Read Online Straight Talking by Jane Green - Free Book Online

forgetting that in the beginning you have to play hard to get, you have to make them work for you a little bit, you have to be slightly unavailable, I said, “No plans really. Why?”
    He took me boating the next day. Luckily, because his first suggestion was rollerblading, and I happen to be allergic to any form of exercise unless it takes place between the sheets. We went to Regents Park and on the way there, in the car, he kissed me. And then, at every traffic light he kissed me again. And he kissed me getting out of the car, walking to the shed to hire a boat, in the boat, on the grass, by the water, and I really thought this could work out.
    “I can’t believe I met you in that queue,” he said, stroking my hair and kissing the palm of my hand. “I just can’t believe it. I’ve spent so long looking for someone and then I met you, just like that.”
    Reader, bear with me, don’t be too judgmental when I tell you we went to bed that night. We spent the whole day together, boating, having a long, lazy lunch, then back at my flat talking by candlelight.
    Sex just seemed the most perfect ending to a perfect day. And in the morning he didn’t disappear, he stayed with me until lunchtime when he had to go home and do some work, but he wanted to see me that night, and me being me, I said yes.
    Playing hard to get is easy when you don’t really like someone. When you’re testing the theory to see if it works and of course it does, because the victim of your game is an ugly bastard, so when he keeps calling and wanting to see you, you laugh to yourself because your mother was right after all—treat them mean and they really do stay keen.
    But then you meet someone who makes your heart stir, and you think, I will try and play hard to get, but what this really means is when they ask can I see you tonight, you say you’re busy. But you can see them later, you add hopefully, after the dinner party you had been so looking forward to before you met them. It won’t finish late you say, just so they don’t think you’re changing your arrangements for them.
    So you go out for dinner and you sit there quite separate from the conversation around you. Every five minutes you check your watch, and at ten o’clock you excuse yourself and rush back to your new lover. This is how we play hard to get. And then we wonder why they feel threatened, suffocated, why they disappear.
    I had an idyllic three months with Guy. Every time I saw him it got better and better, and he really liked me, at least he seemed to. But of course I made a fatal mistake. I started to believe that he meant what he said, and after a couple of months, after I had started to relax, I brought my toothbrush, moisturizer, and a sexy nightdress to his flat and accidentally left it there. He didn’t say anything, which I took to be a good sign. How wrong can you be?
    Just before we were about to hit our third-month anniversary he invited me on holiday—a long weekend—with him and another couple, to his parents’ house in the South of France.
    We flew down there together, me ecstatic with happiness, him kissing me throughout the whole journey. Guy’s friends, who I didn’t know well, and who were very pleasant, in that pleasant way people have of sizing up their friend’s new girlfriend, were arriving the next day.
    But Christ, were they young. Guy mixed with twenty-five-year-olds, and while there is only a five-year difference, I felt like an old woman. They were sweet, but I knew, after the first night when we made dinner and ate it on the terrace overlooking the swimming pool, I knew that perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea after all.
    Not that I had any doubts about Guy, I just wished we were here alone.
    Guy and I had made dinner, and I want you to know that while I was cooking, Guy couldn’t keep his hands off me, spinning me around while I was trying to chop, hands all over me like an octopus, lips desperately searching for mine.
    Everything was