The last man I’d kissed hadn’t been half the man Tom was and he had totally flattened the little self-confidence I had. I didn’t stand a chance with someone like Tom. He would break me into tiny pieces until there was nothing left. I stiffened underneath him and felt his body go alert. He framed my face with his hands and narrowed his eyes at me.
‘Oh no,’ he said in a dangerous voice. ‘No way are you going to kiss me like that then shut down on me. I’m through those shields now. I’ve spent all of five minutes with the real Frankie and I’m not letting it go.’
‘People kiss all the time,’ I said in what I hoped was a nonchalant tone, but I suspected my voice was a little too shaky to pull it off. ‘No big deal.’
‘That kiss was a big deal,’ he declared, ‘and it means that you and I are officially seeing each other.’
No, no, no. We were not seeing each other. In fact I resolved at that point to make damn sure that I saw him very rarely from now on.
‘I’ll be here to pick you up tomorrow at seven.’ I widened my eyes at him, and was about to speak when he cut me off. ‘If you’re not here then I will come and find you, Frankie.’
Time to move to Russia.
Chapter 21
Beautiful pain
The next morning I found out that, by some miracle, Scary Glenda had managed to avoid any blood-borne diseases in her short, chaotic life. But the relief I felt was swiftly replaced by panic, when I remembered what was happening that evening. I considered hiding at Dylan’s or Lizzy’s place or simply wandering the streets in an attempt to avoid him, but in the end I decided that it would be better not to find out if he really intended hunting me down.
Lou was ridiculously excited that I’d agreed to go out with him. She had declared herself in charge of my wardrobe selection and makeup, but my backbone put in a rare appearance, and I point-blank refused. I had decided that, if I had to go out with him, I wouldn’t truss myself up into something I wasnot.
In fact I decided on no makeup. I put my hair up in a messy knot at the top of my head and was wearing my most faded jeans with a shapeless brown jumper, which I usually reserved for monging at home. I figured that the sooner he realized I wasn’t worth any of this effort, the sooner he would back off and I would be spared the heartbreak that would only be worse the longer I spent with him.
My mistake was thinking that he would care at all about what I was wearing. I’d forgotten just how scruffy he was. When he arrived at seven on the dot he was arguably more casual than me. He had on his standard jeans and a tatty T-shirt, which had ‘Mr Lazy’ emblazoned across his chest. It was another item of clothing that, worryingly, I thought I recognized from our university days.
He stood outside the door to our flat after I opened it, his eyes doing a full body sweep of me and then lighting with humour and not the annoyance I was expecting. Lord knew, if I didn’t dress up to Chris’s satisfaction (on the rare occasions he’d deigned to take me out) there would have been hell to pay, and a fair few cutting comments to endure. Tom’s face, however, told me that he knew what I was trying to do; it amused him, and furthermore he couldn’t give a rat’s arse what I wore either way.
As soon as he was finished with his body scan he stepped forward and grabbed my hand, tugging me into him, and before I had time to gather my wits his lips were on mine in a soft, barely-there kiss. It was the opposite of the crazy wild kiss we’d had the day before. Just as breathtaking, but in an infinitely sweeter way. As he pulled back I was left blinking and dazed.
‘You ready to go?’ He was speaking and I knew that it was English but I didn’t hear a word. I just stared at him, open-mouthed. What felt like hours of silence passed whilst I tried to kick-start my brain. Tom’s eyes were dancing and his lips were pressed firmly together. ‘Uh, honey?’ he asked in a voice laced with amusement. ‘Have you stroked out again?’
Oh my.
He called me honey.
Nobody other than Lou and Dylan (that is if ‘Ladies’ counts) had ever used an English term of endearment with me. My parents only ever used Italian endearments, and I was lucky if Chris even bothered to use my name most of the time, leave alone something affectionate. I felt the beautiful pain of Tom calling me ‘honey’ slide through me and I shivered involuntarily. Jeepers, I was in trouble. Unfortunately this did not help my power of speech to return, and Tom’s suppressed laughter was quickly morphing into full-on chuckling.
One of his hands came up to cup my cheek and he dipped down again so that his face was a hair’s breath from mine.
‘Frankie?’ he called softly. ‘Shall we go?’
I nodded and he smiled, tugging me forward out of the door and slinging his arm around my shoulders.
‘You kids have fun now!’ Lou shrieked from a suspiciously short distance away, confirming her unashamed eavesdropping. ‘Try to behave yourself, Weasel,’ she added, ‘or not. Your call.’
I rolled my eyes. Lou was mortifying but at least she’d done the job of snapping me out of my stupor.
‘So, um, where are we going?’ I managed to ask, having regained the ability to speak. His arm was still around my shoulders and he kept me tucked into his side all the way down the stairs and to the passenger side of his van.
‘Alghero,’ he said, grabbing the van door for me. I noticed that it needed a healthy tug to wrench it open. I looked inside, deciding how best to negotiate the detritus on the passenger seat (even worse, if possible, than the last time I was in there), and thinking that Alghero was my favourite restaurant, which was a bit freaky, especially as it was all the way over in Bristol (over forty-five minutes away). Tom noticed my contemplation of his passenger seat, and moved around me to sweep all the crap onto the floor of the foot-well.
Seriously, it would take me five minutes to clean out his van. How could he live with it like this? I bit my lip to stop myself offering to run up and grab a bin liner.
‘I love Alghero,’ I blurted as soon as he was settled in the driver’s side. He smiled at me as he started the ignition.
‘I know.’
‘How did you –’
