The Thirty Before Thirty List

Chapter Thirty

The next day, I discovered that there were such things as semi-permanent tattoos, so I half-heartedly ordered a pretty-looking Arabic one online, which Lucy helped me apply at work on Wednesday ahead of my meeting with Noah. It looked sort of sexy along the side of my hand, positioned exactly where Noah was bound to notice it. Lucy was a genius like that.

I didn’t feel excited about meeting Noah, despite what my strategically placed ‘tattoo’ may have suggested. There was too much going on in my mind for me to process and it was overwhelming. There was work, Noah, Zakariya and seeing my brother with his mysterious lady-friend and cagey behaviour, all weighing on my mind.

‘Can I style you for your date?’ Lucy asked as we walked back to our desks, letting out collective sighs of relief when we saw that Sheila wasn’t in her office. I had yet to send her the email asking about going part-time. I had written it but was planning to send it when I wouldn’t have to run into her immediately afterwards, like a minute before logging out to go home. The thought of sending her that email stressed me out a lot more than my upcoming date with Noah, although that was also up there on my ‘most nerve-wracking moments this year’ list. Not that I had a list like that. One list at a time was more than enough for me, thanks.

‘Yes, please,’ I said, although the thought of trying on hundreds of outfits exhausted me. ‘I don’t want to look like I’ve made too much of an effort though.’

‘I know, hun, but you do need to get your hair done. It’s been months and it’s looking messy. And you could do with a manicure to go with your tattoo and we haven’t got you a spring/summer wardrobe yet either and—’

‘OK! I get the point. But there isn’t enough time.’

‘Let’s go to Westfield after work. We’ll make it quick. I’ll see if I can get you a hair appointment and while you get your hair and nails done, I’ll buy you some bits and pieces.’

A few hours later, I was sitting in a salon with foil in my hair and my hands spread out while one lady worked on my hair and another worked on my hands as if I were some sort of celebrity. It felt good but I couldn’t help but wonder if Noah was doing anything remotely like this in preparation for his date with me. Probably not. Why were women the ones who were always under pressure to perform like a show horse, while men could wash their faces and brush their teeth and that would be considered making an effort? And why was I letting Lucy coerce me into continuing this toxic cycle?

Because the sad reality was, I needed it. How I looked directly correlated to how I felt. Maybe one day it wouldn’t. Maybe one day I wouldn’t care, but right then I did. And that didn’t make me a bad person, or anti-feminist, did it? I made a mental note to hash it out with Fareena next week.

A couple of hours later, I met Lucy again – thankfully she hadn’t gone wild with my credit card, but she did still have a fair number of high-street bags on her arms.

‘Here, let me show you what I got,’ she said, pulling me over to a bench.

‘Aren’t we going to eat anything? I’m starving.’

‘Sorry, I’m meeting someone in a bit,’ she replied vaguely, rummaging through the shopping bags so she could avoid making eye contact with me.

‘Not that guy you ended things with?’ I asked, my heart sinking. ‘You told me to never let you see him again until he was ready to commit.’

‘I know,’ she said quietly. ‘I sort of ran into him recently and he’s been calling me since then. I’m going to let him say his piece.’

‘OK,’ I leant over to hug her. ‘I hope it goes well. Remember that you deserve someone who’s proud to commit to you and introduce you to his family and friends.’

‘I know. Now let me quickly show you what I bought before I dash.’

Lucy began taking various shirts, dresses and jackets out of the bag and showed me what she wanted me to wear to work on Thursday: a silky sage green shirt dress with a belt and black boots.

‘Err, you know I don’t show my legs, right?’ I reminded her.

‘I know, so I bought you these wool tights to wear with them. You can’t see your skin through them. You’re going from work so you can’t meet him in jeans and a shirt, Sheila will kill you.’

‘She’s already going to kill me. I sent her the email about wanting to change to part-time hours and now the thought of facing her tomorrow is making me sick.’

‘You’ve got nothing to fear. Don’t you get it? You have the upper hand because you don’t need this job. You can leave whenever you want and focus on your studies.’

