Page 58 of Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop
‘How would you even know if it was huge or not, you haven’t been on your third date yet, have you?’ Verity chortled. Nina absolutely did not appreciate the fact that Verity had chosen this moment to crack her first rude joke.
‘Haha! Good one, Very! High five!’ Posy crowed. ‘So, Nina, your third date’s looming then? And we all know what happens on a third date!’
How Nina wished that she’d never told Posy or Verity about the third-date rule. ‘You know, youdon’thave to shag someone on a third date. It’s not the law,’ she said.
‘Oh really? Because you’ve always been pretty adamant that itisthe law, unless there were extenuating circumstances,’ Posy said as Verity nodded her head vigorously in agreement.
‘Yes, you said being a vicar’s daughter was extenuating circumstances and so it would be all right if I waited until the fifth date but in the meantime, it was only polite to have a bit of oral sex,’ Verity recalled, a finger to her chin, which Nina thought was overkill.
‘I’m sure I never said that!’
‘Yeah, you did,’ Verity assured her. The pair of them were enjoying this far too much.
Nina cast a longing look at the shop door, praying that a whole coachload of customers would descend, all with urgent queries that only Nina could help them with. No such luck.
‘Oh poor Nina,’ Posy cooed, as she saw the stricken look on her friend’s face. ‘Payback is a bitch, isn’t it? But, come on, all those times that you’ve hounded us about our dating …’
‘Or lack of dating,’ Verity chimed in. ‘Or speculated about our sex lives, usually in front of customers. It’s quite nice to get our revenge.’
‘I’m sure that I’ve only ever been supportive of your relationships,’ Nina grumbled but it was very lacklustre because Posy and Verity were right. God damn them. She was the annoying friend who dragged her single friends out on the pull, even if they didn’t want to go anywhere near the pull. And when Verity had been seeing an oceanographer called Peter Hardy who’d left her alone for long periods of time while he graphed oceans, Nina had constantly speculated on how Verity was getting her sexual needs fulfilled in the long absences. ‘OK, you have five more minutes to rib me about this but then I’m cutting you off.’
‘No more ribbing, but I am curious,’ Posy admitted as she flopped onto one of the sofas. The shop was so quiet that Nina decided she might as well flop next to her. ‘I mean,Noah. I just can’t get my head around it.’
‘What do you mean,Noah?’ Nina demanded indignantly. ‘He’s lovely.’
‘Case in point. You don’t do lovely. He seems very off-brand for you,’ Posy mused. ‘You said you were looking for Heathcliff but Noah seems far too nice to be Heathcliff.’
‘Although, to be fair, your type hasn’t really been working for you,’ Verity said gently, perching on the arm of the sofa where Posy and Nina had flopped so that it started to feel a lot like an intervention. ‘Heathcliff is the worst possible romantic role model to base your search for a soulmate on – at least Darcy came good in the end. No wonder you end up with all of those so-called bad boys who end up treating you terribly. That can’t be much fun, or is it that you just like the thrill of the chase?’
‘Pfffffft, don’t be silly, Very. I LOVE the thrill of the chase,’ Nina said because that was what she was meant to say. It was what she always said. ‘You know me, I’m all about the passion and the drama. Without passion and drama, we might just as well be dead. And Noah, lovely though he is, definitely isn’t passion and drama.’
‘Well, I have to say, Nina, it sounds exhausting,’ Posy said with great feeling because she was married to a man who had brought a lot of passion and drama into Posy’s life. ‘What is the endgame here? Are you still going to be on HookUpp or hanging out in dive bars and dodgy pubs, when you’re in your forties, fifties …’
‘I’m not even thirty yet,’ Nina said. ‘And anyway, age ain’t nothing but a number and the endgame is that I meet my one true love. My soulmate. The one man I can never get enough of: can’t live without him, can’t live with him.’
‘That sounds exhausting too,’ Verity noted. ‘I know lots of people who are happily coupled up but I don’t know anyone who’s in that kind of relationship.’
‘Because a love like that doesn’t come around too often,’ Nina said. A love beyond all rhyme and reason. Without it, she was just going through the motions and it felt like she’d been doing that, stuck in a bad-boy holding pattern,waitingfor years.
‘Well, Noah is great, so please don’t hurt him,’ Posy implored. ‘He doesn’t deserve to have his heart broken and also, Sebastian would be very cross. He thinks of Noah as an honorary younger brother.’ Posy sighed and then went all melty and misty-eyed. ‘You know, Sebastian is a lot more sensitive than most people give him credit for. And yes, he is very passionate and overly dramatic, but not all the time, thank goodness. Passion and drama can get very old very fast, Nina.’
‘Maybe what you think you want and what you actually need are two very different things,’ Verity said with all the calm logic that usually Nina valued. ‘I really like Noah, except when he’s eavesdropping on my private conversations or manhandling Strumpet. He might not be big with the passion and the drama but he could be so good for you.’
And that was the one problem with Noah – which was odd because usually when Nina was seeing someone they came with at least ninety-nine problems – who wanted to go out with someone that everyone liked? Who wasn’t a misunderstood renegade?
Even if Nina and Noah did have a proper relationship, it would still implode like all Nina’s relationships did. Not in a dramatic, passionate, china-smashing way because that wasn’t Noah’s style, which was why their break-up would be inevitable because they were absolutely incompatible. And, if Nina was really honest with herself, it wasn’t just his lack of drama and passion that was the issue.
The secret truth that Nina had been shying away from since that train journey back from Worcester Park was that Noah, for all his talk of compartmentalisation and being a cold fish, had risked life and limb on all sorts of hair-raising adventures. He never stayed in one place for too long and had been all around the world and was planning a road trip across America. Nina, on the other hand, for all her talk of living life to the full, hadn’t ventured further than the fifteen or so miles that separated Bloomsbury from Worcester Park. If you took away the vintage clothes and make-up and the extra four stone she’d put on since then, Nina suspected that she was still the same girl who nearly got married at twenty. Clinging on to the twin pillars of drama and passion was the only way Nina knew to rid herself of that girl.
As soon as Nina remembered the girl she’d been, inevitably she thought about the boy Noah had been. Creeping and cringing down the school corridors as people chanted ‘Know It All’ at him or tried to shove him headfirst into lockers or down toilets. And more often than not, it was her brother who was doing the shoving.
And when Nina remembered their school days, she was also reminded of the terrible secret she was keeping from him, which meant that she and Noah could never be anything.
It was probably best to end things now. Two non-dates in, before there was too much collateral damage and especially before Noah realised that Nina was the very last woman on earth that he wanted to have feelings for.
Verity and Posy were both looking at her, eyes wide with hope and expectation that all Nina needed were a few dates with a good man to see the error of her ways. So that she’d settle down like they had. She hated to disappoint them because she really did love them both but …
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here!’ she declared in her most careless voice. ‘Noah and I have been on two dates. We’re not even exclusive, so stop getting ideas. Yes, he’s a lovely bloke but he could never be my Heathcliff.’
