Page 84 of Is She Really Going Out with Him?
“Noah, thank you so much. You’re a lifesaver, I’ll relinquish all hedge-cutting privileges as a gesture of my gratitude.” I say it with a smile, but his steely gaze tells me it’s too soon to be making hedge jokes.
“Mum wants to ask you something,” says Jess, now wide awake.
“Not now, Jess,” I say, shooting her warning daggers. I’m not asking Noah out, not after tonight. It will have to be Kenny’s grandad.
“Mum wants to ask you out,” Ethan says, with the subtlety of a chain saw.
“Ha,” I laugh, as though this is 100 percent not what I wanted to ask him.
Noah’s glower softens. “What?”
“Well, no—well, yes. Not like that. It’s for work, for my column.” I stumble over the words, my face aflame, wishing I had the sweet refrain of beeping to block out any need for this conversation.
Jess jumps in to rescue me. “Mum’s dating men we choose for her. People from real life, not online. It’s for her magazine,” Jess explains.
Noah looks to me, to confirm this is true, and I nod.
“She hasn’t liked anyone we’ve picked so far, so it doesn’t matter if you don’t like each other,” Ethan adds.
“Thanks, Ethan,” I say, clearing my throat.
“And you can’t go to the pub. You have to do something interesting,” Ethan explains.
“And she doesn’t want a boyfriend. She’s happy on her own,” Jess adds.
How am I in this situation, where my children are pimping me out? And how did no one think it was weird when the boy inSleepless in Seattledid it?
“Fine, sure, if you like,” Noah says, nodding wearily, then picks up his ladder. “Night, all.”
Ethan and Jess high-five each other as soon as his back is turned. Noah scrapes the banister with his ladder on his way down the stairs.
“Just please mind the—” I start to say, but the angry hunchof his back tells me to leave it. “It’s fine. It looks better that way, more lived in.”
And then he is gone, without a backward wave or a word of good-bye. “Thanks again!” I call to the closed front door.
Sitting down on the top stair, I take a moment to check my phone. Still no reply from Will. It’s the middle of the night, so it’s hardly surprising. I hate this. I don’t want to be the person who obsesses over a reply. I also don’t want to be the person who has to ask a neighbor for help in the middle of the night. I promise myself that tomorrow I will buy myself a ladder and all the DIY tools I might need, because if I’m going to keep telling people that I am fine on my own, then I want it to actually be true.
Google searches:
Ladders
Cheap ladders
Why are there so many different types of ladders?
Chapter 27
Jonathan leans out of hisdoorway and calls across the office.
“Anna, in here, please!”
When I walk through his office door, I see Will is already there. Hestillhasn’t replied to my message and I’m starting to suspect I might have invented the whole weekend. He’s wearing a blue suit, a white shirt, and his thick, dark-rimmed glasses. His face is so familiar to me now: the small patch of missing hair follicles on his chin, which you only notice when you’re an inch away; the fleck of gray in his green eyes. My belly hums at the sight of him. Was he always this handsome?
“Will tells me the weekend was a great success,” Jonathan says gleefully, and now I feel as though I have hot coals pressed against my cheeks.
“It was,” I say, my voice coming out at a higher pitch than usual.
“Moonlighting for theTimes, who would have thought it? I can’t wait to read the piece,” says Jonathan, offering us each a brandy snap biscuit. Will declines but I take one. Jonathan orders his sweet treats from an expensive patisserie, and they arealways mouthwateringly good. Sensing Will looking across at me, I can’t bring myself to look at him yet. “Crispin wanted the three of us to jump on a call this morning,” Jonathan tells us, picking up his mouse and tapping it up and down on his desk. “Will, can you?” He nods toward his computer. “I can never get video calls working.”