‘It’s a lot easier said than done.’

‘I know, but you’ve got this. Anyway, here, I got this necklace and these earrings, wear them with that bracelet I gave you last time and keep your makeup fresh and neutral – go for a glossy lip. It will draw his eyes to your lips.’

‘Why would I want him to do that?’

‘Oh, Maya, you’re so clueless sometimes.’ With that, she got up, gave me a quick hug and began to hurry away.

‘Good luck!’ I called after her retreating back, but she didn’t turn around. With a sigh, I gathered all the bags and began the long journey home.

Ma and Baba were out when I got in, visiting some relatives and Malik wasn’t home either, so I rummaged through the various butter tubs and ice-cream containers to see what leftovers had been stored in them. I really needed to get better at cooking. Here I was, trying to become more confident and independent in every way, yet I was rubbish at one of the most important life skills.

As I waited for the leftover fish and green mango tenga to warm up – a yummy soup-like curry that was mostly tangy but also a little sweet – I checked Noah’s RateMyDate profile for the hundredth time. He really was something to look at. He had that All-American look about him, but with a bit of British rough and readiness. There was a new picture on his profile and I opened it up eagerly. He was outside an old building, possibly a town hall or a listed building of some sort and wearing a charcoal-coloured suit that clung to every muscle and hard line of his body. I don’t think I had ever seen a suit that looked that good. It was like something you would find on the runway, not north London. Men like that should be made to wear pillowcases over their heads to hide their beauty and shapeless sleeping bags on their bodies to hide their physique. Why had he uploaded this picture? Was it because he was trying to attract more women in case our date went badly? I resisted the urge to screenshot the picture and send it to Lucy for her opinion. She was busy sorting out her own life and I needed to be less reliant on her. After seeing the picture, I was glad that I let her talk me into a bit of beautification. At least I’d be putting my best foot forward as well.

A text pinged through and I immediately assumed it was Noah cancelling, before I remembered that he didn’t have my number. Grabbing my phone, I opened it up to find a message from Zakariya:

ZAKARIYA: Hey Maya, how are you? Are you free after Arabic on Thursday?

Instantly, I felt awash with guilt. I wasn’t free. In fact, I was bunking Arabic altogether to meet Noah. What sort of woman had I become, texting one man while meeting up with another? I replied, wondering what excuse to give:

MAYA: So sorry, I’m not going to be at Arabic, I’ve got an appointment after work. A really important one that I can’t cancel I’m afraid. Sorry.

As I re-read what I had sent, I realised that I had been rambling; something that wasn’t supposed to be possible over text, when you had the chance to edit before you sent. I should have just kept it simple; the more I went on, the more insincere I sounded. He wasn’t stupid, he would know that something was up. He deserved more respect, more honesty than that.

Picking up my phone again, I continued to write:

MAYA: Actually. I’m meeting someone for the first time. Kinda like a date, I guess.

ZAKARIYA: Wow, OK. Well, good luck!

I re-read his message at least five times. What did he mean by ‘Wow’? Was he disappointed in me? Why did he write ‘well’ before ‘good luck?’ I replied with a simple, ‘Thanks ’.

Sheila wasn’t in the office the following morning and according to her calendar, she had external meetings all day. I had brought my makeup bag into the office, hoping to do a little touch-up before I left for my date. Now that my boss wasn’t around, I had more time to make myself presentable, so at four o’clock, Lucy and I disappeared to the toilets to sort my face out. The other night, I had felt bad about depending on her so much. But this morning, I saw that she had turned our shopping trip into content for her social media and the guilt faded away. We were helping each other out.

‘How did it go with your mystery man?’ I asked her as she got to work on my face, trying not to move my facial muscles too much.

‘I don’t know,’ her voice was quiet and I waited for her to elaborate. I didn’t want to be too forceful and drive her away.

‘What don’t you know, hun?’ I asked quietly after a few minutes of silence. ‘You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but I’m here to listen if you do.’

Lucy didn’t say anything so I closed my eyes and let her get on with my makeup, but when she got to my lips, she sighed.

