Love Songs for Sceptics

by Christina Pishiris

  ‘Where would you go?’

  He shrugged. ‘Somewhere new, I guess.’

  Neither of us spoke for a couple of minutes. The muffled voice of the tannoy puncturing the silence.

  Now that my initial shock had worn off, I could begrudgingly see Nick’s point. She was demanding – and unstable.

  ‘Do you want another tea?’ he asked.

  ‘No, thanks. I should probably head off.’

  ‘Let me give you a lift.’

  ‘You drove?’

  ‘I’ve borrowed my boss’s car and I’m looking for an excuse to drive it.’

  I was intrigued. ‘Why’s that?’

  The answer was obvious when we got to the station car park. Nick had a beeper in his hand, and when he pressed it, the lights of a racing-green Aston Martin blinked.

  ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Is that a DB9?’

  ‘You like cars?’

  ‘My brother does. Some of it rubbed off on me.’ I walked round to the passenger door. ‘I’ve never been in an Aston before.’

  ‘Hop in.’

  I didn’t need a second invitation. ‘Drop me off at a Central Line tube stop,’ I said. ‘Don’t go out of your way or anything.’

  ‘It’s no problem.’ He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. ‘I’ll go and pay for the ticket.’

  I smiled as he jogged to the machine; only a non-Londoner would use a paid car park on a Sunday when you could park for free on a meter or yellow line. Then again, if you drove an Aston, maybe you were a bit more fussy about where you left your car.

  The interior was as plush as I’d imagined. Soft leather seats hugged me as I sat; the display was edged in polished wood and even the dash was covered in leather with contrasting stitching.

  Nick returned and slid into the driver’s seat.

  When he pressed the start button the roar of the engine ricocheted against the concrete walls of the underground car park.

  We turned to look at each other, guilty smiles on both our faces. ‘It’s like music,’ he said.

  He put the car into reverse and swung out of the parking space.

  The car smelt of him, I suddenly realised. Or maybe it was that we were sitting very close to each other.

  When we came out into the daylight, the engine didn’t sound quite so brash. Above the snarl, Marvin Gaye was playing on the stereo.

  When Nick reached across to open the glove box, his forearm grazed my knee and it was like a bolt of lightning.

  Shit. Was that chemistry? This wouldn’t do. Not if we were going to be cooped up in this sex-wagon for the best part of an hour.

  Marvin singing ‘I Want You’ didn’t help.

  ‘Looking for your driving gloves?’ I said, resorting to humour to defuse the situation. Not that Nick looked like he needed any sort of release. The chemistry was all in my head. Probably.

  ‘Sunglasses,’ he said, fishing out a pair of Oakleys.

  Unsurprisingly, the addition of dark glasses did nothing to lower my levels of discomfort. Did he have any idea how good-looking he was right now? Good job he wasn’t my type.

  ‘Do you have a girlfriend, Nick?’

  How had that slipped out? I didn’t feel tipsy, but I sure as hell had to be.

  The car jerked as if he’d released the clutch too fast.

  I couldn’t tell what he was thinking now that he had sunglasses on. Maybe he hadn’t heard me.

  ‘I was seeing someone in Mexico.’

  Past tense. ‘What happened?’

  He glanced at me. ‘Is this a therapy session?’

  ‘I was just making conversation.’

  More silence.

  ‘She ran off with a bullfighter.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’

  ‘Well, he was an actor in a telenovela who played one. But bullfighter sounds better.’

  ‘Mexican soaps sound fun.’

  ‘I used to think so, too.’

  I couldn’t suppress a smile. Nick glanced at me. ‘Glad you find my pain so funny.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Nick. You’re right. It’s not funny. But it could have been worse. If you were in England and she’d run off with a British soap star, you’d have to tell people she left you for a market-stall holder.’

  ‘Gee, I feel so much better.’

  ‘You have to laugh, though, don’t you? What’s the alternative?’

  ‘Throwing yourself into work. Swearing off relationships.’ He looked over at me. ‘Having the occasional hook-up.’

