you. And also, because I’ve got a job in London now. Well, an internship, at a trade union.’
‘Oh, that’s amazing! Congratulations.’
‘I just felt, you know, I should do something. Working with homeless people is important, vital work, and I’ll probably go back to it in the future, but first you’ve got to dismantle the structural inequalities that have allowed the situation to get so bad in the first place. There’s so much energy, so much hope. It’s incredible to be a part of it.’
I felt almost humbled by his passion, his zeal to change the world for the better. I shared his ideals, I truly did – but he was doing something about it, whereas I was just working as a cook in a pub.
‘It feels like there’s a real impetus, right now, to achieving a fairer world,’ I said. ‘It must be incredible to be a part of it.’
He grinned. ‘That’s one of the reasons I love you, Zoë. We care about the same things.’
He pulled off the towel and handed it to me, and I let myself admire his lean, naked body for a few seconds, until he pulled on his underwear and jeans. Then I reluctantly turned and went to have my own shower, my mind whirring as it registered what I’d just heard.
Did he just say he loved me?
Seventeen
As Venus enters Gemini, things are looking good for you on the love front. But are the stars in your eyes making you lose track of where you’re going?
After that, things with me and Jude went from zero to a hundred in, like, a day. Or not even a day, because after that first night, he never really left. He kept saying he needed to go back to his mum’s place to pick up some stuff, but if he did, he must have gone during the day, because every evening when I got home, there he was.
After about a week, I stopped feeling anxious that when I pushed open the door, the flat would be empty and he would somehow have vanished again. And even if for some reason he was out – like one time when he developed a craving for chips and headed to the local late-night kebab shop – I didn’t have to worry, because now I had his number.
And he texted me throughout the day: little jokes and memes, notes to say that he was thinking of me, even a semi-regular countdown to how long it would be until we saw each other again.
Sharing the flat with him after living alone for so long was kind of weird, but I told myself I’d get used to it – and I promised Frazzle he would, too. I didn’t want to put Jude under any pressure, so I never asked how long he planned to stay. He was a Gemini, a bohemian, a free spirit like me. If I made him feel crowded or rushed, he might change his mind about us.
And anyway, things were so good when we were together, there was no reason to change anything. Although the time we had with each other was limited by my long working hours, we made the most of it. Like me, he loved watching old reruns of Buffy and The Big Bang Theory. The Spotify playlists we had on our phones were almost identical. He was rereading his way through the complete works of Terry Pratchett, and the bits he read aloud to me to make me laugh were all my favourite lines from when I’d read the series.
If we were often too tired to do anything more than snuggle into each other’s arms in bed, and if when anything more did happen it was often over really quickly, that didn’t seem to matter. After all, we were still new to each other, still discovering each other, and he was so considerate and sweet in so many other, more important ways.
Like one Wednesday after work, when I trudged up the stairs to the flat, my feet aching after an evening in the kitchen that had seemed like it would never end. Everything had gone wrong that night. Robbie had forgotten to take a batch of soup out of the freezer and it had caught and burned when we tried to defrost it on the hob. The grass-fed beef mince we’d ordered for the burgers hadn’t turned up. A big table celebrating a birthday had neglected to mention when they booked that three of their party were