Alex
Everything in his life seemed to have piss-poor timing.
After ignoring him for three days, Lila had suddenly reappeared on his phone saying she’d like to have lunch with him. Unfortunately, Lila’s version of “Sunday lunch” wasn’t a roast like everyone else’s, but rather falafels from her favourite vegan café off Balham High Street, where the menus were all in Arabic and it smelt like his parents’ damp garage. Even more unfortunately, Alex was hideously hung over, with a trapped nerve in his neck from the two hours of fitful sleep he’d got at the cinema.
After his first cinematic nap, Alex had woken with a start, at first just confused as to where he was, then secondly confused as to how he’d missed the second half of Iron Man 2 and what appeared to have been a rather large chunk of Thor. Nadia had still been asleep, her mouth slightly open, her fist curled up loosely by her face and her whole body turned in the chair towards his, like a uninhibited toddler snoozing in her all-in-one pyjamas.
“Are you okay?” Lila asked, sharply. Alex realised he was smiling vacantly at his Arabic menu as he recalled the sleeping Nadia of just a few hours before.
“Yeah.” He threw the dog-eared laminated menu down on the table top. “I don’t know why I’m even trying to read that.”
“Just get the falafels,” Lila told him, right on cue. “They’re lovely.”
Not really having any other option, Alex agreed and waited patiently whilst Lila relayed their order to the café’s one bedraggled waiter.
“So, Lils,” he barrelled in as soon as the waiter had placed their pint glasses of tap water in front of them and disappeared into the kitchen. “What’s up? How are things?”
Lila took a very careful sip from her water, tucking one side of her honey-blonde bob behind her ear with her free hand as she did. “Things are… okay,” she said, after a moment. “It was a long time coming, actually. But you’re sweet to be concerned.” She flashed him one of her usual warm smiles, the kind that made him feel giddy and reckless.
Alex had seen Lila’s text as a sign. Obviously she wanted to stay friends; but Alex wasn’t sure that he could stay being “just friends” with Lila Palmer. He had to grow a pair – as he was sure Nadia would say – and tell the girl how he felt, right now, here, at this point where he had the least to lose.
He just wished he didn’t have such a wicked hangover for what could turn out to be one of the defining moments of his life.
“I’m just looking forward to taking some time to myself, enjoying being single, reconnecting with Penny and my other friends,” Lila was saying. “You know, it got pretty intense pretty quickly, me and Rory…” Alex nodded solemnly; he sure did know. “I’m actually not surprised it burnt out the way it did.”
“It obviously wasn’t meant to be…” Alex agreed, wondering how the hell he was going to subtly circle the conversation away from bloody Rory.
Lila hesitated, momentarily biting at her bottom lip. “Can I… Alex, can I ask you something?” She looked across at him nervously through her lowered eyelashes.
Alex blinked. This felt momentous. What if he’d had it wrong and Lila had always secretly had a thing for him? A thing she was now free to confess? There had certainly been something between them in recent weeks, since the shit had started to hit the fan with Rory, anyway. There had been deep, lingering looks that lacked context, barbed comments that made no sense, expressions that caused questions, questions…
“Sure,” he managed, after a moment, straightening his feet under the café table, preparing himself both mentally and physically.
“Do you think that Rory might have been seeing someone else?”
Alex’s visions abruptly deflated like a collapsed soufflé. “What?” he managed, fumbling through the mental wreckage of his hope.
“Like, an affair. Like, maybe he wasn’t working late at all – he was seeing another girlfriend.” Lila’s bottom lip trembled and she clenched and unclenched her fists against the plastic tablecloth.
“Oh, Lils, no. I don’t think so. Rory may be a pain in the arse, but I don’t think he’d do that to you. He cares about you, I know he does. He’s just genuinely… in a place with his work at the moment…”
“Oh, don’t you start!” Lila barked, drawing both of her hands into her lap and out of sight. “I’ve already heard it. ‘In a delicate place in his career’ and all that bollocks,” she said, mockingly. She exhaled shakily. “It might actually be better to be dumped for another woman than for his desk…”
The waiter chose that moment to interrupt, with two plates of slightly wilted-looking salad and falafel balls. Alex and Lila politely paused their tense conversation until he’d retired into the back once again.
“Lila,” Alex started, trying to inject as much sincerity into his tone as possible. “You shouldn’t take this at all personally. You were too good for Rory to start with! Even he agrees! The reason he’s broken up with you is because he thinks you can do better, isn’t it? So you can find a guy who’s not quite so much of a douche about work and can give you all the time and attention in the world.”
