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Chapter Text

[00:13] Missed call from Skull

Lucy frowned at her phone for the hundredth time that morning.

“Has he said something horribly controversial again?” Holly said over her shoulder. Lucy jumped so intensely she almost pulled a muscle; it was easy to forget how quiet her coworker could be when she wanted to.

“No, nothing like that,” she replied after her heart rate steadied. “He, er— he called me. Or, tried to. It was just gone midnight, I was asleep.”

“And this is bothering you because…?”

Lucy finally looked up from her phone. “We’ve never spoken over the phone before.”

“Ever? You’ve known each other a while though, right?”

“About half a year.”

“And you talk every day?”

“Near enough.”

Now it was Holly’s turn to frown. “And you’ve… never called? Never heard each other’s voices?”

“No.”

“Not even sent a silly voice note here and there?”

Lucy shrugged. “I’m not a voice note kind of person.”

A long, slow nod was her only response, which was more unnerving than Lucy would’ve liked to admit. “Is it weird? That we only ever text?”

Holly made a vague gesture. “If I were in your shoes, I’d think it a little odd, but—”

“Can I get some service, or is this establishment closed for gossip hour?”

Lucy’s head whipped around to find a customer waiting at the till, red irritation blooming high on his cheeks. She bit back an instinctive snarky response.

Luckily Holly had a knack for dealing with difficult customers, and rushed over to serve him with a beaming smile. “Of course! I can’t apologise enough for being distracted. What can I get for you?”

Lucy decided she was in dire need of a break. She set a timer, threw together a cup of tea and drifted off into the break room, finding comfort in the battered settee with with so many cracks and tears the original leather was barely visible.

She drew her phone out of her apron pocket. The missed call notification still sat there, taunting her for not knowing how to reply. Skull himself hadn’t said anything, either, which was incredibly unusual for him. It was bobbing on three p.m.; normally by now he would have sent at least two obscure memes, three colourful insults, and one post from their shared paranormal forum with added commentary on how stupid OP was. Instead, she hadn’t heard a peep from him.

‘Unusual’ was a massive understatement.

Her teeth worried the skin of her lips. What if something serious had happened, and she was too hung up on a silly missed call to check up on him? What if she’d done something to severely piss him off, and the missed call was his last attempt to hash it out?

Or—the most likely scenario—what if he clicked the call button without realising, and she was making a huge deal over something hilariously insignificant?

She took a swig of her scalding tea, let her head fall back to stare at the ceiling for a long, excruciating moment of contemplation, then eventually opened their chat.

The cursor blinked. Lucy steeled her nerves and reminded herself that she was being a complete tit.

There! Message sent; she was officially no longer a cowardly over-thinker. She relaxed and sunk further into the chair, but stiffened as soon as she saw that Skull was typing. Okay, scratch that—she was definitely still a cowardly over-thinker.

Shit.

It took an embarrassing amount of time to type her response.

Lucy straightened and waited with bated breath, tea all but forgotten about. In the time Skull took to type, Lucy involuntarily went through all of her worst-case scenarios one more time, and suddenly felt the need for a drink much stronger than tea. Christ—why was this bothering her so much?

Lucy slowly placed her phone on the settee, counteracting the urge to lob it directly at the nearest wall. She gave herself a moment to breathe—in through the nose, out through the mouth, just like Holly taught her to do when a customer really got on her nerves—before cautiously picking it back up again.

Lucy’s eyes narrowed. She had an opening here—should she take it? She took a sip of her tea, now disgustingly lukewarm, and decided to go for it.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

Her break was up. Startled that the time had flown by so quickly, she checked the clock on the wall, only to find she was indeed due back on the shop floor.

On the bright side, she no longer had to worry about the possibility of Skull being a) dead, or b) eternally pissed off at her. Instead, her mind focused on the very real chance that she’d be talking to him on the phone in the near future.

Lucy was by no means completely inept; she could handle a phone call when it was necessary. However, phoning her old insurance provider to get them to remove her from their annoying mailing list and calling a close (could she consider them close when she knew so little about him?) friend acquaintance for the first time were very, very different things.

