Not that kind of ever af.., p.1
Not That Kind of Ever After, page 1
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To Riley’s fairy godmothers.
And you too, Mum. Obviously.
PART 1
1
It came, unlike me, while I was riding backward cowgirl on what must have been the hairiest man in London.
I’m going to be honest with you, it wasn’t my finest hour. I’m not talking about my performance, of course—on that front I’d rate myself a solid 6.5, maybe even 7 out of 10, and I promise you I don’t say that lightly. I was giving it all the cries and whimpers of your more talented roster of YouPorn actresses, but being totally sincere, my heart wasn’t in it.
But oh, how I wanted it to be.
The date hadn’t been great. We’d met through Mirror Mirror, the latest in the long line of dating apps that have haunted my home screen, and from what I could see on my phone, he was … well, he was male, single, and conveniently located in London so he ticked the right boxes.
Name: Charles Wolf
That should have been my first telltale sign. The Charles bit, I mean—not the Wolf, although to that point his surname was a bit unfortunate given his disproportionate body to body-hair ratio.
But Charles: not Charlie, or Chip, not even Chaz, but Charles. Like the prince of Wales or the floppy-eared dog. I wondered maybe if it was just the formality of writing down his name—I’m still the full “Isabelle” on all my work emails despite just being Bella—but as he joined me in the cute little pub that I’d suggested, he went straight in with a cheeky banker side kiss and a five-drinks-down-already slur of:
“Belle? Charles. Charmed.”
So it was Charles. Just Charles.
Still, it wasn’t his choice to be called Charles. His parents named him, the nice vicar christened him, he was the victim here and if none of his primary schoolteachers had given the whole “nickname thing” a go then who was I to blame him for it?
Name: Charles Wolf
Occupation: Assistant Manager, GRM Investments
Again, I told myself. Not his fault.
Not all those who work for investment banks are dickheads, there’s just a disproportionate number of dickheads who work for investment banks. Finding the pure gems from inside the sea of rhinestones is, speaking from personal experience, a rummage in the dark that inevitably ends with me crying my eyes out to Pretty Woman and thinking that my life would be easier if I was a beautiful West Coast prostitute.
He was probably just great at math or economics at school and teachers guided him to portfolio management the same way that mine guided me toward creative writing. That’s a bit of a lie—my teachers guided me to average grades all around but I guided myself to creative writing, and my parents invariably accepted my life choices despite my obvious mediocrity.
But, I reminded myself, someone’s name and job title doesn’t necessarily define them. I mean, they literally define them, sure, but I know firsthand that I’m far greater than: Isabelle Marble, receptionist at Porter Books Publishing Ltd.
I’m Bella Marble: writer and creator; lover of dogs and fantastic karaoke singer to aughts’ classics; four-time winner of Porter Books’s annual “most courteous telephone manner” award (an achievement that is still very much on my LinkedIn profile despite the fact that the last time I won was over four years ago now); drinker of wine, pale ales and, if I’m in need of a pick-me-up, strawberry-infused-gin and tonics; a walking advertisement for H&M clothing; queen of animal-based documentary recommendations and owner of more books than the rest of London combined. Ginger, like all Marbles, freckles like the stars, and body type “petite,” meaning at one point the rest of the world grew taller and I somehow didn’t. I can juggle (ish), cartwheel (kind of), and have a strange love of constructing IKEA furniture.
And I’m a true, hopeless, despairing romantic. Above all things, above my wish to be a writer, above my dream to hug David Attenborough one day, above anything and everything, I want love.
I want what all those Disney princesses had before the producers and writers got better and found independent non-male-oriented story lines. I want a good old-fashioned man to sweep me off my feet and make me feel like royalty, but I’m living in the twenty-first century so I also want a man who treats me with respect and admires my strength and talents for what I’m worth while he rides me off into the sunset and maybe, just maybe, I will find that in:
Name: Charles Wolf
Occupation: Assistant Manager, GRM Investments
Height: 6′3″
Age: 33
2
The pub hidden on a tiny side street just north of Chinatown is an old favorite of mine. In the heart of Soho it’s easy and convenient for most of London, but it has a beautiful home-away-from-home vibe that’s not associated with central London at all. It’s straight out of an old English fable: all dark woods, mahoganies, and the strong smell of varnish coupled with an enthusiastically early Christmas tree. It feels like a bit of countryside in the wrong postcode. I love it.
I try to leave it to my dates to pick the place. I think it tells me a lot about them depending on the kind of place they pick but the usual “where should we go” conversation with Charles didn’t quite go the way I’d hoped.
Bella Marble
Where do you fancy going?
Charles Wolf
What’s near your place?
