Page 52 of Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop
‘It’s good to have a plan B,’ Noah agreed evenly and she couldn’t stop looking at him, at the warmth in his green eyes, his smile …
‘OK, you two, break it up,’ Claude said and it was only now that he stopped with his bloody needles that Nina realised that she hadn’t even noticed the pain for the last half hour. ‘You should have a stretch before I start doing the colour work.’
Nina slowly sat up then gingerly stretched, keeping the arm that was a work in progress pinned to her side. She glanced down to see Claude’s handiwork. ‘It’s perfect. So much better than I ever imagined,’ she said.
‘It’s all right,’ Claude decided, as Marianne stood up and stretched herself. ‘More tea?’ she asked. ‘Nina, Noah?’
‘I should probably go,’ Noah said without much enthusiasm and without moving so much as a millimetre off the stool.
‘Don’t go,’ Nina said softly.
‘If you want me to stay …’
‘Of course she wants you to stay,’ Marianne said. ‘And as you’re not being tattooed or doing the tattooing you could even join me in some alcohol, then afterwards we’re going to order a curry from The Tiffin Tin. You don’t want to miss that.’
‘Well, I’m going to drive Nina home so I won’t have any alcohol but I wouldn’t say no to more tea.’
So, it was decided that Noah would stay.
For the last two hours of the tattooing session he asked some gentle but probing questions about how Nina and Marianne met. They told people it was at a vintage fair, ‘But really it was at a burlesque striptease class,’ Marianne admitted.
‘Not that we’re embarrassed about that,’ Nina assured Noah. ‘But it does give people the wrong idea.’
‘And neither of us could ever master twirling our pasties,’ Marianne added and Noah was so pink that it looked painful and even Claude had to set down his tattoo gun and tell them both very sternly to pack it in.
The conversation seemed to flow like the red wine that Marianne opened. It was light and easy, lots of laughing and joking, especially when the tattooing was done and Nina’s tattoo was covered up with a sterile gauze pad and clingfilm, and they’d decamped to the living room upstairs to eat their way through an Indian feast.
Even though she skewed heavily towards the bad-boy demographic and a life less ordinary, there had been times when Nina had tried to picture her one true love and she’d always come back to the same image: of this unknown man fitting in with her friends, of him sitting in Marianne and Claude’s eclectic, cluttered lounge sharing a takeaway as Nina so often did.
The three of them, Noah, Claude and Marianne, were talking about Palm Springs, how Claude and Marianne had taken a sightseeing tour on an Aerial Tramway only for Claude to realise that he was terrified of heights. Marianne was perched on a pouffe, her long legs stretched out in front of her, as she glanced over at Noah, then caught Nina’s eye and winked at her.
It occurred to Nina that as much as Posy and Verity both lamented Nina’s many and frequent dating disasters, Marianne and Claude were equally disapproving in their own way.
‘Ohno, Nina, not him!’ Marianne would invariably say if Nina introduced her to a man who’d survived the first three dates so she could loosely describe him as someone she was seeing. And Claude, who often saw fit to act like an overprotective big brother, seemed to like Noah a lot if the way he kept nodding and laughing was anything to go by.
And Nina? She liked Noah very much. So much so that ‘like’ was an entirely inadequate way to describe how she felt about him as he carefully guided her down the stairs from the top-floor flat. She’d had one glass of red wine, after five hours of being tattooed and with pain endorphins coursing through her blood, so it had gone straight to her head and her very wobbly legs.
Noah’s hand curled around her elbow, light but purposeful, as if he enjoyed touching her. As they drove back into the centre of town, Noah’s hand brushed Nina’s leg as he changed gears because she’d curved her body towards him. She wished that the journey would never end. That they’d stay cocooned in the cosy warmth of a rented car, just the two of them, the silence comfortable.
Since when had she wanted cosy? Or comfortable?
‘So, our third date, does this mean that we can officially get down to some funny business now?’ Noah suddenly drawled, his voice doing things to Nina’s nerve endings that weren’t remotely cosy or comfortable.
‘This wasn’t a third date,’ she said sternly, because it wasn’t. There were rules about these things. ‘This was hanging out.’
‘Oh, that’s a pity. I was looking forward to more kissing,’ Noah said in the same dark voice that made Nina feel quite light-headed while other parts of her felt heavy and languid.
‘Good things are worth waiting for,’ Nina said as she fluttered her lashes. She really was absolutely hammered just from one glass of Merlot.
‘Well, I look forward to it, then,’ Noah said. It was almost as if they’d skipped a few steps, and the flirty banter had been discarded in favour of deep discussions, the sharing of intimate secrets, so actually Nina was quite happy to rewind and get her flirt on. ‘By the way, I’m back at Happy Ever After this week, but don’t you think we should keepthisunder wraps?’
Nina was immediately stung; it hurt even more than the dull throb in her arm. Then she remembered that she didn’t even know whatthiswas. It changed from minute to minute, hour to hour. One moment as cosy and comfortable as an old cardigan, the next charged with fraught anticipation.
So, yeah, who even know what this thing between them was. But Nina wanted to find out. As Noah pulled the car up at the entrance to Rochester Mews, she said, ‘I’m glad we get to hang out this week.’
She turned her head to smile at Noah at the exact same time that he turned his head to smile at her. Then, shockingly, because this was also new territory, he rested his hand on her knee and it was hard to remember why she wasn’t going to do anything more with him tonight. ‘I’m glad that you’re glad.’ His voice was low, his eyes heavy-lidded as he looked at Nina. ‘How about we seal the deal with a kiss?’
Nina was already unbuckling her seatbelt so she could scoot closer to Noah even if it did mean getting very intimate with the gear lever. ‘Sounds like a plan,’ she agreed huskily.