Lila gave a little, watery smile. “Do you really think that?”
“I know that. Come off it, Lila! You’re gorgeous, you’re funny, you’re smart. You could have any guy you wanted. “
Lila looked at him curiously. “Do you really think that?”
“Totally. Any guy off the street!”
“No. About me being… pretty and stuff.”
Alex’s heart suddenly thumped in alarm. “Of course,” he managed, after an agonising beat. “You’re… great.” And here it was – a golden opportunity on an equally golden platter. Time to stop being the loser that Alice Rhodes had turned him into all those years ago and just say it, spit it out; fight for love. Alex inhaled deeply, steeling himself. “In fact…” he choked out.
“Oh, Alex,” Lila said at the same time. “You’re great, too. I’d really, really like for us to stay good friends, despite Rory, you know?” She smiled at him as she picked up her knife and fork and cut energetically into the falafel ball, causing it to fall apart into a heap of processed crumbs.
Alex couldn’t help but relate.
Nadia
Nadia planted her palms flat on her living room’s crumbling sill and hoisted her entire upper body out of the sash window, straining her eyes to see as far down the road as she could. Caro was by now twenty-five minutes late. Caro was never, ever late.
Swinging back inside again, Nadia swiped her phone from the top of the coffee table, tapping the call button impatiently to re-dial the last number in her history. Once again, Caro’s mobile rang out, proving only that she wasn’t trapped underground on the Tube with no signal. Nadia dropped her mobile phone to the table top again, half concerned and half annoyed. Caro had promised she’d be round before one o’clock – and that she’d bring lunch – and that the two of them would do some work on the basics of Nadia’s Indefinite Leave to Remain appeal. She was due to get her court date before too long and the whole thing was getting much harder to ignore.
Throwing herself down on the sofa with a sigh, Nadia pulled her laptop towards her. She might as well start reading the advice blogs without Caro, no point wasting any more time. But instead she found herself loading her Gmail and typing out a quick message to Alex.
She imagined him noticing the email notification sliding up in the corner of his screen and giving one of his unhurried smiles. She often amused herself by picturing him at his desk. He’d admitted the other day that he wore glasses at the office to reduce the strain on his eyes from the computer screen, which fitted in nicely with her whole Clark Kent/Superman opinion of the real Alex Bradley. At work he was the guy she’d met all those months ago; he probably had his hair super-tidy, his face cleanly shaven, glasses on, neat and prim in the sort of suit she now only saw him in if she was meeting him directly after work, a sensible half pint of chilled water from the cooler to the side of his keyboard…
Okay, so she knew she was picturing Alex’s office like something out of the fifties and she knew that he’d told her not to email him at work that often in case he got in trouble for personal correspondence, though he couldn’t be all that worried about it because he always immediately replied.
Nadia was so engrossed in their email conversation that she almost didn’t realise her mobile was ringing until the call had almost rung out. Letting her laptop slide from her legs she reached to grab her phone; Caro was calling back, at last.
“Hello?” she said, allowing her annoyance to be evident in her tone. “Are you okay? Caro, I swear to God…” Nadia trailed off as she realised that Caro wasn’t making excuses; in fact, Caro wasn’t saying anything at all. “Are you okay?” Nadia repeated. “Where are you?”
“Lavender Hill,” Caro admitted, in a small voice.
Realisation dawned. “Caro, are you with Monty?” Nadia asked, not really wanting to know the answer.
Caro sniffed, an altogether very un-Caro-like noise. “I was.” She fell silent.
“And are you coming over?” Nadia asked impatiently after she felt the dramatic silence had gone on for too long.
“I left my Oyster card and my keys in his flat,” Caro admitted, her voice even smaller than before.
Nadia’s ears pricked up. “Have you guys had a fight, or something?” she asked, taking care not to sound too pleased at the prospect.
“We’ve had the fight,” was all Caro said.
Nadia sighed. “Just get in a taxi.”
Montgomery Fletcher had been a thorn in Nadia’s side since the start of the previous academic year. Caro had come to the pub after her first day of classes for her new Masters’ in Art History full of stories about the impossibly rakish lecturer who wore converses and skinny ties and seemed truly and honestly passionate about his subject. Within a month, Caro was hooked. Before the autumn term was over, she was in love. At the departmental Christmas drinks the pair had shared a drunken kiss and suddenly, by the time January came around, it had become a full-blown secret affair.
