Highland Fling - A Funny Chick Lit Romance (COMPLETE)

The Cat Sitter

"I didn't mean to smash his heart into smithereens—and they were his words not mine—but if you want to make an omelette you have to break a few eggs, don't you?"

"Stop right there!" My best friend excels at bossiness. She stirs herself from the sofa and holds a hand out, traffic cop style.

"Do NOT mix metaphors like that," she begs. "Please. My ears are bleeding."

She's a copywriter and very fussy about what people say in front of her. Don't ever dare utter, you know? at the end of a sentence, because she will jump down your throat. No, I don't know. That's why you're telling me. I cut that habit out after about the hundredth time she said it.

"Katya!" I too am on the sofa in my soon to be vacated home. I love this sofa. It took me five visits to the SofasRUs (and all on the days when there were sofa sales, so I wasted a lot of bank holidays) to find my perfect one. This is it. Dark red velvet, super squishy and big enough to fit four people, five if you don't mind snuggling up closely.

Tomorrow, I say goodbye to this sofa. Just like I wave farewell to the coffee table I rescued from a junk yard, sanded down and varnished myself, the bookshelves I built from flat packs accompanied by a lot of cursing, the laminated floorboards I laid one hot and sweaty weekend, the curtains...

Gabrielle Amelia Richardson! My mother's voice. This moping will not do. Katya backs her up. Not in real life, but in my head; the two of them competing to see who can order me around the most.

Katya rummages through her handbag, and her hand emerges with a large bar of chocolate that she waves in front of me.

"Okay," she says, "if you promise not to mix any more metaphors and refrain from terrible clichés, I will break this bar in two and give you half." She inspects the bar, checking the label. It's the Oreo cookie version, tiny bits of biscuit crumb encased in thick slabs of chocolate, and it snaps with a satisfying crack.

"The much smaller half."

Oh no, no, no. I lurch forward and grab the bigger bit from her hands, dancing away from her as she shrieks and tries to snatch it back. My fingers move in double quick time, ripping through purple foil while Katya howls, "Don't you dare!" I jam it into my mouth, bite off a quarter and hand it back to her, tooth marks scalloping the edge.

All's fair in love and war, or love and chocolate, right?

"You pig," she says, but bites off her own bit anyway, and sinks back into the sofa. I do too, seeing as me and this comfy hunk of red velvet are on the brink of a split. Best I make the most of it.

We finish the bar between us. Katya holds chocolate-y fingers in the air and wiggles them. I raise an eyebrow, and she lifts the cushion underneath her and wipes them clean on it.

Maintenance of the sofa is not my problem any more.

"It's so selfish of you to move to the ends of the earth," she pipes up.

"Hardly," I say. "They do have public transport in Scotland, you kno- I mean, yes you can get there by train and bus. Even plane if you want to."

"Not the same," she says, and she is right. We have lived not more than fifteen minutes from each other ever since we were kids. Even when we went to university, we chose the same city.

"You're the one who cheered at the engagement party," I add, sticking my ring-less hand out so I can place it on her knee. "Or rather, the not engagement."

"And I would cheer again. Every single time. I just didn't think you would do something this drastic."

But I don't have a choice. Not really. Ryan is still at his family's place in France, and he made it clear I was to be gone by the time he returned. He's got a point too. Despite the lavish sofa and the hand sanded coffee table, this is his house. Ryan works in his family's garage and car sales company. They had a few rough years during the recession, but car sales have peaked once more. He is fantastically rich, and he owns this house outright. I am a tenant the landlord now wants rid of. Fast.