‘I really like him, Maya,’ she began. ‘He’s a good guy and there’s so few of them around. He’s smart, he works hard, he’s successful. He looks after his family and respects them. He’s respectful towards me.’

‘He sounds great.’

‘He is, but there’s a massive cultural difference and I think he thinks his family would disapprove, which is why he hasn’t told them and doesn’t want me to meet them. And until he does that, we can’t move forward. He’ll never live with me outside marriage, but it looks like he won’t marry me unless his family is happy with our relationship.’

I thought about my own parents and culture and as much as I wanted to slate this guy who had my friend in pieces, I had seen all this play out countless times. Boys who weren’t allowed to marry their girlfriends and then had arranged marriages to unsuspecting women who never knew that their husbands’ hearts were elsewhere. Boys who defied their parents and ended up miserable later because the odds were against them. There were, however, some positive examples where the family accepted the non-Bengali spouse and these cases were slowly becoming more frequent. To me, the fact that Lucy didn’t know what her man was thinking, or if he had told his family, meant that he wasn’t serious.

‘I don’t know how traditional this guy’s family is,’ I began carefully, ‘but if I were in the same situation, I would tell my parents if it was serious. There are more and more mixed-race marriages these days and if you want to be with someone enough, at the very least you’d tell your parents. You can’t know how they’d react unless you give them the chance and respect to do so.’

‘What do you think your parents would say, if it were you?’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied honestly. ‘It could go either way, but I think they would come around if they saw that the man was good.’

‘And what if he isn’t Muslim?’

‘If he wanted to marry me, he’d have to become Muslim, that’s non-negotiable, regardless of whether he was Black, white, or anything in-between.’

I had to stop myself from picking at my nails throughout the Tube journey back to north London, as anxiety overcame me. I did the breathing techniques that Fareena had taught me to try and manage the sensation of everything inside me coiling up into a tight ball: breathing in for four seconds, holding that breath for another four and then exhaling for four seconds. I was meeting Noah, my Noah, from the list that had changed my life and I was terrified of what would happen. Yes, there was the fear of us not connecting again, which would tarnish my perception of the past nine months. But what would be worse would be him not turning out to be the person I thought he was. All this time I had been going through pages in this notebook belonging to him, tracing my fingers over his words, looking into his mind as he worked his way through the list, doing my own version of his ideas and plans. We were bound together by this book, by our shared experiences, but he had no idea about it all. How was I going to hold myself together? How was I going to stop myself from confessing it all?

I had to, though, because if he found out what had been going on, he would probably think I was a stalkerish psychopath. He would run and never look back.

I got off the train at Finsbury Park and hopped from one foot to another as I waited for the W7 bus to Crouch End. I had to pull myself together. I could not mess this up. There was no reason why I should mess it up, I told myself over and over again. Noah seemed to like me before my makeover and before the list; when I was simple, boring Maya with a simple and boring life. Look at me now. I was going back into education. I knew where I wanted my career to go. I had run a race for charity. I was strong, I was sort of independent. If I could handle jumping out of a plane, then a coffee with some guy I’d met briefly in the past would be an absolute doddle.

Topping up my lipstick on the bus and giving myself three sprays of my eye-wateringly expensive perfume, which I had now calculated to cost approximately 25p per spritz, assuming there were 1,000 sprays in the 100ml bottle, I did a bit more deep breathing, recited a prayer and then got off the bus right outside the clocktower where we were due to meet, my body trembling with nerves.

It was almost six and I was bang on time. When the bus drove away and cleared my line of vision, I saw him. He was standing beneath the tower in a leather jacket and jeans, scrolling through his phone. He looked like he belonged on the front of an estate agent’s leaflet, encouraging young, trendy people to move to Crouch End.

Before I could back out, Noah looked up from his phone and the biggest smile spread across his face. And then he was walking towards me. I was rooted to the spot, my face contorted into an expression that was part startled, part nervous; my smile more of a grimace than the thing we do with our mouths when we’re happy. Because I wasn’t happy, I was bloody terrified.

