by Holly Bourne
“This hotel?” I asked. “Is it nearby?”
Noah smiled, though it was strained.
“Just round the corner. Come on. Let’s go.”
And he walked me out of the train station, leaving the teeming mass of confused people wondering how they were ever going to get home.
The snow was still falling heavily as we weaved our way through the streets of the capital. My shoes were ruined and my feet soaked. Most people we encountered were still in headless-chicken mode, crunching through the wetness in evening finery with their phones clutched to their faces. I allowed myself to feel relief. We didn’t have to get home tonight. It was going to be okay. I rang Mum and explained the plan. She seemed shocked but admitted it was the wisest thing to do.
“You say his parents have booked you a suite?”
I turned my face from Noah’s and covered my mouth with my hand.
“Yeah. It’s charged to the company account.”
There was a pause as the neurotic cogs in Mum’s brain whirred.
“Does this mean we have to pay them back?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve offered but Noah refused. I don’t think booking last-minute hotel suites is such a big deal for them as it is for us.”
Sensing he was being talked about, Noah cocked his head and gave me a puzzled look.
“Gotta go, Mum.” I hung up before he could overhear anything else.
Noah was right. The hotel was so close that we arrived within minutes. I stopped outside and stared. It wasn’t just any old hotel – it had massive marble steps leading up to the glass-fronted entrance and screamed five-star.
“Couldn’t we have just stayed in a hostel?” I asked, eyeing the pretentious potted mini-trees lining the staircase. “This place seems a little…pricey.”
Noah took my hand and led me up the steps. “When are you going to realize that money isn’t really an issue for me? We may as well make the most of it.”
A little man wearing a bowler hat came and held the door open. I thanked him, feeling guilty he had to come out into the cold, but Noah strode past him, slipping a note into his hand without looking.
It was odd seeing Noah like that. Okay, I knew he came from money. He had told me. But seeing him in this place, so accustomed to a way of life you’re only comfortable with if you can afford to be, was like seeing a different person. I wasn’t sure if I liked it. Or him. And the fact he had barely spoken since we left the train station wasn’t helping.
Just the reception area of the hotel blew my mind. After the ballet, it was almost affluence overkill, and I was very aware that I didn’t know the behaviour protocol. I tried to act nonchalant as I took in the lush red carpet, marble statues and high ceilings. But my mouth kept dropping open. And as Noah checked us in at the giant gold reception desk, I found myself saying “Thank you” at least a million times.
Noah was still…weird. He wouldn’t say thank you to anyone and seemed distracted. I tried to hold his hand as we walked to the lift, but he just squeezed it then let it drop.
The lift was gold as well and I gawped as we shot up several floors. With a ping, the doors slid open onto a floor with only one door.
More gawping. “We get a whole floor?”
Noah shrugged. “It’s a suite.”
Okay. Something was definitely up.
“Of course.”
Noah slid a black credit-card thing into the lock and the doors sprung open to reveal the plushest hotel room I’d ever seen in real life, or even in a magazine. It was more a luxury apartment than a hotel room. There was a living room with a cinema-size TV screen and a remote-controlled fire, and a bathroom with a bath you could swim laps in.
I let out a yelp and ran inside to examine everything more carefully.
“Noah, there are dressing gowns!” I yelled at him. “Actual dressing gowns, like in the movies.”
No answer, but I was too excited to care.
I ran into the living room and flopped onto the sofa.
“You could actually fit twelve people on this sofa,” I yelled again in his direction. “How did they fit it through the door? Ooo, look, chocolates!”
I ripped open the black box and delved into the layers. I picked a caramel and stuffed it into my mouth. Still a tad overexcited, I ran to the giant windows and ripped back the curtains.
I hadn’t realized how high up we were. You could see the whole of London. Blobby snowflakes obscured my view slightly, but I could still see the city stretching out for miles. It looked much prettier than usual. All the grime and grey were on hold, replaced by a white-carpeted winter wonderland.
Although I was very excited, much of my enthusiasm was covering for Noah’s sudden bad mood. I wasn’t sure when it had come on, but he’d gone from perfect to weird somewhere between here and the train station. I was shivering, so thought the best thing was to leave him to stew and get myself warm.
“I’m having a bath.”
Again, no answer. So I locked myself in the bathroom.
As the water gushed out of the fat gold taps, I experimented with all the free beauty goodies on display. I poured generous amounts of Molton Brown bubble bath in and opened up all the other bottles to smell them. When the bath was ready, I shrugged off my beautiful silk dress and gratefully sank into the hot bubbly water.
It was gorgeous. I hadn’t realized how cold I’d got until I was submerged in the blissfully warm water. To my delight, pressing a button on the tap transformed the bath into a supersized jacuzzi. The pressure from the jets erased any stress I’d felt about the snow, getting home, and what was up with Noah. I even started singing “Kiss” by Prince at the top of my voice, trying to recreate the bath scene from Pretty Woman.
I floated about until the water turned cold, and emerged transformed. I climbed into an oversized dressing gown and walked into the bedroom with my half-damp hair swirling around my shoulders.
