“Why didn’t your date work out, really?” she said, moving her hand away and placing it on my thigh again.
“There was no chemistry. It was the third date and all we had in common was work.”
“Third date. So you just turned down sleeping with her.”
I looked briefly at the floor. “I guess I did.”
“Why’s that? I know for a fact that my brothers wouldn’t have turned down a fuck just because there was a lack of chemistry. And after you’ve had a mutual fulfilling of orgasms you go your separate ways and both of you think of polite reasons as to why you can’t make another date.” She smiled, her hand still there.
“Maybe my standards have been higher recently.” I tried to read her expression.
“Maybe,” she said. “But I don’t believe you’ve been a monk for the past four weeks.”
She was right, I hadn’t. There had been a drunken one night stand one Friday night. I’d woken up the morning after in my own bed, feeling hungover and confused. The sex had been alright, serviceable, and the woman nice enough, but the experience had been empty and it hadn’t scratched the itch. “No, I haven’t.”
Her expression was as unreadable as a book written in invisible ink and I wondered why the hell I was wanting her to feel jealous. I had never been the sort of man to play games; a woman was either interested or she wasn’t. if I saw a girl I was dating flirting with someone else or she started to mention another man a lot, I didn’t spend time getting jealous: if she was trying to get that response she wasn’t for me; the same was true if she was going to play games.
Ava wasn’t trying to get anything. She was straightforward, easy going, clever, interesting and not interested in anything more than a hook up that didn’t have an agenda. And right now, I wanted her to have an agenda. One that involved me.
“Honest,” she said. “I like that.”
“Have you joined a nunnery?”
She studied me, not answering straight away. “Two nuns lived at the priory for a time,” she said. “I found the diary of one of them in my treasure trove. I’ve read the first couple of entries. It’s really interesting.”
I held her eyes with mine and she didn’t look away. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“I know.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know whether it’s necessary information.”
I wanted to know but I didn’t understand why. “Your call.”
She sipped her drink, looking at the display in front of us, the people dancing, the conversations through body language, the dimmed light and the pound of the bass.
“I slept with my booty call,” she said. “We were working together on site and he told me he’s moving up to Manchester; he’s signed his half of his business over to his brother – who’s better to work with anyway – and we fucked for one last time. It would’ve been the last time anyway.”
“How was it?”
“Unfulfilling.” Her eyes told me why.
“Tomorrow,” I said, pushing my beer away. “Can I take you out?”
“I thought I was buying you fish and chips after we’d investigated the secret room?” Her tone was playful, the tension that had built around us like a fucking huge wall now gone.
“Can I take you out for something where we sit down and eat at a table, maybe with wine and waiters?” I said, realising how much I needed to have her again, but not just in my bed, or her bed.
“Do I get to dress up and feel pretty?” She smiled and it was like the room had been lit with a thousand fire flies.
“As long as I can tell you how beautiful you look.”
Her laugh pealed around us. “My brothers should’ve gone to the same charm school as you.”
“I’m not trying to be charming, Ava, I mean it. I like you, as in three-nights-wasn’t-enough-like-you.”
“Blunt, aren’t you?”
