Girl Online (18 page)

“That must have been so cool.”

“It was. He didn’t let me see any of it in the ultraviolet light till he’d finished the whole thing. You know how I brought you down here in the dark?”

I nod.

“That was exactly what he did to me. I’ll never forget it.” Noah is smiling, but somehow he also looks sad.

“I bet. Well, I’ll never forget it either,” I say.

He stares at me for a moment and I feel as if he’s about to tell me something, but then he lets go of my hand. “Come on, let’s go get some lunch.”

I follow him along the magical seabed wondering what just happened. At the very end of the corridor there’s a picture of an octopus—its tentacles glowing in every color of the rainbow. As we get closer, I can hear the muffled sound of voices and the clinking of cutlery.

Noah turns to me and grins. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

He reaches out for what looks like the octopus’s nose protruding from its face and turns it. A hidden door swings open. The octopus’s nose turns out to be the handle.

Noah beckons me to follow him. By this point I’m not
sure what to expect. I feel just like Alice in Wonderland when she fell down the rabbit hole. It wouldn’t have surprised me at all to see a mad hatter’s tea party on the other side of the door.

“Oh wow!” As I follow Noah into the café, my eyes widen to take it all in. The room is dark and full of mismatching retro chairs, clustered around chunky wooden tables. Candles flicker at the center of each table, wax spilling down the sides of their wine-bottle holders. Apart from a few lamps dotted about the place, this is the only light. The walls are painted deep red and full of framed photos and paintings. It doesn’t just look amazing, it smells amazing too—a rich mixture of tomatoes and herbs and freshly baked bread.

“Do you like pasta?” Noah asks.

I nod, too busy drinking in the surroundings to say anything.

“Cool. They do the best pasta here—the chef’s Italian. He’s the real deal. Let’s grab this table.” Noah leads me over to a table tucked into an alcove. We sit down on a squishy leather sofa, smiling at one another.

“Happy Magical Mystery Day,” Noah says.

“This has been the best Magical Mystery Day ever,” I say.

“Well, it’s not over yet.” Noah grabs the small menu card from the table and moves nearer so that we can both look at it. Once again, I’m conscious of how close we are and I’m so distracted by this fact that all the lettering on the menu blurs into one.

“The lasagna here is incredible,” Noah says.

I look up at him and the thought bubble above my head becomes filled with the words “KISS ME.” For a split second,
as he looks into my eyes and moves his head the tiniest bit closer to mine, I wonder if he’s thinking exactly the same thing. But then a guy comes bounding over to our table and the moment is lost.

“Noah, my man!” the guy says. He’s tall and thin and wearing low-slung jeans and a skater T-shirt. “Long time, no see. How you been?”

“Oh, you know—busy,” Noah replies.

The guy smiles. “I bet.”

“Penny, this is Antonio. Antonio, Penny—she’s come all the way from the UK to eat here today so you don’t wanna disappoint her.”

“For real?” The guy looks at me and I nod. “Well then, you guys have got to try my new meatballs.” He perches on the edge of our table and leans in close. “The sun-dried tomato sauce is a top-secret recipe handed down from my grandma’s grandma. You won’t get anything like it outside of Italy.”

“All righty, that’s sold me.” Noah turns to me. “What do you think, Penny?”

“Sounds great.”

Antonio looks at Noah and grins. “Man, that accent is cute.”

Noah nods and I blush.

Once Antonio has taken our order and disappeared off into the kitchen, I take another look around the café. There are only a handful of other diners—all hipsters, in skinny jeans and faded T-shirts, hunched over laptops or huddled in conversation. It’s the most laid-back restaurant I think I’ve ever seen.

“This place is so cool,” I say, speaking my thoughts out loud.

“I knew you’d like it,” Noah says.

“Oh yeah? How come?”

“Because I like it.”

I raise an eyebrow at him.

“We have a lot in common, you and I.”

“We do?”

“Oh yes.” Then, just when I feel like something special’s about to happen, like he’s about to tell me something important, he shifts away from me on the sofa. “Just gotta use the restroom. Be right back.”

As I watch Noah walk away, I take a moment to process everything that’s happened. It’s weird because although on paper there’s no way a knicker-flashing, international disaster zone like me should be in this place, with this person, there’s something about the way Noah and I fit together that makes it seem like the most natural thing in the world. I decide there and then not to worry anymore about what things look like “on paper.” I watch as a girl walks over to an old jukebox in the corner and puts some money in. The song “What a Wonderful World” comes on and I feel so happy it’s like every cell in my body has turned into a shooting star. This is Dad’s happy song—the one he always plays when we’re celebrating something. It seems so perfect—
this
seems so perfect—that my eyes fill with happy tears.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Noah says, when he gets back to the table.

“They’re worth way more than a penny,” I say with a grin.

“Oh, really?” Noah slides back onto the sofa, right up close to me. “How much more?”

“Way out of your price range, I’m afraid.”

“Is that so?”

“Yep.”

Noah grins at me. “I’d tell you my thoughts if you gave me a penny.”

“Really?” I fumble in my bag for my purse and hand him a penny. “Go on then.”

“I was thinking, I’m so glad I gave Sadie Lee a lift to work this morning. And I’m so glad I hung around to play that guitar.”

My heart starts beating really fast. “Yeah?”

“Yep. That sure was a nice guitar.”

“Oh.”

He gives me a knowing smile, then looks away.

Chapter Twenty-One

“Your turn,” Noah says, handing me back the penny.

