Model Misfit (35 page)

“It was to me.”

“I bet,” I say in my most sarcastic voice. “Don’t you know your own
girlfriend
very well?”

“Usually,” Nick says, raising his eyebrows. “But Poppy’s not my girlfriend. She never has been.”

here’s always this excellent moment in really good action films where everybody’s kicking and fighting and there are legs and arms and bodies everywhere, and suddenly somebody leaps into the air and it all goes very slow, and very quiet, and you just
know
that the end is somehow coming.

As if we’re all hanging in the air, waiting for somebody to pull the move that changes everything.

“
Uh?
” I say.

“I have never dated Poppy,” Nick repeats, and there it is: the metaphorical boot in my face. “
Ever
. She’s just a model I worked with on that D&G shoot in Paris. I had absolutely no idea she’d told you we were together until Rin called me at the lake.”

I suddenly hear that overheard phone call again. ‘
Poppy?
’

He wasn’t talking
to
her: he was talking
about
her.

“But—” I try to swallow but it’s not really working. “You came to the flat … she said—”

“Exactly.
She
said. I didn’t. We were doing another shoot that evening, but the reason I’d raced over was to see you. I was waiting for you at the airport, but you looked so happy and excited to be in Tokyo … I guess I didn’t want to confuse things. So I decided to turn up at your flat instead and do it properly.”

My mind makes a little whirring rewind motion.

He
did
turn up a few minutes after I did.

And at no stage did Poppy
ever
refer to Nick as My Boyfriend in front of Nick. She kissed his
cheek
.

“B-but what about the sumo match?”

“I waited for you.” The corner of Nick’s top lip twitches. “For
three hours,
Manners. But then you made it brutally clear you were over me.”

I suddenly remember his white, punctured face on the steps.

He wasn’t confused, he was
hurt.

I feel abruptly guilty, and also a tiny bit pleased with myself.
Ha!
I am an excellent, excellent actor. Nat is going to be
delighted
when I tell her.

“So at the lake …”

“I had to give it one last shot. But you gunned me down again, so the kiss” – he shrugs and looks pained – “I guess I was kind of saying goodbye.”

It’s a good thing I’m sitting down, because if I wasn’t standing would be a bit of a problem. You know how my bedroom always looked strange and unfamiliar once the lights went off? Now it’s the other way round. The lights have gone back on, and everything looks completely different. Unexpected. Brilliant.

“But …” I pause and blush.

The sumo. The lake.

Nick’s been totally innocent the entire time.

Oh my God, I have been
so horrible
to him. I said he was part Linhenykus. Nobody deserves that. Except maybe for—

I blink. “Why would Poppy pretend like this? And how did she even know about me?”

He shrugs. “Poppy’s the kind of girl who gets exactly what she wants. I think she kind of lost control when it didn’t work this time. I suppose she thought if she believed in it enough, and if she got rid of you, I’d end up with her. Which I wouldn’t, because she’s a nightmare and also” – he twists his finger up to his head in a way that politely suggests
bat-poop crazy
–
“and … and I talked about you in Paris.
A lot
. She basically had an entire character-assassination arsenal at her disposal. Sorry about that.”

I look at Nick’s beautiful face, all screwed up and flushed and anxious, and suddenly know
exactly
why Poppy put in so much effort.
“But … Nick, you
dumped
me, remember?”

“No, Harriet,” Nick sighs. “I told you
really
clearly that I was gonna leave you alone for a couple of months while you did your exams. I should’ve realised you’d zone out and stop listening – you
always
do that when you panic. I should’ve sent a supporting document or an email afterwards or recorded a message or something.”

And the last piece of the puzzle slots into place with a click, like an enormous, romantic Rubik’s Cube.

All I actually remember from that conversation over two and a half months ago is ‘we shouldn’t see or speak to each other any more’ before I went into internal meltdown mode.

And, though I’ll obviously never admit it to the Nobel Prize committee judges, there
was
quite a lot of time spent with Nick when I should’ve been revising.

Like, almost all of it.

Who wants to revise biology when you’re going out with a supermodel? Even
I’m
not that much of a geek.

Oh my God. I am
such an idiot.

Nick smiles awkwardly. “I said I’d be back when your exams finished. But you made me think I’d left it too late.”

The text
. It arrived the day after the end of my exams.

“So … you still like me then?”

“Don’t you get it yet, Harriet?” Nick says in total exasperation. “I
like
that you know about the stars in rain and the shape of clouds and the heartbeat rate of a hummingbird. I like that you know that giraffes don’t have vocal cords and sharks can’t stop moving. I like the way you stick your little nose in the air and stomp your feet and frown just before you laugh. I like how your ears go red when you’re embarrassed and your freckles get darker when you’re angry. I like that little crumpled paper ball your chin makes before you cry. I like that when you’re shouting at me you physically pretend you’re a T-Rex. I like
you,
Harriet. Why is that the only thing in the universe you find so hard to wrap your big fat brain around?”