Bella Marble
I’m sure there’s a place that’s good for both of us! Soho maybe?
Charles Wolf
I don’t know Soho
Bella Marble
Where do you work then?
Bella Marble
I’m happy traveling to you if you know somewhere nice?
Charles Wolf
Running late. Be there in 10 x
Bella Marble
Be where?
Charles Wolf
Wrong chat
Another sign maybe that it wasn’t going to be the happily-ever-after I’d hoped for, but it wasn’t like he was the only guy I was chatting with either. Well, he was, but it wasn’t like I wasn’t open to chatting with multiple other men. I just happened to not be, right at that moment in time.
When I didn’t hear from him I thought about calling the whole thing off, but then it occurred to me: I had the power. I’m a strong female, raised in a house led by a strong female, living with other strong females and watching strong females on television more often than I’d care to admit. Plus, I hadn’t had anyone even accept a date with me in months. So I took the lead.
Bella Marble
Free Friday?
Bella Marble
There’s a cute pub on the edge of Chinatown?
Bella Marble
Maybe like 7:30?
Bella Marble
I think it might already sell mulled cider
Bella Marble
If you’re into that, it also sells beer
Bella Marble
Or wine if that’s what you drink
Bella Marble
It’s like a normal pub, it sells all drinks, just to be clear
It’s not like a specific cider place or anything is what I’m saying
Bella Marble
I just called them up to check and they won’t be selling mulled cider
Bella Marble
So like, let me know if you fancied it. No problems if not, obviously
Bella Marble
We could also meet later if you had other plans
I waited five hours after sending that last one and regretted everything. The stupid app interface doesn’t let you delete messages or I would have instantly. I was about thirty minutes away from deleting my entire profile, but, like a true prince galloping over the horizon, he texted back.
Charles Wolf
Sounds good to me. Let’s say 11
3
Eleven p.m. was a rogue time for a first date, but given how much effort it had been to secure the rendezvous I didn’t want to take my chances asking to move it only to find myself alone on a Friday night. Luckily for me, 11 p.m. is basically the new 7 p.m. in Soho … at least that’s what I told myself as I reapplied my makeup five hours early and tried to coerce a few of the commissioner’s assistants to have after-work drinks with me so I wasn’t just hanging around. By the time I polished off a shared bottle and finally wandered down Marylebone Road toward the twinkling lights of Piccadilly, swerving around annoying tourist and Instagrammer alike, it was already 10:30 p.m.
Still, I was early and arriving early on a date is never ideal. I thought about circling Leicester Square but given that I’d opted for heeled boots my feet hurt too much to walk more than I already had. Plus I went for a “borderline-work-appropriate sexy” look in a sheer white
I picked a corner of the nearly empty pub maybe a bit close to the Christmas tree (it’s September now; surely it will die before December?) to try to avoid people looking up at me with those “you okay, hon” eyes as I waited completely alone, not “okay, hon.” It didn’t help that the place was almost empty. The kind of vibe the pub emitted, all homely and warm, isn’t the kind of vibe people come to Soho for on a Friday night, unless you’re me, of course.
As 11 p.m. came and went the last-call bell rang out. Charles had already sent me a preorder with some flimsy late excuse so it wasn’t an immediate problem, only it did remind me that it was probably not the best idea to choose a pub for an 11 p.m. date. Then again when I’d suggested the place I think I’d anticipated a slightly earlier start time. But he did get there eventually, all politeness and apologies and any thought I had for calling it a night early was quickly switched out for the happy butterflies of budding romance.
“So tell me a bit about yourself.”
“Ever seen that Leonardo film?” His accent was cool public school drool, which wasn’t entirely unexpected. His stiff white shirt was unbuttoned at his collar and a plethora of thick brown hair was protruding out of his chest like a fur blanket. In fact it was quite easy to follow the zigzag of hair from his chest, right up around the sides of his ears, right around his untamed beard, and finishing with a thick patch of brown sprouts twisting around in no order whatsoever on the top of his strangely square head. I was trying not to stare directly at it, keeping my eyes fixated on his.
“Da Vinci?”
“No, the actor.”
“DiCaprio?”
“The film with the fit one from the superhero movies? The blonde?”
I’m sure this game of Articulate! would have immediately put off some women but what some might have seen as off-putting, I saw as a challenge. Movie trivia was my specialized subject. I was in the game.
“Margot Robbie? You’re talking about Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie?”
“Yeah—them.”
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood?”
“Na, the one where you see her pussy.”
I tried not to wince at the word. Call me slightly prudish but I’m not big on vagina-based terminology. Not on a first date. Not really in general. But the game was on, my cold expensive cider was before me, and the night was young (ish. It was already 11:30 p.m.).