  I kept my eyes forward. ‘Sounds like pretty good advice, if you ask me.’

  Had I just told him I was up for hooking up with him? The idea was suddenly very appealing. No-strings sex with Nick so I could forget this Simon-shaped knot in my stomach.

  He didn’t speak, and instead concentrated on the road. My eyes drifted to his hands; one on the gear stick, the other loosely resting on the wheel. He had good hands. Big but not fat. No tufty hairs on the knuckles. Hands that knew what to do. Hands that could grab you, but not too roughly. Caress you with light touches, then build to something more insistent, more urgent . . .

  God, I was having a heart attack in my knickers.

  I peered out of my window, trying to clear the images in my head. They involved lips as well as hands. And skin. Lots of skin.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Want to grab a drink somewhere?’ I tried to sound casual, but to my ears I’d just asked him back to my place to shag his brains out.

  The sun disappeared behind a dark bank of clouds. I tried not to read too much into it. We stopped at a red light. He removed his sunglasses and hooked them into his breast pocket.

  ‘Or we could do something else.’ His voice was low.

  I swallowed. Was he thinking about my skin idea? Even without the dark glasses I couldn’t read him.

  He shoved the gear into first and we burned the other cars. Easy tiger, I wanted to say, I haven’t said yes yet.

  Spoiler alert: I was definitely going to say yes.

  ‘What did you have in mind?’ I said.

  ‘You’ll have to trust me.’

  My neck prickled. ‘Can you be more specific, please?’

  ‘I don’t want to scare you,’ he said, his voice low, ‘but how do you feel about doing something . . . public?’

  Bloody perv. That’s it, I was going to jump out of the car at the next set of lights. He wasn’t the only one with hands. I had a couple of my own and a nice private bedroom.

  ‘You know what, Nick. I’m flattered and all, but you can find someone else to play with tonight.’

  We’d been going at a steady 30 mph, but he suddenly swerved into a side road and braked to a stop. I had to brace myself against the dash to stop from flying forward.

  He took off his seatbelt and leant his elbow on the central console. It meant his whole body was tipping towards me. He looked up at me through thick lashes. ‘You’ll wake up tomorrow a different woman.’

  Oh my God, this was the corniest seduction routine I’d ever been subjected to. I was actually embarrassed for him.

  ‘Now hold on one minute, Nick—’

  I didn’t get any further. He was smiling. Grinning, actually.

  Oh.

  There was a teensy possibility that I’d jumped to conclusions and that Nick had been playing me like the damn fiddle in ‘Come On Eileen’.

  ‘Karaoke. I’m going to take you to a karaoke bar,’ he smiled again. ‘What did you think I meant?’ He was really enjoying this.

  ‘You know exactly what I was thinking,’ I told him, but my indignation had dissolved. ‘And you did it on purpose.’

  His eyes went wide with fake innocence. ‘I have absolutely no clue what you’re talking about.’ He flicked his gaze to the back seat then slowly back to me. His eyes were far from innocent.

  Oh my.

  My breath quickened. This was bad.

  Or he was having me on again.

  ‘Come on, then,’ I said, playing it safe. ‘Where’s this karaoke bar of
yours?’

  *

  The answer to that question was a basement near Victoria. A well-lit basement, I was pleased to note. It had padded walls, but in a cosy way, not Hollywood-mental-hospital style. The only problem was that everything was in Japanese.

  ‘A bit of help with this menu, Nick? I’m sure you can read Japanese.’

  ‘Tell me what you want and I’ll order it.’

  ‘White wine would be great. The drier the better.’

  ‘They don’t serve alcohol here.’

  Was he serious? ‘The drinks menu runs to eight pages. What’s it filled with, every version of Coke ever invented?’

  ‘Actually, they make a green tea cola on the premises. Coke developed it for the Japanese market, but it never took off. I’ll order us both one.’

  I grabbed his arm before he could turn to the barman. ‘You can’t expect me to sing sober? In front of all these people?’

  I waved at the room. My plea was somewhat undermined by the fact that there were only three people in here. Two of them were on their phones and the third appeared to be either asleep or in a cola-induced sugar coma.

