It's Been a Pleasure, Noni Blake

by Claire Christian

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have I always told you the truth?’ He is irritated and his voice is strained.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what do you want to know?’ he asks and I look up at him. ‘Don’t insult me by making up some bullshit story where I am the villain.’ He sighs loudly and rubs his temples. ‘Or act like you know exactly what’s going on in my head when you’ve never fucking asked.’

  So I ask. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘But why? I don’t get it. I don’t get why—’

  ‘Do you know how insulting that is to me? You’re basically saying that something I love is not worth wanting.’

  ‘I’m not,’ I say, feeling like a toddler throwing a tantrum. Wait. ‘Something you love?’

  ‘Yes!’ he exclaims like it’s the most obvious thing ever. ‘You dickhead.’

  ‘Don’t call me a dickhead.’ I can’t help but smile a little.

  ‘Well, stop acting like a dickhead.’ He speaks slowly, punctuating each word. ‘I am in love with you, Noni Blake.’ He steps towards me. ‘And I’m not afraid of that. But you are.’

  My throat feels tight. ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘Because you’re going?’

  ‘Yes. And because I don’t get why someone like you would want—’

  ‘I want you because I want you. Because at a base level my chemicals are infatuated by your chemicals and every time I see you I want to do outrageously sexy things to you.’

  I smile. But I suddenly feel underwhelmed. He’s attracted to me, sure, but love? This doesn’t sound like love. Beau shakes his head and groans.

  ‘Nope. Shit. That’s a cop-out.’ He’s flustered. He paces. ‘The idea of you kissing someone else, it really hurts,’ he says and I nod. ‘And the idea of you leaving, well, that really fucking hurts too.’

  ‘Yeah, I know—I’m sorry, you’ve got to know—’

  He cuts me off. ‘Noni, I want you because I am enamoured by you.’ He steps towards me, looking me in the eye. ‘I want to know what you think about…well, everything. I want to be with you when I’m not. I love how you think. I love how I feel when I’m with you. You talk about your pleasure quest, and you are the most pleasing thing ever to me. In every way.’

  I want to cry, dropping my bag with a heavy thud to the floor. ‘This is too much.’

  ‘Come here,’ he says and I shake my head. ‘Please?’ he asks.

  I exhale loudly and walk the two paces to get to his chest. His forefinger lifts my chin to look up at him as his thumb traces my bottom lip, kissing it sweetly. ‘I love you. And I love that I love you. And I’m not scared of loving you.’ He pauses. ‘You might be leaving, but you haven’t left yet. Have you?’

  ‘Nope,’ I sigh. ‘I love you too,’ I whisper.

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘Now, kiss me like you just saw me after being away from me for a year.’ He smiles and I laugh. ‘Go on. That’s what it felt like tonight, you all the way over there, pouting with your bag in your hand. A whole year.’

  I wrap my arms around his shoulders and plant my lips on his, and I kiss him like I’ve missed him with my whole heart. Because I will.

  Miss him.

  With my whole heart.

  35

  We meet Lil just before sunrise at an old inn. She tells us there’s a walk of about four miles that is a divine mix of lake and woodland and castle in the background that she thinks will provide stunning locations. She makes us get naked in the car but wear our coats. She gets naked too, in solidarity, which makes me laugh. I feel like a naughty teenager as the three of us set off on our naked exploration. When she finds a spot she thinks is perfect, she sets up her camera and makes us stand with our coats on until she’s ready, and then we drop them out of frame, run in, and wrap ourselves up in each other.

  ‘Perfect!’ Lil yells, and we put our coats back on and keep walking.

  The first few times I’m desperately self-conscious and try with all my might to hide behind Beau. But by the third or fourth time you’d think I’d always been larking naked through the Scottish woods.

  When I told Beau about Lil’s idea he knew instantly it was something he wanted to do. After the wedding debacle I’ve been alternating between feeling guilty and sad, but equally happy and amazed by everything. I am a swirling contradiction of feelings, pummelling me moment to moment. ‘It’ll be brilliant,’ he’d said, and I’d thought: he’s right. Why is he always right?

