Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [118]
Tom couldn’t stop watching her. Surely she could feel what he felt. It just worked. They worked. She was gorgeous. Her face was so animated. Those bright eyes took everything in.
‘D’you reckon we’ve got it right this time?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Well, last time, for H, we were too drunk, weren’t we, to consummate our relationship? Now we might be just drunk enough.’
‘Charming. Do you have to be drunk to find me attractive?’
‘That’s not it. You’re attractive, all right. You’re very attractive. Even without my beer goggles on…’ Natalie giggled. ‘It’s just so… weird… that’s all.’
‘Weird?’
‘You know what I mean. That’s the crux, isn’t it? That’s the switch.’ She held her hands like a pair of scales. ‘That’s where it really shows if we’ve stopped thinking mates – or, dare I say, siblings? – and started thinking… you know, phwoar!’
Mojitos had made Tom brave. He pulled Natalie to him, not very gently. ‘Let’s get something straight, Nat. I’m not your brother, I never have been. And right now I don’t feel very matey. And, since you bring it up, I’m thinking very much phwoar.’
She pulled back. ‘Let’s go dancing.’
Tom pulled her closer again. ‘I’m dancing.’ He started to move slowly, his hands on the small of her back.
‘There’s no music.’ But she didn’t pull away.
Tom kissed her, and it wasn’t friendly.
This time, when Natalie moved back a little her eyes were wide with surprise. They stood still. Tom felt himself on the edge of something. His heart was racing. When she spoke she said only one word, and it was so faint that Tom had to bend down to hear it: ‘Phwoar.’
The young guys on a cruising weekend away from their cheerleader girlfriends could see that Tom and Natalie had chemistry. They whistled, and one shouted, ‘Get a room’ – advice they were happy to take. The elderly couple in the lift on their way to the fifteenth floor, talking loudly about their dinner and trying not to stare (her with disapproval, him with a twinge of envy and regret) didn’t doubt they had chemistry. And the tired maid, on her long journey of turning down beds and placing chocolate on pillows, could see it too. Mind you, she saw a lot of stuff.
And behind the door, fifteen floors up, one or other of them might have been waiting to get the giggles, or snap out of it, or for something to happen that reminded them of who they were and why this couldn’t happen. But it didn’t.
The only really funny thing that happened was that the enormous fountain that ran along the lake at the front of the Bellagio erupted into its noisy, explosive son et lumière show just as…
But that was on the third time, hours later.
And when she woke up, and raised her head to check that she was where she thought she was, and that the room was still, the red digital numbers told her that it was three thirty a.m. ‘Happy birthday, Tom.’
‘Mmm.’ He didn’t answer, unless that counted, or open his eyes, but he pulled her tighter into him, and she went back to sleep with his breath warm and comforting on the side of her neck.
Lucy
The doorbell rang as the phone did. Lucy went to the door – let whoever was ringing leave a message.
It was Marianne.
Marianne had never slapped someone’s face before, and Lucy had never been slapped, so it was an awkward, unsatisfactory blow, but hard enough to leave three red welts across Lucy’s face.
They both stood, shocked, on the step. Three doors down, Lucy’s neighbour stared from behind her rosebush.
Marianne spoke first: ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have hit you.’
‘Yes, you should.’
They still stood there.
‘Do you want to come in?’
Marianne’s face crumpled, and she seemed to sink towards the floor. ‘I don’t know.’
Lucy pulled her into the house and shut the door behind them. ‘I’m sorry.’