Nadia wandered arm-in-arm with Naomi, her old colleague from a job years ago who had since left the world of STEM to become a professional Instagrammer with almost three hundred thousand followers. She was the one in the picture-perfect relationship with Callum, who was now officially her ‘Instagram Husband’, snapping her for uploads that she could command up to eight thousand pounds for. Nadia reflected on her hundred and thirty-three followers on her own account and wondered what she could charge. About thirty pence, maybe? She couldn’t be too envious, though – it was Naomi’s followers that meant she got offered free tickets to an event like tonight, something Nadia would have paid for anyway, but it was so much sweeter to be comp’d as a VIP.
All around them, people dressed as Montagues and Capulets meandered around, the actors placed amongst them reciting lines and having rap battles and generally adding to the atmosphere. It was like an immersive theatre event, with anything able to happen next. Nadia was thrilled to be there. She’d kept a low profile since breaking up with Eddie, heading to work and going to her classes at the gym and reading a lot at home on the sofa. She wasn’t too saddened by the break-up – they’d been dating only a few weeks, after all. But it was the loneliness she was struggling with.
Not only did she no longer have Eddie, but after seeing Gaby and Emma together Nadia had made the decision to wait it out – to wait for them to come to her with her news. Except, so far, they hadn’t. Nadia didn’t reach out to them, and save for a cursory and distant text from Emma once a week, she didn’t really hear from them. Gaby always seemed to be in a rush somewhere at work too, and that’s why Nadia had forced herself to reach out to the old work friend she hadn’t seen in a while. She figured Emma and Gaby had to hash out what was going on between them in their own time, and Nadia would just have to wait, patiently. On the sofa. At home. Alone.
Naomi and Nadia caught up on each other’s lives as they walked: Naomi’s brand deals and business and the difficulties of working with her husband.
‘He drives me nuts!’ she said. ‘We’re together almost all day, every day. But then, he takes the afternoon off to go to the health club or drives down to the coast to see his brother, and I miss him horribly.’ She laughed at the predicament. ‘I don’t think it’s healthy to spend so much time together, but I’m as obsessed with him as I ever was!’
Nadia smiled. She was envious, really, of how easily Naomi talked about her love for Callum. But also, it was more than that: there was a respect. A really deep respect for both him, and what they had.
‘Are you seeing anyone?’ Naomi said, following up with, ‘I know that’s the worst question in the world.’
Nadia smiled. ‘It is, but also you’re allowed to ask. And the answer is no. I was seeing somebody, a guy – we met in a bar, when I was actually stood up by another date, woe is me.’ She rolled her eyes, pseudo-dramatically. ‘And he was so great. But …’
‘But not the one?’ Naomi supposed.
‘But not the one,’ Nadia said. She sighed. ‘Do you think I’m too picky?’
Naomi pointed in the direction of the VIP area and distractedly said, ‘Let’s go grab a spot over there.’
‘Okay,’ said Nadia.
‘And do I think you’re too picky? Oh, I don’t know. Only you know that. I know that a lot of women – and, you know, probably a lot of men – fall in love even after they’re married. For some people there’s a lightning bolt that strikes when you meet, and for others it’s more work.’
Nadia nodded along as they let a concierge hand them bean bags and blankets and gift bags.
‘I don’t think one is more right than the other,’ Naomi said. ‘It’s just what works for you.’
They sat down and Nadia peered in the goodie bag: there was some coconut water and a handful of Lindt chocolate balls.
‘Could you go in for a burger?’ she asked.
Naomi smiled. ‘I could always go in for a burger.’
They stood and looked across to the food area, where small lines had formed in front of each stand. ‘That way, I guess,’ Nadia said. And to close off the discussion of her love life: ‘And I see what you’re saying. I guess for now I am better alone, until I’m not. Self-contained, but ready for romance whenever the opportunity presents itself. Or something.’
‘Or something,’ smiled Naomi.
They meandered over to the burger stand, admiring people’s outfits along the way, and almost being pulled into a battle of words in Shakespearean English, where a group had gathered around Romeo’s mother and Juliet’s nurse. The atmosphere was electric – it was a spectacular event.
