It takes all of my willpower to not ‘awww’ audibly. So. Fucking. Sweet.
We walk up concrete steps set amidst a kind of parkland next to a giant structure that looks akin to the Parthenon.
‘It’s called Edinburgh’s Disgrace,’ Beau says. ‘It was meant to honour the dead, but it’s basically just a concrete monument to bad financial planning, because it was never finished.’
I laugh as we follow a path around the structure.
‘What about your parents?’ I ask.
‘Like, the actual opposite of yours. Stupidly happy, have been married for forty years, ridiculously supportive of my younger sister and me.’
‘So, the disgruntled artist fuck-you-mum-and-dad stereotype is not even close?’ I tease.
‘Not even in the same stratosphere. “We just want you to be happy, Beau,”’ he says, changing his voice to mimic his parents.
‘Ahh, for my parents that sentence always comes with a “but”. “I want you to be happy, but…”’ I mimic my dad’s dubious tone perfectly.
We sit on a park bench facing Arthur’s Seat, an extinct volcano. And he opens his backpack and pulls out a thermos full of a whiskey-flavoured hot chocolate concoction that makes my eyes widen with glorious surprise when I first taste it.
‘My dad’s special recipe,’ he says.
‘Good work, Dad.’ I sip slowly and feel warm from the inside out. We sit in silence for a moment before Beau looks at me.
‘Do you think your parents are to blame for distorting your idea of happiness?’ He draws circles on my knee with his finger.
I laugh, insecurely. ‘I’ve never thought of it like that. Maybe. I don’t know. When my ex, Joan, and I broke up it was big, yeah, some big shit went down.’ He raises his eyebrows and I nod. ‘And I kind of didn’t know myself anymore.’
‘Of course,’ he says.
‘And I realised that I had gotten happy being unhappy, you know? Or not even unhappy. Ambivalent, maybe? Or numb. Indifferent. Yeah. I was indifferent about my life.’
‘I like how you do that.’
‘What?’
‘Search for the right word. Try it out. Find the right one.’
‘Do I?’
‘Yeah. It’s cute.’
‘Cute?’ I ask, whacking his leg.
‘Intelligent? Disarming? Hot as hell?’ he says, putting his arm around my shoulder again.
I laugh. ‘The last one, please.’
‘It’s hot as hell.’ I lean into him and kiss his neck lightly and lay my head on his shoulder. I wish there was a word to describe this thing that happens when you meet someone new. The way they look at you through a new lens and notice things about you that you didn’t even realise about yourself. The delivery of this information is like these little explosions of recognition. Feeling seen and surprised all at once.
‘How long were you and your ex together?’ he asks.
‘Nine years,’ I say. He makes a throaty sound in acknowledgment. ‘Dog. Mortgage. Joint bank accounts. The lot,’ I say.
‘And why did it end?’
I pause. ‘It just did.’
‘I think endings like that are sadder than the big dramatic ones.’
I raise my eyebrows and look at him. ‘Ooh, big dramatic ones, I want to hear about those.’ I start tracing patterns on this thigh.
‘When I was twenty and at art school my girlfriend cheated on me during an installation piece while I was in the audience.’
‘Shut up.’
‘Yeah. I told her she was fucked, she yelled about my lack of vulnerability, all in front of an audience. People thought it was staged.’
‘Oh my god.’
‘That’s kind of an isolated fuckery. But I’ve been in situations where I’ve messed up, or they’ve messed up, and in those moments you can at least rest the blame somewhere. Or you have a reason for the end. But I had my heart completely shattered by a relationship a few years ago that just sailed its course. It’s tough.’
‘Yeah. I mean, it’s been two years now. So I’ve totally exited that crying-lady chrysalis, but yeah.’ We sit silent for a moment, he puts his hand on top of mine, squeezing it, and I squeeze his back.
‘So, what started all of this? Like what was the final arse kick?’ he asks.
‘A firefighter.’
‘Oh, really?’
I tell him about Ruby the firefighter, about the months of flirting, the one-night stand after the sex drought, and about reading about her tragic death in the newspaper. I tell him about the disaster that was Ben. And Niko.
