CHAPTER TEN
Nash
Not for the first time do I curse Walter for insisting I need to return to London. It has taken me three god damn years to get back to this woman, and within the space of not even a month, I have to walk away again. Dwelling on it won’t change anything, but I will hold on to some hope of a quick fix with Margison’s and then I might just get back to Australia before the end of the project with Beth’s firm.
I book one of my favourite restaurants, I had been craving it since I left. The last time I had been there was with David, and now it felt like the perfect opportunity to go back and share some of those memories with Beth.
I’m sitting in the living room waiting on Beth to join me, I had been fighting back the feelings of having a schoolboy crush ever since we’d walked through her front door a few hours ago. No matter how I try to interpret how I’m feeling analyzing always comes back to being with Beth, and no matter how much she argues the point, it’s our first official date.
I check my emails while I wait; Gemma has sent through my itinerary, my flight was at 7.30 tomorrow morning. I would need to leave Beth’s bed before 5 am to make check-in. I push down the feeling of dread as I exhale, stretching out the tension in my neck, I notice Beth standing in the doorway.
I can feel my mouth hanging open, and there are no words coming out. A blush warms her cheeks as I continue to stare.
“Is something wrong?”
I still struggle to find my voice. “No way, you look fucking amazing and I’m rethinking taking you anywhere other than the bedroom, sweetheart.” Beth was dressed in a silky slinky dress with thin straps, the heels I had picked out for her, and her lips were a bright red, giving me visions of later watching her wrapping her lips around my dick.
“I’ll take that as a compliment then.”
“You should. If you’re ready, we should go now before we go nowhere at all.” She laughs off my threat, but in no way was it idle.
We pull up outside the restaurant and only then does it occur to me that Beth may prefer to have gone somewhere else.
“Beth, I should have asked, do you even eat Japanese?”
“Oh my god, yes!”
The smile was in her eyes, and she had never been more beautiful. Holy shit, I was in deep with this girl.
I take her hand and we walk inside, being greeted as we entered.
“Good evening, Sir, Madam. Your table is ready, please follow me.”
The waiter leads us to a private room in the back, there are candles glowing on the table and soft serene music playing quietly from the overhead speakers. The waiter pulls out the chair for Beth and then lays a napkin across both of our laps. Leaving us with a menu for meals as well as a wine list.
“This place is beautiful, how did you know about it?”
“David brought me here actually.” I watch her for her expression as she gazes around our small room, taking it all in.
“David brought you here on a date? Just when you think you know someone.” She smiles again and winks at me. “So what is good here?”
“Everything.”
“Everything?”
“Yep, the food is amazing.”
“Well, that doesn’t really help narrow down what to choose at all.” Her attention is drawn back to the menus, I watch her as she scans over the pages while I watch her, I love this classic Hollywood style look she has gone for tonight. She was stunning.
“In that case, let’s get a couple of different dishes and share. What do you think?” I suggest.
“Sounds logical, but if I choose something better than you do I’m not sharing.”
“Ditto, baby.” I mimic the action she makes, including the single eyebrow raise.
The waiter returns to take our orders and returns only a moment later with the bottle of wine we had selected.
“So, you came here with David, tell me about it?” She laces her fingers together and rests her chin across the knuckles.
“Yeah, we came here a couple of times after work. We’d come here to celebrate the closing of a big proposal and end up get rotten drunk. The saké goes down a little too easy.”
“Sounds like you two would’ve been trouble.”
“Yeah, we had our moments.”
“Will you tell me some stories of him?”
“Yeah of course.” Thinking back to the nights out David and I use to have made me chuckle. “So the first time we went out together after dinner we both actually fell asleep at the bar. We’d had a massive week and after a belly full of food, in hindsight, we should probably have just gone straight home instead of trying to push on for a big night. I think we brought out a competitive streak in each other, so neither of us could admit defeat. The bouncer carried us both out about 2 am when the snoring became too loud. ”
“I’ve never heard you snore.”
“It wasn’t me who was snoring. Another time, we ah,” The story I was about to tell her had us nearly arrested for public nudity and I’m sure Beth wouldn’t want to visualize her brother in that particular story. “…we helped do the dishes here one night, stayed until closing, then popped out to the kitchen to give Mr. Wan a hand. Got us a free ride home that night, so it wasn’t so bad.”
“So should I be worried about how tonight is going to go?”
“No, sweetheart, we are going to have dinner, go dancing and then I’m taking you home to take full advantage of that sexy mouth of yours before I need to leave for the airport in the morning. You have nothing to worry about.” I watch the blush creep across her cheeks again while her eyes sparkle as they wander the room.
The waiter returns to the table with our plates, and the aroma that greets us has my mouth watering.
“Oh my god, this looks so good. This is about three hours extra in the gym this week.”
“You work out?” I ask her as I take my first bite.
“No. But if I did it would be three hours extra than the fictitious amount that I already go.”
“With a body like yours, I would believe it if you told me you had a VIP membership.”
“Is that supposed to be an attempt at flirting Nash?”
“No, I was just saying… never mind, I just realised how cheesy it would have sounded. Sorry.”
We swap between the plates, Beth’s threat of withholding a dish defeated due to her curiosity of what the other meals tasted like.
“I’m not sure how much I will be able to move once we finish dinner and that doesn’t even consider dessert, maybe dancing was a bad idea.”
“I have been psyching myself up all afternoon for dancing, so there is no way we are not going, and dessert we can have when we get home.” Home, calling Beth’s place home didn’t stir the same reaction as it should have, I’d called places home before but never before had it given me a sense of peace. London was home, my childhood house had been home. But Beth’s place, it felt like home, when we’d been snuggled on the couch when we’d done our lunch dishes and hung the dishcloth over the handle on the oven door. It had felt like home because she was there.
I had ordered a car to collect us after dinner was finished, the driver is sitting outside the restaurant when we finally leave.
“Where to folks?” The driver, a round-cheeked jovial man with an American accent, was holding the door open for as we get ready to climb in with a friendly smile on his face. Beth gives him the address, before closing the door he tips his hat to her before making his own way around to the driver’s seat.
We pull up outside an older building, and it is not at all what I had expected, I was expecting a dark club with a line of people barely dressed wrapping around the block and a velvet rope. What I was not expecting was to see a brightly lit building with double doors coming off the footpath and no line at all; only a single person was standing outside in black pants, a white singlet smoking a cigarette.
“Where are we?”
“Dance class, Nash. We’re going dancing. You said it has been a while, so I figured this could be fun.”
“What kind of dance classes exactly?”
“Salsa.” And there it was again, that captivating and radiant smile of Beth’s.