And while Caro was blissfully happy, Monty became increasingly paranoid. He was her tutor, after all; if the university found out about them he would lose his job and Caro would be kicked off the course. He’d probably never work in education again. But that wasn’t the reason that Monty was so paranoid, why he refused to even smile at Caro in public, why he constructed overly elaborate reasons for her being in his office so often, why he took out another phone contract to conceal the fact that he was in always contact with her.
Monty was paranoid because he was married – with a two-year-old daughter – and because Monty had already been caught cheating twice during his marriage, he knew that he was truly on his final strike when it came to his long-suffering wife. Sally must never find out, he stressed to Caro, raising his voice at her as though somehow it was all her fault; Sally must never find out. And it was for that reason he shunted Caro in and out of his Battersea flat like a package whenever Sally was out of town with the baby, vacuuming the flat obsessively, over and over, even whilst she was still there, as if Sally would return home and immediately notice a rogue strand of hair in a brown two shades darker than her own and cry foul.
And despite the constant pleading from her friends to get out of it, this had been Caro’s life for the past eight months. Because despite all evidence to the contrary, despite being told otherwise by absolutely everyone she knew and despite knowing somewhere deep in her own heart that she would never be the exception to the rule, Caro wanted to believe that one day Monty would leave his wife for her.
“He’s never going to leave his wife for me,” Caro wailed, wedging herself as small as possible into the corner of Nadia’s sofa. She was the very embodiment of woe: ratty strands of dark hair sticking to her wet cheeks, a handful of already half-sodden tissues clenched in one fist.
Nadia placed a steaming mug of Caro’s favourite extra-strong green tea on the coffee table in front of her.
“Of course he’s not going to leave his wife,” she said, not unkindly. “They never do.”
“Sometimes they do,” Caro insisted, despite herself.
Nadia launched into her usual script; they’d been having this same conversation for the last half a year. “And what if he did? What then? Could you ever have a proper relationship with him, ever trust him, knowing that he’d cheated on his wife like that?”
“I don’t know,” Caro admitted miserably. “But it’s a moot point anyway because he’s not going to leave his wife.”
“No,” Nadia agreed, sadly, taking a sip of Caro’s tea herself. “He’s not.”
Alex
Alex frowned slightly, opening the Outlook ribbon and clicking Send and Receive, just to check that there were no emails pending somewhere or other waiting to get in to his inbox. Right in the middle of a very animated conversation about films they thought were severely overrated Nadia had disappeared on him, leaving him alone with his exceedingly boring afternoon in the office.
Alex sighed and turned his attention to the pile of applications and forms he had to process and separate, as well as log onto their systems. It was the usual: student visa applications, extension requests, notifications about over-stayers; human beings reduced to the information you could fit onto one A4 piece of paper. And Alex couldn’t help but wonder how much longer he could do this job.
He’d toyed with the idea of quitting on and off for years now; after all, the Home Office was only ever meant to be a stop-gap, a nice little entry to jumpstart his CV and to allow him to begin paying off his eye-watering student loan. But for whatever reason, he never actually seemed to get around to job-hunting. And now the promotion he’d been working overtime for all summer had gone to a girl who had only started working in his department the year before. He just didn’t display the passion for it, was Donnelly’s blunt feedback, as he’d scratched the paunch straining against his TM Lewin shirt in a bored fashion, like it didn’t even matter. And the thing was, it actually didn’t.
Not everyone could be passionate about their jobs, Alex used to think. Not everyone could have a calling: be a teacher or a doctor or something useful to society. Alex got up and went to work every day simply because otherwise he’d have no way of paying his rent, and that was that. And then he had met Nadia, somebody who had so much passion for everything she did that she was almost exhausting; she was passionate about London, passionate about her volunteer work, passionate about making him into a better person.
“Not a better person,” she’d corrected him when he’d told her that, shaking her head empathically as she spoke. “Not better. Not a different person. Just more you.”
Alex’s thoughts wandered to his upper arm, remembering the buzz and sting of the tattooist’s needle there all those years ago. He’d been meaning to get an appointment and get all that sorted out for years; yet another entry on that mental to-do list that he was never going to get around to. Mainly because it was Nadia’s to-do list was all-encompassing these days. Alex smiled at the thought, wondering what could possibly be next on her agenda.
But he didn’t remember there being any rule that stated Nadia had to set all the activities.
Hey, you, he opened up a new email window to type. I was thinking and I’ve realised that there’s something that you’ve definitely not experienced before that I can help with. When do you next have a spare six hours?