A hot burst of air greeted her as she emerged from the back and settled behind the counter. She’d been a barista at this cafe for so long everything was muscle memory. It was a mostly handy skill, until someone once switched the syrups around and she almost handed a hazelnut latte to someone with a severe nut allergy. Besides that, and… her tendency to text on the job… she swore she was a virtue to the company.

“Got a clearer head now?” Holly said over the sound of milk being steamed.

“Yeah. I brought it up, and now we might actually end up calling.”

“Ooh, how exciting!” Holly beamed, then added quietly, “Unless he turns out to be a creep, that is.”

Lucy took moment too long to reply. “I’m sure he isn’t.”

“…Yeah!” Was Holly’s response, full of fake optimism that was far from convincing.

A third voice—one Lucy was becoming more familiar with these days—came from the other side of the counter. “Who might turn out to be a creep?”

Lucy rushed to meet Lockwood at the till. Even on a Saturday, he was still dressed smartly. “Oh, no one. Just— er, a friend of mine.”

“They only ever text! He could be anyone,” Holly stage-whispered to him.

Lucy gently batted her out of the way. “You don’t need to spill my private life to customers, thank you.”

“But he’s our best regular.”

Lockwood beamed. “Glad to hear it.”

She playfully rolled her eyes and tapped the till screen out of standby. “Your usual?”

“No, actually,” he said, sounding ridiculously pleased with himself over something so trivial. “I’d like to try that new gingerbread latte, please.”

“A sucker for a Christmas special, are we?”

He shrugged. “Who can’t resist a bit of seasonal marketing? I’ll also have a slice of lemon drizzle too, if you’ll allow it.”

A huff of laughter escaped her. “Wow, you’re really branching out today.”

He gave her another one of his toothy grins. As he paid, he quirked a curious eyebrow. “What’s this about a maybe-creep you only ever text, then?”

“Oh, I can’t believe Holly told you about that.” Actually, she could—over the past month or so, Lockwood’s visits had become less by-the-script, and the two of them had learnt more about him than they ever expected to. Of course, it was a two way street, and as a result Lockwood gained a firm grasp on Lucy’s sarcasm, weakness for confident smiles, and now her friendship with a random guy on the internet.

She’d managed to avoid mentioning Skull to him, up until now. She was surprised the secrecy had lasted this long, though she was unsure why she’d been so keen to keep quiet about him.

“We met online,” she said slowly. Thankfully, putting Lockwood’s order together kept her hands busy and her brain occupied, which meant she had less energy to overthink how she’d explain her situation. “Met through a shared interest. We were— er, well, honestly we argued a lot, at first. I’m not sure how it turned into a friendship, but it did, and now we talk pretty regularly.”

“Every day,” Holly added.

“For...?”

Lucy shrunk in on herself slightly. “…Six months? Ish?”

Lockwood whistled, long and slow. “That’s quite a bit of time.”

“Exactly!”

“Holly, shut up,” Lucy said with very little venom. “We’re going to call. We’re going to talk. It’s not an issue.”

He leaned on the counter, watching her dust ginger onto his drink. “Right now?”

“What? No, not right now. That’d be mad.”

“Could be interesting.”

She slid the drink and plate over to him. “Don’t be nosey.”

“It’s in my nature, Luce.” He winked, taking a sip of his drink. “Gossip at heart.”

Lucy’s stomach did a funny flip. She playfully waved him off under the pretence she was in a rush to serve the next waiting customer, and was harshly reminded she forgot to put her phone on silent when her pocket was met with a barrage of vibrations.

As the atmosphere lulled once all customers had been served and seated, she returned to her chat with Skull. Most of it was pure gibberish, a poor attempt at grabbing her attention again by way of spam.

Lucy glanced at her phone sidelong as she wiped down the counters. Why was it such a big deal?

She dwelled on it for a moment or two, but was cut short at the sight of the whole screen lighting up with Incoming call: Skull.

At first, she simply stared. Pressing the red decline button would mean everything stayed as it was—no awkward first phone call, no pressure to make their casual, stupid online friendship something more meaningful, no caving to the expectations of the more socially well-adjusted people around her. But pressing the green pick up button would mean… well, it would mean talking to Skull. Like actual friends. What would they even talk about?

Curiosity gnawed away at her.

