Читать книгу Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You - Nikki Gemmell - Страница 63

every womanly woman, who truly realises her mission, desires to be a pleasant object of vision for her fellow creatures

Cole knows of him.

He’d insisted upon meeting the new Library friends at one of the drinking sessions after work, he wanted to tag along. As if he just wanted to keep tabs on your new life; the price of the gift, perhaps. You had to say yes.

The actor one is creepy, he said, as you sat side by side on the tube on the way home.

Why?

He’s in love with you, he said.

What makes you say that? Sweat shimmering across your brow like it does after too much chocolate.

I don’t know, just a look, perhaps.

And Cole had returned to his Standard. Secure in his fiefdom, knowing implicitly the type of man you like and do not. He’s always assuming he knows you so well: orders your drink without consultation, insists you try a particular dish he’s sure you’ll like, tapes you television shows he feels you should watch. And he always considers these gestures a kindness.

Gabriel never assumes, he wants to learn.

Two red patches on your cheeks, often now.

Your nails are painted for the first time in years and you keep on forgetting and catch in the corner of your eye the octopus fingers, it’s as if they’re weighed down with a life of their own. You write neater with them and eat neater and less. You’re losing weight, there’s a reason to now, and you’ve cut your hair short for you want people to see the new lightness in your face. You get contact lenses. You feel taller with them, bolder. You’d become lazy in so many ways, you’d stopped trying. You feel sleeker all over, walk with a subtle shine.

Your Elizabethan book takes on a new urgency as you dip into its pages:

She decked her selfe bravely to allure the yes of all men that should see her. And who knows not how this deceipt of hers prospered and how much she is magnified and commended for the same.

You shut the volume, tremulously, you smooth your palm over its surface. You tuck the tiny book away in your drawer, suddenly not wanting Cole to see it lying around, to flip through the cocoa-coloured subversion of its beautiful handwriting.

You’re readying your life, but for what? You don’t know where all the flirting and phone calls will end up. Does Gabriel feel the same as you? You don’t dare to think ahead too much, for you don’t want this melted under the heat of your attention, don’t want it gone from your life.