Nadia
Holly, bless her, had not stopped to ask questions when she’d come out of work to a voicemail from Nadia which perfunctorily instructed her to pick up several boxes of Party Rings biscuits and a large bottle of dark rum. She’d just done as she was told.
The rum had been polished off even quicker than the biscuits. After that, Holly had stepped up and pulled several dusty bottles of expensive red wine out from under her bed; her office had given her one every Christmas in lieu of a bonus for years. The empty bottles joined that of the rum in the plastic recycling box; all three girls’ lips were stained purple in the corners.
The combination of sugar and alcohol had done the trick; Caro was no longer crying. Instead she was that sombre sort of silent, staring into the dark depths of her wine glass as if she could see her future in it if she just tried hard enough.
“You just need to cut him out of your life now,” Nadia insisted. “See this as the opportunity it is. A kick up the arse.”
“How can I avoid him? He’s my fucking teacher,” Caro moaned.
Holly and Nadia exchanged a look. “When is this course over?” Holly asked.
“January.”
“Ahhh.” Holly took a tactful sip from her wine glass rather than commenting further.
“You’re going to have to see him tomorrow. He’s got your house keys, for crying out loud,” Nadia pointed out.
“I bet I’ll find a manila envelope in my departmental pigeonhole tomorrow with my stuff inside it,” Caro sighed. “That seems more his style.”
“His ‘style’ is being an absolute arsehole,” Nadia retorted, the hours of heavy drinking making her tongue loose and her words harsh. “His ‘style’ is having his cake and eating it too, that’s what his flipping ‘style’ is.”
Holly’s forehead creased in drunken confusion. “Wait, wait. Is Caro the ‘cake’ or the ‘too’ in this situation?”
“That’s not the point!” Nadia declared, waving her wine glass dramatically in Caro’s face as she did. “The point is, you shouldn’t have to put up with it. Why you have for so long, I don’t know.”
“Because I love him,” whined Caro, causing both Nadia and Holly to instantaneously roll their eyes.
“But why?” Holly pressed.
“I guess that’s something that I don’t know,” Caro admitted, rolling her head back against the plush back of the sofa. “Love is an absolute shitter,” she concluded, petulantly.
“You’re sort of making me glad I’m a professional singleton,” Holly sighed. “Come on, you girls are meant to give me hope in true love, not utterly destroy my faith in it.” She turned to Nadia. “Please tell me how great things are going between you and Matt and how your future is full of marriage and babies and puppies before I slit my metaphorical wrists.”
Nadia fidgeted awkwardly. “I keep telling you and telling you. Matt and I are just casual. In fact, I’m thinking of breaking it off…”
Caro gasped and sat forward, immediately distracted from her own woe. “Well, whatever you do, don’t bloody do it before your court hearing.”
“You see this, Hols?” Nadia pointed at Caro with the hand that was holding her glass, causing the wine within to slosh alarmingly. “This is why romance is dead.”
“This isn’t about romance, this is about being practical,” Caro retorted. “The perfect British boyfriend with the exact name fell into your lap at precisely the right time and has remained there ever since. The sod might as well have Golden Ticket stamped across his face.”
“I hate myself a bit for it, but I agree with Caro, Nads…” Holly admitted.
“The universe saw you were in need and the stars aligned and sent him to you,” Caro continued, characteristically theatrical.
“Okay, I don’t agree with that…” Holly added quickly.
Caro sighed. “I used to think that the universe had brought Monty and I together…”
“I think there’s something in all of that, you know,” Nadia interjected quickly, half to distract and half to console Caro. “NOT about you and Monty,” she frowned, “but the whole people come into your life for a reason thing. Think about it,” she insisted, ignoring Holly’s doubtful expression. “If your parents hadn’t been going through that messy divorce, then you wouldn’t have been sent to our school, right?”
Holly rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, that’s right. Bring up my painful childhood; unwanted by my parents! Shunted off to boarding school…”
“And if my grandfather hadn’t died when he did, my parents wouldn’t have had the money to send me to the UK for my education,” Nadia continued, warming to her theme. “And we would never have met.” Nadia took advantage of the dramatic pause to liberally top up everyone’s wine glass.
“And then us two wouldn’t have met at uni,” Caro pointed out. “And I wouldn’t be sitting here, far too drunk for a Tuesday…”
“Not knowing Nadia wouldn’t mean you’d never meet Monty the Pervy Professor, I’m afraid,” Holly pointed out. “You’d still be stuck with that. But you wouldn’t have such attractive and accommodating drinking company, as well as access to several bottles of Châteauneuf-du-Pape.” Holly and Nadia chinked their glasses together in a toast to themselves.
