Page 43 of Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop
Both of them flinched. Noah because the mention of their hometown must conjure up all sorts of barely repressed memories and Nina, because she knew that her brother had been the root cause of the agonies that Noah had suffered.
And as for Dan, Nina really didn’t remember him being involved in the bullying but then again, so few boys in their year were innocent bystanders.
Nina could hardly bear to think about how much pain, both physical and emotional, Noah would have been in while she walked the same corridors and playgrounds completely oblivious. God knows, she couldn’t bear to think about Dan either, not after their terrible break-up, and so it was easier to distract, divert, deflect.
Her usual tirade would do. ‘Anyway, that was then and this is now, and now I don’t want to settle down or settle for some all-right guy just so I can be in a “relationship”.’ Nina made scathing quote marks around the word. ‘I want more than that. It’s like I told you when we went out last week: I want passion. Life without passion is just existing.’
Noah blinked a few times like he had something in his eye. ‘I’m not sure I agree with you. You can still settle down and have the passion too, can’t you?’
‘Well, yes, but—’
‘I mean, you can be madly and passionately in love but the two of you still need to pay your Council Tax and do a supermarket shop every now and again.’
‘I hear what you’re saying,’ Nina said in the time-honoured way of someone who violently disagreed with what was being said but didn’t want to cause a scene. ‘But that doesn’t sound very passionate to me.’
Noah grinned like he was enjoying playing devil’s advocate. Or maybe he wasn’t playing at all and was simply enjoying winding Nina up. ‘You could have passionate rows in the cereal aisle over whether to get cornflakes or Rice Krispies.’
It was very hard not to grin back, but Nina didn’t want to encourage Noah and also the subject of passion was something that she felt very serious about. Still, she did mutter, ‘Cheerios. Always Cheerios.’
Noah took pity on her. ‘You can’t have passion 24/7. You need more solid foundations to build love on. Unless you’d rather have passion than love.’
‘I want love too. Of course I do, doesn’t everyone?’ Nina asked with a sigh. ‘But then I don’t want to be in a relationship for two years, five years, ten years and it just becomes safe, dull, routine. That’s whyWuthering Heightsresonated so much with me.’ Nina wasn’t going to say anything but the lingering adrenalin from their laser tag victory and the kick of her spiced-pear martinis was loosening her lips. ‘I was stuck in a safe, dull relationship and my whole life was heading in the same safe, dull direction and around the same time I readWuthering Heightsand I realised that I had to jump off before it was too late.’
‘Jump off what?’
The matrimonial merry-go-round, Nina almost said but she shook her head. They were only two non-dates, two dates, in and it was too soon to bare her soul and share all of its darkest secrets. ‘That relationship I was telling you about. I ended it because I realised that I was twenty and for the first time in my life I needed to listen to what my heart wanted, not what everyone else told me I should want. And my heart wanted passion. God, I’d never been passionate about anything before that, except never eating carbs. It was no way to live.’
‘And now you live passionately?’
‘Trying to.’ And yet, it seemed as if that passionate life still eluded her. It was just out of grasp and instead of passion, Nina had a lot of drama, which wasn’t the same thing at all. And then, because they always ended up talking about her, she asked, ‘What things are you passionate about?’
‘I don’t really do passion,’ Noah said in an unconcerned manner as if passion was no big deal. ‘I’m a pretty middle-of-the-road kind of guy.’
Nina couldn’t help the face she pulled. ‘You must be passionate about something,’ she insisted.
Noah shrugged. ‘I’m really not.’
‘Do you think it might be a case of still waters running deep?’ Nina asked hopefully, though it shouldn’t really matter to her if Noah was a passion-free zone.
‘I’d say my waters are pretty shallow. Frozen, even.’ Noah sounded amused at Nina’s persistence. ‘Bit of a cold fish, so I’ve been told; that I don’t let people get too close.’
Oh God, it was obvious that what had happened at school had left Noah with serious trust issues and deep emotional scars. Paul hadruinedhim.
‘Nina, there’s no need to look quite so broken about my lack of passion. There’s all sorts of things I like a lot,’ Noah said and it still sounded as if he was half-teasing her. ‘I like cocktails and laser tag, obviously. Food. Work, but also life outside of work and going on adventures. And of course I’d like someone to share those adventures with.’
‘What kind of adventures?’ Nina asked. The closest she ever came to an adventure was trying to blag her way into an after-hours drinking club on a little side street between Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, which didn’t seem like Noah’s kind of adventure. ‘I suppose you’re looking for a pretty intrepid sort of girlfriend who’d be up for kayaking down the Amazon. Trekking through the Hindu Kush? That sort of thing?’
The sorts of things that Nina would never do in a million years. ‘I think my days of doing anything that means I have to have vaccinations for malaria and yellow fever are over. But I do want to take a six-month sabbatical before I move back to the UK for good so I can do a road trip across the States. Stop in every state. Stay in motels, eat in diners, see all the sights from the Grand Canyon to Graceland.’
‘That sounds amazing,’ Nina breathed, as their nachos finally arrived. ‘I’ve never been to America, but I’d love to go …’
‘Well, we’ve only been on two dates, and there hasn’t even been any kind of funny business yet, so let’s see how things develop,’ Noah said dryly and quite rightly, Nina was horrified. And blushing again. She never blushed so much as she did when she was with him. Maybe she was going through an early menopause.
‘I wasn’t hinting,’ she said huffily. ‘Like Posy would give me six months off. Haha!’ she choked out a laugh to show she was joking too. No wonder Noah was giving her another one of those assessing, analysing looks that always made her nervous. She cast around for something less fraught to talk about.
‘So … you didn’t come back to London with the intention of staying then?’
‘I didn’t. I was meant to just come back for a Christmas visit but then I found out that my dad’s been diagnosed with MS …’
