‘I’d love that,’ said Jess, really meaning it and feeling like it was the first sincere thing she’d said all evening.
‘I’ll call you then,’ he said.
‘Great. See ya!’ said Jess, standing up, grabbing her bag and walking out of the bar, with just a casual backwards wave.
That was one of the other two things she had to do to keep the Alpha Male interested, which were not to let him kiss or manhandle her in any way, until the third date – and not to offer to pay her way.
Although she would quite happily have jumped on his gorgeous body right away – just sitting close to his masculine frame, with its subtle scent of expensive aftershave, had got her hormones whizzing – it was the second rule that she had found harder to stick to.
With Neil they’d always had to split the bill – or she had to pay it all.
A struggling cartoonist who’d never quite got the break he needed, he was still working part-time in a small printing business and barely made ends meet each month.
But he fervently believed that the moment he took a full-time ‘proper’ job it would mean he’d given up on being a professional cartoonist. It would just be his ‘hobby’ then, and he wouldn’t make that compromise. So it was three days a week at the print shop – and the rest drawing cartoons on their kitchen table, which he’d commandeered as his studio.
It was Trina who’d made the point that forcing them to live like students, eating their meals on their laps in front of the TV, was keeping them both stuck at that stage of their professional development.
She said if Neil was really serious about the cartoon thing he should get a proper job to fund a real artist’s studio to work in on weekends – then he might start to give out the vibe of a real cartoonist and people would start to think of him as one and actually buy some of his work. His attitude was holding Jess back too, said Trina – because you become what you’re surrounded yourself with.
Jess thought she’d probably been right about all that, because since she’d split up with Neil and had been living in a small unit on her own, she’d spent most evenings home alone cooking and had come up with loads of new recipes to use in the café at work, which had proved very popular with the customers. And when her boss left a few months later, she’d immediately been promoted to café manager, with a big hike in salary.
But while that was all great, those lonely evenings at the stove hadn’t been exactly fun. It had taken all Jess’s self-control not to ring Neil on the nights when her yellow velvet cupcake mixture – she was working on incorporating a swirl of lemon curd into the sponge – was liberally mixed with tears.
She didn’t miss having to pick her way around his piles of paper all over the kitchen and she didn’t miss having to turn down fun weekends away with a gang of friends because he couldn’t afford to come and she wouldn’t enjoy it without him. But she did miss him.
She missed the sex, which had stayed good, and she missed his quirky humour and all the little things he used to do, like putting funny little drawings in her pockets and handbag so she’d find them at random times.
On Trina’s advice, she didn’t have anything that would remind her of Neil in her unit, but she couldn’t bring herself to throw those drawings away. She’d put them in a special purple envelope and hidden it in the bottom of a drawer.
The next day Jess was convinced that the two-drinks-and-scarper gambit definitely had been going too far. Adam hadn’t come down for his morning coffee. He was clearly avoiding her. She’d blown the whole thing. She was about to send a message to Trina, to see if she could meet her after work for a high-level summit to discuss it all, when she got a text from someone else. Adam.
Adam saying how much he’d enjoyed having a drink with her and that he’d missed his morning muffin, but he’d had to go to Melbourne for a couple of days. Perhaps they could have dinner when he got back?
After a quick call to Trina, Jess knew what she had to do about the text. Ignore it. Not answer it until the next day. It took all Jess’s inner strength to restrain herself. She was so used to replying to texts immediately – that was the whole point of them, wasn’t it? – and she thought she might wear her phone out checking that Adam Walker really had sent her such a cute message, with an actual dinner date request in it.
She finally replied on Saturday afternoon, apologising for not doing it sooner, but she’d ‘been really tied up and hadn’t found it until just then.’ What a heinous lie, but it did the trick because almost simultaneously as her phone signalled that the text had been sent, it rang. With Adam’s number showing on the screen.
Jess folded her arms very tightly to stop herself answering the bloody thing. In the end she had to run and and lock herself in the bathroom until it stopped ringing.
What was she doing? She felt like some kind of secret agent, sneaking around and laying false trails. Wasn’t dating supposed to be about sharing good times with people you liked? Not playing evil mind games with them.
But while it might feel all wrong, Trina’s rules seemed to work, because when Jess allowed herself to listen to it, she found Adam had left a sweet message in a disappointed voice saying he’d got her text and had been hoping to speak to her to make a dinner date.
She went over to her laptop to take her mind off him, only to find that he had also left her an email, asking her to ring him. He called her on the phone again an hour later and that time Jess allowed herself to answer and heard herself saying she was so sorry, she hadn’t seen that he’d left her a message. Oh, and had he sent an email?
She was beginning to wonder when those women had written that bloody book. Certainly before there were so many ways for human beings to be in instant touch with each other.
It was one thing not calling a guy, but ignoring all his many methods of approach in the twenty-first century was taking heroic amounts of self-discipline – which seemed pretty crazy as there was nothing Jess would have liked more that Saturday night than to go out for the early dinner he was now suggesting.