  ‘Oh come on, don’t tell me you’re chicken? Live a little.’

  ‘I live plenty. And I’m not scared.’

  ‘Prove it.’

  I folded my arms. ‘I don’t need to do anything.’

  He tipped towards me on the balls of his feet. Closer than he’d been in the car, close enough for me to get a lungful of his catnip aftershave. ‘It’s exactly what you need.’

  Would he shut up about my needs?

  Suddenly, his hand was warm in mine. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

  He smiled and started walking and I had no choice but to follow. Fuck, he was a leading me to the stage. One of the blokes on his phone jumped to attention. He had an open laptop in front of him and I realised that he was the DJ. Three mics on leads were also arranged on the table.

  Nick still hadn’t let go of my hand. He handed me a mic and then picked up one for himself.

  ‘I’m not going to sing,’ I protested.

  ‘No, I am,’ he said. ‘But you’re going to join in on the chorus.’

  Before I could ask what the song was, the opening riffs of Def Leppard’s ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’ were blasting through the PA.

  The barman started nodding his head in time to the beat, but the punters didn’t look up from their phones.

  Nick released my hand, but before I could make a run for it, he wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me to his side.

  His ribcage vibrated against mine as he sang and his voice was a low growl; a spot-on impression of Joe Elliott. The only thing missing was the mullet.

  I watched the lyrics zip by on the screen in front of us. The words didn’t make sense and were eye-rollingly cheesy, but their meaning could not have been clearer. The whole song was about sex. And pressed against Nick’s taut body as he channelled his inner rock star was doing funny things to my lady parts.

  Shit, we were at the chorus. This was my cue. ‘Pour some sugar on maaaaaaay.’

  I swear Nick winced. Well, sod him, it was his fault my mouth was so close to his easily offended ear.

  He started on the second verse with extra swagger, his voice warming up now. I was swaying from side to side in time with the music, my hips perfectly synchronised with his. We got to the final crescendo; my one-line chorus bouncing around Nick’s lament on how hot, sticky and sweet he was.

  We punched the air at the same time for the final drum beat. And then it felt like the most natural thing in the world to hug.

  His cheek was cool against mine, but his body was warm. I could feel waves of heat coming off him. Or maybe it was my own body heat pulsing between us.

  I was smiling and breathless when I pulled back.

  He grinned back at me. ‘How did that feel?’

  I tried to find the right words. ‘Better than—’

  ‘The next word out of your mouth better not be “sex”.’

  Look whose mind was in the gutter now. ‘Better than I imagined.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘It’s a hell of a song,’ I admitted.

  ‘Well, you get to choose the next one,’ he said.

  I groaned. ‘Oh, come on, Nick. You want to go again?’

  ‘Did you really think I was a once-a-night man?’

  His expression knocked the breath out of me. Right now, I was hoping he was an up-against-the-wall man. They were padded, after all.

  I kept that thought to myself, and instead said: ‘Do I get to have a drink first?’

  ‘Nope.’

  What was wrong with him? My seduction game was always better with a bit of lubrication. It was his own fun he was ruining.

  ‘Just one,’ I said, trying not to sound desperate.

  ‘I told you, this a dry bar.’

  He was serious about that? ‘No wonder this place is empty.’

  ‘I’ll make you one concession,’ he said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘We’ll go to a private booth.’

  He had a chat with the barman, and a couple of minutes later, was ushering me into a side room with its own karaoke machine. The padded walls, I was just realising, were for soundproofing.

  Once Nick had closed the door, I couldn’t hear the music from the main bar. It was just as well, because as we’d left someone had started singing ‘New York, New York’ in a key hitherto unknown to the human ear.

  For a private room it was pretty big. The padded leather banquettes that lined the sides could have easily seated fifteen people.

  Nick sat by the screen and started scrolling through the computer to find a song.

  ‘Do you want me to choose one for you?’

  ‘Are you serious? You want me to sing?’

