Lessons in Laughing Out Loud Read Online Free PDF

upon himself to look after her. He’d given her a couch to sleep on the night it all broke down, found her a place to live afterward, and generally patched her up and got her back on her feet, even bringing her a series of TV dinners every night for a month after she’d moved into her new flat, getting them both so drunk that they’d pass out every night on the sofa, heads lolling on each other’s shoulder in snoring abandon. Willow wasn’t sure exactly when, during all of this, she had decided she loved Daniel, but she was certain it was a futile longing that would torment her for as long as it endured, which would quite possibly be forever. Daniel loved her, in his way, and with steadfast loyalty, not at all in the same way that she loved him, which was hopelessly, pointlessly.
“You’re sighing, why are you sighing?” Daniel’s voice interrupted her train of thought.
“I’m picturing you naked,” Willow told him.
“Then you should be laughing!” Daniel chuckled. “I’m getting middle-aged, Will, I’ve got a paunch, an actual paunch, and I think I might be going bald. Will you look at the top of my head for me, because I have the distinct feeling that I’m getting a lot more sun up there than I used to.”
“You want me to look at the top of your head?” Willowcaught herself smiling in the mirror as she toyed with the ribbon around the box of chocolates.
“No. I want you to come to dinner Friday night and perhaps between courses look at the top of my head, you know, if the conversation is running a little dry.”
“Dinner?” Willow was delighted. Daniel had recently starting seeing someone regularly enough for her to be considered a girlfriend. Which meant he didn’t require her company for watching films or eating out or drinking far too much on a school night. Perhaps this invitation meant that he’d already tired of the latest one, a leggy model he’d met on a shoot in Spain, and she had gone the way of the others. Willow smiled. A night out before India moved in was just what she needed.
“I’m not sure . . .” Willow pretended to play hard to get, although both of them knew it was artifice.
“Willow, I need you, I’m working on something brilliant, real art for once instead of prostituting myself and my camera. But I need your thoughts, you know I can’t make any decisions until I’ve talked to you.”
Willow knew she was being shamelessly manipulated, but still she glowed, preening under the caress of his voice. It had been too long since she’d spent time with Daniel, talking nonsense about nothing serious, lying on the decking of his roof garden, gazing at the stars.
“Don’t deny me, baby,” Daniel pleaded. “Please, Will, I need you.”
“Do you?” Willow asked softly, each one of her heartstrings expertly tugged. “I suppose I might be able to make it.”
Willow closed her eyes for a second.
“Think about all the times I’ve been there for you. Like that time I came and picked you up at three in the morning from that Australian barman’s flat in Earl’s Court.”
“I know.” Will winced, remembering how she had drunkenlythrown herself at the much younger barman, until he relented, taking her back to a one-bedroom flat he shared with six others. Sobering up mid-mistake, Willow had told him she was popping to the loo, quickly dressed and sneaked out of the flat without saying good-bye, stumbling into the early hours of a wet October morning. Daniel had come to fetch her even though it was late and he was drunk and there had been a girl in his bed. A lot of people, Holly especially, said that Daniel Fayre was no good for her, but aside from her sister he was the only other person in the whole world who would always come.
“I’ll try, I can’t say more than that,” Willow told him, already knowing that she’d probably leave India Torrance alone with a cutthroat razor and a hot bath rather than miss spending time with him.
“Great. Kayla, you remember Kayla, right?