But she’d started this test, she might as well continue it.
‘I’d love to, Adam,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid I’m busy tonight. Perhaps another time?’
‘I’m free tomorrow night too,’ said Adam. ‘How about then?’
‘OK,’ said Jess, her heart beating faster, ‘that would be great.’
And so they’d had the second date. A very nice bowl of pasta in a casual Italian in Paddington, where they’d had a good conversation and Jess had told him about her aspirations to do a cookbook and how she developed recipes at home, which she then tried out in the café and how she had started making notes towards starting a blog.
‘Is that why you’re always too busy to come out with me?’ he said.
Jess feared she was blushing, but then thought that might work to her advantage. He might think he had a lot of competition from other Alpha Males and was blushing about them.
‘It’s sometimes that,’ she’d said and then hastily changed the subject, telling him about her Yellow Velvet cupcakes.
After dinner, they’d walked past the cinema on Oxford Street and had both come to a standstill in front of the poster for a French film which was getting rave reviews.
‘Oh!’ they’d said in unison and then looked at each other, laughing.
‘I really want to see that,’ said Adam, looking at Jess with a raised eyebrow.
‘Me too,’ said Jess. ‘I saw this director’s last movie and loved it.’
‘Well,’ said Adam. ‘It’s on in half an hour, shall we go and see it then?’
‘Yes,’ said Jess and looked the other way, a knuckle stuffed in her mouth, as she let him pay for her ticket.
The film was great and replete with the usual intense French love scenes. Sitting close to Adam, in the dark, while two very attractive people had rampant sex on screen, Jess wondered if he could feel how fast her heart was beating.
There was a moment when the protagonists were declaring th
eir clandestine love to each other and she felt his hand brush against hers. She knew if she didn’t move it quickly, he would take it in his and all her self-control would be shattered.
So she pulled her hand on to her lap as naturally as she could and then whispered to him.
‘Sorry, got to nip out to the loo.’
When she came back, the love scene was over and the moment between them was also gone. She congratulated herself on her cleverness, while simultaneously realising how disappointed she felt. She might be winning the game according to the Rules, but was she cheating herself?
She wasn’t sure, but having come this far and had it work so well, she felt compelled to continue and when they left the cinema she let him hail her a taxi, she thanked him for a lovely evening, planted a swift kiss on this cheek and then jumped into it and closed the door.
She got into bed that night feeling lonelier than any time since she’d left Neil.
But the Rules were definitely working. On Monday morning a bouquet of yellow roses was delivered to her at the café.
‘Looking forward to my first Yellow Velvet.’ said the card.
He didn’t come down to get his coffee that morning, but sent someone else instead.
‘I work with Adam Walker,’ said a man who Jess recognised as a regular latte and a sausage roll, but didn’t know. ‘He said to say he’s sorry he can’t come down himself today, but he’s in back-to-back meetings – and that you know his order.’
Jess smiled tightly and turned quickly to the espresso machine, wanting to squeal with glee. Was this how Alpha Males played the Rules back to you? Sending you gorgeous flowers and then teasing you with messages? If it was, it worked for her.
But despite all that he didn’t call her, or come into the café for several more days. Jess thought she was going to go mad. Had she blown it, running off in that taxi? But he’d sent the flowers – and the messenger – so he must still be interested. Should she call him? Was that the underlying message he was sending her? Was it time to ease off a bit on the hard-to-get from her side?
She rang Trina and when Jess took her break after the lunchtime rush, they walked round the block and found a bench looking over Darling Harbour.
Trina had her copy of The Rules with her, and was flipping through it.
‘I’m sure there’s a bit about in here what to do in situations like this,’ she said, ‘but where is it?’
She carried on scanning the book, while Jess sat on her hands to stop herself checking her phone in case Adam had sent her a text and she’d missed it.
‘Aha!’ said Trina, finally. ‘Got it! This is classic Alpha Male stuff – and shows exactly why you have to keep holding out.’
‘Why?’ said Jess.
‘Because he’s probably properly busy at the moment. You know how you keep pretending to be too busy to think about him? Well, right now, he really is too busy to think about you.’
‘How rude,’ said Jess.
‘It’s the big difference between men and women, according to these sheilas,’ said Trina. ‘They say that when men get tied up in loads of heavy work stuff – and with his job, that would happen – they really only think about that, whereas women get tied up in loads of heavy work stuff and still obsess on guys at the same time.’
‘Multitasking,’ said Jess.
‘Exactly,’ said Trina. ‘So it’s not that he’s lost interest in you, he’s just totally involved with his big man stuff at the moment and as soon as that’s lightened off, you’ll hear from again. In the meantime, you just have to stick it and when he calls, you’re still busy – OK?’
‘That’s going to be hard,’ said Jess.
‘Yeah, that’s what it says here, they say this is often the deal breaker. The woman just can’t hold out and rings the bloke when he’s really tied up with work and then he gets pissed off and loses interest in her.’
‘Well, I better get super-busy then,’ said Jess. ‘For real.’