Lucy pressed the green button.

“You were staring at your phone wondering if you should pick up, weren’t you?”

She wasn’t sure what she expected Skull to sound like, but it wasn’t quite this. He didn’t sound significantly older or younger, though his voice had a slight rasp to it, and she could hear his smile—knowing him, it was more likely to be a smirk—through his words. It was unfamiliar, yet so undeniably Skull that she couldn’t help but smile a bit herself.

“No. I told you, I’m at work. Busy day.”

“Busy enough that you picked up the phone in the middle of your shift?”

She rolled her eyes fondly and signalled to Holly she’d be back in five minutes—emergency, she mouthed, gesturing to the phone at her ear—and Holly gave her a knowing look in return.

London’s wintery chill nipped at her skin as soon as she stepped outside, but the fresh air was nothing short of lovely.

She squinted up at the sky; grey clouds loomed overhead. “Why now? Why not call later?”

“Got sick of you awkwardly bringing it up over text,” he said, then added: “Wanted to see if you’d pick up.”

“Well, here I am. I picked up. Now what?”

A short pause. “You were the one that was so bothered by it all.”

“I wasn’t that bothered.”

“Er, yeah you fucking were. So, my voice: what’s the verdict? Are you swooning?”

She gave a harsh huff of laughter. “You bloody wish.”

“I can hear you moved outside. Needed some fresh air to cool your blush?”

“Shut up? You’re not funny. Besides, my voice is miles better. I bet you almost tripped over your own feet when I first spoke.”

“I’m nothing but elegant and graceful,” he said, playfully indignant, “even when faced with a really annoying, nasally voice.”

“Charming.”

A beat, then: “I didn’t know you were northern.”

A small, ugly snort escaped her as she contemplated this. At the beginning of their acquaintanceship they’d stuck to an unspoken rule of avoiding delving into their personal lives, but as time passed and they became more comfortable with brutally bullying each other under the guise of friendship, details had come out here and there. They were both English. She worked at a cafe. His go-to drink order was an espresso martini (I’d had you down as a guinness kind of guy, Lucy had said, to which he responded thats the worst fucking insult). The drops of info were random and sporadic, and ended up so Lucy knew Skull had a really stupid tattoo on his left arse cheek, but he didn’t know she was northern—and this, in her opinion, was downright hilarious.

“You do now,” she said. “Look, I really can’t talk for long. I already spend way too much of my shift on my phone.”

“This was an emergency,” Skull said dryly, “you had to succumb to social pressures and modern friendship conventions.”

Lucy huffed in disbelief. “Friendship?”

“Slip of the tongue. I meant rivalry.”

“Of course you did. Denial is not a good look— er, sound, on you.”

He scoffed playfully. “Don’t throw my own words back at me. It’s not my fault you’re desperate for my attention and companionship.”

“And it isn’t my fault you’re projecting.”

“Ooh, you’re pushing it,” he said, and Lucy really could hear his smile. “I could just hang up right now and never contact you again.”

She sighed wistfully. “That would truly be the dream.”

“A nightmare for you, more like. You couldn’t survive without m—”

Lucy took great satisfaction in hanging up on him, and waltzed back into the shop with a lazy smile on her face. To her surprise, it wasn’t Holly whose eye she caught first upon her return, but Lockwood’s. He narrowed his eyes for a moment before flashing a grin—it was his split-second of hesitation that made Lucy wonder if he’d been watching her call Skull through the window.

“So,” Holly drawled, leaning in close as Lucy returned behind the counter, “how was the emergency?”

“Awful. Three wounded, one fatality.”

Holly’s teasing smile froze; it was clear she still hadn’t fully accustomed to Lucy’s sense of humour.

“It was fine. It’s nice to just have that over and done with. Now I can stop thinking about it.”

“What was he like?”

“Exactly how he is over text— no, wait, his ego was actually more inflated. He’s a bit insufferable.”

“The smile on your face counteracts your words, Luce.” Holly playfully nudged her before diverting her attention to a waiting customer, and together they fell back into their routine. After the line had gone back down, she stole a glance at her phone, and held back a snort at the notifications waiting for her.