The bedroom’s widescreen television was on and Noah was sitting on the bed watching it. Bad vibes still emanated from him and he barely registered the fact I was in the room. That was enough to make me worry, but then I saw something even worse.
Noah had constructed some elaborate barrier down the middle of the king-sized bed. He had collected all the decorative cushions off the sofa and combined them with spare pillows to create a big speed bump covered with a sheet. He was sitting on his side, intently watching the TV. It would have been less obvious if he’d drawn a line down the middle with paint.
A number of emotions ran through me. Panic. Upset. Hurt. Confusion. But anger won out. And before I had time to run through what I was going to say, I found myself running over, grabbing the remote, switching off the television and then hurling the remote at him.
“What the hell is going on?” I demanded.
Noah held up his hands to protect himself from further missiles.
“Ouch! I don’t know what you mean.”
He still wouldn’t look at me. The anger intensified.
“Noah, I am not one of those girls who will just put up with your crap and sit here smiling sweetly when you’re behaving like an arse. Of course you know what I mean.”
I pointed to the makeshift barrier.
His eyes followed my finger.
“Oh. That,” he deadpanned.
“Of course that.” My arms were flailing in the air with rage. “What the hell is it? Do I have some hideous disease or something? You’ve barely spoken to me since leaving the ballet, you’ve completely ignored me since we arrived at this hotel, and now I find you’ve created some kind of physical manifestation of an anti-Poppy force field down the bed. What’s wrong? What have I done?”
Anger gave way to sadness and my voice cracked. I realized I was dog-tired; too much had happened today. It seemed like years ago that Lizzie and I had walked to college. And now, here I was, less than twenty-four hours later, trapped in a posh hotel suite with the world outside resembling The Day After Tomorrow and my boyfriend behaving like a
jerk. To my embarrassment, a single tear slid out of my left eye.
“Am I so repulsive that you have to create an actual barrier to keep away from me?”
Another tear fell.
Immediately Noah was at my side, his arm around me, gently shushing me. I tried to shrug him off, humiliated, but he held on strong and stroked my hair.
“Shh, Poppy. I’m sorry. It’s horrible seeing you cry.”
“Well don’t make me then.” I wiped my eyes to capture more tears.
“Do you really think I’ve made that barrier because I don’t like you?”
“I don’t know. But it’s weird. And mean. And how I am supposed to know why you do anything if you don’t talk to me?”
I sat down on the bed, too upset to notice how soft and sumptuous it was. Noah sat next to me.
“Hey,” I said. “This is my side.”
He laughed.
“It’s not funny.”
He tried to get me to look him in the eyes. “I know it’s not funny. I’ve been a prick. Let me explain.”
I looked up into his beautiful face. I knew I looked a mess. I had a tendency to look absolutely awful whenever I cried, but he’d seen it now. There wasn’t much I could do.
“Okay…Poppy…God, this is hard to explain.”
“Try.”
“Right. Of course…well…I’ve just kind of flipped out, that’s all.”
“Flipped out? Over what?”
“This is where it gets hard to explain… About us.”
A crushing sense of dread raced through me and I struggled to breathe for a moment. The tears that had been retreating quickly changed direction and began to flow freely again.
“Are you having second thoughts?” My voice quivered.
“Are you kidding? Of course not.”
Relief flooded through me and more tears drained out of my eyes. Startled by my reaction, Noah hugged me tight and whispered into my ear.
“Poppy. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s the opposite of what you think. The truth is, well, tonight has been amazing. But it’s been too amazing. Do you understand?”
I was too emotional to talk, so just shook my head.
“The thing is, I’ve told you before, I’ve never felt this way about a girl. I’ve never been that interested in what they were thinking or feeling, and it’s just been, you know, physical. And with you it’s different. You mean so much to me that I’m terrified I’m going to screw things up.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, much as I love you, I also massively fancy you. And I wouldn’t normally hold off taking things further. But we talked about it and, you know, decided to slow things down, and, well, I agree, I really do, and I don’t want to rush you.”
My crying had subsided enough for me to enjoy how he was struggling for the words.
“So what happened tonight then? Why have you constructed this massive barrier on the bed?”
Noah did a half-smile. “That’s the thing. By me trying not to ruin things, I’ve gone and done exactly that. Poppy, do you have any idea what you did to me at the ballet?”
I remembered the touching, the fizzle of electricity between us. “Things did get a little heated…”
“A little? Poppy. You have no idea how close I was to jumping you, right there, where everyone could see us.”
I giggled.
“Seriously. I’ve never had an urge that strong. It is possibly the most overwhelming feeling I’ve ever had. It was like a force bigger than myself. I realized I could lose self-control and possibly just lunge at you and scare you off for ever.”
I smiled and sniffed.
“Poppy, I’m serious. I managed to get a hold of myself. I figured if I could get you home everything would be okay. But then there was the bloody snow. And the thought of having to spend the night sleeping next to you, but not being able to do anything…well…I didn’t trust myself…
so I…”
“…turned into an introverted tosser and made an anti-Poppy device without explaining any of this to me?” I finished for him.
