Just Keep Breathing by GS Rhodes (any book recommendations txt) 📗

“What?” Kidd asked.

“It just seemed like a nice idea, that’s all,” he replied. “Besides, it breaks up the monotony of working from home. Although,” he checked his watch, “they want me in a meeting in an hour and a half, so that’s how long we have to wine and dine.”

“I’ll be heading back to the station afterwards, so no wine for me, unless you mean whining, because I can do plenty of that after the day I’ve had.”

“Maybe just wine for me then,” John replied with a waggle of his eyebrows.

“We don’t all work in publishing, you know,” Kidd replied. “Not everyone can get away with drinking on the job.”

“In publishing, believe me when I say, it helps.”

Kidd and John crossed the road outside the station and headed down towards the riverside. Kidd could already feel his phone buzzing in his pocket and quickly took it out to switch it to silent. He didn’t want to be disturbed when he was supposed to be having a nice lunch. He never took a proper lunch break, never usually had the time, but he was determined to actually spend the next hour with John. He’d promised him after all.

They walked into a pretty nice restaurant overlooking the river, the two of them taking seats by the window. The decor was a little over the top, and way too fancy for somewhere like Kingston, but it was blissfully quiet, the post-lunchtime rush had died down, practically giving them the run of the entire restaurant. There even seemed to be a team of waitstaff over by the bar, waiting for people to arrive.

When they’d walked in the door, a young man quickly approached them. His hair was cropped close to his head and he was wearing a clean, bright white shirt that had creases across the front of it like he’d just taken it out of the packet that morning and neglected to iron it.

“Hello, my name is Alex, I’ll be your server today,” he said brightly. “Can I get you started with some drinks?”

“I’ll get a lemonade. John?”

John sneaked a quick look at the menu. “A sparkling water?”

Alex wrote them down and swished off towards the bar. Given that there was hardly anybody in here, Kidd didn’t anticipate he would be all that long. He looked over at John, who had taken off his jacket to reveal he was wearing a well-fitted checked shirt, tucked into his black jeans. His face cracked into a smile when he caught Kidd looking.

“What are you staring at?”

“Nothing,” Kidd replied, flustered, picking up his menu. “You just look nice, that’s all.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Thought I’d make an effort.”

“I’m just here in my work stuff,” Kidd replied.

“Yes, but Ben, your work stuff is a suit and tie,” he replied, still smiling. “If I’d shown up in what I’d been working from home in all day, it would have looked like you were taking a homeless person out to lunch.”

“What were you wearing?”

“Day pyjamas.”

“What on earth are day pyjamas?”

“Pyjamas…for daytime,” he said. Kidd couldn’t stifle a laugh. “It’s literally a pair of grey sweatpants and a tee, but it’s not cute for going out for lunch.”

Kidd couldn’t really imagine an outfit where he wouldn’t think that John was cute, but he decided to keep that to himself. They’d not been seeing each other for all that long and the last thing he wanted to do was scare him off by being too forward.

“Ben?” he said, leaning forward. “I asked what you’ve been up to.”

“Oh,” Kidd said, jumping a little. He’d gotten lost in his own head for a moment. “We started working on a new case actually. There’s a teenage girl that’s gone missing. That’s what the press conference thing was about outside the station.”

“So I’ll turn on the news tonight and you’ll be there?”

“Possibly. It might not go national but if it does, I’ll be nervously chattering on about Sarah Harper,” Kidd said with a sigh. He still wished he’d been able to come up with something a little more concrete rather than vague, politician-style answers that would be torn apart by people online. “It’s a pretty big case.”

The waiter appeared and placed their drinks on the table, offering a hopeful smile to them both which faded when John politely informed him that neither one of them had yet picked up the menu. He said he would give them a few minutes and scurried off, presumably to stand over to one side and watch them until they picked up the menus and put them back down again.

“The reunion tonight, then,” John said, opening his bottle of sparkling water and glugging it into the glass. “What’s the dress code? I’m assuming it’s also not a day pyjamas kind of place.”

DI Kidd winced. He’d forgotten about that.

“What?” John said. “Have I said the wrong thing? I promise I’m not about to wear day pyjamas out, that was a joke.”

“I know, I know,” Kidd said, taking a quick sip of his drink before turning back to look at him. He was staring across the table at Kidd, his dark brown eyes looking a little sparkly in the light coming in from the window, his hair in that perfect quiff that miraculously seemed to stay there. Kidd had no idea how. His hair always looked scruffy no matter what he tried to do with it. He looked hopeful and Kidd felt like he was about to tell a child that Santa Claus wasn’t real. “Something has sort of come up,” he said eventually.

“Oh?” It was all John managed. It was clearly still Kidd’s turn to speak.

“The reunion is still happening, and I’m still going, but the parents of Sarah Harper, the girl that’s gone missing, they are likely going to be there,” he said, though he didn’t like how readily he was giving out details of what he was working on. He wasn’t supposed to be doing