Chapter Four #2
‘I’m serious, Lucy,’ said Sasha, giving Lucy her best glacier-forming stare.
‘You and Nate both need to step up. Do whatever they want this evening – go skiing by torchlight, drink J?germeister through a pair of Kristoff’s boxer shorts, whatever it takes to keep him entertained. We’ll be there as soon as we can.’
‘OK, we will.’ She looked up at Nate, who pointed to the departures board and held up six fingers to indicate their gate number. ‘We need to go, our flight’s boarding.’
‘No pressure, mate,’ said Jonno, and Sasha turned the phone in his direction so Lucy could see his pained smile and his white knuckles gripping the steering wheel. ‘But just so you know, the future of the Titan account is currently resting entirely on your shoulders. Try not fuck it up, yeah?’
‘Can you ski?’ asked Lucy, turning to Nate who was now settled into the aisle seat next to her, apparently somewhat reluctantly.
Lucy had suggested he take what would have been Jonno’s seat, but she was beginning to wonder why he’d accepted.
He’d said almost nothing while they waited at the departure gate, choosing a seat in the furthest corner, before losing himself in whatever was playing through his headphones.
‘Yes, of course,’ he said, in a tone that seemed unnecessarily snippy to Lucy. ‘But I prefer not to.’
Lucy pulled the in-flight magazine out of the pocket and flicked through it aggressively. ‘Sorry I asked.’
‘Can YOU?’
‘No,’ said Lucy. ‘It’s not included in the UK comprehensive school curriculum, and unlike France, Croydon isn’t great for après-ski.’
‘I grew up in Clevedon,’ he said witheringly. ‘That’s not great for après-ski, either. And I’m only half French.’
‘Which half?’ she asked, figuring that they were stuck together for the next few hours, and she might as well make friends, or at least try to find out something about him. God knows today wasn’t shaping up to be much fun otherwise.
‘The French half,’ deadpanned Nate, putting on his headphones.
Lucy sighed and went back to ignoring the articles in the easyJet magazine and looking at the ads instead, hoping to spot anything that looked remotely original or interesting.
It was all perfume and skincare, which invariably featured the same airbrushed movie stars looking deathly bored in wispy clothing.
Apparently there was no need to have any kind of personality as long as you smelled nice.
‘How do you want to manage this evening?’ asked Nate, taking his headphones off again.
Lucy turned to look at him. ‘Manage what?’ He looked fidgety and unsettled, like he’d been over-thinking this question for a while.
‘The clients. It’s just that . . . I’ve never met them.’
‘Really? Haven’t you worked on this account for over a year?’
Nate shrugged. ‘Yeah. But Fran does all the client meetings; I just do all the work.’
Lucy smirked, delighted that Nate could, at the very least, muster a bit of snark about Fran. ‘Well, that’s awkward,’ she said. ‘Because I’ve never met them either. In person, anyway.’
Nate’s eyes widened in surprise, and Lucy realised for the first time exactly how long his eyelashes were.
‘Copywriters hardly ever go to the client meetings,’ she continued. ‘We’re usually not very client-friendly; we either talk too much or not at all. I mostly work backstage and let Jonno manage front of house.’
‘Hmm,’ said Nate thoughtfully. ‘I’d assumed you were out front, doing your Lucy thing.’
‘What’s my Lucy thing?’ she asked, furrowing her brow and already suspecting she might not like the answer.
‘I don’t know,’ said Nate, squirming uncomfortably. ‘You’re just . . . the kind of person people notice, I guess.’
Lucy looked away, feeling slightly blindsided by the whiplash segue from Nate seeming bored and unengaged, to throwing out comments that felt both personal and critical, somehow.
She decided to change the subject to more comfortable territory.
‘Why do you put up with Fran, out of interest? Let her take credit for all your work?’
Nate held her gaze for a moment, like he was trying to work out her motivation for asking. ‘I don’t know. I guess I’m not very client-friendly either.’
She blinked twice, not sure if he’d answered her question or not, and slightly dazzled by how good-looking he was up close. Did he know? Perhaps the whole closed-off, taciturn thing was an act to make him seem more mysterious?
‘Well, that’s not going to work this evening,’ said Lucy. ‘I’ve heard Kristoff likes smart conversation, so if you’ve got any suggestions on deep and meaningful podcasts we can namedrop, I’m all ears.’
‘Let’s see how they are when we get there,’ said Nate. ‘If they want to talk work, I can take the lead – I know their annual plan inside and out. But . . .’ He hesitated, and Lucy smiled.
‘But what?’
‘If they want to party, it’s up to you.’
‘What makes you think I like to party?’ Lucy squirmed, conscious that to other members of the team she and Jonno probably looked like an exclusive little clique who spent half their life in the pub.
She’d never been the type to have a big circle of friends, and she didn’t naturally open up to people.
Alcohol loosened her corset a little, but she only ever drank at the weekends.
Not that Nate would know that; she could see how she probably came across as a wine-fuelled chaos party girl, when in reality she was anything but.
Nate smiled softly. ‘Lucy, I’ve seen you stand on a table in a bar and sing.’
‘What song?’ asked Lucy, pretending to be shocked but now starting to enjoying this more talkative, playful Nate.
There had been more than one occasion over the years when she had stood on a table in a karaoke bar and belted out a song – usually after too much wine, and as an opportunity to lose herself in a moment of vocal self-sabotage.
‘I can’t remember. Kelly Clarkson, maybe?’
Lucy felt her cheeks flushing as she remembered her rendition of ‘Since U Been Gone’ at the agency summer party the previous year. ‘Was I any good?’ she asked tentatively, hoping he might throw her a tiny compliment. She’d been pretty pissed, but it had definitely sounded great in her head.
‘No,’ said Nate. ‘You were shit, and the whole thing was actually kind of embarrassing for all of us.’
‘Right, and I suppose you’re Elton John?
’ snapped Lucy. She realised that this was what annoyed her about Nate – he wasn’t rude, exactly, just able to vocalise what she secretly already knew but had chosen not to face up to.
He did it in the office sometimes too – in just a handful of words, he could make her feel exposed and vulnerable, like he could read her mind and see deep into her soul.
Lucy was pretty sure it was done unconsciously and entirely without agenda, but she still found it unsettling.
‘No,’ said Nate, looking at his fingernails. ‘I play guitar, not piano.’
So the guitar was his, then. She briefly considered mentioning it, in a casual Oh, I saw your guitar on Instagram kind of way, but that definitely sounded like she’d been stalking him on social media, which she absolutely had.
Just out of interest, who was the person videoing you on a Parisian bicycle three years ago?
There was no way to have this conversation without sounding a bit mad.
‘I thought I sounded OK,’ she said feebly.
‘Drunk people always think that,’ said Nate. The plane started to back away from the stand, so he put his headphones back on again and closed his eyes.
Lucy pressed her lips together and turned back to her magazine, silently fuming that Nate would bring up something like that, just for the opportunity to humiliate her.
Turns out he was way hotter when he said nothing, thought Lucy.
He can feel free to French Exit through the emergency doors any time he likes.