Noah laughed and held my face. “Basically yes. I’m sorry.”
I exhaled in relief.
“Are you mad at me?” He looked genuinely worried.
I nodded and then shook my head. “Yes. No. Not hugely. But don’t you ever do that to me again. The not-talking. It’s horrible and I won’t stand for it.”
“I know. I’m sorry. Never again.”
I thought again of the ballet. Those feelings were instantly recalled – and we were alone now. There was nothing and nobody here to stop us acting on our hormonal impulses.
I stretched up and kissed Noah gently on the lips. He made a small grunt and kissed me back. Then, one of us, I can’t remember who, turned the gentle kiss into a frenzied passion. I lost sense of everything. Before I knew it, Noah was on his back and I was sitting astride him. My eyes were closed in blissful delirium, my arms around his neck, and his hands moving down my side, stroking my body. I moaned into his mouth.
But then Noah pulled away, leaving my mouth empty and hanging open.
“Now can you see why I made the barrier?”
We were both breathing heavily.
“Yeah, I suppose it makes sense,” I said, still incredibly turned on.
I got off Noah and he flipped his body over the makeshift barrier.
“I think I need to stay over here a few moments.”
I pouted out my bottom lip. “Do you have to?”
“Yes, Poppy. I do.”
“But what if I change my mind about this whole taking-it-slow thing?”
Noah covered his ears with his hands. “La la la. I’m not listening.”
I reached over and removed them. Just touching him again sent electric volts screeching through every limb.
“Seriously? Am I not allowed to change my mind?”
I wanted him so much. And it would be perfect here – a five-star hotel suite, after the ballet, with snow falling outside. Not many girls could boast that as their losing-their-virginity story. I was terrified, naturally, but I also wanted it more than I’d ever wanted anything. Not so much the physical part, which was the scary bit for me, but the closeness it would bring us. How making love would evolve us as a couple.
I stroked Noah’s face, looking up through my eyelashes in what I hoped was a seductive manner.
But all he did was yelp and sit up.
“No no no no no no, MAN, this is HARD!”
I laughed, a little hurt, but amused by his reaction. “So I’m not allowed to change my mind then?”
“No.”
“That hardly seems fair. Am I not allowed to know myself and what I want?”
“It’s not like that, Poppy. You know yourself better than anyone I’ve ever met. You don’t do things you don’t want to do. But we are still just getting to know each other. I really don’t want to rush. Even though every impulse in my body is telling me to.”
I was officially defeated, and knew he was right. We had only just begun seeing each other. It didn’t make sense to rush. Especially as I felt this was just the beginning. We had a long time to explore that side of things.
I held up my hands. “Okay. Seduction over. Look, I’m not even going to touch you. But please! I need a distraction. Put the telly back on.”
Noah picked up the remote. “Gladly.”
We’d almost forgotten the snow but the 24-hour news channel happily filled us in on the havoc it was wreaking. Noah and I held hands over the bed barrier as we watched a chirpy news reporter excitedly divulge all the grotty details.
“As I mentioned before,” she said, a smarmy grin across her overly made-up face, “there was no warning of this snowy weather. The Met Office is just as baffled as the rest of us. But, predicted or not, the capital has effectively shut down as snowfall continues to cause widespread disruption.”
The screen changed to shots of snow-induced pandemonium. Cars skidded
into lorries, cold dogs shivered, and panicked commuters stared wildly at departure boards in train stations.
“Look.” I pointed at the TV. “That’s where we just were.”
Another equally smarmy reporter was interviewing distressed people in Victoria Station. A timid woman, blonde, with a cold-looking infant propped on her hip, was being interviewed.
“How about you?” Mr. Reporter asked. “How is the snow affecting your evening?”
The blonde talked to the reporter rather than the camera.
“I’m not sure what to do,” she said, her voice a silvery whisper. “I only popped up to London this afternoon to meet a friend, and now I don’t know how to get home. I think I’m going to have to find a hotel to crash in, but I haven’t brought enough stuff for my baby.” She shifted her child from one hip to the other. “To be honest, I’m pretty peeved. I don’t understand how the weather people didn’t know it was going to snow. It’s supposed to be the twenty-first century…”
“Christ,” Noah said. “We so made the right decision coming here.”
The lady continued to whinge, but we saw the reporter put a hand to his earpiece and his expression changed.
“Can I just stop you there?” he said, still pressing his finger to his ear. “We’ve got some breaking news coming in…hang on…thank you very much and back to the studio.” The reporter turned to the camera and waved goodbye, as the blonde woman blinked like an agitated fish.
In the studio, the anchorwoman flashed back onto the screen, her face grim.
“Apologies for the interruption,” she said, “but we’ve just received breaking news that there’s been a major accident on the M25 caused by the adverse weather conditions. It’s estimated at least twelve vehicles are involved, and there are possible fatalities.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Noah said.
That twisted feeling came into my stomach – the one you get when there’s a catastrophe that doesn’t involve you. There is a mixture of relief and empathy, but overall an inexplicable curiosity to know every minute detail.
