Ready For It

ALSO BY NICOLA MASTERS Happy Happy Happy This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Text copyright © 2023 by Nicola Masters All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher. Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle www.apub.com Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates. ISBN-13: 9781662503948 eISBN: 9781542039185 Cover design by Emma Rogers Cover image: ©Anna Kutukova / Shutterstock For the friends I’ve known for years and the ones I met along the way CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN CHAPTER SIXTEEN CHAPTER SEVENTEEN CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CHAPTER NINETEEN CHAPTER TWENTY CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR Follow the Author on Amazon CHAPTER ONE NATALIE I wish I could be more like Fiona. That’s the main thing that goes through my head as I read the text that just popped up on my phone. For one thing, Fiona’s never even had to look at a dating app. Except for when we’ve had a wine and I let her loose on my Tinder profile. What must that be like? I should have stayed with my childhood boyfriend like she did, even though I’m pretty sure he’s in prison now. That would actually work for me. Nobody thinking there’s something wrong with you and getting to enjoy your own company in the evenings? Sign me up. So, it’s not like Nigel’s message has upset me, per se. And, honestly, who is even called Nigel anymore? I was doing a gracious thing by looking past that and agreeing to drinks. And then the cinema. And then dinner. But if he doesn’t want to go out with me anymore, that’s fine. It’s not like we were the romance of the century or anything. We never even kissed. We only started seeing each other because of a lack of alternatives. Because why not? Because it’s nice to have a fallback for Meerkat Mondays when Fiona’s busy being an Adult with a capital A – furniture shopping or whatever with Matt. And, let’s be real, Nigel’s name is Nigel, and that’s more than enough reason for someone to end up slogging their way through Tinder too. Hence us ending up in each other’s orbits for a minute. NIGEL: Hope you can understand x I look at his last message again. The cheek. Of course I can understand! I think the tone is what annoys me. Because, what? He’s sorry? For me? He should be just as sorry for himself since we are both at the bottom of the pile. But I bet that hasn’t occurred to him. Honestly, god grant me the self-confidence of any man on any dating app ever. I pause on the high street and take a shaky breath. It sticks in my chest. I wince. A couple of cars race past. They literally race, oversized exhaust pipes screaming as they go. Absolute twats. The teenagers driving those cars are much more deserving of my annoyance, so I direct it their way, cursing them in my head for a while. And these boys will grow up to be the Nigels of the world, and what hope is there for any of us? The kids racing around in those cars would probably look at me and see an old woman. I would have looked at me and seen that when I was their age. When Fiona and I were young we promised ourselves we’d never be like every other adult in the world. We were going to be cool. We weren’t going to get ourselves stuck in the same traps everybody else seemed to. Jobs, marriages, a tedious obsession with interest rates. None of it meant anything to us. We’d lie under the climbing frame in her garden, long after we got too big to actually climb the climbing frame in her garden, and we’d plan all of our adventures. ‘I’m going to live in America,’ Fiona might say, eyes shining. ‘In New York. I’ll have a huge apartment like they do on Friends. And I’ll travel all the time. And you go somewhere different, and then we can visit each other.’ ‘I want to go someplace sunny,’ I’d tell her. ‘Go to LA! It’s always sunny. And when I come and stay we’ll go to the beach and just hang out.’ We never let the fact that we were two of the palest people in the world, who would both burn if we so much as thought about the sun, get in the way of a good daydream. And, after we went to uni, it really seemed like we might get to travel the world. At least for a while. I mean, Fiona still did. Because things work out differently than you plan sometimes. And I was behind her every step of the way, because what’s the point in being anything else? The decision’s already been made. A screech of tyres from one of the boy racers brings me back to the present. Honestly. One day they’re going to kill someone. I can feel my anger creeping back. It’s mostly still directed at them, because they are dicks. But it’s Nigel as well. Or it’s me. I don’t know. I shove my hands into my coat pockets and turn up one of my favourite side streets. Everyone who lives along here has amazing taste in interior design and seemingly no concern about ever closing the