Page 59 of Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop
‘You know that I could as soon forget you as my existence!’
Normally, Nina wasn’t the kind of woman to dither. She was a ripper-off of plasters, a plunger into cold swimming pools, but instead of immediately breaking things off with Noah, she decided to sleep on it.
Then Noah gave her the perfect opportunity the next day when he texted Nina to tell her that he had to fly to Glasgow to sort out a crisis at a packaging plant.
‘Posy and Verity know about us,’she texted back, reasoning that it was only fair to have the difficult conversation face to face. Binning people by text message was so ten years ago …‘Apparently, we weren’t very stealthy.’
‘I know they know. Sebastian is worried that you’ll be a bad influence and I’ll end up with all sorts of body parts pierced and tattooed.’
What Sebastian had probably said was more along the lines of ‘You could do better than Tattoo Girl: she’s been around the block more times than the milkman.’ Nina also didn’t want to think about Noah’s body parts or his lovely freckly skin covered up with tattoos.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had so many conflicting thoughts about a man. Probably not since Orlando Bloom (her teen crush) had married Miranda Kerr.
She texted back a perfunctory:‘I guess I’ll see you when you get back’and in the meantime, set about trying to forget Noah, which meant firing up HookUpp and up-swiping on a graphic designer who worked just round the corner. In his profile pic he was dark and smouldering and his bio was one line: ‘Let me paint you like one of those French girls.’
When Nina turned up to meet him in The Thornton Arms, Wilhelm was even more smouldering in the flesh. Smirky too and Nina was a sucker for a smirk as much as she was for guys in skinny jeans, Ramones T-shirts (did they give out Ramones T-shirts on the first day at art college along with an orientation pack?) and designer stubble.
Nina hadn’t even had three sips of her vodka tonic before he said that he’d like to draw Nina naked.
‘Yeah, whatever,’ Nina heard herself drawl in a world-weary tone when usually that was just the kind of suggestion that had her firing back with some flirty repartee of her own but honestly, she was so done with the frogs who were only interested in getting her knickers off. The date only lasted that one drink.
Noah had ruined her for all other men and for the rest of the week, Nina lived like a nun. Well, a very progressive, liberal nun who still went to the pub with her friends, but Nina was determined not to get chatted up or picked up so she kept her eyes to herself.
‘Are you ill?’ Verity asked Nina one night in The Midnight Bell when Nina turned down the offer of a drink from a scruffy-haired Australian with tribal tattoos. ‘He’s just your type.’
‘Sickening for Noah, maybe?’ Posy suggested with a sly smile while Tom, who hadn’t been privy to the latest intel on Nina’s love life said, ‘Why would you say that? Noah and Nina? Don’t be ridiculous.’
Even Tom knew that Nina and Noah were two people who didn’t fit together, like oil and water, or spots and stripes.
‘We were quite surprised when you rocked up with Noah,’ Marianne told Nina when they met for their monthly ‘nana night out’ which involved a big sesh at the Mecca bingo hall in Camden then spending their winnings on a bowl of pasta and a bottle of wine at the old-fashioned ristorante across the road.
‘Yeah yeah, he’s not my type,’ Nina murmured as they waited for the bingo to start. ‘I got that memo.’
‘He might notlookyour type, but that doesn’t mean a thing. You’ve been out with some absolute pigs simply because they did look your type,’ Marianne pointed out, which wasn’t very helpful. She waved at an elderly lady sitting across the aisle from them. ‘Hello Lily, how are your knees?’
‘I wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemy,’ Lily said, as she always did, and then she started listing her other ailments, of which there were many, and for the rest of the evening, Nina made sure that Noah’s name didn’t come up.
She did such a great job of forgetting about him that when she came downstairs on Friday morning, ten days after Noah had flown to Glasgow, to see him coming through the shop door, she felt rocked where she stood. Her heart thumped giddily, her body jerked in joyful recognition and she had to tell herself sternly not to smile too much, not to run over to him.
She was going to play it cool.
Then Noah looked up, caught sight of Nina hovering uncertainly in the no-man’s-land between shop and counter and he smiled broadly and brilliantly as if just the sight of her was enough to make everything right in his world.
Forgetting all about her resolutions to end things before they’d started, Nina felt her heart and her spirits perk up like nobody’s business.
‘You’re back!’ she noted and her powers of observation weren’t going to give Sherlock Holmes any sleepless nights.
‘I am back,’ Noah agreed. ‘You’ve changed your hair.’
Nina put a hand up to her hair, which was platinum once more. ‘Well, you know what they say about blondes having more fun,’ she said in a breathy voice as if she were seconds away from an asthma attack.
‘Talking of fun, you have the rest of the week off,’ said a voice behind her, which made Nina jump before she turned round to see Posy standing there. Two minutes with Noah and, once again, the rest of the world ceased to exist.
‘What do you mean, I have the rest of the week off?’ she asked, because Nina was pretty sure that if she’d booked Friday and Saturday off she’d have remembered it.
‘I hope you don’t mind, I asked Posy … it’s a surprise,’ Noah said a little hesitantly. ‘Do you like surprises?’
‘Depends,’ Nina said, because often when a man asked her if she liked surprises, it usually involved him whipping down his trousers. Plus, she was supposed to be breaking them up at the earliest opportunity. ‘What kind of surprise?’