I suddenly feel like I’m at the lake again: as if I’m covered from head to toe in lights. I have absolutely no idea what to say to any of that.

“My brain isn’t big and fat. It has a totally normal fat quantity, which is roughly half of its dry mass.”

Oh. Apparently I do.

Nick grins. “My point exactly.”

It feels like two strings have been attached to the corners of my mouth and somebody is pulling them upwards. “And is this all because of you?” I gesture around me. “Am I in Tokyo because you made it happen?”

“Nope.” Nick shakes his head. “This time I’m here because of you. I actually begged Yuka for this job. I had to organise
dresses
and stuff
.
It nearly killed me.”

Nick pulls a face, but underneath the usual calmness is something I haven’t seen before: uncertainty. And I suddenly realise with a pang that all of this has been for me.

Nick found me, seven months ago. For me, he left. For me, he came back again. He made me laugh when I needed to; he annoyed me when it helped me; he saved me when I couldn’t save myself.

For me, he tries to keep it simple.

There are 7,123,024,873 people in the world, and Nick keeps choosing me.

I look at him – sitting on the pavement, pulling at the holes in his jeans – and he suddenly looks so earnest, and so worried, and so nervous, and so totally
un-Nick
, that there are only two possible things I can do.

So I do both of them at the same time.

I leap up from my suitcase and I lob myself at him so quickly he falls over slightly and has to steady himself on his elbow. “Thank you,” I say into his ear. “Thank you for liking me.”

And I kiss him as hard as I can.

Reasons to Think About Nick

1. He always thinks about me.
   

I don’t know how long we kiss for.

Let’s just say it’s long enough to make the entire world and everybody in it melt and turn to vapour, and not quite long enough to get us arrested.

Which is good. My urge to see the inside of a Japanese prison is only a very small and transient one.

“OK, I just have one more question,” I say when I finally pull away, flushed and beaming with my lips all tingly and my heart all swoopy and my hair all sticky-outy, like a small dog who’s just been harassed with a hairdryer.

“Of course you do.” I’m pleased to note that Nick looks exactly the same as me, if not a bit beamier and more rumpled.

“How did you find this all out? Poppy didn’t confess all, did she?”

“Obviously not. FYI she’s currently on her way back to England. Yuka is absolutely furious and she’s made sure Poppy’s agent knows it. I think Poppy’s next modelling job will be staring vacantly out from a kitchenware catalogue with her hands on her hips,” Nick says. “Rin, Bunty and Wilbur helped, but most of it came from somebody else.”

“Who?”

Nick points into the distance. “Him.”

I follow his finger and stare at the huge crowd of people walking across the zebra crossing, dodging the bicycles. Then I stare a little bit harder. Because walking through the middle of them – wearing a T-shirt with a guitar drawn on it and a bright purple velvet jacket – is Toby.

Right, I give up.

I clearly know nothing about people at all.

Slowly, I stand up and wait for Toby to reach me. He starts playing
Three Blind Mice
on his T-shirt. After a few wrong notes he shrugs. “It’s so very important to make an entrance, isn’t it, Harriet? Although in hindsight, I wish I’d worn the drum-kit T-shirt. It’s a bit easier to play under pressure.”

I stare at him, too startled to speak.

“Hey, Nick,” he adds chirpily, waving with his spare hand. “I liked the wellies you were wearing earlier. Do you think they’d go with this outfit, or would it get a bit sweaty around the knee area?”

“
Toby
,” I finally manage. “What are you
doing
here?”

“I’m your stalker, Harriet. I’ve been here the whole time. What kind of terrible stalker would I be if I wasn’t?”

“But—”

“I’m getting really good at it, right? I don’t think you knew I was here
at all.
”

“But
how
are
you here? You’re not even sixteen yet.”

“Oh, I’m here with my parents. They said we could go on holiday anywhere I liked to celebrate the end of my exams, but I just couldn’t decide where to go. That is until some information came to my attention last week.” And he actually winks at me. “They think I’ve been
really
busy with a school project.”

Toby looks extremely chuffed with himself. “I mean, you’re at my school, right? And this was a
fascinating
project. I found all sorts of incriminating evidence.” He pulls out photos and crumpled bits of paper and audio recordings and maps and drawings.

All this time I thought I was alone. But really I was surrounded constantly by people who cared about me: Toby, Nick, Wilbur, Bunty, Rin. I just couldn’t see them.

I don’t know whether to be incredibly touched or slightly creeped out.

“Toby – why on earth would you follow somebody
6,000 miles
?”

“5,937 miles, to be precise.” He points behind me. “Do you know what that is, Harriet?”

Oh dear. I patiently follow the direction of Toby’s finger. “It’s a statue of a dog.”