“Oh! The Wolf of Wall Street! The Scorsese movie.”
“Who?”
“The director—it doesn’t matter. What about it?”
“Yeah, well, it’s a bit like that.”
“What is?”
“My life.”
“Oh,” I said, all smiles because if this was the one—if this was my Prince Charming—then I wanted him to get lost in my bright blue eyes and not see the confusion and early onset regret that was currently in them. I wanted this night to be perfect, one we could tell to our future generations. The “how we met” we’d tell to our mini ginger mes and hopefully-less-hairy hims. Our little Wolfy children.
“Oh—that’s actually quite funny, isn’t it,” I realized. “Wolf of Wall Street, you’re Charlie Wolf. Kind of fitting.”
“Charles Wolf.”
Not his fault.
“Charles. Sorry.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he concluded, swinging back the £9 craft beer that he’d preordered.
“My, what big gulps you take!” I said, watching the whole thing disappear down him. He wiped the foam from his mouth like a true gentleman. Sort of.
“You a natural redhead?” he asked finally after a slightly awkward silence.
Asking questions—well, that’s a good sign. It shows he’s interested at least. It might not be the most original of inquiries, but it’s something at least.
“I am indeed,” I answered, twiddling one of my locks around my index finger.
“You’re pretty,” he said, and immediately my cheeks exploded a dusty pink. It was the first compliment I’d had from a guy in like … months. Maybe even a year. I couldn’t stop my heart from fluttering away.
It’s not that I think I’m bad looking at all—I don’t. I know I look pretty good when I make an effort, only given every girl out there makes an effort these days and most boys don’t naturally think “short with freckles” is their “type,” I don’t think that many people actually notice.
“For a ginger,” he added, but I ignored that bit for obvious reasons.
Suddenly I didn’t care that he wasn’t a natural beauty. Suddenly I didn’t care that I could weave his eyebrow hair into a French plait. I was just a girl, sitting in front of a boy, listening to him call her pretty and loving it.
“Thanks,” I said, threading a loose strand back off my face and looking down coyly. “You know I—”
“Shall we go back to mine?” he interrupted. I mean, I wasn’t going to say anything too breakthrough anyway so like, whatever.
I looked down at my very full pint of cider.
“Maybe another one?” I asked, my voice sounding light and uncaring like I’d seen work in a hundred rom-coms before.
“The bar’s shut.”
“Somewhere else?”
“My place is like a thirty-minute Uber. We can split it. It won’t be more than twenty pounds or something.”
This might be the father of my children, I thought. The charm’s a little less than I’d hoped, but perhaps he was just shy. Many men are just shy.
Besides, he’d just told me I was pretty. I couldn’t keep running from men at the first sign of trouble. Who on earth would there still be if I turned down every man who thought dick first? So I took a gamble.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, trying to sound all female empowerment like it was all my idea. Because it was: it was my choice to meet him. It was my choice of venue. I was the one who bought the drinks and now I was the one saying yes.
I was winning at being a modern-day woman. Ish.
Except a £36 cab ride and two hours later I was bouncing on top of him like a jumping jack, screaming his name and trying desperately not to imagine the man beneath me was the aging prince of England.
Not the fairy-tale opening perhaps, but some things, like a good brew of tea, take time.
All was not lost. Yet.
4
Backward cowgirl is great for nosy people like me. While I was up there, dropping it to the beat of “Staying Alive” as per my usual fake-it-till-you-make-it technique and moaning at regular intervals, I managed to sneak a pretty expansive look around his room. He lived in a flat share in Camberwell, a three-bedroom new build with a one-size-fits-all kitchen and generic furniture he clearly didn’t put time into buying. His walls had no artwork, his room had no photos—he was by all accounts a psychopath. He did have one shelf, which was lined with all manner of products that I spent the odd bounce trying to make out the brands of. At least looking up at that was time not spent looking down at his catastrophically hairy legs. At one point I considered how satisfying it would be to pour thick golden hot wax all down them and with one rip to pull out fistfuls of thick curls.
But even as I thought it I felt bad.
It wasn’t his fault he was hairy.
It wasn’t his fault that he’d never been with anyone who’d suggested a little more self-grooming.
This was a man clearly in need of someone to guide him and there I was, ready and open to be the girl who would change his life for the better after we got the awkward first sex out of the way.
Except as a by-product of the hair he must be impervious to the climate because even exerting myself as I was, I was still fucking freezing in his room. I tried once or twice to grab the cover that he was lying on, but his grunts of protest stopped me before I got too far. I tried to change position, thinking the closer I was to him the warmer it would be. Perhaps it would even feel like a nice winter coat in missionary. But trying to turn myself around up there wasn’t going down too well either.
