Heart (24 page)

“I don’t know what his name is. Flynn just said there had been an American interested in you.” When I finally got the courage to look up from the blanket and into his eyes, I saw all of his insecurity pooled there. It was knowing he had asked, even though he probably didn’t want to hear the answer he was expecting, which gave me the guts to tell him. Everything. Well, everything except the night Garrett pushed things too far when kissing me, less than a hundred yards from where we were sitting.

“I hate myself for admitting this. You’ll probably hate me for admitting it. But I’m glad he didn’t turn out to be the person you thought he was. Because if he had, you’d probably be with him now, not me, and I don’t think I could cope with that. I don’t want to think about him kissing you, touching you. But I’m so glad, so fucking relieved, that there wasn’t anything more than that.” He leant over and kissed me, oh-so-gently. “Because I don’t think I could live with knowing I had caused that. That I was responsible for taking what we had, what he have, and dirtying it.” His watery eyes showed me how much he meant what he was saying, how much guilt he carried with him. But I was also glad Jake was still the only person I had been with, that what we had still had some element of purity to it.

“I don’t hate you for saying that, Jake. I could never hate you. I feel the same. What about you? Has there been—” Before I had even finished, he took my head in his hands and looked at me.

“No. You are my life. I can’t imagine being able to live without you. I tried it and know how miserable it was. You are my sun, rain and soil. I need you to grow.” He laughed self-consciously. “I can’t believe I’m talking about gardening. But you know what I mean. Without you, I can’t survive. I’d wither and die. I need you. I
need
you, Myrtle.” His hands held me firm as he gave me the deepest, most serious kiss of the day so far.

“I need you more,” I said when we broke for air. “Let’s go.” This time, it was me who took him by the hand and led him to the van.

When we got back to campus, he pulled his rucksack from the back of the van and locked it. Hand-in-hand, we walked to my room.

“Ready?” The glint in his eye told me how ready he was as I unlocked my door.

“Oh, yes!” And then I thought about it. “Shit, no! No, I’m not ready.” Him, his balloons and his picnic had made me forget my plans for the afternoon – and there was no way he was getting any closer until I had had some serious bathroom time. I stood in the doorway, not wanting to go one step further.

“What do you mean?” His about-face would have been funny, if it wasn’t for the serious expression on his face.

“I’m not ready. You know, I need some… umm…
maintenance
.”

“Maintenance? What do you mean?”
Bless the innocence of boys about things like that
.

“I need to have a shower, shave my legs and stuff,” I admitted.

“You don’t need to do that, Neve. Trust me, there is nothing that could turn me off right now.”

“I beg to differ. One stroke of my furry legs and you’ll be looking for your keys! Please. I want it to be special.” He pulled me to him, hard, and eased his tongue into my mouth before picking me up. Walking us into my room, he slammed the door and leaned me against it.

“It’s you. It’s me. It’s us. How much more special can it be?”

His kiss changed to something more gentle, more coercive. “But, because I love you and want you to be happy, you have half an hour to do whatever needs to be done. I will sit here, patiently, until the thirty minutes is up. At that point, furry legs or no furry legs, we carry on this…
conversation
. Deal?” He held me to him so I could feel how ready he was. But half an hour? I had intended to spend half a bloody day! I mentally ran through what was essential as he pushed me in the direction of the bathroom. “Ready, steady, GO!” He shut the door behind him.

I started by sending a mental thanks to Mum and Dad for paying the extra rent for me to have an en suite room. And lost a minute. Intent on producing the best possible me before the deadline, I brushed my teeth, plucked a few stray eyebrow hairs and dealt with a couple of spots. Music could be heard through my door and I imagined him scrolling through his playlists, trying to work out what best suited the afternoon.

“I can’t hear the shower running. Twenty-four minutes to go!” Or maybe he was just watching the clock.

“Oh, my God, don’t listen!” The door opened and Jake leant against the frame.

“Well, I could watch, I suppose.”

“No!”

“Please? I promise I’ll be good.” His grin suggested he didn’t even know the definition of good.

“No! Now get out. You’re wasting my minutes!” I pushed him out and loudly locked the door, loving the sound of his laugh on the other side.

I showered, shaved everything that needed it and rubbed in some fancy body lotion Mum had given me for my birthday. And then I realised. When Jake pushed me into the bathroom, I didn’t think to pick up any clean clothes, underwear, anything.

“Umm, babe?” I asked through the door.

“Yeah?”

“Can you do me a favour? I forgot to bring clean underwear in. Can you get me some? It’s in the top drawer.” In that split second, I thought about what I’d just asked him to do. Go through bras which have seen better days and comfy knickers which should never be seen by anyone other than me? Ruin the illusion that I’m always dressed in pretty, matching underwear? I couldn’t do it.

“Actually, my dressing gown is on the back of the door. Can you just pass that through?” I waited, praying he hadn’t decided to find the underwear.

“You’ll have to unlock the door.” I turned the lock and his brown arm handed over the dressing gown. “You’ve got six minutes.”

“Six minutes? I still need to dry my hair!”

“Well, you’d better hurry up then, hadn’t you?” He closed the door and I put it on before finger-combing my damp hair. When it came to that moment, it wasn’t about the furry legs at all. It was about feeling ready. Ready to show him how much I loved him. How much I wanted him. How much I needed him.

I walked out of the bathroom with a sense of confidence. In us.

And there he was.

Lying on my bed.

In just his low-slung jeans, arms behind his head.

Smiling.

There was absolutely no way I could do anything other than look at him.

“Four minutes,” he said, looking back at me, his voice slightly lower than usual.

