Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake (Winner Bakes All #1) - Alexis Hall Page 0,123
contingency plans coming out my fucking urethra. I could still make this show if every single one of you fuckers was killed in a freak blending accident. But”—and here Jennifer cast herself disconsolately into her chair—“I do not like to waste footage. And I’ve put a lot of work into giving you a beautiful fucking journey, so a beautiful fucking journey you will pissing well have. Now get out of here, both of you, look humble yet grateful, and leave the rest of this objectively faecal situation to me.”
They got out of there and were about halfway across the lawn before they realised they weren’t sure where they were getting out of there to. The bar seemed wrong now Anvita was gone, and the only place they could be certain of not running into Alain again was one of their rooms and that felt way too intense, especially given how things had ended last time they’d been alone together.
“Bloody hell.” Harry plunged his hands thoughtfully into his pockets. “I can’t believe he tried to get you kicked off the show. I mean, you weren’t even the one what smacked him.”
“Yeah. I get men don’t like being turned down for sex, but that’s a level of pettiness I was genuinely not prepared for.”
“I reckon it was tactical. I mean, he’s obviously narked he didn’t get to have a threesome with you, but he also takes the competition way too seriously and I think he saw a chance to get rid of someone what could beat him.”
She was about to say something reflexively self-deprecating, but then she changed her mind. “You know, I think I can kick his arse. There’s only so many times you can put handpicked lovage in something that doesn’t need it.”
“I know it’s not nice of me,” Harry offered. “But I really would like to see his face if he doesn’t win.”
“He honestly seems to think he’s the only person who deserves to.” She drove her toe into the grass. “God, I can’t believe I dated him.”
“To be honest, mate, I can’t either.”
“Hey.” She couldn’t tell if they were both working hard to make this feel normal or if it felt normal because they were that comfortable with each other. And probably she should stop fretting about it in case it went away. “That was a complicated low-self-esteem-slash-quarter-life-crisis thing we’ve discussed at length and you’re not allowed to be mean to me about it.”
“I’m not being mean. I’m just saying, it never made much sense to me on account of how he’s a dick and you’re not.”
A feature of Rosaline’s love life that she’d previously taken for granted was that none of the people she was romantically interested in had ever watched her previous relationship play out in its disastrous entirety. “Aren’t you always telling me how your best mate’s a dick?”
“No, he’s a knobhead. It’s a very different thing.”
“Is it? Because it sounds like it might be quite similar.”
Harry stroked his jaw. “Like, a knobhead usually don’t mean nothing by it. But a dick just don’t care.”
“And a ballsack?”
“Kinda . . . hangs there, not doing much good to anyone.” “Speaking as someone who wanted to be a doctor,” said Rosaline, “I’m pretty sure they do have a useful function.”
“Speaking as someone who has to live with one, they don’t half get in the way. I mean, sitting on your own balls is, mate, it’s like, it hurts, and it’s embarrassing, and you shouldn’t be able to do that to yourself. Oi, what are you laughing at?”
“Sorry.” She made a valiant attempt to control her giggling at Harry’s testicular misadventures. “The human body is weird like that. There’s a whole bit of your nervous system dedicated to making sure your muscles don’t break your bones.”
“Tell you what, if there’s a God, he’s taking the fucking piss.”
“I know, right? A girl in my class once dislocated her elbow pointing too vigorously.”
“What was she pointing at?”
“Funnily enough,” Rosaline told him, giggling again, “that’s not the detail I most remember from the incident.”
Harry gave a low, answering chuckle. Then abruptly stopped chuckling and glanced over Rosaline’s shoulder. Turning, she saw Alain—who she hoped had ignored Jennifer Hallet’s advice to masturbate over a picture of his mother—striding away from the Lodge and towards the hotel. He had that very fixed posture that said he knew they were there but was making a point of not looking.
“Oh shit,” she whispered. “It’s dinner, isn’t it?”