That night Jess started her blog. She’d wanted to do it for so long, but had felt oddly shy about getting going on it. She read other food blogs obsessively and had loads of ideas for her own. She’d been researching the best blogging platforms, finding suitable images and writing trial posts for ages, but just hadn’t felt confident to take the plunge. But finally she felt ready to take the plunge and ‘Extra Shot’ went live.
It was café culture blog from a behind-the-counter point of view, with humorous observations about customers, tips on how to get the best coffee out of any barista and one of her recipes at the end.
She felt really proud she’d finally done it and posted the blog link on Facebook and Twitter with a great feeling of satisfaction, which increased as she started answering congratulatory messages from friends. Then she had to thank all the ones who re-tweeted it and then – most excitingly – reply to really lovely encouraging comments from people on Twitter she didn’t even know.
It wasn’t until she finally closed down her laptop at after one in the morning that she realised she hadn’t thought about Adam for hours.
She fired up the computer the next day to find loads more lovely Tweets about the blog – some of them from people in the UK and America. Crikey. She was so excited, she decided to put her up her second post right away.
She’d been wondering how often she should do it, but encouraged by the reaction she’d already had, she decided not to wait and as it was all just about ready to go, five minutes later it was up, with the link posted in all the key places.
When she came back for one final look, after having her shower and getting dressed, she found loads more positive tweets waiting for her – and she was getting quite few hits on the blog already. It was thrilling.
She opened Facebook to check that the link to the new post had gone up on there properly and froze. There on the top of her timeline was a very familiar style of drawing. It was of the little two characters that Neil had always drawn for her, Nim and Vim.
Nim was sitting at a desk with his head buried inside his computer and his neck had grown superlong so that his face came out of Vim’s computer. His lips were puckered in a kiss.
Jess’s eyes filled with tears. It was such a simple drawing and conveyed his message perfectly without the need for any words: I like your blog and I’m sending you a kiss.
Jess sighed deeply and closed the page.
That morning Adam finally rang. He’d been at a conference in Perth and had only got back the night before. He wanted her to have dinner with him as soon as possible.
‘You tell me when,’ he said.
‘It’ll have to be next week,’ said Jess. ‘I’ve got a lot on right now . . .’
And for once, she wasn’t lying. She’d decided to post something on Extra Shot every day at first to get some momentum going, and had to get really busy to make sure she had enough material stocked up. She’d had such an amazing start to her blog, she couldn’t let herself blow it.
‘OK,’ said Adam, ‘if that’s really the soonest you can do, it will have to be next Friday. Does that work for you? I’m looking forward to hearing what you’re up to. And if you free up any sooner than that, give me a call.’
‘Next Friday is great,’ said Jess, quite keen to get off the phone. Her trainee barista had just done a really cute bit of beginner foam art on top of a coffee and she didn’t want to miss getting a shot of it for the blog.
And so now, a whole ten days – and ten more blog posts – later, the night of the big third date had finally come. She was about to leave the unit to get a taxi to the restaurant when something made her have one last look at her laptop.
She checked the number of hits on the blog that day and saw she’d had the most extraordinary spike. Hundreds of people had looked at it. What was going on?
She checked on Twitter and saw a message from Trina, congratulating her on having her link retweeted by a well-known TV chef with thousands of followers. She scrolled down and found it:
‘Want to k
now how to get a decent coffee even in a rubbish café? Check out this great new blog.’
Jess’s mouth opened in amazement. She knew this kind of retweet was the Holy Grail of blogging – and she’d got it after doing the thing for barely two weeks. Maybe it was really going to work for her. Maybe she was going to be the one to have the book – the movie even? Anne Hathaway could play her in it.
As she finally got into the lift to go and meet Adam, she looked at herself in the mirror on the back wall.
Yes, she was having her GoMo all right – but she didn’t think it was the date with the hot Alpha Male that had brought it on. She’d made the moment golden herself; he was just the added chocolate sprinkled on the cappuccino of her life.
And so, she decided, the lying, limiting Rules were now definitely off as far as he was concerned. If he didn’t like the real her, the one who was going to give him a good hard kissing after dinner, followed by whatever came naturally, then she didn’t want him anyway – but she was pretty sure that he would.
Don’t miss Maggie Alderson’s new bestseller:
Home is where the heart is – but what happens to your heart when the people you love are scattered around the world?
Hannah and Matt are very happy together, living in London’s cool East End with their two young children. Hannah has a job she loves as a beauty editor and Matt is always just about to break through as a songwriter.
But then events start to pull them apart, with Hannah certain they’d be much better off down in the English countryside with her family – and Matt’s mum needing them with her, back in Sydney, 17 000 kilometres away.
Hannah’s mother, Marguerite, mends broken china, but can she can repair her damaged marriage? And Matt’s vivacious young cousin, Ali, feels lost, looking for love in a strange city.
All of them have unsettling secrets and while some are better shared, others might be best left unspoken – the problem is knowing which are which.
The GoMo Page 2
