Page 38 of Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop
Before Nina could ask him why, Posy poked her head round the office door again, a plaintive look on her face. ‘Do we have to go to this open evening tonight? Because I have officially lost the will to live now.’
‘We don’t have to go,’ Sam agreed. ‘Although my entire future depends upon good A-level results, then getting into the university of my choice, but if you’d rather go home and watchDon’t Tell The Bridethen that’s your call.’
Posy groaned and retreated back into the office.
‘You’re really quite evil, Sam,’ Nina noted with grudging respect.
Sam shrugged. ‘You don’t know the half of it.’
‘It is for God to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive.’
‘Iam going to kill Sam,’ Nina told Noah five nights later as they stood outside Ye Olde Laser Tag Experience on Whitechapel Road. ‘I am going to flay him alive with my PedEgg while he begs for mercy.’
‘“The latest laser technology and SFX lighting combined with all the fun of a Renaissance Faire”,’ Noah read from the poster. ‘Wow. I’d like to have been in the meeting when they came up with that concept.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Nina said. ‘So very sorry. I should have researched it properly and I should have been way more suspicious when Sam offered to reserve two tickets with a voucher he had.’
Noah nodded. ‘You must have done something to really piss him off.’
‘I fetched him cakes,’ Nina remembered. ‘And the next thing I will serve him is vengeance.’ She looked at Noah who was still staring at the poster, which featured two men in cheap-looking chainmail holding some very unmedieval laser guns bedecked with flashing green lights, with an air of bemusement. ‘Shall we just move on to the second part of the evening and go to this bar I found in an old discount-suit shop?’
Bemusement turned to amusement. Noah put a hand to his heart and furrowed his brow like Nina had done him ten kinds of wrong. ‘No way! You promised me laser tag and we are going to play laser tag.’ He tapped the poster. ‘Do you think we’ll have to talk in Olde Worlde English, my comely wench?’
As compliments went, Nina had had much worse. She’d also had much better. ‘If you say anything else in Olde Worlde English, then I’m going home. I’m not even joking,’ she said.
This was already going down in the annals as one of Nina’s Worst Dates Ever. Not as bad as the date watching a nine-hour Japanese film with only two intervals; or the date that had involved a funeral then a wake, though at least there’d been alcohol.
Also, the nerves she’d had before their first non-date were nothing compared to her heart-thudding, sweaty-palms, churny-stomach nerves as she’d taken the Central Line to Bethnal Green tube station.
Her heart-thudding had upgraded to a full-on slam dunk when she’d heard someone call her name and had turned round to see Noah standing on the platform, a still point in a sea of people rushing home from work. He’d smiled at her and she couldn’t help but smile back.
Nina had waited for him to reach her and there was no time for their usual awkward meet and greet because, as if he’d given the matter some thought and had prepared for the moment, Noah took her by the elbows so he could lean forward and kiss Nina on her right cheek and then her left cheek. Then he’d pulled away, smiled again and said, ‘You always look like you’ve stepped out of a film.’
Nina had been feeling frumpy and stumpy. No tight hobble skirt today but a black-and-white polka-dot dress with a full-circle skirt, under a voluminous net petticoat, so she’d have freedom of movement while she was laser tagging. And she was wearing trainers. She couldn’t find her leopard-print Converse so she was wearing a pair of three-stripe Adidas shell-toes, which she’d borrowed from lovely Annika who’d assured Nina they were very in, but they left Nina feeling like she was wearing a pair of orthopaedic shoes.
He added, ‘You’re like Ava Gardner but with pink hair.’
‘People usually say Marilyn Monroe,’ Nina said.
‘No, not Marilyn,’ Noah said firmly, tucking Nina’s arm into his so they could start walking to the exit. ‘I think you’re too complex to be a Marilyn.’
His words had secretly thrilled Nina, that someone else could see that she was a creature of hidden depths and grand passions. She’d also felt an unexpected thrill course through her as Noah had pulled her in to kiss her cheeks; something to do with suddenly being pressed so close to him that not even a whisper could come between them. Close enough that she could smell his aftershave, which was subtle, not at all overpowering, like Noah himself, and reminded Nina of posh soap and clean sheets. But more than that, Nina could tell from the way that Noah had pulled her into his brief embrace that despite his unassuming, navy-clad appearance, he was strong. Obviously all the hanging from zipwires and hiking through rainforests had given him muscles. Wait …what? Nina couldn’t possibly be having lustful thoughts about a man who wore so much navy. Her Heathcliff would never be a man so buttoned up, so ‘compartmentalised’, so … so tied to her own past in the worst possible way.
Still, as they’d caught the bus for the short ride to the venue, Nina had been heart-thuddy and palm-sweaty all over again, not in dread of the ordeal ahead, but rather because of a delicious mix of nerves and excitement and oh God, that usually meant that she was attracted to a man who would inevitably turn out to be a wrong ’un.
Not that Noah was a wrong ’un, but he wasn’t a right ’un either and Nina had spent the bus journey agonising over exactly what Noah was and if this really was another non-date, until they got to the address of the laser tag place and then other matters took precedence. Mainly, if she’d be able to kill Sam and not have Posy hold it against her.
But she’d worry about that later. Right now, she was going to worry about how she could get out of an hour playing a mash-up of Quasar and Dungeons and Dragons. ‘It’s not too late to turn back,’ Nina said, trying to drag her heels, but Noah was having none of it.
‘I never back down from a challenge,’ he insisted, pulling her along with his superior strength. ‘Do you think they’ll make us dress up in chainmail?’
‘Chainmail is my absolute deal breaker,’ Nina said grimly.
There wasn’t chainmail, but there was a horrible garment called a laser utility vest, which was a vinyl tabard decked out with green lights and not designed to be worn by anyone with breasts.
They were given their vests by one of the instructors, or laser marshals, an officious, beardy man in his late thirties called Peter, who kept staring at Nina in disbelief as he led them to a holding area to meet the rest of their team.
‘Team? Can’t we play just the two of us?’ Nina demanded. The word ‘team’ never led to anything good. She’d once worked for a big chain of hairdressers and had been forced to attend an excruciating team-building away day, which involved enough trust-building exercises and role-playing to put her off the word ‘team’ for good.