Chapter Text

Lucy’s flat was always strikingly quiet, but there was something about returning from a busy day at the cafe that made her boxy little home feel like an auditory black hole. More out of habit than conscious choice, she reached for the little CD player that sat where a more well-adjusted person would put a television and felt her shoulders slump as the familiar sound of her favourite music filled the space. In an ideal world, the music would’ve been coming from a record player, but that was laughably out of her barista budget.

Her kitchen was cluttered and cramped (the teetering pile of dishes in the sink that she’d been ignoring for days didn’t help), but it was comforting to know it was hers, and hers alone. Here, it didn’t matter if half of her cupboard space was taken up by her impressive biscuit stash, nor if her collection of mugs and glasses (mostly stolen from local pubs) didn’t match, because no one else was around to care. On multiple occasions Holly had implied she would love to come round, but Lucy pretended to not pick up on her hints. It was an act of good will; the poor woman would have a heart attack if she saw the state of Lucy’s place.

Lucy hummed to the music as she popped the kettle on, threw a teabag into her biggest mug, and went about plating up a few biscuits—she deserved a treat after the long day on her feet. To top it all off, there hadn’t been any leftover cakes or pastries as they closed up—a certain bespectacled boy had nipped in at the last second and was more than happy to take the last few things off their hands—which meant Lucy had no freebies to bring home with her. It justified the number of biscuits she fit onto the plate.

The final custard cream teetered atop of the tower as Lucy bypassed the battered two-seater and went straight for her bed, crumbs in the sheets be damned. The mug and plate somehow found a spot on her cluttered nightstand. She had to stretch to reach the sketchbook that had ended up under her bed, then contorted even more to find a stray pencil, but soon she was settled cross-legged on top of the duvet, hunched over a blank page.

Trying to draw customers from memory had become a fun little game of hers. Lockwood, naturally, was one of the easiest—Lucy saw him so often nowadays, she could get his perfectly styled hair and gleaming smile onto paper with her eyes closed. George posed more of a challenge; his tendency to hide behind his big glasses and baggy hoodies meant details were harder to make out unless she stopped in her tracks and openly stared at him, but she was slowly getting there. Drawing Holly felt like cheating, since Lucy now knew her face almost as well as her own, but trying to memorise and replicate her many hairstyles and accessories was always a welcome challenge. Moustache man was next, though the moustache itself was such an integral part of his character and so difficult to nail that Lucy found herself erasing and redrawing it enough to make her wrist ache. A few more regulars followed. There were some new faces today, too, but she couldn’t remember much more than the very basic shapes of their hair and faces.

A distant buzzing pulled Lucy attention away from the now-crowded page, and only then did she remember she left her phone by the kettle. She clambered off her bed and was in the kitchen in a few steps (one of the few benefits of having the world’s tiniest flat). Unsurprisingly, the incoming call was from Skull.

Lucy didn’t think twice about picking up. “Please tell me he died and this is one of his other friends calling to break the good news.”

“Oh, you’re hilarious,” he said drily. “As if you’d be on my list of people to call if I kicked the bucket.”

“As if you have any other friends to call me in the first place.”

“Joanie, we really need to stop with the self-projection.”

Lucy began to meander back towards her bed. “Er, I think you’ll find that out of the two of us, I’m the only one who’s mentioned other friends before.”

“Your chatty little coworker doesn’t count.”

“Even so—”

“And neither does Pretty Boy,” he said, following it up with a melodramatic gag.

Lucy sank back down into the spot beside her sketchbook and reached for the last biscuit. “You know, it’s funny,” she spoke between bites, “you’re always the first to bring him up.”

“What was that? You just cut out.”

“I said—”

“Ah, wait, I don’t care.”

“Mhm,” Lucy said around the rim of her mug; the dregs of tea were stone cold. “Very convincing. Why did you call?”

“To brighten your sad little day, obviously,” he scoffed. “I know you go straight home after your shifts and sit in solitude, you miserable sod. Is that— Are you listening to Depeche Mode right now?”

Lucy’s gaze flitted to the CD player. It was too far to reach without hauling herself off the bed again. “Maybe I am. Bet I’m having more fun than you are, anyway.”

He let out a sharp bark of laughter “As if.”