  We’re standing on a sandy lakeshore with a fucking castle in the background and the sun filling the sky in perfect shades of pinks and yellows and oranges, and all of the feelings rise up in me at the same time. Beau puts his coat down and we sit on it, me between his legs, his arms wrapped around my shoulders. I lean my head on his bicep, kissing it slightly.

  ‘How do you feel?’ he whispers.

  ‘Well safe,’ I say, and he laughs loudly. ‘But actually, that’s true.’

  ‘I’m glad.’ He kisses my neck, and we sit and watch the sky and breathe each other in.

  ‘Holy shit, you two. These are going to be fucking beautiful.’ Lil is ecstatic.

  Suddenly a dog appears out of nowhere, running right up to us. It sniffs and licks us as we laugh loudly, unable to move our naked bodies. Lil takes photos as an older man in a flat cap appears, looking mortified.

  ‘We’re doing a—I’m a professional, I swear,’ Lil says, walking over to him as Beau and I stay exactly where we are.

  ‘Orright!’ Beau says with a nod.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ flat-cap says, not looking at us. ‘Roger! Roger! Here! Now.’ He grabs the dog and apologises over and over again. We all fall about laughing. Lil keeps clicking away.

  ‘There’s one more spot I want to shoot,’ Lil says. ‘Quick sticks, let’s catch this light.’

  We follow a path to some woodlands. Tall, moss-covered trees line a winding walkway and the effect is so stunning my breath catches. Lil sets up a shot so we’re standing on the path with the trees in the background.

  ‘Face each other,’ she says, so we do.

  ‘You’re fucking beautiful, do you know that?’ Beau says to me softly.

  ‘You’re fucking beautiful, do you know that?’ I reply, and he kisses me, both hands on my cheeks.

  ‘Okay, now Noni, you face me, and Beau, face away.’ We do as she says. ‘Hold hands,’ she shouts. Lil comes in close around us. ‘Close your eyes. And breathe,’ she says, and I am grateful for the reminder.

  I breathe in and out, and smile with the mindful recognition of what exactly is happening right now. I’m naked. Next to a very naked man who thinks I’m beautiful. In public. I’m getting my photo taken. Photos that people are going to see. I don’t feel as self-conscious as I thought I would, not really. I don’t feel any hatred. I don’t really feel anything, other than a kind of peace. This is my body today. These will be photos of my body today, and that’s okay. I feel fine. I feel better than fine. And I kind of hate that there’s the possibility that I might mar these big, glorious, contented, cared for, wild, brave feelings I’m having with any negative thoughts. It genuinely feels like a waste of energy, and of the goodwill of Beau and Lil. So I decide not to. I whisper under my breath to myself, ‘You did good, kid.’

  ‘And now open your eyes,’ Lil says, and I do and I smile with my whole body, from the tips of my toes to the top of my head.

  Beau and I sit in a café after our shoot, drinking coffee, eating eggs and toasting our morning. The city is only just waking up, with normal-looking people heading to work and school, and I feel like I want to grab them and yell, ‘I just had an epiphany in the woods while I was naked. And not on drugs. And see this Viking here? He thinks I’m beautiful and isn’t that brilliant? Life is brilliant!’ But I don’t, of course, I just smile and sip from my mug and picture the scene playing out in my mind.

  ‘This morning was one of those perfect moments,’ Beau says, and I nod, agreeing. We both sit silently for a moment. ‘A
nything you want to do in your last week?’ he asks.

  ‘Not think about the fact that it’s my last week.’

  ‘Okay. We can do that.’ He bites his lip. He’s not saying something, I can tell, but I don’t ask what.

  I’m not saying something too, so I get how he feels.

  36

  We’re sitting in a fancy restaurant and Beau is smiling wide. ‘What are you thinking?’ he asks.

  ‘This is nice,’ I say. I indicate the restaurant, but I really mean Beau and me. This thing between us. It’s been nicer than nice. It’s been bloody amazing. Since London, we’ve spent days wrapped up in each other, saying I love you and having the kind of sex that is an extension of those words. It has been all eye contact and closeness. But neither of us has said anything about the future. And now that I’m leaving tomorrow, I don’t want to be the one to bring it up. I want him to. Desperately.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ I ask.