“But who’s to say in this alternate universe Monty didn’t leave his wife for me?” Caro pointed out, eyes gleaming. “Or – even better – was never married in the first place!”
Holly placed her glass down on the coffee table in exasperation. “Talk about a dog with a bone,” she muttered under her breath.
“Isn’t it scary? How easy it could be to be living a different life..? Sit next to a different girl at school when you’re eleven; balls up a job interview at eighteen; marry the wrong guy at thirty.” Nadia considered the depths of her wine glass. “Do you remember, Hols, how that night at the Bellevue quiz, we refused at first when they wanted us to be moved to that other team?”
Holly looked at her curiously. “Yeah.”
“See what I mean? Such a simple thing. If two other people had gone over to Alex’s table instead of us that evening, I’d never have met him.”
“Nadia.” Holly sat forward as she spoke; Nadia winced at the formality of her full name being used. “About Alex. Usual disclaimer: I'm only saying this because I love you. I think that it’s this little Stockholm Syndrome crush you’ve got going on for him that’s impacting on your relationship with Matt.”
“Stockholm Syndrome?” Nadia echoed, incredulously. “He hasn’t kidnapped me.”
Holly gestured dismissively. “Either way round.”
“Well, I haven’t kidnapped him either!” Nadia immediately argued. “I dared him to come to a couple of random places with me. It’s not like I locked him in my basement.”
“Well, you live in a mansion block,” Caro pointed out, gravely. Holly and Nadia looked confused. “As in, you don’t have a basement,” she clarified.
“Even if I happened to have a basement, kidnapping random men and locking them inside it wouldn’t exactly be my first thought,” Nadia pointed out, scathingly.
“Daddy keeps wine in his basement,” Caro added brightly, following the mention by topping up everyone’s drink once more, despite the fact that Nadia had just done so, and that she'd clearly already had enough.
“If there’s wine in it, doesn’t that make it a cellar?” queried Holly, picking up her glass to take another drink the moment that Caro had stopped pouring.
“Anyway,” Nadia said, belatedly, “I don’t have ‘a crush’ on Alex. I’m not fifteen.” She scowled at Holly, who graciously ignored it.
“Nadia and Alex, sittin’ in a tree,” Caro sung to herself, delightedly. “K, I, S, S, I, N, G…”
“Nads. You forget how well I know you,” Holly continued. “And I knew you when you were fifteen. You are crushing. Hard.”
“I have to admit, I’ve picked up on this too. The chemistry between you two the other night. You are totally crushing,” Caro declared, matter-of-factly.
“And it’s alright to be, you know,” Holly added. “I like Alex. He’s grown on me.”
“Yeah, I totally see it. He’s quite hot. You know, in a geeky way,” was Caro’s opinion.
“It’s not like that between us,” Nadia insisted. “He’s not interested in me, not in that way…”
“Probably because you have a boyfriend?” Holly pointed out bluntly. “And he’s all super-gentlemanly and wouldn’t want to, you know, get called to a duel by Matt because he’s coveted his lady. Or whatever.”
“Okay Hols, is Alex Hugh Grant from the ‘90s or a Victorian duke?” Nadia sighed, “because I don’t think he can be both.”
“Did Hugh Grant ever play a duke?” Caro asked, absently. “It seems like the sort of role he’d play…”
“Either way,” Nadia interrupted impatiently, growing immensely tired of the meandering conversation. “He…” she hesitated, still not remotely comfortable with the idea. “He likes someone else. So that’s that.”
“Not more than he likes you, surely?” Caro scoffed immediately. “He’s like, your biggest fan.”
“He’s always looking at you,” Holly added.
Nadia blanched. “What do you mean, looking at me?” She had a flash of Alex with his face pressed up against the window leering at her and giggled at the image.
“You know, when he’s talking to you. He looks at you.”
Nadia raised her eyebrow. “Oh no,” she intoned, sarcastically. “What a creep.”
“No, no, I know what Holly means,” Caro interjected, readjusting her position on the sofa so that her legs were underneath her; she bounced a little with excitement. “He looks at you,” she paused dramatically, “like you really matter.”
Nadia couldn’t help but snort with laughter. “That’s sort of the least I’m looking for in a friend, guys,” she giggled.