He laughs. ‘And the girl here?’
‘All fantasy and missed opportunities. Our timing was always off. But this time closed that book. She has a girlfriend. And she didn’t tell me. And I found out after we’d— So, that is very much done.’
‘Oh, god, Noni, that’s rough.’
‘Yeah. And then I decided that I was going to focus on myself, and my own pleasure, and I got a tattoo to commemorate that fact, and then I met this handsome tattoo artist who I like making out with.’ I look at him.
‘Cool,’ he says. And I can’t help but think that he is. Cool. So cool. Probably too cool for me.
‘What does your sister do?’ I ask.
‘She’s an optometrist.’
‘So, the favourite?’ I smirk. He’s so handsome that I need to really expend energy focusing on what he’s saying instead of drifting into jaw bones and squinting green-blue eyes and plump lips.
‘Yeah, something like that.’ He moves so he’s facing me. ‘I like talking to you.’
‘I like talking to you,’ I tell him. He stares at me and smiles. ‘What?’ I ask.
‘Just waiting.’
‘What for?’
He smirks, staring at my lips.
‘Oh.’ I laugh, leaning into him so our lips are close, but they don’t touch. ‘Something like this?’
‘Something like this,’ he says and he kisses me.
Later he drops me home and we sit out in front of my unit. ‘Hypothetically, if I were to ask you to come in, what would you think about that?’
‘I would love to. Really. But I have got a huge day tomorrow, which means I have a huge drawing night tonight. And if I come in, well, there’d be no drawing. Something else entirely would be happening. You know. Hypothetically.’
‘Thank you for a lovely day,’ I say, and he kisses me softly on the mouth. I get out of the car and walk inside, up the stairs to my unit.
My phone buzzes. Hypothetically. If I’d come up what would we be doing now?
I take a photo of the barrel of monkeys on the bookshelf and hit send.
Sexy, he replies. Tomorrow night?
Please, I reply.
26
I love working with Lil. For starters, her studio is gorgeous. Tall white walls, high ceilings, a whole wall of big windows flooding the room with natural light. There’s a tiny kitchenette with bright-coloured appliances and every surface and corner of the room is filled with plants. They hang from beams and a hat stand, sit on plinths and tiny tables in every corner. They flood out of a pastel-blue-painted set of drawers in the centre of the wall. There’s an air diffuser sending the loveliest smelling puffs of air into the space. I feel instantly calm.
‘Are you nervous?’ Lil asks, playing music through a speaker. A grounded male voice sings along to sweet melodies. I’ve already been on two shoots with Lil, but today is my turn, to shoot the promised Amsterdam lingerie photos.
‘Weirdly, no.’
‘Good. Do you want a cup of tea?’
We drink tea and sit on the plush, dark-pink couch and I make her laugh with tales of my cavernous vagina, and tell her about my dates with the Viking. Three now. Officially.
One night he took me to a barbershop that was actually a bar, right near his house. We had to walk down a quaint, winding staircase before opening a door set secretly into a bookcase, prohibition-style, and ended up in a funky little cocktail bar. It was all dim ligh
ting and bearded bartenders with the same haircut. We drank cocktails, ate hot chips, and made each other laugh before tipsily stumbling the short distance back to his flat, where we barely made it inside to have pants-around-our-ankles, jackets-still-on sex in his lounge room. And then again in his shower. And bed.
The day before, I’d met him for lunch at the studio and all the other artists had given him shit when he kissed me.
‘Such a smitten kitten,’ one of them shouted, and they all oohed and ahhed.
‘Fuck off. Everyone, this is Noni, Noni these are the assholes I work with.’
‘You’re right, Bojangles, she’s well lush,’ one of the girls with a whole arm blacked out and a thick Welsh accent said, smiling.
‘Let’s go, Noni, before they destroy all my cred.’
‘What cred?’ one of the older artists chuckled.
‘They seem lovely,’ I’d said as we walked towards a pub.
‘They’re great. It’s a great shop to be in. I’ve worked in some shit places in the past. If the people are wrong, or arrogant, or whatever, it just ruins everything. You can’t be creative in a place like that.’
