Page 20 of Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop
‘Hardly everything. I’m not good on all sorts of things. Insects. I always get my Greek and Roman gods mixed up. And ice-skating. I know nothing about ice-skating.’
Damn it! Nina was smiling. At Noah. Again. ‘I don’t believe you. I bet you have tons of facts about ice-skating stored away up there.’ She almost but not quite touched his forehead.
‘I don’t. I really don’t,’ Noah assured her.
‘I’ve seen you in action now. You know everything. You know it all.’
Know it all. Noah. Know it all.
Oh God, that was it! Of course she knew him! How could she ever have forgotten? He was Know It All Noah!
Nina had the look of a cartoon character a split second before something heavy fell on them from a great height. Her eyes bugged out, mouth hung open as she continued to stare at Noah in utter disbelief, so it was no wonder that the smile gradually faded from his face.
He took a step back from Nina, his expression slightly bewildered.
‘I can’t believe … Ow!’ Nina had to bite downhardon her tongue to stop herself blurting out her unexpected revelation because now she also remembered why being called Know It All Noah wouldn’t hold many happy memories for him.
‘Sorry, I was, um, you know, er, first-date nerves.’ Nina grimaced – as excuses for acting like a total loon went, it was a pretty weak one. She tried out a sheepish smile that Noah did not return. ‘Normally I don’t get nervous before a date, but this guitarist, he’s a feisty one! Grrrr!’ And yes, she had just fashioned her hands into claws and growled. What was wrong with her?
‘I see,’ Noah said, his eyes fixed at a point somewhere beyond Nina’s shoulder. ‘Look! There’s your bus. Wouldn’t want to miss it and be late for your hot date.’ Nina turned to see the 168 trundling towards her.
She turned back to Noah to say goodbye, maybe apologise again, crack some lame joke, but he was gone. Striding away from her as if he couldn’t wait to put as much distance between them as possible.
‘I hate him for himself, but despise him for the memories he revives.’
Know It All Noah. Although in all the years that Noah had attended Orange Hill Secondary School, people had just called him Know It All.
Not because he was always getting in people’s faces with his huge intellect, far from it. Now that Nina had finally answered that nagging voice asking her where she knew him from, she found that she could picture adolescent Noah quite clearly.
Back then his hair had been really orange; the kind of orange hair that glowed so brightly it was as if it had its very own power source. He wore a pair of glasses with thick lenses that magnified the size of his green eyes to manga-like proportions. More often than not, those glasses were held together by Sellotape because they were frequently knocked to the ground.
He’d been gangly too, all elbows and knees, and walked with an odd loping gait like a newborn giraffe only recently upright, so he always looked as if he was waiting to grow into his school blazer, even when he’d been in sixth form. Probably because, by that point, Noah had skipped several years ahead. He’d been a couple of years older than Nina, the same age as her brother, Paul. But he’d been moved up a year for maths and all the science subjects. Then another year. Then yet another year. Had even been in the local paper for doing his GCSEs and A-levels early, which had earned him nothing but derision from his classmates.
Paul and his friends, but mostly Paul, a fact which made Nina go hot and cold thinking about it, had made Noah’s life a misery for daring to be better than them. Then the older kids had made Noah’s life a misery too for daring to be better thanthem.
Whichever way you looked at it, Noah’s adolescence had been a misery. Lots of shoving him in corridors and shouts of ‘F*** off, Know It All!’ whenever he appeared. Nina didn’t even want to think about what horrors might have happened in the boys’ cloakroom as they changed into their football kit.
It was bad enough that nobody ever called Noah by his real name unless they were singing an infantile version of ‘Who Built The Ark?’ when he scuttled past. ‘Who did the fart? Noah! Noah! Who did the fart? Know It All Noah did the fart!’
Nina couldn’t remember if she’d ever joined in with the singing. She hoped not. Really hoped not. But she’d been one of the sheep back then. Had looked like all the other girls. Walked like them. Talked like them. Hadn’t wanted to stand out …
‘What’s the matter, Nina? Goose walk over your grave?’ Verity asked and Nina shivered again, returned, blinking, to the present – Friday morning in the tiny kitchen off the back office where she was meant to be making tea.
‘Just thinking about stuff,’ she mumbled, her face flushing.
Verity stared at her keenly because mumbling and blushing weren’t usually Nina’s thing. Usually they were more Verity’s thing.
‘Thinking about your date last night? How did it go?’ Verity asked. ‘Do you think he might be a long-haul type of guy?’
After recognising Noah, Nina had been off her game for her date with brooding guitarist Rob. Also, she’d quickly realised that he wasn’t so much brooding as a bit thick. Boring, even. Had no decent chat in him, just kept wittering on about effects pedals. ‘Definitely not my Heathcliff. Not even a third-date kind of guy, Very,’ Nina confessed sadly. ‘Though I will say that when you have to decide if you really want to have sexy fun times with the person you’ve already been on two dates with, the third-date rule really does sort the men from the boys.’
‘Though you don’thaveto have sex with someone on the third date,’ Verity reminded Nina.
‘You don’thaveto, but if youwantto then the third date is the green light,’ Nina said firmly. Before Verity and Posy had gone and settled down, they’d treated Nina as the oracle on all things relating to men, dating and sex. Some of it, well, actually, quite a bit of it, she just made up on the spot, but she still missed being her friends’ go-to girl on relationship advice.
‘And if you reallywantedto, like, if you’d fallen head over heels in love with someone, then maybe even the first date,’ Verity mused. ‘Un coup de foudre.Love like a thunderbolt, the French call it.’
‘Sex on afirstdate,’ Nina echoed in her most outraged voice. ‘And you a vicar’s daughter too, Very.’ Verity pretended to huff at the same time that the kettle came to the boil. ‘Tea, then? Shall I make for Posy? Tom’s not in today. Noah?’
