Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [121]
Something was tickling her. Like a fly. Natalie swatted at her skin and settled. The tickle came back, and dragged her into consciousness. Grudgingly she opened her eyes.
Tom was crouched over her, with a marker pen in his hand, and he was – bizarrely – writing on her chest.
‘Is this some weird sex thing I don’t know about?’ she mumbled, raising her hand to ruffle his hair.
‘No. We’ll be trying weird sex things later.’
‘Promises, promises. What, then, may I ask, are you doing to me?’ She sat up.
‘See for yourself.’
Natalie looked down. Tom had inscribed a perfect X, about two inches high, on her breast.
‘Okay, honey. None the wiser.’
‘X marks the spot.’
‘Yep, indeedy.’
‘X. The penultimate but one letter. Marks the spot. Where your heart lives, and mine is now lodging.’
He meant to hold her gaze, but he couldn’t, so he got up and shucked off his jeans, kicking them on to the floor by the bed.
She took his hand and kissed it. ‘That is the sweetest, sweetest thing you have ever said to me. Hell – that anyone has ever said to me.’
Tom felt like a kid. He climbed in beside her and held her to him.
‘Of course, it’s also the most nauseating.’
‘Hey.’ He started to tickle her, and she tried to wriggle out of his grasp.
‘And, frankly, the lamest excuse for a letter thus far in your game. And your heart is on the left if I remember anything from O level biology…’
The tickling increased. ‘You’re so rude! I couldn’t reach the left side…’
‘What are you going to do about it?’
And the tickling turned into something else, and Tom didn’t stop to wonder whether she had made a joke of his lame line because she didn’t want to talk about it or because it was a lame line. And, pretty soon, he didn’t care.
Nicholas and Anna
Natalie had bought her dad a Stratosphere snowstorm from Las Vegas. She shook it vigorously and stood it triumphantly on the tray table across his bed. ‘Kitsch comes to the ward!’
Her dad smiled.
‘And I have jelly beans. Your favourites.’ She produced a large bag with a flourish. ‘Better hide them in here.’ She put them into his locker. ‘I’m sure the nurses wouldn’t approve. I’ll get some for you every time I come. They’re brilliant. You can mix together flavours and make cocktails.’
‘You look happy.’
‘A sentence! I should go away more often.’
He raised his good arm and made a shooing motion at her. ‘Brill, Dad.’ She kissed him and sat down on the bed, one leg under her, and held his hand while she talked.
‘Happy? I’m flipping ecstatic!’
Behind her she heard the door and her mum’s voice. Natalie stood up and hugged her. ‘The old man’s talking again!’
‘I know. I can’t get any peace to do the crossword any more.’
‘Rude girls,’ her dad said, but he was smiling as broadly as she had seen him smile in a long, long time.
‘Did you have a fabulous time, darling?’
Natalie had rung her mother, excitedly, from the check-in queue at Virgin to tell her where she was going.
‘The best. Vegas is extraordinary. I thought I might hate it but secretly like it, if you know what I mean. Actually I just out-and-out unapologetically loved it. Best city in the world. I know I should probably think Prague is, or St Petersburg, or Ho Chi Minh or somewhere worthy and beautiful, but I think I’m a bit of a Vegas girl at heart. Cultural desert – it and me. Quite literally!’
‘And Tom? Dare we ask?’
Natalie felt her cheeks go pink. ‘I’m crazy about him.’ What was she? Fifteen?
Anna and Nicholas exchanged a glance and a smile.
‘I mean, not just because of Vegas – although we did have the most wonderful, wonderful time together. I think I must have been getting crazy about him for ages. But it was so different from with Simon, and you lot were all so keen, and, frankly, that didn’t help.’
‘Sorry!’ Nicholas said.
‘It’s fine now. Now I can see what you guys saw. Now I get it. He loves me, too. For what I am. For everything that I am. Or maybe despite of.’
‘Rubbish. He’s a lucky man.’
‘Now I’ve just got to make