‘Would you ever want your own shop?’
‘No way. I like being able to rent a space, and go away when I want. I think I’d hate the pressure.’
Later over lunch he’d looked at me and asked, ‘What else do you want to do while you’re here, Noni? Is there stuff you want to see or do?’
‘You mean apart from you?’ He’d nodded. ‘I don’t know. I kind of like just making my mind up a few days at a time. That feels very liberating,’ I said.
‘I get that.’
‘I’m so used to only having weekends, or school holidays, it’s nice to not really be beholden or bound to anything.’
‘Or anyone?’ he asked.
Oh fuck, I thought. What on earth do I say to that?
‘I mean, you can tie me up if you want,’ I’d joked. It was the best I could think of in the moment.
‘And what did he say?’ Lil smiles sympathetically. Her tiny, tanned nose crinkles with an almost cautious wince.
‘He laughed and said he’d love that, then we had lunch and we didn’t talk about our feelings and it was lovely. He’s lovely. But if this was the real world, if this was where I lived, if this encounter wasn’t directly linked to the pleasure-quest version of myself, then surely around now is when we would be having a chat about whether this thing was an actual thing, you know?’
‘You want boundaries?’
‘Sure. I just want to make sure we’re on the same page, that this is a fling, and that’s it.’
‘That’s what you want?’ she asks.
‘Yeah.’ I nod. ‘I wouldn’t mind a bit of insight too. Like, what is he thinking about me?’ I lean my head back onto the edge of the couch with a smile.
‘Tell him and ask him. This anxiety about what he wants can quite easily be avoided by just talking to him,’ she says very calmly, the beaded wood bangles on her wrist spinning as she rests her head on her hand, looking at me with nothing but compassion.
‘Oh, Lil, stop being so practical.’
‘This is how old you would’ve navigated this, yes? Pleasure quest Noni only wants to feel pleasure.’ She pokes me in the ribs. ‘Are you feeling pleasure?’
I swat her away, shaking my head. ‘No.’
‘Exactly. Then ask. Talk about it. Find out if you’re on the same page. If he’s seeing other people, if shagging gorgeous travellers is his thing,’ she says casually.
Is he seeing other people? Should I be seeing other people? Do I even want to see other people right now? Between dates with Beau, working with Lil and spending time on my own, I hadn’t really thought about seeing anyone else. I suppose I could, if I wanted to. But I don’t think I do. I like things how they are. But now I have to know, I have to ask. I also feel naïve—as if this gorgeous human is only seeing me. He’s probably got a whole harem of beautiful women he’s making feel like this. You idiot, Noni.
I smile at Lil, pretending everything is fine, as my mind conjures images of Beau with other women.
She stands up and offers me her hand. ‘Now, let’s take your photo before our shoot this afternoon.’
It turns out I love having my photo taken. Eventually. At first I feel weird and awkward, and I don’t know what to do with my hands. But Lil is magic, and excellent at her job. I’ve already assisted her on a few shoots by this stage, so I know her tricks, but they work tremendously. She plays loud music and tells funny stories and makes herself vulnerable, and eventually I feel comfortable, I feel powerful, I feel fucking hot. She shoots me in my clothes to start with, and then piece by piece I undress to reveal the Amsterdam lingerie. Nothing is too posed or over-the-top.
‘These photos are just a celebration of your body on this day. In this moment,’ she says. And I like that. And in this moment, on this day, this woman feels fucking happy in this body.
Later, I carry this energy into Beau’s local bar, which has ample fairy lights and cosy lounge chairs. I see a woman staring at us. Staring at me. She’s tall and thin, with a sharp, asymmetrical haircut. Her hands, knuckles and neck are tattooed in bright colours, peeking from her tight top which is showing off perfect perky boobs. Her posture is so impeccable it forces me to roll my own shoulders back and sit up straight.
‘She’s beautiful.’ I nod in her direction and pick up my drink for distraction. I want to see what he does. I want to bring up the us situation. I want to see if he’s shagging other people, and try and feel out what I want to be doing, too. He turns his head and looks quickly at the woman and then looks back at me.
‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘so I was thinking we could get a takeaway—’
I try to say it nonchalantly. ‘You should go and call her Sassenach.’ I smile so he knows I’m not being weird.
‘I don’t want to fuck her, Noni,’ he says, his forehead pinched as he tries to read me.
‘That’s not what I said.’
‘No, but it’s what you meant. Didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘So just say that.’ He says it so pointedly that I scoff, shaking my head.
‘What?’
‘You’re so sorted—’
‘Sorted? Noni! We barely know each other. Don’t you see? I’m playing my best cards right now. I’m doing everything in my power to make sure you think that I’m—’
‘What?’
‘A total fucking dreamboat!’ He squeezes my knee. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘Of course, although I don’t think I have quite as many dreamboat cards as you,’ I say, sipping from my glass. This conversation is not going at all like I thought it would.
‘Oh no, Miss Fuck-me-against-this-wall-when-I-booty-call-you-at-two-o’clock-in-the-morning?’
I think about what this means. ‘What are your other cards?’ I ask.
Beau smirks, bites the corner of his lip and breathes in deep. ‘You wanna see my deck, babe?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.’
‘My deck is pretty straightforward, like—’ I say, but he cuts me off.
‘Are you a human?’ I look at him, confused. He continues. ‘This shit is never straightforward.’
‘So—’
‘What do you want to know? Ask me anything.’
‘Anything?’
‘Yes.’
The dossier of curiosity labelled ‘The Viking’ flies open in my mind and my heart beats as I think about what I want to know. Who was the woman who broke his heart? Why does he seem so together? Is it because he’s incapable of commitment? Does he like me? Am I good in bed? Does he want to be with me? Does he think I’m good enough for him? What did his ex-girlfriends look like? Were they skinnier than me? Could he fall in love with me? Why is he with me? Is he still in love with Zeppelin’s mum? Does he believe in monogamy?
‘I want to know—’ I stop myself.
‘I want to k
now what’s going on in your brain right now. That’s what I want to know,’ he says.
‘I want to know…everything,’ I say, and feel silly. I try and make it sound cooler. ‘Everything about you, and about what you think…’ I fail and stop myself.
‘About?’
‘Me,’ I say softly, looking at the floor. He pulls his chair closer towards me so his knee is between my legs.
‘Everything about what I think about you?’ He leans in closer to me, resting his arms on the arms of my chair.
I don’t look up. ‘Yeah.’
‘What do you think I think about you?’ he asks.
I shrug. ‘Me? Oh, god. I’m trying to not be such a dick to myself. I think I’ve been a dick to myself for most of my life, really. And I’m having all of these epiphanies lately about why that is. I’m just so worried about what people think about me all the time. And saying that now out loud feels so adolescent, like I’m still fifteen, you know, looking at the boy I have a crush on, hoping desperately that he thinks I’m pretty enough to kiss me.’ I stop, looking at him. He’s smirking. ‘I don’t know what I’m trying to say.’
‘You care what I think.’
‘Yes.’ I nod. ‘Everyone. What everyone thinks.’
‘Why do you think you’re so hard on yourself?’ His hands sit flat and high on my thighs.
‘I don’t know. Why do you think you’re not?’ I look at him.
He shrugs. ‘I don’t know, practice. I’ve done some big fucking work on myself. I have walked into the woods and sat with my pain.’
‘Metaphorically?’ I ask.
‘No, actually. I’ve been on retreats and done my version of your pleasure quest. I guess the difference between us though is that finding things that gave me pleasure was never my issue. The opposite stuff was my problem. I got very good at numbing shit out with pleasure. But there’s an expiry date to all of that. The one benefit of getting older is that you stop tolerating your own bullshit,’ he says. He grabs his drink with one hand, taking a mouthful then putting his hand back on my thigh, like that’s where it belongs.
‘Yes. Absolutely. You get over it, maybe,’ I say, but the next thought that crosses my mind makes what I’ve just said a lie. Some thoughts you don’t get over. Some insecurities never fade. He’s too good for you, Noni, I think, and I wince.
It's Been a Pleasure, Noni Blake Page 20
