Truly, Madly, Like Me - Jo Watson Page 0,132

crap behind. Independent woman in a new town with a new job, starting a new adventure.”

I nodded. “I hadn’t thought about it like that. I sort of just thought I was running away in fear.”

“You did in the beginning. But look at you now, you’re running towards something unknown, fearlessly. You just helped a sheep give birth!”

“I guess I did.” I beamed at her. “We’ve totally become friends, haven’t we?”

She placed her hand on my shoulder and gave me a squeeze this time. “Totally. And I didn’t even officially friend you or like one of your posts!”

Her words, although said in an irreverent way, held more weight than I think she knew. Because when I thought about it, Samirah was the first friend that I’d made offline in years. We hadn’t agreed to be friends by clicking a button and sending thumbs ups and hearts each other’s way. It had just happened naturally, and it was real. More real than anything I’d had in years. Maybe ever.

I thought about my other so-called friends, who’d all abandoned me when I’d needed them most, ghosted me when I’d reached out . . . Real friends don’t do that. Only fake ones.

Fake friends and a fake life.

I was starting to think that, the longer I stayed here. Because when you do something real, like save a baby lamb, it puts things into perspective. It really highlights what’s real and what’s not. Real was over there in that pen, jumping about on its new legs with glee. Real was sitting next to me in this car, trusting me enough to tell me her deepest fears.

That was real.

The other stuff—@TheKyleWhite101, #powercouple, @FitspoFrankie—well, I was starting to think that wasn’t.

CHAPTER 67

We woke up together in Mark’s bed the next morning, and the next morning, and the morning after that, until a whole week of waking together had gone by. We would have breakfast together at the kitchen table, with Harun looking on, hoping to steal something off our plates when we weren’t looking. Turned out Mark was also a coffee connoisseur and each morning he would brew me a different blend. And after breakfast on most mornings, we grabbed a shower together and had hot, wet, sometimes very clumsy shower sex. And after that, Mark would drive me into town and drop me off at Samirah’s and he would go off to the store. And everything about that was perfect!

The pace of life here was slow and lazy and many days we would simply be off work for the whole afternoon and find ourselves with nothing to do but lie in bed, talking and reading and watching Mark’s favorite movies while I got a crash course in cinema and music. I watched and enjoyed movies that I never thought possible, even ones in black and white. We’d settled into this comfortable, effortless way of falling into bed at night, making love, waking up and then, after work, taking Harun on long walks through the desert followed by gin on the veranda, followed by talking late into the night and playing board games by candlelight when the electricity went out, which was pretty often. We even did quiz night and I officially joined Risky Quizzness. It was such fun. Turns out I have a serious gift for general knowledge, all that endless Googling and my need to know everything had finally come in handy! I was amazed by how much fun I was having without my phone and online life. I hadn’t thought about it once or craved it. For the first time in a long time, my life was balanced in a way it had never been balanced before. Work, friends, alone time, exercise.

Our routine began to feel so normal and natural. These weeks had completely changed my life, and I was really starting to feel a part of something. I’d also gone to book club, after being asked by Natasha for the hundredth time while doing my grocery shopping. I had gone back to meditation, and had a much more successful attempt at it; I’d popped round one afternoon to share a coffee with Logan at the hotel restaurant; and to top it all off I’d bought a box of dye and dyed my hair brown to match the roots that were showing. And what really surprised me was how much I loved it! I also found myself going for long jogs in the desert, exercising for no reason other than I enjoyed it. I