sexual partner. It had taken Matt well into his twenties before he realized that women actually liked him, and he didn’t
even have to try that hard to make them. They thought he was funny, his girlfriends told him, charming, and, best of all, good-looking. They went on about his thick, blond hair and his intense blue eyes. Apparently he also had the kind of backside that a lot of women liked, and one girl had told him he had the sexiest hands that she had ever seen, although Matt failed to see how hands could be sexy.

Gradually, Matt’s confidence had grown, and with it, his success with the opposite sex. He liked testing his luck, seeing how far he could get with girls who should, by rights, be well out of his league. He discovered that most women were accessible. All you had to do was make them laugh, look them in the eye, and really listen to them. Or at least appear to be really listening to them. He’d started writing a column about his dating exploits for the paper on which he was a music writer. It had started as a filler on the music-review pages one week when they didn’t have quite enough column inches and advertising was down. It was meant to be a one-off, but loads of people emailed in, said they’d liked it, that it had made them laugh. Before he knew it, it was a regular thing. Friday and Saturday he’d be out with his mates, looking to hook up. And on Monday he’d be writing it up for the paper. He never used girls’ real names, of course—but some of the things that happened, it was enough to make a grown man blush—only not him. Not anymore—not since the day he realized that a woman hadn’t made him blush in months and he believed that he was cured. But rarely were the girls he met already mostly naked, and he wasn’t sure if gently jiggling all-natural 34 Gs might set him off again.

“I’m only doing this while I’m at university so I don’t end up thousands in debt.”

“Wha… what are you studying?” Matt asked her.

“Forensic science; I want to be like the one on
Bones,
” Lindsey told him. “So far I’m on track for a first, so not just a pretty pair, hey?”

Matt could not have been more relieved when they were interrupted.

“Back on set, please, girls, we need to get your school ties on,” the photographer bellowed.

“God, I hate it when they make me wear a costume,” Lindsey joked, rolling her eyes. “Nice to meet you, Matt, and just between you and me, you should ask Carla out for a drink—she’s been eyeing you since you got here.”

Matt watched as Lindsey strode back to the set, slipped a tie over her head, then handled her fellow model like she was assessing the ripeness of a pair of melons.

“So are you cured?” Pete asked.

“Cured of what?” Matt said.

“Glamourous models.” Pete nodded at the girls, who frolicked with each other with a most professional élan. “Today was your treat—your story to tell your mates back home—but your job is to be an average bloke and write about things average blokes want to know about, cars, footy, bands, gadgets, and how to get girls, and on a weekly like
Bang It!
that means you’ve got to get cracking today. We’ve got to get to a features meeting now; don’t go in without any idea or your new god and our editor Dan’ll rip you to shreds. You’ll need to have uploaded all your copy, which means your column and two features to the features folder by Wednesday. We put that magazine to bed on a Thursday, we get bladdered on a Thursday night, and on a Friday we start all over again. So remember, even though your job is to be the average bloke, you’re not. Average blokes don’t spend all day around naked women, they spend all day thinking about them—which is why our magazine is the field leader in the weeklies and the boss liked your column so much. So you know where you stand right until your probation is up? Work like a bastard or get dropped, there is no in between.”

“Yeah—of course, I’m up to it,” Matt said with a bravado that he didn’t quite feel. “I’m stoked that I’ve got a chance
to write for a national magazine. I’m going to give it my all, Pete—I swear.”

“Good. Let’s get back to the office then and get you doing some real work.”

While he waited, Matt noticed Carla leaning against a windowsill, powder brush in hand, the midday light igniting a fiery halo around her hair. She was about his age, maybe a couple of years younger, slender, with a nice figure under her shirtdress. Okay, it was only his first day here and he had to move into his digs later, but apart from the other articles he had to write, he needed to have his first installment of his column ready in two days—he needed some material. He could recycle something old, or make something up, but Pete had just made it perfectly clear that he needed to impress from the start, and what could be more impressive than bagging his first London date on the day he arrived. Perhaps hitting on a girl through work was a bit of a cheat—a bit lazy—but Matt’s motto was always to strike while the iron was hot. Never pass up an opportunity, he lectured his regular readers.

“Hiya.” He approached her, his smile warm and friendly—open and casual.

“Oh, hi.” Carla looked him briefly in the eye before studying her chipped fingernails.

“This is all a bit mad, isn’t it?” Matt nodded at the models. “You’d think it’d be a turn-on, but to be honest, I’m more interested in a bit of mystery, someone who’s a bit less obvious.” Matt noticed a smattering of freckles scattered across the bridge of Carla’s nose. She had painted her fair lashes black but he could just see their natural pale gold right at the very roots, just where they met the near-translucent skin of her eyelids. It was these small vulnerabilities that really drew him to a woman, not how she was built or how she looked. It wasn’t the tricks a girl used to make herself look better that Matt went for, it was the frailties that she failed to hide that really touched him. They all had them, even Lindsey from Doncaster, for as much as she’d caught him off
guard with her easy bravado, it had been the white patches behind her ears where she failed to fake-tan that Matt had especially liked about her.