With the tea drained and biscuits scoffed, Lucy found her hands desperate for something to do. She picked up the pencil discarded by her sketchbook and began to fiddle with it. It soon became idle doodling in the few blank spaces left on the page. “What are you doing, anyway?”

“Oh, you know. Uncovering the secrets of death. Doing hard drugs and studying ancient relics. The usual. So did the rush hours chip away at your psyche? Was it painful? Was it gruelling?”

The quick topic change didn’t escape her notice, but the audible smile in Skull’s words soon distracted her. “You know it did. It always does. PB asked about you again, actually.”

“He’s obsessed. Oh, no—you know what it is, Joanie? He’s downright jealous.”

Lucy paused for a moment. “Jealous? Of what?”

“Me. Us. This. He wants you carnally, but he knows he’ll never beat what we’ve got going. Poor bloke. I almost pity him.”

“You’re getting far too ahead of yourself—and never say the words ‘he wants you carnally’ to me again or I’ll bloody block you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes. Shut up. He only asked if we call regularly now, anyway. I don’t really like how much he’s learnt through Ho— my coworker. She tells him everything.”

“So he knows how you swoon at my voice and never shut up about my rock hard abs?”

Her grip tightened around her pencil. It was now that she realised her idle doodling had become idle sketching, and what started as random lines was now a vague outline of a man she’d never seen before. The pencil strokes were light and wispy thanks to her uncertain, distracted mind, and the face lacked any discerning details—hell, even the hair was barely distinguishable—but Lucy knew who it was, all the same. She chucked the pencil across the room and flipped the sketchbook so her drawings lay face-down against the bed; out of sight, out of mind. Almost.

“You really need to come up with new material. Don’t quit the day job.” She took a breath. “If you even have one, that is. You spend all day either texting me or posting stupid shit to the forum.” The forum in question being the place they first met—after a lengthy, heated debate that led to one of the mods telling them to shut the fuck up and placing them under a week-long mute.

“Of course I do. I’m a glass jar quality checker. Best in my region, actually.”

“A what?”

“You heard me. Someone’s got to make sure there aren’t any cracks. Don’t want your jam escaping before you can slather it on your toast.”

Lucy rolled her eyes so vigorously it almost hurt. “Yeah, sure. Okay. Glass jar checker.”

“Oh, alright, I’m having you on. I’m actually a hand model. Sexiest hands in Britain.”

“Not the UK?”

“Not yet. Give it time.”

Time. Lucy frowned. What time was it? She pulled her phone from her ear to check and found that almost two hours had passed since she got back home; as if on cue, her stomach growled.

“Fucking hell, Joan. I didn’t know you had a dog.”

“He likes the taste of weird guys with a shitty sense of humour.”

“Ah, so that’s me off the menu, then. Good thing I only provide comedy gold.”

“You ought to see a doctor about your delusion, it’s getting quite worrying. Anyway, I need to go. I have more important things to do than talk to you.”

Skull’s voice jumped an octave in his poor attempt to mimic her. “You ought to see a doctor about y—”

Hanging up on him would never not be satisfying. The barrage of texts that came flooding in immediately afterwards only served to make her even more smug. She’d come to learn that Skull’s post-hang up threats were mostly empty, aside from that one time involving a crowded bus and her phone volume being too loud and Skull taking the opportunity to grace her speakers with inappropriate noises.

The glare from the mother of the child sat next to her still haunted her at night.

Texts. Eventually phone calls. But never pictures.

It was one of their unspoken rules; pictures risked accidental reveals of personal details, or unwanted hints about their day-to-day lives.

But they’d already crossed a line with phone calls, right?

Lucy snapped a picture of the coffee she’d just made, the foam on which had settled into a blob that sort of resembled a skull, and stared at it for a moment too long before turning the screen off and shoving the phone back in her apron pocket.

The afternoon was bobbing on into early evening, closing time was steadily approaching, and Lucy was already behind schedule thanks to being stranded by her coworkers (i.e. left to work the closing shift alone because everyone had more exciting social lives than her). She served the last few stragglers of the day and silently prayed it wouldn’t take too long to clean and close, because she was being beckoned home by the thought of her bed, comfiest pyjamas, and an obscenely large takeaway.

