Truly, Madly, Like Me - Jo Watson Page 0,62
you know . . . nothing,” I trailed off, embarrassed. Hoping he wasn’t some kind of mind reader.
He narrowed his eyes. “Something I should know about?” he asked.
“No! Definitely . . . NO!” I said, a little too emphatically, which of course made him smile even more.
That smile of his though . . .
Was I imagining it, or seriously, was he familiar?
CHAPTER 30
“So, what do you do out here all day?” I finally asked Mark, when I’d unpacked all my things into his wardrobe and we’d both gathered back in the kitchen.
“I have a lot to do,” he said.
“Like what?”
“Well, I run a store during the day.”
“Not every day, though,” I said.
He raised his brows at me.
“I went round and you weren’t there. This other guy was.”
“You came round looking for me?” he asked.
“Well, no. Not like that.” For some reason I suddenly didn’t want him to think I went looking for him. “I wanted to return the movies,” I added quickly.
He nodded, seeming happy with this explanation.
“What else do you do?” I asked.
“I have a band on the side,” he replied.
“You have a band?” I was totally taken aback.
“Yup!”
“What kind of music do you play?”
He shrugged. “Mixed genres really. It’s not a very serious thing. But we do have a gig tonight, if you want to come?”
“Yeah?” I perked up at that. I was very curious to watch Mark play in a band. “What else do you do here?”
“I make my own gin,” he said.
“Really?”
“You want to see?”
“Uh . . . Sure.”
We walked around the back of the house. A cottage caught my attention, and behind that, a small shed.
“What’s that used for?” I pointed at the buildings.
“I used to rent the cottage, but now it’s just a storeroom.”
He opened the door to the shed and we walked in. The small room was dominated by a brass pot, and then behind that, rows and rows of bottles with handwritten labels. I felt uneasy in the small space, but tried to push that feeling away.
I walked up to one of the bottles and picked it up. “Do you drink all of this?” I asked.
“No,” he chuckled. “It’s not for me. I supply The Reservoir.”
“The what?”
“It’s a little restaurant. It’s where I’m playing my gig tonight. I also supply the hotel.”
“Ohhhh, so that’s how you know Selma?” I asked.
“Um . . . Sort of.” He sounded sheepish once again. A coy quiver in his voice.
“She’s pretty,” I said, but I don’t know why.
He shrugged. “I guess.” As if he hadn’t noticed!
“You seem to know a lot of people in town . . . sort of.” I hadn’t meant for that “sort of” to come out in such a strange tone. But it had.
“Small town. Small dating pool,” he finally said after a while.
“So you’ve dated a lot of women in town then?” Why was I asking this? I sounded like some jealous wife, which I wasn’t. Obviously.
“Not that many, but if you do go on a date here and decide not to go on another one, it’s awkward, because you’ll defo bump into them again.”
There was that cute “defo” again.
I thought about that for a while. “I guess you can’t just swipe left on them or unfriend and block them.”
I turned my attention back to the bottles of gin.
“Want to taste some?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m not drinking at the moment,” I replied.
“Why?”
“It was just something that Kyle thought would be good for extra content, you know?”
“No, I don’t know.” He looked at me with a blank expression.
I took a deep breath and started. “Well, there is this #NoWineOClock-Challenge. You know?”
He shook his head.
“It’s this thing that people are doing, it’s a really popular hashtag at the moment. You take photos of yourself before, during and after one year of no drinking. It’s something a lot of influencers are doing. You can get a lot of new followers from that. There is a whole community of people online doing it.”
“Wait!” He held his hand up. “Let me get something straight. Do you have a problem with alcohol?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Ever had a problem with it?”
“Nope.”
“So, you’re only not drinking so you can post pictures of yourself and hashtag it because it gives you more content and likes. And you are doing it because your ex-boyfriend thought it would be a good idea?” he asked, looking appalled.
“Yes,” I said.
“You know how ridiculous that sounds, right?”
“What? No. It’s not, it’s—”
“Ridiculous,” he cut me off.
“Hey, our followers really went up when we started the