I lay curled in the bedsheets, wondering whether to go join him and see if he needed any help scrubbing his back. Or maybe I’d just roll over and sleep a little longer; after all, it wasn’t like I had to get up and go back to my own place. After he’d poured his heart out the morning after the Masquerade Ball, telling me exactly how he felt about me, I knew I couldn’t walk out on my job at his bar – or him – the way I’d planned to. He was right; it wasn’t important what Heather, or anyone else, thought about us. We weren’t pretending to be crazy about each other; we really were, and that was the only thing that mattered. That night, we’d announced to the other staff that we were dating; Penny squealed in delight and hugged us both, while Rudy’s reaction was a simple, ‘What took you so long?’ And now, six months later, I’d at last taken the plunge and moved in with Eddie. It still didn’t quite seem real; even Delia couldn’t believe I’d made such a grown-up decision, though the fact my landlord had been making noises about getting the builders in to start remodelling the property might have forced my hand a little.
