Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake (Winner Bakes All #1) - Alexis Hall Page 0,83

all sat around this table and Josie had made her feel like shit and Florian had come to her defence seemed almost to have happened to a different person.

Josie gave a macabre grin. “Unless, of course they decide we’re equally rubbish and can us both in a shock twist.”

“Or”—Rosaline made a valiant attempt to stay positive—“they’ll decide we both have real potential and—”

“Dump Harry?” Anvita finished.

“I was going to say, ‘save all of us.’ But I suppose that’s an option too.”

“Don’t get me wrong, he’s great. But if he goes out”—and here Anvita got slightly misty-eyed—“then when they’re doing the interviews in the final, he and Ricky can both be all, We’re rooting for Anvita, she’s excellent and sexy.”

“Alternatively,” put in Josie cheerfully, “you could have a tremendous disaster and go home to your nan in disgrace.”

Anvita’s eyes widened. “Wow. Is that what passes for tough love where you come from?”

“I have three kids.” Josie’s wineglass was emptying rapidly. “All my love is tough.”

Nope. It wasn’t Josie’s fault, but Rosaline . . . just didn’t like her. Didn’t want to spend time with her. Didn’t want to contemplate going out of the competition while nice normal Josie and her nice normal kids sailed triumphantly through to the final on wings made of niceness and normalcy.

She stood up again. “Anyway, I came here for a drink and, as with so many things this week, I’ve failed to achieve it. I’m going to the bar. Does anyone want anything?”

“The bartender’s cute,” suggested Anvita.

“Anything you can put in your mouth—actually, forget I said that.”

Since no actual drink orders were forthcoming, Rosaline left them to it and was in the process of securing the planned consolatory G&T when Harry—the man she’d driven from her home with an unsolicited and unqualified mental health diagnosis—claimed the barstool a couple of spaces over.

“All right, mate,” he said, with visible discomfort. “I reckon I acted like a bit of a knobhead the other day.”

She’d been braced for something a lot worse. “No, it’s fine. You were doing me a favour and I shouldn’t have . . . got so personal.”

“Your heart was in the right place, though, weren’t it? And I shouldn’t have got so shirty with you.”

“Let’s put it behind us, shall we?”

“I mean, yeah. If you want. But”—he picked at a bowl of complimentary peanuts—“we don’t have to. Like, you shouldn’t have to worry I’ll blow up any time you say anything that’s not Hello or How are your fish fingers.”

To be honest, she was low-key worried about that with most people. Maybe not in such a specifically fish-fingery way. But she’d tiptoed round her parents for nineteen years until she’d untiptoed in the most dramatic way possible—and that kind of thing was probably more habit-forming than it ought to have been. “I don’t really,” she said, taking a fortifying sip of her G&T. “Or if I do, it’s not on you. It’s just blah blah gender socialisation blah blah history.”

“You what?”

“Oh, you know. We teach boys to talk about what they want and girls to talk about their feelings. And then you grow up and you realise you’ve got to do both, and it’s all a bit of a shock.”

He thought about it for a moment. “Not sure I’m good at either. I mean, if I know how something’s gotta be, I can be like, This is how it’s gotta be, but if I don’t, then I’m a bit stuffed.”

“I think that’s the difference, though. Even if I do know how it’s gotta be, I’ll always end up saying, Have you considered maybe thinking about it being this way, but I’m sure you know best.”

“Does that mean,” he asked, “I’ve got to learn to talk about feelings? ’Cos my mates will take the fucking piss. I can’t just sit there being, Guys, we got knocked out the Cup before the quarter finals again. That, like, makes me sad.”

“You know there are more emotions than happy and sad, and that also you can have them about things that aren’t football?”

“I think we’ve read different rule books, mate.”

“Also,” Rosaline said, really hoping this wasn’t breaking some secret man-law, “you talked to me last night. That was about emotions.”

He didn’t seem shocked exactly, but there was a definite colouring, and he did that thing he sometimes did where he rubbed the back of his neck and looked away. “Yeah, but, well. Like I want to say it’s different on account of how you’re a woman and that, but