Page 40 of Best Served Hot
Outside, Alex said, ‘OK, what the hell happened there?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, you had an opportunity, and you didn’t take it. You could have pressed him. He was clearly there to meet someone he didn’t want you to see.’
Nicole glanced back at the bar. ‘I guess he was. Hmm. Well, there’s always tomorrow.’
Alex laughed. ‘Nicole, I’m staggered. You vowed to drain every last drop of sweat out of his body, and now you’re just passing up a shot?’
While it had certainly crossed Nicole’s mind that he was there with his next conquest, she just hadn’t had the energy to do anything with it. ‘Doyouwant to go back in?’ she asked Alex.
Alex shook her head. ‘He’ll keep until tomorrow.I’mnot concerned about that. I was just checking that you hadn’t had a bang on the head or something.’
‘You want to get something to eat?’ Nicole asked, buttoning her jacket, not interested in Ethan for the moment. ‘I’m Hank Marvin.’
Alex looked keen. ‘Me too. I know a great Chinese place down the road.’
Nicole smiled. ‘Lead the way.’
***
Nicole knew it was out of character for her to pass up a chance to turn the thumbscrews a bit tighter. But she needed a break from all that. She was exhausted. You couldn’t run on that much anger forever. She needed a moment to be a normal person, the Nicole of old. She could go back to wreaking vengeance tomorrow. Right now, she wanted to sit in this bright Chinese restaurant with its tinkly muzak, eat some spring rolls, drink a couple of Tsingtaos, and maybe try to convince Alex not to give up on her dreams.
They ordered too much. Plate after plate came to the table: chicken and sweetcorn soup, crispy duck, sesame prawn toast, crispy seaweed, something in black bean sauce Nicole couldn’t even remember ordering, chop suey, two kinds of rice, mushroom chow mein, spring rolls, and a gigantic bowl of prawn crackers. Nicole was cursing herself for ordering in that state of hunger.
But Alex slapped her hands together. ‘Here we go.’
‘You think we can handle this amount of food?’ Nicole asked. ‘I mean, I’m hungry, but I just don’t know.’
‘I could do this solo, in a pinch,’ Alex said, loading up her plate.
‘Is that a tall thing?’ Nicole asked. ‘Do you have extra space in your legs for food?’
Alex tutted. ‘I’m not that tall. I’m only five-eight.’ She crunched on a prawn cracker.
‘From five-two? Fuckyou, that’s not tall,’ Nicole told her sardonically.
Alex started to laugh and inhaled a bit of cracker, choking slightly. She quickly lubricated her throat with beer and recommenced eating the cracker.
Nothing was said for at least fifteen minutes while they ate. When it felt like the edge had been taken off her hunger, Nicole looked up to see that Alex wasn’t kidding. She had ripped the banquet a new one. Nicole was honestly impressed.
‘Can I ask you something?’ Alex said as she polished off a spring roll.
Nicole was full and relaxed. ‘Sure.’
‘Why did you marry Ethan?’ Alex questioned.
Nicole wasn’t sure how to answer that. ‘Er…’
‘That’s not a judgmental question, by the way. I went for his act, too.’
‘So why ask?’
‘Because you seem a lot smarter than me, and I’m trying to understand how he got you,’ Alex explained plainly.
‘That’s… I don’t know how to respond to that,’ Nicole said honestly. ‘I don’t think I’m smarter than you, anyway. So you can cutthatout.’
Alex watched her for a moment, chewing her spring roll. ‘You’re skating around the question,’ she mumbled through a full mouth.
