Page 42 of Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop
When Nina got back from the bar with their cocktails and with an order of nachos to come, her mind was made up. They’d talk of innocent, innocuous subjects like their assorted nieces and nephews, maybe even a bit of business analysis, but Noah didn’t even give her a chance to take the first sip of her drink.
‘So, you said that your dating hasn’t been entirely successful,’ he prompted.
Nina sighed. ‘It’s been an absolute disaster lately. Nothing but creeps and chancers. What about you? Are you on HookUpp?’
She was pretty sure Noah wasn’t because he would have come up in her matches when they were both at the shop together, unless Sebastian’s dating algorithms had decided that they were spectacularly incompatible.
But Noah was shaking his head. ‘I wouldn’t trust Sebastian not to hack into my account and either pair me up with some right shockers or completely rewrite my profile.’
Nina grinned. ‘I worry about that too. Worse! That he and Posy discuss my matches and dates over breakfast. “Nina’s not going to be fit for anything this morning. She was up-swiping past midnight.”’
‘So, you’re on HookUpp a lot?’ Noah asked carefully then fixed his eyes on his drink.
‘Well,yeah.’ Nina felt as if she was confessing to some terrible crime or a disgusting habit like one of her old flatmates who used to pick at her toenails while she watched TV. ‘It’s the twenty-first century, it’s what people do. Not so many opportunities to lock eyes with someone across a crowded ballroom these days, is there?’ There was really no need to mention her new resolve to quit HookUpp and really redouble her efforts to find her one true love; it might give entirely the wrong message …
‘But it is pretty much for hooking up, not so much for relationships,’ Noah mused. He was still staring down at his glass like it was the most fascinating receptacle for liquid that he’d seen in a long while. ‘I mean, casual dating can be fun but sometimes it feels a bit like being on a hamster wheel. Going round and round in circles without achieving anything. You know what I mean?’
‘I’ve been on that hamster wheel forages,’ Nina said with great feeling. ‘Stop the wheel, I want to get off!’ Then she realised how that sounded. ‘Not the rude kind of getting off …’
‘Though the rude kind of getting off can be fun,’ Noah said and he was looking up from his drink now, directly into Nina’s eyes, so she squirmed in her seat, stretching out her legs so she bumped knees with Noah under the table and just that incidental touch seemed to light a fire deep in her belly and made Nina squirm again. Now it was her turn to stare down at her glass because she knew that if she looked at Noah, she might do something silly. Giggle or blush or reach across the table to yank him closer so she could kiss him.
‘I don’t agree to any kind of funny business until the third date,’ she muttered with only five per cent of her usual sass.
Noah picked up his phone from the table. ‘I must make a note of that,’ he said in such a dark, drawly voice that Nina had to steel every muscle she possessed so she wouldn’t squirm for an unprecedented third time.
‘So, past relationships, have you had any?’ Nina asked baldly as she told herself sternly to calm the hell down. The only reason she felt sogiddyevery time Noah’s leg brushed against hers was because this was an actual second date after months of first dates that never went anywhere. The thought lifted her heart – a man! Not a Heathcliff, not by any stretch of the imagination, but a rare breed of man who didn’t think that getting the first round in counted as foreplay!
‘Yes, Nina, I have managed to persuade a few women to see me on a regular basis,’ Noah said gravely. ‘It was quite hard at Oxford, because all the girls were at least two years older than me and I still had acne and my beloved pocket protector but Sebastian gave me some tips on personal grooming and an introduction to a girl in his tutor group, a maths prodigy, who was also two years younger than anyone else.’
‘Sebastian is actually quite the nurturing sort,’ Nina said because Sebastian had taken Sam under his wing too and now Sam would only wear jumpers made of cashmere and no longer asphyxiated them all with the noxious smell of Lynx because he’d upgraded to asphyxiating them all with a Tom Ford cologne that he was only meant to use sparingly. ‘Did he tell you all about the birds and the bees too?’
‘Thankfully no, I don’t think either of us would ever have recovered. Anyway, I was with Laura for my last two years at Oxford, then I went travelling and she went off to do her masters degree at Durham and we agreed that the long-distance thing wasn’t practical. We’re still friends,’ Noah said and it soundednicethat his first relationship had been so cordial but it was hardly a story to stir the passions.
Noah went on to describe a couple of very casual relationships from his travelling days, then he’d moved to San Francisco and become part of the tech scene and a very work-heavy culture, and dated until he met ‘Patricia, who I was with for nearly four years. We broke up last summer before I came back to London,’ Noah said, but his attention was distracted by his empty glass. ‘Shall we get some more drinks and find out what’s happened to our nachos?’ So it was impossible to know how he felt about Patricia and the break-up.
Still, Nina was determined to find out. To see what lurked behind Noah’s mostly affable, occasionally sarcastic, exterior, so as soon as he came back from the bar with their drinks and with the news that apparently their nachos were on the way, she asked maybe a little too eagerly, ‘Did Patricia break your heart? Or did you break hers? Was it very painful?’
‘Well, during the big fight that led to our parting of the ways, she threw a Microsoft-branded stress ball at my head, which was painful,’ Noah said and he rubbed his right temple as if he could still feel the phantom pain. ‘But she was more cross with me than heartbroken.’
‘She sounds pretty heartbroken to me. You don’t throw stuff at the person you’re splitting up with if you don’t care,’ Nina said, because if something didn’t get broken (usually crockery or glassware, and once an iPhone) along with her heart then the relationship had hardly been worth it – and if Noah could rouse this kind of passion in his ex, then perhaps he might have hidden, Heathcliff-like depths.
‘Nope, definitely cross.’ Noah took a sip of his fresh G&T and wrinkled his nose. ‘See, Patricia was a planner. She had a one-year plan and a five-year plan, even a ten-year plan, and live-in boyfriend transitioning to husband then to father of her babies was an important part of the plan, but it felt like any spare man would do. Like, ticking the boxes was more important than being in love.’
Nina leaned closer. ‘So, you believe in love?’
‘I think so.’ Noah raised his glass to the elusive spirit of love. ‘But love doesn’t come with a five-year plan. It either happens or it doesn’t, right?’
‘So, I’m told,’ Nina said with a wistful sigh because she was also a huge believer in love but it always seemed to happen to other people.
‘And what about you? What’s been your longest relationship?’ Noah asked as he had every right to because Nina had been grilling him about his love life.
Five years, seven months, three weeks and six days, Nina could have replied because she used to be the sort of girl who would measure out a relationship in really specific terms. Like she deserved some sort of long-service medal when actually what made up a relationship was kisses and longing looks and staying up all night talking about everything and nothing, and rowing then storming off but running back into each other’s arms in the rain, and still getting that feeling that made you tingle when you’d been apart and were about to be reunited. That kind of thing.
‘It was a childhood sweetheart deal,’ she said breezily. ‘Started dating when we were practically children and then of course by the time we were all grown up we realised we had nothing in common.’
Noah sat up a little straighter. ‘Oh. Was he from Worcester Park too?’
Nina slumped in her seat as if she could shrink back into the leather-look red vinyl. ‘Yeah,’ she admitted unwillingly. ‘But I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have known him. He didn’t … he went … he kept himself to himself.’
