Smithy poked through the pile of memos and envelopes on his desk, nothing grabbed him or made him feel less overwhelmed.
"Back from holiday already?" Gina's head asked from around the corner of the door, making him jump.
"Yeah, no harm in being five minutes early back," he shrugged, binning a handful of outdated memos. "Honestly, ten days!"
The rest of Gina entered the room and sat in his spare chair, her head on one side. "You look well!"
Smithy glanced up and grinned a little sheepishly.
"You look all healthy and brown, too. Where did you say you went again?" She asked, a smile flitting across her face before regaining composure.
"Greek Isles." He nodded, half-reading.
"Greek Isles?" She asks, faux-shocked. "Sounds lovely, new holiday hotspot. Zain Nadir got back from leave yesterday, he went there as well."
Smithy stopped reading, sliding his eyes up the page to state disbelievingly at a very satisfied smirk. He was too shocked to think on his feet and he cursed himself for being so easy to trap.
"Z-Zain, you say? I haven't seen him yet." he tried for cool and casual, but came across squeaky-voiced and awkward.
"You're going to have to do better than that next time someone asks you if you bumped into him when you were over there." Gina stood up, straightened her skirt and belt.
Smithy watched her leave before burying his face in a police report.
The soft sand, the blue sea. Colourful cocktails with naughty names from mid-afternoon before spending the rest of the day in the sun. Dinner in a café where dinner was ordered blindly from a menu of symbols, accompanied by copious amounts of wine. Back to the hotel room and alone for a few blissfully hot hours, the fan clicking rhythmically overhead until morning when the sun shone through the curtains over tangle of sheets and limbs, and the rise and fall of mocha skin next to his own.
Back to life, back to reality. Car reported stolen an hour after it was involved in a ram-raid incident.