Passive-aggressively mopping around people’s tables was her go-to method for getting lingering customers to leave, and today it had an almost 100% success rate.

Except for two.

George was incessantly tapping away at his laptop while Lockwood peered over his shoulder, only briefly looking up to flash Lucy an apologetic smile.

With a sigh, Lucy leant against the counter and pulled out her phone once more. She opened up her chat with Skull, took a slow breath as she selected the skull foam picture, and—

clicked send. With the caption ‘gtfo of my workplace’.

“Lucy?” Lockwood said, prompting her to look up from her phone (and saving her from staring at it until she received a reply). He’d stepped away from George and was approaching her—with no counter acting as a safety net, no barrier to hide behind—but while that would usually send Lucy’s heart racing, she couldn’t help but notice there was now a complete lack of a reaction.

Lockwood turned on one of his trademark smiles (Lucy did another full body scan—no, still nothing, no racing heart rate or flushing cheeks). “Could we ask for a favour? George is in the middle of an internet-related crisis right now, but we’re having broadband issues back at our place. Would it be possible for him to stay past closing and use the cafe wifi?”

‘Our place’? These two lived together?

Lucy eyed up George over Lockwood’s shoulder. Sure, over the months she’d clocked they were long-term friends, but she didn’t expect Lockwood’s tie collection and George’s array of nerdy graphic tees to live under the same roof.

She looked back at Lockwood with narrowed eyes. The corner of his smile had drooped ever so slightly.

“How long will it take?”

“George?” Lockwood said over his shoulder.

“Fifteen minutes, tops,” George said without looking up. “I swear on Arif’s doughnuts.”

After a moment of mulling it over and avoiding Lockwood’s blinding smile, Lucy sighed. “Alright.”

“Oh, thank you, Lucy!” Lockwood beamed. “We owe you one.” He leant against the counter beside her, so close that his hand almost brushed against hers.

Lucy adjusted the mop to hold it with both hands.

“It seems a bit cruel, scheduling you to close on your own,” he mused.

She shrugged. “Friday night. Everyone else was busy, and the only other guy scheduled tonight called in sick.”

“You don’t have Friday night plans?”

“Well, yes,” she said, thinking back to the dreamy bed-pyjamas-takeaway combo. “A quiet evening in.”

Lockwood took a breath; his grip on the counter tightened. “Well, if you ever wanted to— I mean, would you—?”

Lucy’s phone buzzed and she fished it out of her pocket, barely realising Lockwood had cut himself off. “Sorry, one sec.”

“Your internet friend?”

Lucy pressed the notification. The latest message was now from Skull: a picture of a deranged pigeon marching across a rain-soaked pavement towards the camera with a crazed look in its eyes. The caption was ‘gtfo of my commute’.

She hadn’t realised a grin had crept on her face until Lockwood clicked his tongue.

“I see,” he said quietly.

She pulled herself away from the screen. “See what?”

“Nothing.” He waved it off. “I’ll go and see how George is doing.”

Lucy stifled another stupid smile and pocketed her phone as she approached their table, dragging the mop with her so she could at least pretend she was still working. George squinted through crooked glasses while rapidly typing, only briefly pausing to frustratedly run a hand through his dishevelled hair.

Lucy peered over his shoulder and caught sight of an email chain containing several expletives. “So, what’s the crisis?”

“The forum I run went down earlier, for no apparent reason. And then our bloody wifi went out, so I came here, and I was hoping it’d all be fixed by now but—” He took a heaving breath. “Sorry. It’s fine. Or, it will be.”

“George has poured a hell of a lot of time and love into this forum of his,” Lockwood said beside her. “It’s like his baby.”

“What kind of forum is it?”

George hesitated. “It’s for paranormal theories and conspiracies. Laugh all you want, but it’s a passionate community and I’m rather proud of it.”

“I’m not a hypocrite,” Lucy said. “I’m active in something similar. I’ve made a few online friends through them, actually.”

“And one of them is a rather odd fellow,” Lockwood murmured. Lucy shot him a look.

“These places are full of odd people,” George said through the clacking of his keyboard. “Most are great; some really are downright weird. You wouldn’t believe the amount of drama I’ve had to handle.”