The women joined the queue behind two dark-haired men – one in a Hawaiian print shirt and another in a black leather waistcoat with nothing underneath, and waited to order their food. Naomi clocked the men before Nadia did, using her eyebrows to make a funny face that inferred she thought they were appealing. A kind of huh-huh-huh in their direction. Nadia crinkled her face up, puzzled, and then once she understood what Naomi meant, leant forward to get a better look.
‘And the thing is,’ the guy in the waistcoat was saying, ‘it’s more of a comment on performative gender, I think – the way it’s girls versus boys, even. That’s so heteronormative! So the girls start preening more and the guys start peacocking more and, just to observe, it’s fascinating.’
Nadia leaned her head forward a little more. Was he talking about The Lust Villa? And what’s more, was he talking about The Lust Villa with high-brow gender analysis?
His friend, the one in the shirt, replied, ‘I see what you mean, yeah. Like, well. You know. I don’t wanna sound gay or anything but you’ve just got to let people be people, haven’t you? Like, I’m really not or nothing – obviously I’m not.’ The guy held up his hands, as if to prove he wasn’t holding ‘gay’ in them. ‘But it’d be pretty cool to watch two men hit it off. Like, if they were emotional and that, you know.’
‘Exactly!’ the guy in the waistcoat was saying. ‘I mean like, I feel it, sometimes. When dad died in the summer and I felt like I had to be so brave because otherwise, you know, I was some massive poofter or weak or whatever. I like how it’s becoming more okay for blokes to have feelings. My flatmate’s a dick but I just made friends with this guy at my job, and he doesn’t take the piss out of everything like Lorenzo does. He’s just … nicer to be around.’
‘Yeah man, that’s rough,’ his friend said. ‘The Lorenzo thing. I never really liked him, and after what you told me …’
‘Yeah,’ the guy in the leather waistcoat said, craning his neck to see if the queue was going down at all.
Nadia was hooked. Who were these two men talking so eloquently and beautifully about their feelings? And about the best show on television? The guy in the waistcoat turned, slightly, and reached out to his friend’s shoulder.
‘How you doing anyway?’ he said. ‘I am so, so sorry about your granddad. I know how close you were.’ The one in the shirt seemed caught off guard by that, suddenly welling up. Naomi was listening in intently too, and put a finger to each eye and ran them down her face, as if to say to Nadia, He’s crying. Nadia could see all the hairs rising at the back of his neck. Bless him.
‘It was his time,’ the guy said. ‘But fuck, I miss him, you know?’
‘If you ever want to talk …’ Waistcoat Guy said, and Nadia silently thought to herself, Of course he wants to talk! He’s asking to talk now! Do it now! He won’t come to you again!
The queue for pulled-pork burgers moved slowly in front of them. The guy in the waistcoat said, after assessing they’d be in line for at least another five minutes, ‘What’s your favourite memory of him?’
Nadia’s heart exploded. What a man this guy was. Beautiful arms, able to talk about his feelings, smart too …
She realized Naomi was sort of nodding her head, as if to say, Talk to him! But Nadia couldn’t interrupt this tender moment. The guy had stopped crying and was saying something about how his granddad used to get really bad wind, but would always blame the dog, even after the dog had died. ‘I’d give anything to have him here. He was a right sound bastard.’
The queue inched forward. Nadia pulled out her phone and typed into a blank note, I am in love with these men in front!!!!! OMG!!!
She passed the phone to Naomi, who read it and typed back, More men like this please! Beautiful, open hearts. I’ve got a hard-on for it.
Nadia burst out laughing as she read it, forcing the men in front to turn around, and the man in the waistcoat to hit his elbow on the corner of her iPhone, promptly knocking it to the floor. Without thinking, Nadia instinctively bent down to pick it up, but at the same moment the man in the waistcoat did too, muttering in a London twang, ‘Fucking hell, I’m so sorry. I’m such a clumsy idiot!’
From where they both crouched down, him holding both her phone and the two food vouchers that had fluttered to the ground with it, their eyes met.
Nadia had the thunderbolt. The jolt. The course of electricity pulsed through every cell in her body.
‘Hi,’ she said to him.
‘Hi,’ he replied, smiling.