“What?”

“Your turn. A penny for your thoughts.”

“But I told you—they’re worth way more than a penny.”

“Oh no.” Noah frowns at me and shakes his head. “Once a person’s told you their thoughts you have to tell them yours—for the exact same price. That’s the rules.”

“There are rules?” I pull a fake disgruntled face but my head is filling with nervous chatter. How can I tell him I was thinking “KISS ME”? He’ll think I’m a lunatic. I need to make up something else. But I don’t exactly have the greatest track record when it comes to thinking up clever things to say to boys on the spot. I make a mental note not to mention anything to do with fleas.

“Go on,” Noah says, nodding at the penny in my hand.

My mind goes completely blank. All I can think of is the truth. “I was thinking about how perfect today is.”
Oh my God, could you be any more intense?
my inner voice starts yelling.

“You were?” I feel Noah move back toward me.

I nod, still unable to look at him, just in case I’ve read things all wrong.

“I think—” Noah begins.

“Yo! Meatballs!”

We both jump at the sound of Antonio’s voice. He plonks two steaming dishes down on the table. In any other circumstances they would look incredible, but right now I hate those meatballs with their stupid secret sauce and their jaunty sprigs of basil. Why couldn’t he have brought them over one minute later? Why couldn’t I have heard what Noah was going to say? To make matters even worse, Antonio then hangs around for about FIVE WHOLE MINUTES telling us all about his grandma’s grandma and how she grew the most amazing “
to-may-toes
” and how people would come from all over Naples just to try a mouthful of her special sauce. By the time he eventually goes back to the kitchen, the moment has well and truly been lost. I try to wrap some spaghetti around my fork but just as I put it in my mouth, half of it unravels. Of course, it’s at exactly this moment that Noah looks at me.

“How’s your meatballs?” he asks.

“Mmm, good,” I mumble, trying—and failing—to style out the fact that I have about six inches of spaghetti dangling from my mouth like a family of worms. As soon as Noah looks back down at his own dish, I try sucking the spaghetti up through my teeth. Just at that moment, the song playing on the jukebox finishes and the silence is filled with a horrible slurping noise.
My
horrible slurping noise, as the spaghetti shoots up into my mouth, splattering my face with tomato sauce.

Noah looks at me. But instead of mocking me or looking ashamed to be sitting at the same table as me, he loads his own
fork with spaghetti and sucks it up into his mouth. A blob of sauce splats onto the middle of his forehead. We both look at each other and crack up laughing, and in that moment I don’t just think Noah is drop-dead gorgeous and Rock-God–tastic—I really, really
like
him too, and that feels way more important.

“Here,” he says, picking up his napkin. “Let me get that.” And he moves closer and gently wipes the tomato sauce from under my eye. And from over my eye. And from my forehead. And from my chin. And from my upper lip. And my lower lip. And . . .

“Seriously?” I say, staring at him. “Did I really get sauce all over my face?”

He shakes his head. “No. I just like dabbing girls’ faces with napkins. It’s a fetish of mine. Don’t worry—my shrink says it’s harmless.”

Laughing, I pick up my own napkin and wipe the sauce from his forehead.

“Aha, you have the same fetish,” Noah says, laughing. “I told you we had lots in common.”

We both put our napkins down and carry on eating. Sheer joy has now set up camp in my entire body. Even my toes are tingling.

“So, is your dad still an artist?” I say, determined to find out as much as I can about Noah.

When he doesn’t instantly reply, I look up at him. He’s stopped eating and is staring down at his plate. “No, no he’s not. My dad . . . he’s dead. Both my parents are.”

I put down my knife and fork, feeling terrible. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize.”

“I know. It’s cool.” But Noah looks really sad and I want
to kick myself for asking the question. “They died four years ago. So, you know, I’m OK to talk about it.”

“Oh.” At first I feel completely stuck for something to say—I can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like to lose one of my parents, let alone both. Just the thought of it makes me shiver. “So, do you live with Sadie Lee then?”

Noah nods. “Yes, me and my little sister, Bella.”

“You have a sister?”

“Uh-huh.” Noah’s expression immediately softens.

“How old is she?”

“Four—almost five.”

“Four? But . . .”

“She was just a baby when they died.”

“Oh—that’s so sad!”

Noah nods. “I know. But Sadie Lee’s a great mom to her and I try to be the world’s best big brother.” He pushes his plate away and looks at me really intently. “They were killed in a skiing accident—an avalanche. After it happened, it was like I saw the world in a whole new light. Have you ever been asleep and having a really awesome dream and then suddenly it turns into a nightmare?”

I nod—most of my dreams have turned out like that lately.

“Well, that’s how my life felt back then. Like, before the accident, everything was safe and fun and nice, and then, after, everything was terrifying. That’s why I totally get how you were feeling in the truck. Your accident’s made you see how fragile life can be.”

“Yes!”

Noah shifts in closer to me. “OK, I’m gonna tell you something pretty embarrassing but, what the hell, I’ve seen
you splatter your face with Antonio’s grandma’s grandma’s tomato sauce.” He starts fiddling with the edge of his napkin. “I got real jittery after Mum and Dad died. I was so scared something was going to happen to Bella or Sadie Lee, I’d have to keep checking in with them when I wasn’t with them, to make sure they were OK. It got to be a real pain. I could never fully relax when we weren’t together.”

“Do you still get like that?”

“No, thank God. Sadie Lee figured out something was wrong and she arranged for me to go see a counselor.”