Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes [210]
But what did that mean?
‘I can think of nothing else apart from you,’ he said. He sounded quite matter-of-fact. ‘It’s affecting everything.’
Her head filled up, up, up with air and she couldn’t speak. Couldn’t locate a single suitable syllable. She’d suspected he liked her, but now that he’d said it…
‘Say something,’ he urged anxiously.
She mumbled, ‘How long has this been going on?’ I sound like Dr McDevitt.
‘Ages,’ he sighed. ‘Since the night of the launch.’
‘That long?’
‘Yes.’ Another sigh.
‘But that’s months!’
‘Six of them.’
‘All that time…’ She was raking over the past half-year, her version of her life falling into an entirely different arrangement. Did he mean it? Well, he’d said it, but she was afraid to believe him. Yet.
‘No wonder you were so nice to me,’ she managed to say.
‘I would have been nice to you anyway.’
‘Would you?’
‘Sure,’ he smiled sheepishly. ‘Well, maybe. Probably… And you?’
‘Me?’
‘How do you, er, feel?’
Still the words wouldn’t come, and the best she could manage was, ‘I feel like going on a date with you on Saturday night.’
‘OK,’ he nodded, reading between the lines. ‘Maybe you’d come over to my house? You said you’d show me how to dance.’
She’d never actually said she would, but she let it go.
‘And I still think you’d like sushi, if you’d only trust me,’ he added wistfully.
‘I do trust you.’
The following day, when Lisa handed in her notice and announced her intention to return to London in a month, Jack had the good grace to say, ‘We were lucky to get you for as long as we did.’ But she was sharp enough to realize he wasn’t giving her his full undivided.
‘And you could replace me with Trix,’ she suggested innocently.
‘We’ll certainly give it some thoug –! Ahahaha, nice one!’ he laughed nervously.
64
In a house in a bleak, sea-facing corner of Ringsend a man and a woman nervously greeted each other. Through the uncurtained windows the still, black sea watched him lead her into a room that he’d spent several hours cleaning earlier that day. The sea had known Jack Devine a long time and it had never seen such a frenzy. Mind you, he could have ironed his flannel shirt and put on a pair of untorn jeans while he was at it.
The woman sat on the recently hoovered couch and touched a hand to the hair she’d had specially blow-dried. She rearranged herself slightly, feeling the crisp lace and cotton of her new underwear remind her of their presence.
‘Hungry?’ Jack asked, handing her a glass of wine.
‘Starving,’ she lied.
On a small table, Jack arranged chopsticks and soy sauce and ginger and other sushi paraphernalia, then, with painstaking care, he prepared the little rice parcels for Ashling, ‘It’s nothing too out there,’ he promised. ‘It’s sushi for –’
‘– beginners, I know.’ And she was touched to the soul, in a way that had been impossible six months previously, when her soul had been out of order.
‘Perhaps if I don’t have wasabi with the first one? Break myself in gently?’ she suggested.
‘Fine.’ But she saw a whisper of disappointment scoot across his face and it made her sad. He was trying so hard.
‘I’ll chance it,’ she amended. ‘It’s best to have them all together, isn’t it? The different tastes complement each other.’
‘Only if you’re sure,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to scare you away.’
Delicately he placed a tiny, transparent sliver of ginger perfectly centre. With his chopsticks he daintily tidied up the ragged edges and she marvelled that he was going to all this trouble, for her.
‘Ready?’ he asked, lifting the sushi towards her.
For a moment she panicked. She wasn’t sure she was. Feeling as though she was opening more than just her mouth, she let him place the tiny bundle on her tongue.
Anxiously he watched her reaction.
‘Yum,’ she finally said, with a smile. ‘Scary but yum.’ Not unlike yourself.
She tried a cucumber one, a tofu one, a crab and avocado one, then pushed the boat out altogether by having a salmon one.
‘You’re fantastic,’ Jack enthused,