  ‘Well, why else are we here?’ This time, the flirty note was absent. ‘You said you enjoyed it. You’ll enjoy it even more if you sing by yourself.’

  ‘You’re going to just sit there?’

  ‘I could stand if you prefer.’

  He pressed a few buttons and suddenly the room was alive with the intro to ‘Love In An Elevator’.

  Oh, very grown-up; he knew I hated lifts.

  He handed me a microphone. ‘Thought you might like this one.’

  ‘Very funny,’ I muttered as he went to sit at the back of the room.

  As well as being a hilarious joke, it was another raunchy number, full of double entendres about ‘going down’. He evidently had a predilection for naff eighties hair metal that I secretly shared.

  What followed wasn’t pretty. Steven Tyler is one of the great voices of modern rock, and anyone would sound bad trying to imitate him, but I was truly terrible. I couldn’t hit the high notes and didn’t do much better with the lower ones either. I’d obviously been singing the lyrics wrong all my life, because the ones that were coming up on the screen were new to me. What the hell was a ‘sassafras’?

  At last, the instrumental break arrived and I’d never been so happy to hear a second-rate Joe Perry guitar solo in my life. It was precious breathing space. I’d kept my eyes fixed on the screen the whole time, but now stole a glance at Nick.

  He had his eyes closed and was thumping his hands on his thighs in time with the music.

  Now that I knew he wasn’t watching me, I felt a bit less self-conscious and threw myself into the rest of the song. I even added some dance moves. I couldn’t sing, but no one could accuse me of not knowing how to shake my booty.

  When I next looked up, Nick’s eyes had snapped open.

  Great, now it looked like I was doing a private dance for him. I turned away and tried to finish the song with the same level of confidence.

  My vocal cords felt shredded by the end, but there was something cathartic about filling my lungs and belting out a damn good tune.

  Nick clapped when I finished. ‘Brava!’

  I did a mock bow. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘I mea
n, you sounded like someone was prising off your fingernails with a flat-head screwdriver, but top marks for trying.’

  My mouth dropped open. ‘Cheeky bastard!’

  He grinned. ‘Encore?’

  ‘After that ringing endorsement?’

  ‘I’ll put it on random and see what it comes up with.’

  The machine whirred for a couple of seconds, then the slow swing of ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ filled the booth. Nick’s smile faded, and instead he was staring at me as if trying to decide something.

  I squirmed, suddenly feeling I was being examined under a microscope.

  He walked over and pulled the mic from my grasp. ‘Enough singing.’

  I swallowed. ‘Is this because of the flat-head screwdriver thing?’

  He tossed the microphone onto the bench. ‘Dance with me.’

  Without waiting for me to respond, he took my hands, placing one on his shoulder and wrapping the other in his. Meanwhile, his right hand was skimming the small of my back and I could feel his feather-light touch through the thin cotton of my dress.

  He was close enough for me to make out the black flecks in his green irises. Close enough to see the furrows on his bottom lip close enough to count the black dots of his five o’clock shadow.

  I was starting to feel out of breath so I turned my head and rested it on his breastbone. I’d done it so I wouldn’t have to gaze up at him, but I hadn’t realised how intimate it would feel. Or how good.

  The rise and fall of his chest was slow, but I was struggling to keep my breathing light. I wanted to take great lungfuls of air; there wasn’t enough oxygen in the room. There wasn’t anything in the room. There was only Nick.

  My first mistake was to look up. My second was to let my eyes wander to his mouth. His lips were parted, and something in me snapped.

  Instantly, I was pulling his head towards me. Then his arms were wrapped around my body and our lips touched. Desire surged through me, as I deepened the kiss and my hands scrabbled down his back, feeling the heat and the hardness and the longing as he leant into me. My fingers reached under the hem of his top and found warm skin and then I think I lost time.

  Jesus Christ, the man could kiss.

  The part of my brain that was still working wasn’t surprised by that. What was shocking was my own reaction. My knees were shaking, and my heart skipping beats. And was it me making those little mewling noises? Probably, because after a particularly loud one, Nick broke contact and lifted his head.