Talking to Addison

Clearly it wasn’t locked.

Half horrified at what I was doing, I pushed open the door.

The large room was dark, but light streamed in from the moon and the streetlights. The place was also lit up with an unearthly green glow, which I realized, once my eyes adjusted, came from a huge VDU. The room was so filled with banks of electronic equipment it was like the flight deck of the Starship Enterprise. LEDs lit up and monitors bleeped quietly.

Sitting with his back to me was a very tall man, who resembled a normal man who’d been put on a rack and stretched out. His black spiky hair stuck up straight from his head, and I couldn’t see his face.

He didn’t turn round, although he must have heard me, because his back stiffened.

‘Hello?’ I whispered. ‘Sorry to disturb you, but I saw you were still working and, well, I moved in here a couple of weeks ago and my name’s Holly and I thought that, you know, since we lived together, we should perhaps lay eyes on one another.’

I swallowed. My voice seemed to echo in the empty room, and I felt like a complete dork. Then, when he didn’t reply, I started to get annoyed. It wasn’t like I was demanding anything unreasonable. This was only basic human contact, for fuck’s sake! The way Kate and Josh tiptoed around him was ridiculous. He needed shaking up, if you asked me. He still hadn’t even bothered turning round! That was bloody rude.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t realize you were so rude. I won’t bother you again. Excuse me.’

I turned to go. Slowly, I heard the revolving chair creep round behind me. I looked back.

A huge pair of dark brown eyes, blinking rapidly, regarded me with a mixture of curiosity and fear. I almost gasped aloud. He was … well, just spectacularly beautiful. Just, like, Oh my GAWD! Not in a pretty, boyband poofy kind of way, but that chiselled, sensitive look that cries out, ‘I may have been staring at this computer screen for fifteen hours, but as my physiognomy suggests, I have the soul of a poet. And not one of those ones with hair in their noses that you see in the Sunday supplements.’ Even from behind his glasses you could see that his eyelashes cast long shadows on his ludicrously high cheekbones and a frown seemed to pass over his exquisitely high forehead.

I managed to quell my first urge, which was to lie at his feet and present my stomach to him to be tickled, when I noticed he was wearing a Star Trek T-shirt. How original of someone who played with computers all day long to like Star Trek, I thought.

‘Excuse me,’ he said. His voice was quiet and soft, with no discernible accent – not like mine. I got very London, selling flowers every day.

He looked at his hands. His fingers were incredibly long – practically prehensile. I actually sighed.

‘I was a bit caught up in what I was doing.’

He sounded apologetic, and I was in one of those brain-twisting moods whereby if you meet someone who is clearly your soul mate you feel an overwhelming urge to be rude to them.

‘So you don’t listen to people when they come to say “hello”? What were you doing?’

He stared at his hands again and didn’t say anything. I thought for a bit.

‘OK, shall we start again?’ I announced. ‘I’m Holly, and you’re Mr Addison, I presume.’

‘Not mister, just Addison,’ he said quietly.

‘Ooh, what a great name!’ I said, reaching out to shake his hand. He didn’t take mine, and regarded it with some alarm. ‘Addison Madison?’

What? What magic potion had I just taken to turn me into the Moron of the Western World? I cringed.

He blinked. His eyelashes practically bounced off his sweetly pouted lips. ‘Ehm, no … Addison Farthing.’

‘Farthing, Farthing – right, of course, how silly of me,’ I gushed, like I was interviewing him on a breakfast show. ‘Of course.’

I was backing away and backing down big time.

‘So, anyway, I thought, you know, time to say hello, pop in, have a chat …’

Addison continued to regard me impassively.

‘So, here we are, having a chat … and it’s been lovely chatting to you. Really. We must do it again some time.’

He continued staring at me as I backed out of the room.

‘Great! Nice to meet you! Nice Starship Enterprise, by the way!’ I said as I got to the door, but he was already turning back to his enormous screen and had clearly forgotten my very existence. Huge cables twisted round the table legs, heading off God knows where. The tapping started up again and I closed the door gently. Outside in the hall I leaned on the wall and let my jaw drop in wonder. Oh my God. No wonder Kate liked him locked away.

‘I spoke to Addison last night,’ I announced to Josh the next day. He was eating dinner and I was eating breakfast and trying to avoid his dinner – the smell of pork chops half an hour after I’d woken up made me feel a bit sick, I had discovered.

Josh looked up at me from an article he was reading in Homes & Gardens. I’d suggested Loaded as a slightly more useful manual for pulling, but it didn’t quite suit him, somehow.

‘And?’

‘And?? AND?? Excuse me, but as landlord of this establishment, I do believe it is your duty to let me know when you’re hoarding Johnny Depp in geek form on your property!’

‘You never asked.’

‘Why did I never think to ask?’ I asked, slapping myself on the forehead. ‘So many gorgeous computer geeks in the world, so little time. Josh! If it hadn’t been for my extreme bravery last night I might never have met my future life partner! Ooh –’ a thought occurred to me – ‘and our kids get to be brainy, too!’

‘He is very pretty, I suppose,’ said Josh, a tad dreamily. I narrowed my eyes at him.

‘Only in an objectively aesthetic way! Not in a romantic way! Not that there would be anything wrong with that! But I don’t! Not that it’s bad!’

‘Stop, stop! You’ve got caught in the Richard Gere “I’m not gay/but it’s OK” cycle of eternal justification. The only way to break free is to remove that plate of pork chops from my vicinity before I vomit on it.’

‘Thank goodness for your magic spell-breaking powers,’ said Josh, picking up his plate and moving over to the sink.

‘You know, I must have him,’ I went on. ‘He will be mine.’

‘But he doesn’t talk.’

‘That’s OK. I can talk to you, or my mother. Addison is for kissing and worshipping.’

‘So, like, there’s no difference between me and your mother?’ asked Josh gloomily, rinsing his plate off.

‘Well, you haven’t ordered me to help with the washing-up yet, so, perhaps there is.’

‘Don’t you have work to go to?’ he asked, a tad crossly.

‘Ah, that’s more like it.’

‘Fine. See you later. I’ll just continue here on my lifelong mission of female identification.’

I popped my head back round the door.

‘You know, if you meant that sarcastically, you should really take that pinny off.’

He gave me the V’s.