“You say that, but it’s actually quite a big deal,” Caro frowned. “Monty only really looks at me at all in the immediate seconds before climax." She rolled her eyes. "I bet Hugh Grant looks at women like they matter,” she continued, half to herself, half to her drink as she brought it to her mouth again.
She still wasn’t entirely sure what they were even talking about, but Nadia felt very in love with her stupid friends in that moment. And also, also, she felt her heart nudging inside of her chest when she thought about Alex and the way that he apparently looked at her.
Nadia stretched forward and poured the dregs of the final bottle out equally between their three glasses.
“That’s it for the wine then, ladies,” she announced. “And speaking of High Grant, anyone up for watching Notting Hill?”
Alex
Alex had been mentally checked-out since lunchtime; the compulsory Friday-afternoon team meeting had just about killed his already-meagre work ethic stone dead. For yet another week running he watched the same faces all studiously staring at their laps to avoid making eye contact with Donnelly, listened to the same crap about budget cuts and productivity levels and missed targets and felt very much as though he wanted to scream.
After what felt like a million years, Alex’s team were released back to their desks to see out the tail end of the working week. Boring afternoons at work had become a lot easier since Nadia had come into his life, although Alex seriously hoped his bosses weren’t monitoring his personal email use. Although, if they were, he’d dare them not to get totally sucked into it; Nadia had a way of making the most stupid topics ever into amazing conversation. That morning they’d been earnestly discussing whether or not the world’s governments were covering up proof of extra-terrestrial life. Nadia’s arguments that they were seemed to mainly be based around a childhood of watching The X Files. She’d been in full flow, sending him jpegs of pixilated blurs in the night’s sky that she swore were UFOs when he got called into the team meeting, so he was eager to see what inbox delights were awaiting him now he was out.
Most recent, appearing at the top, was a subjectless email from Lila Palmer; Alex felt an embarrassing little jerk in his stomach. Since their awkward falafel lunch the other week, he hadn’t had any contact with her, save the fact that he hadn’t been able to stop himself from “liking” all of her latest Facebook activity (he was only human). He’d gotten the distinct impression that, despite all her grand words about staying friends, he was being phased out. So why? Why this sudden email? He almost didn’t want to open it, glanced wistfully at the one from Nadia, sitting a few lines below, before resolutely double-clicking on Lila’s.
The message began innocuously enough.
Hiya! Are you good? Has your flat deteriorated into a total testosterone pig-sty by now??
Lila was forever peppering her texts and emails with little faces; this particular sentence was punctuated by a tongue-sticky-outy face to show she was only kidding. The flat was pretty much pristine actually, Alex thought, a little annoyed; neither he nor Rory were hardly ever in, these days.
I was just wondering if you’re free tonight? the email continued, making Alex’s heart soar. I fancied going to the cinema. I know it’s short notice, but Penny just bailed on me saying she’s not feeling well. Sad face. Alex pulled a matching grimace, feeling the rollercoaster dip of disappointment. A stood-up Lila had clearly just mentally scrolled through all her acquaintances and decided that he, out of all of them, was most likely to be free on a Friday night. Charming.
Let me know if you’re up for it! Lila had concluded, smiley face.
Lila had already been waiting for a response for over twenty minutes, but for some reason Alex didn’t feel inclined to reply straight away. He minimised Lila’s email and opened Nadia’s. It was, as he’d expected, far more cheering. Much like Lila’s little emoticon quirk, Nadia’s habit was to over-exclaim; even the most humdrum sentences seemed to merit at least two exclamation marks.
Look at this!!! Nadia demanded, underneath where she had pasted the link to a conspiracy theory blog. How can you say that nothing was going on in the fifties!?!?
Nads, seriously, Alex replied immediately, grinning to himself. I’m currently in a government building! I really can’t be clicking on links to anti-establishment nut-job websites! He rolled his eyes. Anyway, changing the subject here before I get fired/arrested/sectioned. Do you fancy the cinema tonight, if you’re not busy? If you let me pick the flick, then the tickets are on me…
Nadia shot back a response almost immediately. Okay. Not another American gross-out comedy this time, please!!! I’ll get the popcorn.
Smiling to himself again, Alex revisited Lila’s email. Sorry Lils… he typed, already almost regretting his impulsive decision; but was it too much to hope that he could ever be more than a last resort to the woman he loved? I’ve already got plans tonight. Another time, yeah?
Alex couldn’t hold back an audible laugh as another email from Nadia shot into the corner of his screen: There’s a film about an alien invasion on at 7pm at the Picture House!! Book it! Quick!!!