  He stands up, walks around the table, grabs my face in his hands and gives me the slowest, sweetest kiss. He pulls away and smiles at me before sitting back down. I laugh giddily.

  ‘I’m bummed this day has arrived,’ he says.

  I sigh, relieved. ‘Me too.’

  ‘You’re—I’ve never met anyone like you.’

  ‘Oh, that’s because I’ve lulled you into this false idea of me. You’ve only met nomad, holiday, pleasure-quest, fun Noni. You haven’t met boring, overworked, awkward Noni. She’s not nearly as cool.’

  ‘I never said cool.’

  And that’s it. That’s all we say about it. I don’t ask him if he wants something more, and he doesn’t ask me. We eat and talk and drink expensive champagne and have sex in the toilets of the fancy restaurant because I made some comment about them being bigger than my last unit back home. And then we start the walk back along the cobbled streets to Lil’s exhibition, him walking behind with his arms tightly around my waist. I tell myself it’s because he doesn’t want to let me go. My heart is thudding too hard and fast. I go home tomorrow. I go back to my real life tomorrow. I don’t want things to go back to the way they were. Before the could’ve-been list, before Beau, before this wild quest to try and land somewhere in the sphere of happy. The pleasure quest can’t continue at home, at least not this version of it, because there are work and bills and real life, and the challenge ahead of me now will be to maintain some kind of pleasure/reality balance.

  I look up at Beau and he kisses me, but we don’t say anything. We just walk. The voice in my head tells me not to leave. To stay right here in this city with him. But I can’t work out if that voice is intuition, or just fear. It’s unclear. What would happen if I didn’t leave? What would happen if I just stayed? I let the thoughts and images creep in and fill me up a little before I block them out. It’s too much to think about, because that’s too much change, too much unknown. Too much of a risk. And I don’t think that’s what he wants. We agreed. The perfect fling.

  I exhale loudly. I know I can be happy at home. I can be happy anywhere, I realise. Because I now know that I am the common denominator in my own happiness. Not things, or clothes, or Vikings, but me.

  We walk into the gallery and there is already a throng of cool-looking people schmoozing inside, lit beautifully by tiny downlights. My hands are clammy, but Beau doesn’t let go. There’s a table of drinks and I pick up a glass of champagne and down it in one hit, then pick up another. Beau shakes his head, laughing. There’s a girl with cropped pink hair playing acoustic covers. She’s very good.

  Lil kisses us both. ‘I’m shitting my pants,’ she says.

  ‘Well, you look great considering,’ Beau says. ‘I think Noni has shit herself in solidarity.’

  ‘I don’t know how you do this,’ I tell her. ‘Look at my hands.’ I hold them up so she can see the sweat on my palms.

  ‘This part is the whole point. Making people take just a second to marvel at beautiful things, to feel something other than ambivalence about their lives. What a fucking privilege.’ She squeezes my hand as she waves to someone across the room, and then she’s gone.

  The place is pretty full already and we wander around the exhibition. I cling to Beau with one hand, my champagne flute in the other.

  ‘These photos are stunning,’ Beau says calmly, taking them all in. He’s stopping and doing just as Lil had hoped, marvelling. I’m pretending I am, but all I want to see is our photos. Beau and I agreed to let Lil choose because everyone, me included, figured I’d chicken out.

  It turns out our photos are impossible to miss because the second you move past the first front-facing wall, there we are, three huge black-and-white shots of us. One is just of our faces, side profile, from when we were sitting on the beach. One is of us entwined in each other’s arms in the foreground of the field of flowers. And the central one, the biggest, is me front-facing in all my naked glory, next to Beau, who has his back turned but his face looking at me, beaming. My head is lolled back and I am laughing, ecstatic, one hand holding Beau’s, the other holding my heart as I laugh. The extremeness of it all takes my breath away. The size contrast, us compared to the trees, the size of my joy. Tears spring in the corners of my eyes and I look at Beau, mouth agape. His face mirrors mine.

  ‘Are you teary? I’m teary,’ he says and I nod. ‘They’re really beautiful,’ he says. ‘You’re so beautiful.’ He bites his lip, breathes in deep and exhales fast, sniffing and clenching his teeth together. He smiles too hard, trying to contain his feelings. I wrap my arm around his waist.

