What Goes Around...

Part Five

Chapter Five

                "So how is Small Town USA?"

Freya's heart always leapt when she spoke to Jamie. After her eight years in the States he was the only person she could call a true friend. She'd been part of an elite team working flat out on their project, whilst arguably she was the brains behind the whole thing; there were others who were better at the PR, and the money men. None of them were really friends as they were all so different, and other than Simon, they didn't really socialise together, that was until Jamie joined the team as the secretary/PA/gopher. He held things together and had been the one person to get them out for dinner and even to the bar once to watch a basketball game.  As time passed, they became friends, and he was the only person that she confided in. He'd left the team six months ago, and had been lucky to miss out on the demise of the project in such a dramatic fashion, and that of her disastrous 'relationship' with Simon.

                "Well, I feel like the most socially inept person known to man. No relevant life experience, no transferable skills, can't even get a job in McDonalds, or rather the local equivalent. I feel as though I've been stuck underground for the whole of my life."

Jamie giggled, "that you have girlfriend. I told you that SO many times. Can't your brother work something?"

Freya leaned back against the back of the sofa and shut her eyes, "he's away, so no is the answer. But I have got to get out of this place before I come to serious blows with his housemate."

                "Why's that?"

Freya reached for the coffee she'd made earlier, "he's some alpha male, thinks he knows everything."

He laughed, "I know how much you like THAT."

She joined in with his laughter; her feminist ways were legendary in their school. She'd been brought up KNOWING she was equal to any man, not just believing it.

                "So you're coming back to the coast?" There was a plea in his voice.

                "Nope. You know I can't Jamie, not really. I'm going to give Small Town a go, if not, may have to look at going back to London. The dust will have settled, maybe I can get a job in college...I don't know."

                "So you're going head to head with this big man. That's not like you." She wasn't confrontational for all her feminist ways, that wasn't her nature, she relied on mentally outdoing people and situations, proving her value, Then she'd developed a relationship with her colleague Simon, and things had changed. It seemed to jeopardise her authority, push her on the back foot. Her lack of experience in romantic liaisons had undone her, and she'd been unprepared for the fall out of her project, unprepared and unsuspecting. She'd left MIT a shadow of the person she'd been, and crumbling...until she'd met Mitchell bloody Cooper. He brought out a side of her that she wasn't familiar with.

She laughed, "this is the new me, I'm going to start confronting my demons, and I'm not about to let some ex-jock run me out of town. Not yet." It was fake bravado, and Freya knew that Jamie was wise to that. But he was also a sucker for a sporty man.

                "Ex-jock?"  

Freya laughed she could imagine Jamie drooling at the thought. So she fed him a little ammunition, after all there was no denying that Mitchell Cooper was a mountain of a man. "Mitchell Cooper...Google him."

She'd barely put the phone down on the table when it bleeped with a text.

                "OMFG, hot with the biggest H! I'm coming to visit."