Lucy propped her chin on the end of the mop. “Worst offenders?”

He pondered it for a moment. “Maybe not the worst, but definitely the most annoying—a little while back, two idiots completely spammed the place out debating whether ghosts would be able to talk coherently or not. I admired their creative insults, but they irritated the shit out of everyone and made the whole forum lag with how rapid their replies were coming in. Almost told them to get a room when I PM’d them, but thought it might have set them both off again.”

From where she had frozen on the spot, Lucy could see Lockwood staring at her in her peripheral, but she refused to meet his eye.

“Lucy,” Lockwood said slowly. “Does that sound familiar to you?”

“Not at all.” Now she was on the move, mopping the floor with vigour. “I get this is a bit of a crisis, but I can’t leave until you do. Please don’t take too long.”

“Oh my—” Lockwood laughed and hit George’s shoulder. “It was Lucy and her friend! The— Skull? Was that his name? She told me they met after debating ghosts on a forum and being berated by the moderators!”

George stiffened. “The friend you were telling me about?” He turned to face Lucy, hands gripping the back of the chair. “Is that true?”

Lucy retreated back behind the counter and tried not to dwell on the fact Lockwood had filled George in on her friendship with Skull at some point. “Who’s to say it was on George’s forum? There must be hundreds out there. Thousands.”

“Did you call your opponent, and I quote”—George took a breath—“a ‘basement-dwelling, good-for-nothing, sweaty little bellend’?”

The silence that descended upon the cafe was deafening.

“In my defence,” Lucy eventually said, “he really deserved that.”

“You and your friend”—George stabbed a finger towards her—“are menaces, and I stand by my previous statement about getting a bloody room. I’m almost done, and then we can leave you to flirt with your pocket boyfriend all evening.”

“We don’t fli— Don’t forget I make your food and drink,” Lucy called over to him. “Next time, I might spit in it.”

“You do flirt,” Lockwood said, somewhat sheepish. “A little.”

“This is the friend that ‘accidentally’ called her when they’d been stuck in texting limbo for too long?” George looked to Lockwood, who nodded. “Ah, yes. I’m sure that call was definitely accidental, and absolutely not a ploy to progress your friendship, or anything.”

“Leave,” Lucy said, sterner than she intended to. “Please leave. We’re way past closing.”

“Good timing!” George firmly closed his laptop. “It’s only a temporary fix, but it’ll do for now. Thanks for that, Lucy. Although one could say you owed me anyway, after I had to deal with that nuclear bomb of a debate all those months ago.”

Unwaveringly silent, Lucy continued to clean the counters. She didn’t bother looking up as Lockwood and George packed their things and headed for the door.

Lockwood span on his heel at the last second and leant over the counter. Out of the corner of her eye, Lucy saw him hesitate and shake his head, before simply saying, “I hope you have a good evening. Thanks again, Luce.”

“And then he said, ‘I’m sure that call was definitely accidental, and absolutely not a ploy to progress your friendship, or anything’!”

Skull cackled at the voice she’d put on. “Is that really what the sod sounds like?”

“Almost exactly. As if it’s any of his business, anyway. As if it was any of Lockwood’s business to share!” In her recount of the day, Lucy had thrown the stupid ‘Pretty Boy’ moniker out of the window in favour of hissing Lockwood’s real name with vitriol. She frustratedly threw her hands up for the hundredth time that evening, and reached for the hot chocolate sitting on her night stand with a groan. “Men.”

“Dickheads, the lot of them,” Skull agreed through the speakers of her phone. There was a muffled hubbub in the background, seeping through the walls of wherever Skull was, but she couldn’t quite place it. “It’s mad that glasses was the one who broke up our fight.”

“He was wrong though, right?” Lucy sipped her drink. “That first call I missed was an accident?”

“I told you, they put the call button far too close to the block button,” Skull insisted. “Anyway—my break’s almost up. Need to go.”

Lucy checked the time. “I should probably head to bed soon, anyway.”

“Night, Joan.”

“Goodnight,” Lucy said. She watched the call end and her phone go dark, and remained upright in bed, still gripping her almost-empty mug.

Much to think about.