Marco’s relaxed facade slipped away. He looked kind of nervous. Ha! So there was at least one thing I could do better than him. I mentally patted myself on the back. Even though Marco wasn’t much older, I felt like such a child around him. He seemed so mature and sophisticated. I, on the other hand, got confused for my little cousin on the phone. So it felt good to run rings around him, literally, in the ice rink.
After twenty minutes of that, he had decided that skating wasn’t for him and left the rink to get hot chocolate. This date was getting better and better.
I stayed to do a few more rounds on the ice. I’d forgotten how fun it was, zooming past everyone else.
Marco approached the rink with two cups. “I got one with the whipped cream and one without. What would you prefer?”
“Whipped cream!”
“I’m glad you said that. I’m watching my weight after a few weeks at home,” he said, winking.
He WINKED. Oh my gods. It was so sexy.
“Yeah, I know what you mean. I stayed with my gran on my mum’s side over Christmas, and she was convinced I needed fattening up.”
“I don’t think you need to change a thing,” he said.
Wow. Even my toes blushed. I took another gulp of hot chocolate.
“Don’t tell Grandma Thomas I said that, though.”
“You’ve done your research!” I joked, wondering how on earth he’d known I called Gran that.
He looked confused for a second. “Oh! No, it’s nothing like that,” Marco said. “Just simple deduction. See, your surname is Thomas – definitely not a Greek name. So, it must have been your mother’s family name, right?” I nodded and smiled. He was sexy and smart.
A gust of icy wind forced me to pull up the hood of my parka. I could really feel the chill now that I wasn’t ice skating.
“I think it’s time we got dinner. How do you feel about American food?”
“I love it!” I said. Was he going to take me to Burger King?! That seemed quite unsophisticated by his standards. I couldn’t imagine him eating a Whopper, burger sauce on his nose and fingers (at least, that’s the way I ate it).
We hopped back on the tube and rode to Piccadilly Circus. I’ve never understood why this area is such an attraction for tourists, but it was rammed all the same. Ads on screens the size of double-decker buses glimmered and flashed, casting neon lights over our faces. A nearby busker began breakdancing to a Bruno Mars track, his audience swelling by the second, this song impossible to resist. The crowds, music, electricity in the air – it felt both incredibly exciting and way too much to handle at the same time.
Maybe it was the infectious fizz of the music, or the fact that I was out on a Saturday night (not watching everyone else have fun on Instagram, for once), but the night ahead felt magic and golden and full of wondrous possibilities. I wanted to bottle the feeling.
Marco looked around him, awe written on his face. “Is it ever possible to tire of London?” he said.
I guess, as a born-and-bred Londoner, I sometimes took the city for granted. But it was a pretty incredible place to call home.
“This way,” Marco said, taking my hand.
We both wore gloves but I swear my skin shivered when our fingers interlocked. I could hardly believe it. Here I was, in the middle of London, on a date with a guy so good-looking it made me stutter. And we were holding hands. Again!
In minutes, the garishness and frenzy of Piccadilly Circus transformed into quieter streets lined with cafes and quirky bookshops. We dodged people in pubs spilling out on to the street, despite the snap of ice in the night air.
“I think Soho is my favourite place in London,” Marco said. “The Beatles, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix … they all walked these streets. I like to imagine it hasn’t changed much since the 1960s, you know?”
“I love it, too!” I said. Yet another thing we had in common. “Mum used to take me here to go fabric shopping. And a couple of her friends owned secondhand clothes shops, too. We’d visit them, then buy a bag of nectarines from the market and eat them on the bus home.”
“It’s nice that you have such lovely memories of your mother.”
I smiled, feeling warm all over.
At some point in the evening my butterflies had calmed down. I felt just as comfortable as I was with him on the phone, chattering away. I added “good listener” to the mental checklist I was keeping of Marco’s best qualities.
We walked for a few more minutes until we got to a small restaurant with a neon sign and an amazing smell of barbecue.
“I hope you’re not vegetarian,” Marco said with a smile in his voice.
We were seated at a table in the basement. The menu looked amazing: chicken wings, pork ribs, burgers. Aphrodite would have a fit if she saw me consume this much salt, fat and sugar in one sitting. But I couldn’t wait.
“I thought you were watching your weight!” I said with a cheeky grin, as our root beer floats arrived with a huge scoop of ice cream on top.
“I know, but I’ve missed this place. Funnily enough, this isn’t the sort of food you can get back home,” he said. “You’re so lucky to have grown up in London, Helen.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess there are worse places to call home.” But home was where my family was. And at the moment, it didn’t feel like much of my family were around.
I got on with reading the menu. What could I order that wouldn’t make me look like a messy toddler? Barbecue sauce all over my mouth, hands and face is not a good first date look. I reasoned that anything I could eat with a knife and fork would work.
“What are you ordering? We should definitely start with the Buffalo chicken wings,” Marco said.
“I think I’m going to have the mac and cheese,” I said. His face dropped.
“Oh no. You really are vegetarian? You should have said!” He looked mortified. “I knew I should have checked first.”
“No, it’s not that. I just didn’t want to make a mess,” I said sheepishly.
He held his hands up, which made his fitted T-shirt stretch over his toned chest (YUMMMMM). “That’s the fun of it! I hope you make a huge mess. Like, hot sauce in your hair and under your fingernails. Perhaps it’ll make you less distractingly gorgeous.”
I swear my heart skipped a beat or five. Luckily he mistook my quiet for hesitancy.
“Believe me, I won’t judge. Will you at least try it?” he asked, his smoky brown eyes gazing earnestly at me.
Those eyes. If he carried on looking at me like that, I’d have serious trouble saying no. Honestly, he could ask me anything (run the London Marathon, rob a bank, sit through a month of double science) and refusing him wouldn’t cross my mind.
“Fine,” I said. “But you were warned!”
We went for a platter of pulled pork, ribs, beef brisket, Buffalo chicken wings, coleslaw and fries. You couldn’t see the table for all the bowls and plates of food.
“Even if we don’t eat it all, you must try a little bit of everything.” Marco said this like it was a challenge.
And so we ate. As it turns out, the messy meal was a great icebreaker. Once we had Buffalo sauce all over our fingers and tore ribs apart with our teeth, the inhibitions fell away.