At First Sight by Hannah Sunderland (latest novels to read TXT) 📕

him. But just as I was moulding the thought in my brain, his expression changed from one of temptation to one of amused puzzlement.

‘What is it?’ I asked, confused and a little breathless.

‘It’s just … yer nose.’ He sniggered.

I frowned, lifted my phone to my face and turned on the forward-facing camera.

‘Oh God,’ I said, instantly holding up my hand to hide the fact that my latex nose was detaching itself from my face. ‘Can you fix it?’ I asked.

‘Let me see?’ he said through a suppressed laugh. I took my hand away and, as I did, there was a thud, followed by a rustling, as the glue completely disconnected and my fake nose dropped into the bucket of popcorn on my lap.

I pressed my lips together, hard, before looking back up to Charlie, whose fingers were now covering his mouth. I reached up and touched my sweaty, air-deprived nose, covered in tiny ribbons of dried glue, and before I could do anything to stop it, a chortle barged its way through my newly human nose. Charlie followed suit, laughing until tears filled his eyes. I fished out the nose and pressed it back to my face but the glue had all dried up.

‘This is just the universe sayin’ that yer too damn pretty to be hidden behind all that make-up,’ he said through his laughter and reached a hand up to my face. His fingertips rested on my cheek while his thumb ran over my nose, taking the dried glue off in gentle strokes.

‘It was criminal to hide yer away behind all of this,’ he said quietly.

He carried on stroking my nose until I was pretty sure that all of the glue was gone. ‘Álainn,’ he said under his breath, so quietly that I almost didn’t hear it.

Just as I was about to ask what he’d just said, the lights dropped, sending the theatre into darkness and the ominous music of Dawn of the Dead began playing out into a room. He gave me one last meaningful glance before sitting far back until he was almost lying down in his seat, grabbing a handful of popcorn and piling it onto his chest, where he picked at it like a grazing pigeon.

A sleeping woman, apparently having a bad dream, came up on the screen, beginning the second leg of this marathon. I turned away and pulled my phone from my pocket, hiding it down the side of my leg in the aisle, away from Charlie, and dimming the screen. I tried to type what he’d just said into Google, but I had no idea how to spell it and after receiving an angry tut from a man opposite, I tucked the phone away.

The little plastic bobble-head zombie jiggled on the dashboard as I pulled up outside Charlie’s flat. He’d told me to park around the corner because the one-way system around where he lived was confusing, so I didn’t actually see the flat, just the general area. It was nice, not as good as where Ned’s and mine was but also nowhere near the depths of despair that my old kebab-scented flat had been.

‘Thank yer for coming with me,’ he said with one hand on the passenger-side door. ‘I’ve always wanted to go to one of those.’

He looked so funny under the light of the LED street lamp that drifted through the rain-speckled windscreen. He too had had enough of his itchy fake nose by the end of the second film and had pulled it off like that famous scene in Poltergeist, where the man tears off his face in the bathroom mirror. He’d purposefully done it in plain view of Chatty Cathy from a few rows back, whom I was sure would be seeking out therapy sometime soon by the look of horror on her face. His real nose poked through the ruined make-up, a nice little reminder that his handsome face still existed beneath it all.

‘Don’t forget your prize,’ I said, reaching for the bobblehead. It was a prize that didn’t really justify the amount of effort that Charlie had put into it, but there was a charm to its mediocrity. It’d been unceremoniously handed to us by an usher who could not have cared less and, somehow, looked more like a zombie than we did. We’d decided to call the bobblehead George in honour of the George Romero marathon and we’d both become ridiculously attached to him very quickly.

‘Can you take care of him for now?’ he asked, tapping George’s head and making it jiggle with a quiet creak of its springs.

‘Of course. My lawyers will be in touch with your lawyers about custody.’ I chuckled and placed George back on the dashboard. ‘So,’ I said, turning back to him as he opened the door. ‘I’ll see you soon?’ It was a question that asked so much more than what the actual words meant.

‘Don’t worry, Nell. I’m not goin’ anywhere. I swear on George’s life.’ He leaned over the handbrake and pressed his lips to my cheek. They lingered there for a moment or two before he pulled away, sent me one last smile and got out of the car.

I watched him until he disappeared around a corner with one final wave and I felt a tugging in my stomach.

Why was it that every time he walked away, it felt so final, as if I’d never see him again?

Chapter Eleven

February transitioned into March with a chorus of birdsong that had been absent the day before. It was as if the birds had been waiting for the frigid winds of February to pass before coming out and darting around the windows of the office, ecstatic to feel the warmth of spring.

‘I like him,’ Ned said, his feet crossed at the ankles and resting on the corner of his desk as he ate a coronation chicken sandwich with the grace of a refuse truck. When I started commenting on people’s messy eating, you knew there was a