  ‘Hey. You good?’ I say and he nods. He’s trying to hold it together. ‘It’s okay,’ I tell him.

  ‘Fuck, Noni,’ is all he gets out. He pushes his hair back and turns to face me. ‘I don’t want you to go.’ His eyes are full of wanting and relief, apology and concern and tears that haven’t fallen yet. I smile and my tears come fully now too. ‘But you’ve got to. I know. We agreed. That’s the plan. But just, fuck—’ He points at the photos. ‘Look at us.’

  ‘Fucking real life,’ I sob.

  ‘Fucking real life,’ he repeats.

  He kisses me gently. But I don’t want gentle. I want him. I want to press our lips and bodies together so close. We kiss like everything depends on it.

  ‘Babes! You look fucking stunning!’ Naz is staring at the photos with slicked back hair and a red lip. Tom smiles and waves, looking a little flushed with embarrassment at seeing me in the nude. Naz hugs me.

  ‘These are incredible. Lil is incredible. Tom googled her, she’s a big deal. This is a big deal. Hi, you must be Beau.’ Naz hugs him and it looks comical, her tiny frame against his. Beau shakes hands with Tom and then excuses himself. I watch him go.

  ‘You guys good? That was a pretty intense kiss we interrupted,’ Naz asks, holding my hand.

  ‘I just don’t want tomorrow to come.’

  ‘Are you sure you can’t stay?’ Tom asks.

  ‘Work and life and—’

  ‘Fuck all of that,’ says Naz. ‘What do you want, babes?’ She points at me with a toothpick, the olive from her canape in her mouth. Lil approaches and we both squeal and tell her she’s amazing.

  What do I want? I want to him to come with me. I want to stay. I want to go home. I want it all.

  ‘You happy?’ Tom asks Lil.

  ‘Absolutely. Are you?’ she asks me.

  She’s asking about the photos, but I can’t help taking her question more literally. ‘Too happy,’ I say. ‘That’s the problem. I don’t know what this next bit looks like.’

  ‘You don’t have to know, you just let pleasure lead. Look.’ She points at someone from the gallery with two long black plaits down their back placing a red dot on the central photo of the two of us. Someone bought it.

  ‘Who bought…’

  ‘I dunno,’ Lil says.

  Beau rejoins us. He’s been crying, I can tell, but he smiles and pretends he’s okay. We all drink and talk, but I’m not in the mood, neither is he.

&nb
sp; ‘Do you want to go?’ I ask him an hour later and he looks relieved and nods.

  ‘I’ll fucking miss you, babes.’ Naz squeezes me tight as we say our farewells.

  ‘You know what to do, darling. Don’t overthink it.’ Lil kisses me boozily on both cheeks.

  ‘I can’t believe someone bought our photo,’ I tell Beau as we wait for a cab.

  He smiles at me. ‘I did. For you,’ he says. ‘Whatever happens next, I wanted you to know that this thing, these feelings, are real.’

  I don’t say anything. Because I don’t know what to say.

  I set my alarm to give myself enough time to orgasm twice more with my beautiful Viking. We’d promised we’d stay awake all night, but he fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. Emotionally exhausted. I lay awake, running through possibilities. Should I stay, not go back, just pretend my life back home doesn’t exist and this is my life now? I’d have to quit my job. That would be a dick move on such short notice. I’m meant to start back in a week. Or do I go home temporarily? Get organised. Move here for real. Live with Beau. What about work? I guess I could teach here. Do I even want to live in Edinburgh? What about Lindell and Graham and the kids? What do I want? What do I want? What do I want?

  I’m no closer to an answer when the alarm sounds, so I don’t tell Beau what I’m thinking. I go along with the plan. I wake him up by straddling his waist, kissing him all over. Trying to savour each moment. To end this chapter of the pleasure quest trying to drink up this beautiful human.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you?’ he asks, as we lug my things towards the door.

  ‘Nope. We say goodbye here. On our terms, like we agreed,’ I say, trying to clear the awkwardness in the air. We’re both being too delicate and it feels weird. Claustrophobic.