‘Maya? Hey! I’m Noah!’ He spoke in exclamation marks and leant over for a hug. I stiffened, did something that resembled a return hug and inhaled his gorgeous scent. He smelt clean but with some sort of musky undertone.

‘Hi,’ I squeaked, my face already flushing. ‘It’s nice to meet you.’

‘Likewise! Do you fancy grabbing some food instead of a coffee? I’m a lot hungrier than I thought I’d be and there’s a nice Thai place up the hill if you fancy it? My treat?’

I knew the restaurant he was talking about and it happened to be halal as well, so I nodded my consent and followed his long strides towards Crouch End Hill, my brain working in overtime to try and process what was going on.

When we got to the restaurant, Noah helped me out of my brand-new, tan-coloured suede trench, the most expensive of the items Lucy had bought for me the day before. It was a bit embarrassing, with the material clinging to my shirt dress and him having to work a little harder to get it off. And when he did, I noticed that the bloody label was still on the jacket. He must have seen it, it was too conspicuous not to and once again I felt heat creep up my neck, giving me the appearance of a scarlet fever patient.

We finally sat down across from each other but I couldn’t bring myself to stare at him the way I could feel him staring at me. Was this normal for an online date? It didn’t feel normal. I had heard horror stories about guys refusing to pay for a single drink, or trying to get away with a free walk in the park to save money and here was Noah offering to pay for a meal? What was his endgame?

‘So,’ he began after we’d ordered our food, ‘I really liked your RateMyDate profile. You sound like you’re into the same sort of things as me.’

‘I do?’

‘Yeah! Well, that’s the impression I got. What sort of things do you do in your free time?’

‘I run, read, go out with my friends. I’m really into trying things I’ve never done before,’ I replied slowly, trying not to give away the fact that the latter part of my statement was all thanks to him and his list.

‘Me too,’ Noah grinned, taking a bite out of the prawn crackers that had appeared at our table. ‘What was the last thing you read?’

I thought for a moment, wondering if I should come out and say it. It almost felt wrong, but it was the truth, sort of. It was one of the last things I read anyway.

‘ Ulysses ,’ I croaked, trying to keep my expression and voice neutral.

‘NO BLOODY WAY,’ Noah stared at me, his beautiful eyes, almost the same colour as my dress, wide in shock. ‘I’ve read that. What did you think of it? I can’t believe it.’

I wracked my brain, trying to remember what Noah had said about it. Oh yes. Epic. ‘It was pretty epic,’ I lied casually as I tried to recall positive things people had said about that blasted book. ‘It’s the most complete literary compendium of human experience, don’t you think?’

Noah continued to stare at me, like he couldn’t believe his luck. ‘I agree completely.’

Changing the subject away from the book, because I didn’t know what else to say about it, I asked him what sort of new things he had tried recently.

‘Well, I went skydiving,’ he told me. ‘It’s something I’d always wanted to do and I finally did it last year.’

‘Guess what?’ I said, taking a bite of the duck spring rolls that had arrived with some Thai fishcakes. ‘I went skydiving recently as well, in Dubai.’

I had to stop myself from laughing when his jaw dropped open in surprise.

‘You really don’t look like the sort of woman who reads Ulysses and jumps out of planes.’

‘Don’t I?’ I giggled. ‘Do I look more like the Bollywood and knitting type?’

‘Ha, no. You look like the type who likes fine dining, complicated cocktails and social media.’

‘You’re lying,’ I almost choked on my drink. ‘I don’t look like that at all.’

‘You do,’ he insisted. ‘You must know that you’re beautiful. I can’t tell you how nice it is to sit and eat and talk without you feeling the need to take pictures or document it all.’

He thought I was beautiful? He liked that I wasn’t obsessed with social media? The latter, at least, was the real me, even if skydiving and Ulysses wasn’t. And that was good enough for me.

‘What else have you tried recently?’ he asked as we continued to eat.

‘Loads of things,’ I said, wondering what I should reveal next. ‘I ran Race for Life last month.’