“You don’t really think that.” Carla looked skeptical, her light gray eyes narrowing. Matt tried to imagine her in the morning, her face clean of makeup. It was surprising how different some women could look in natural sunlight and without any cosmetic aid. Despite her profession, Carla was wearing hardly any, and Matt liked that about her.

“Listen, it’s my first night in town tonight. I’m moving into my new place later—but could I take you for a drink first? It’d be great to have someone show me around a bit.”

“Really? I mean yeah, okay—why not—a drink, yeah, that would be good. Great—I mean fine, whatever.” Carla’s face flitted through a range of expressions from surprise to delight to studied nonchalance within a fraction of a second.

Seeing Carla’s mobile peeping out of the top pocket of her dress, Matt fished it out, careful not to touch her. He punched his number into it and saved it under his name.

“Text me, yeah? Let me know where to meet you.” He slipped the phone back into her pocket, feeling more heat between the two of them in that second than he had felt the whole time he’d been talking to Lindsey.

“Bye then.” Carla swept the bristles of her brush over the tips of her fingers, leaving them dusted with glitter.

“See you later,” Matt told her. “Look forward to it.”

Matt followed Pete down the concrete stairs of the studio and out onto the bright street, crammed with office workers clamoring for lunch and a little midday sun before they chained themselves back to their desks.

“So you’ve got your eye on Carla, then?” Pete nodded in approval. “Nice little arse on that one and not a bad pair for someone so skinny.”

“It’s just a drink,” Matt said, laughing, as he followed Pete into the back of a black cab.

“It better not be! You and I know the score, Matt, and let me tell you, you might not spend your afternoons rolling around with naked models, but you mention to any pretty little blonde you meet in the pub who you work for and chances are most of them will be all too happy to show you what they’ve got, in the hopes that you’ll get ’em on the next cover.”

“Pete—you don’t decide that!” Matt chuckled.

“I know that, you know that—but they don’t.” Pete laughed. “Best job in the world, mate. Best bloody job in the world.”

Matt glanced at his watch and sat up. It was almost 8:00
P.M.
He’d told the woman on the phone that he’d be at his new lodgings by seven at the latest. It was time to go. Carefully he eased himself off the bed, hoping not to wake Carla.

“Where you going?” she murmured, rolling over, exposing one delicate, pink-tipped breast.

“I’m moving into my new place tonight, remember I told you?” Matt smiled, bending over and kissing her freckled shoulder. “We were going to have a couple of drinks and then they turned into doubles and we came back to your place for coffee to sober up and…”

“Well, we did sober up.” Carla smiled, leaning up on her elbows, her tangle of auburn hair nestling on her shoulders, her black mascara spread under her eyes, intensifying their pale blue hue. She stretched out two slender arms to him, cocking her head to one side and curling her mouth into the sweetest smile in her armory.

“Do you really have to go?”

“I do,” Matt said. “I need to move in and I’m already late.”

“Well, I’ll come with you then,” Carla offered, already pushing back the bedclothes and reaching for her discarded bra. “Help you get moved.”

“I’ve only got a couple of cases,” Matt said, nodding at his luggage that he’d left in the hallway. There were two reasons he didn’t want Carla to come with him: first, he didn’t really
want anyone to know that he was going to live with a widow and her kid and, from what he could make out, some old lady and a German woman. It wasn’t exactly cool, it wasn’t exactly the
Bang It!
–lad lifestyle that Pete had told him he had to embody. But it was the only place he could find close to work that he could afford and that wouldn’t mean spending a fortune in travel costs. It would do for now, at least while he was still on three months’ probation; once the job was permanent and he knew he wasn’t going to have to go back up north with his tail between his legs, he would look for a bachelor pad.

The second reason was that he didn’t want Carla to think that what had just happened meant anything. That the sex they’d had would lead to greater intimacy. Matt had broken his own rules. He hadn’t told Carla up front that he wasn’t looking for a relationship. He hadn’t told her definitively that he wasn’t looking for a girlfriend, his usual blunt disclaimer when he approached any woman. In theory, his blunt honesty should have put girls off, but so far that had rarely happened. Women heard what he said, they shrugged their shoulders as if they didn’t care—but almost all of them seemed to secretly think that he would change. Each one thought she would be the girl who would change him; one night with her and he’d change his mind, be desperate to settle down, get a couple of kids and a dog. Almost without fail, they were upset and hurt when they realized that Matt never stuck around for more than a couple of weeks at the most. When he’d remind them about his disclaimer, they’d look bewildered and hurt, as if they really believed that a few nights of sex, a few days of laughing and kissing automatically meant the beginning of a grand romance. Sometimes Matt felt bad about letting them down, but at least he always had his declaration to hide behind—proof that he had not led them on. But in the heat of a moment saturated with vodka, Matt had forgotten to make his intentions clear to Carla.