I forced myself to turn around and blast-dry my hair upside down. After running the brush through it a few times, I was happy with it. I knew it was going to get messed up and, all of a sudden, four minutes sounded too long to wait.

“Done.” I turned and stood, wondering who was going to make the first move.

“Come here.” He shuffled over and lay on his side, making room for me next to him. I lay down, mirroring his position. “Possibly the longest half hour of my life,” he said, tracing his fingers over my eyes, my cheeks, my lips. “You look beautiful. You smell beautiful. You
are
beautiful.” I raised my hands and did the same, repeating his words back to him.

I can’t remember which one of us moved in closer. It didn’t matter. This wasn’t about either of us. It was about both of us. As we kissed and touched and explored, I was glad he had made us wait. This wasn’t the heated need for release which had taken place in the car park; this was about renewing our worship of each other.

My dressing gown was getting tangled between us, so I took it off and he ran a fingertip along my side from shoulder to hip, complete adoration on his face. I undid his jeans and he moved onto his back to wriggle out of them. And that’s when I saw it for the first time. His tattoo.

“Sit up!” Something in my voice told him he needed to follow the instruction, even though his jeans were still around his ankles. I couldn’t stop my hands touching it.

“What is it?” I knew what it was.

“Myrtle.” Nothing could have prepared me for the emotion I would feel at that moment. I knew what the tattoo of the oak tree meant to him. What adding myrtle to that meant to him.

“It’s amazing.”

“Yeah, he did a good job, didn’t he? The tree looks so much better as well now.”

“It
looks
amazing but it’s more amazing that you would do this. Have me inked permanently onto your body. Next to your dad.” I struggled to articulate how significant I knew this was.

“Why? Being apart from you taught me something important, Myrtle. I want you with me until the day I die. Until I breathe my last breath. So, this,
this
was the easiest decision in the world.” I kissed the tattoo before kissing him on the mouth.

“Take your jeans off, Jake.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He lifted his lower body and removed his jeans and boxers. “What now?”

We both knew it was a rhetorical question.

When I woke, the room was dark and I was being held possessively against Jake’s chest, head under his chin. My body ached from the different ways we had each proven our love until we had drifted off in a moment of satisfied calm. I stretched my arm over to check the time on my phone. 10:16pm.

“So, it’s not a dream, then?” Jake’s hand cupped my breast. “You’re real? This is real?”

“Don’t use corny lines as an excuse to cop a feel!” I swatted his hand and tried to move toward the edge of the bed. He rolled us over so that he was over me, above me, everywhere on me. “Do you want something to eat?”

“I certainly do,” he said, holding my hands at my sides and trailing a line of kisses downwards from my mouth. Just as he reached my abdomen, my stomach rumbled and he laughed. “Okay, I give up,” he said, planting one final kiss on my tummy. “Does anyone deliver to here?” As he sat up, I did the same and tried to untangle the bird’s nest my hair had become.

“Yeah, I’ve got a pizza flyer here somewhere.” I put my dressing gown on and passed him the flyer. “Pick what you want and I’ll ring it through in a minute.” I escaped to the bathroom and didn’t need to look in the mirror to know I needed more than a quick freshen-up.

“It’ll be here in twenty minutes. I’m going to have a shower,” I said after ringing the pizza company. “Fancy joining me?” Jake didn’t need telling twice to follow me into the bathroom. After undoing my dressing gown, he slipped his hands around my waist and pulled me to him, clearly excited at the prospect of our first shower together. As his mouth descended to one of my breasts, I clung to the edge of the sink to stop myself falling.

“Let’s get in the shower. We haven’t got long,” I managed to say as the waves started to break in my blood.

“I don’t think I’ve got long, either,” Jake responded with a wink before opening the shower cubicle and turning on the water.

As I followed him in, I realised that all of those writers who include hot shower sex scenes had lied. A three-foot box which included two glass walls, a huge metal tap and water did not great sex make. After a couple of attempts to find a position that worked, we laughed and gave up.

“Will you take an I.O.U.?” Jake asked before kissing me on the end of my nose. “I don’t want to break something – and I don’t mean the shower!” He switched the water off, stepped out and picked up a towel. Leaning back in, he wrapped the towel around me and dried me off, caressing and stroking every inch of me, making me crave more of him. The door buzzer stopped things going any further and he raced to put on jeans and collect the pizza from downstairs, giving me a chance to put on some underwear and my dressing gown.

Once the pizza was finished, we undressed and climbed back into bed. I snuggled up to him, content in his arms.

“I’ve been thinking, about the future.” I tried really hard not to show the slight panic that his statement generated. After all, it was this same bed, in this same room, that had been the setting for our last fateful discussion about the future.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want to make plans that don’t involve you, but I also don’t want you to think I’m sat at home, expecting you to come home at the end of your degree and pick up where we left off.” I started to interrupt, to disagree, but he silenced me with a kiss. “Look, I can already see it with Flynn. His life is changing, going in a different direction to mine. And that’s okay. He’s got Cass, and hers is changing in the same way as his.” My stomach clenched, filled with the dread that he was going to end things between us once and for all, convinced our paths were diverging.

“So the way I see it, I’ve got to change my path so that it’s running alongside yours. Bill has been great, promising me more responsibility, but I want more. I want to
be
more. I’ve looked into it and there’s a garden design course I’m interested in. It’ll take longer, but I can do it part-time and still keep up with my work for Bill. If I can stick it out at home until you’re finished here, we can then decide on our future together. Grace and Josh will both be at uni or working by then so we can do whatever we want, wherever we want. I’m going to follow my heart. Follow you, wherever you want to take us: home, here, the other side of the world.” I was blown away by how much he’d thought about this and how committed he was to making our future a shared one.