‘Wow! A runner who’s also into charity? I feel like I’ve struck gold here,’ he gushed, his face illuminated with joy. I felt the food swirl around in my stomach and tried to push aside the guilt.

‘It’s an important cause,’ I shrugged nonchalantly, as though I had come up with the idea all on my own. ‘I did a sponsored charity walk up Snowdon not too long ago as well.’

‘No way!’ he gasped. ‘I trekked it last year. I’m hoping to do Kilimanjaro one day.’

‘Me too!’ I lied enthusiastically. ‘I’ve always wanted to go to Nepal.’

‘Nepal?’ he repeated, his forehead creased in befuddlement.

‘Kilimanjaro?’ I reminded him.

‘That’s in Tanzania. Maybe you mean the Himalayas?’

‘Oh yes, sorry, my bad,’ I coughed, my cheeks flushed. ‘My geography isn’t great.’

‘At last, she has a flaw,’ Noah smiled good-naturedly as he scanned his beautiful eyes over my face, as though he couldn’t believe his good fortune in meeting someone like me, who shared all the same interests as him.

When it was time for desserts, I reluctantly pretended that I was full, having barely touched the main course in my eagerness to appear as health-conscious as Noah. He also patted his belly and claimed to be stuffed. We ordered healthy green teas instead and I suddenly remembered Zakariya’s plate piled high with rice and curry and how he was always encouraging me to eat more.

But before I could dwell on Zakariya and the moments that we had shared, Noah reached over and traced his finger over my ‘tattoo’ and I nearly died from the electric shock his touch sent buzzing through my body.

‘I can’t believe you have a tattoo in Arabic,’ he said, his voice a little louder than a whisper. ‘Do you speak Arabic?’

‘A little,’ I shrugged, trying to keep it cool, though inside I was anything but. Inside, I was a raging inferno, a hot mess of feelings and sensations I had never experienced before. Not with Zak, not with Kaito from uni, not the Duke from Bridgerton . What was happening right then was on another level. ‘I’ve been taking lessons.’

‘So have I,’ he replied, his eyes moving from my wrist to my lips. ‘I’m not surprised by how alike we are anymore. This is obviously destiny. Let me see what it says.’

Once again, his finger brushed against my skin and I felt instant goosebumps form along my forearms as he took my hand and brought it closer to his face as he tried to decipher the complicated calligraphy which was woven into a pattern until it was almost illegible.

‘That’s a “ha” and I think that’s a “meem” and .?.?. is that a “ra”?’

‘Hmmm?’ I knew he was saying something but I could barely focus on anything but the sensation of my hand in his, on his warm breath tickling my skin. If this was what a mere touch was doing to my senses .?.?. for a brief second, I allowed my mind to fantasise further.

‘Hmar? Your tattoo says Hmar!’ Noah began to laugh, shaking me out of my drunken-esque stupor.

‘Huh? What? What does that mean?’ I felt groggy as I tried to surface from the pool of desire I was floating in. As my eyes began to focus and my mind sharpened, I realised that Noah had turned red from the exertion of trying to contain his laughter.

‘Noah! What does it mean?’ I repeated, my voice rising as the heat within me began to fizzle out.

‘It .?.?. it means d-donkey,’ Noah spluttered as he gave up trying to conceal his laughter and let it all out.

Mortified, I snatched my hand away and covered my face. I couldn’t believe it! How could I not know that I had stuck a semi-permanent tattoo that said DONKEY on my hand? What sort of Arabic had I been learning for the past few months if I was too ignorant to notice it?

It took a while for Noah’s hysterics to cease and when they did, he apologised profusely, his grey-green eyes still glistening with amusement.

‘It’s OK,’ I sighed, my shoulders slumped in shame. ‘I’m the fool. I should have done my due diligence, but it was difficult to make out the letters. I’m an idiot.’

‘You’re not,’ he smiled, taking my hand again. ‘You’re funny, smart, exciting and possibly a bit crazy. But you’re not an idiot.’

My heart began to speed up again and this time when I looked into those pools of green, the amusement was replaced with a sort of wonder.