“Whoops,” he said deadpan, and I burst into helpless laughter.
He stuck his head out the window to ensure he hadn’t accidentally knocked somebody out, but came back satisfied.
“The glass isn’t even broken,” he informed me. “It’s landed in a flower bed. Best place for it, I suppose.”
“You are officially my hero,” I announced, and I swear Steve glowed with pride. There was an awkward moment when we didn’t know what to do next.
“Shall we go for a walk?” I pondered out loud, just as Steve said, “Shall we watch a movie?”
“Movie sounds great,” I agreed readily, while Steve countered, “what a good idea, let’s go for a walk.” It was a classic sitcom moment and it carried us over the awkwardness.
“Let’s have a movie,” I reiterated, fancying a nice little cuddle and some more wine and a little relax.
“Okay,” Steve consented, “But you pick. I’ll make some sangria.”
Sangria, as well. And more nibbles. Was he trying to seduce me, I wondered, or was he trying to put all that weight that I had lost back onto my now skinny frame?
Who cared? I perused his movie collection and made a short list of three. A romantic comedy, first choice; a high brow period drama, for show; and a crime thriller, out of interest. Steve discarded the period drama as too boring and told me the thriller was a bit on the gory side. So the rom-com it was.
“How come you’ve got these in the house, anyway?” I teased as he loaded the DVD player.
“It’s my soft,
metro
side,” he told me flippantly. “Can’t you tell?” He ran his fingers through his hair in an exaggerated brushing gesture, then rubbed his non-existent sidies into shape. He sat down delicately on the sofa next to me, crossing his legs daintily at the ankles.
“I think you got that wrong,” I snorted. “A little too over the top to be metro. You’d better be careful, before I get the wrong idea.”
“And what would that be?” he challenged me back.
“Well—”
At this point, two glasses of wine and another of rather potent sangria took over. My rational side said good night and it was all naughty from there on.
“I’d have to check, you see,” I sniggered. “Whether all that equipment is there and in functioning order.”
Steve was momentarily lost. “What equipment?”
“You know…” I gave a meaningful toss of my head in the general direction of his midsection. “
That
equipment.”
Steve looked down at his body doubtfully.
“Oh,
that
equipment,” he echoed. “Well, I dunno. It’s not been used for a while. It might be defective.”
Judging by the way he was prominent through his trousers quite nicely now, it wasn’t defective in the slightest.
“How would you test?” he provoked me teasingly.
“Like so,” I countered. Before I could stop myself, I had retrieved an ice cube from my sangria and, in one swift movement, hooked my finger round his waistband and dropped the ice cube down inside his trousers and underpants.
The effect was cataclysmic. Steve jumped up from the sofa, howling in exaggerated pain. He did a terrific little dance around the lounge, taking his trousers off to gain access to the over-cooled area. Miraculously, the bulge remained.
Concerned for his modesty, I got up somewhat unsteadily and pulled the curtains. Steve crept up behind me and dropped an ice cube down the back of my shirt. My God, that was cold. I let out an almighty shriek and pummeled his chest with my hands.
“Get it out, get it out,” I demanded as he got hold of my wrists and, laughingly, stopped me attacking him.
“Now why would I do that,” he asked, “when it’s having such a wonderful effect?”
“Because it’s co-o-old,” I wailed and then his mouth was on mine, his warm lips meeting mine, his tongue exploring gently, probingly. He let go of my wrists and put his arms around me, pulling me close and holding me tight. One of his hands wandered up my bottom and up my spine, sending electric tingles all the way along. I wrapped my arms around his body, pressing against him as hard as I could, going with my needs, feeling, experiencing.
We were so hungry for each other, we never even made it to the sofa, let alone the bedroom. Steve laid me down gently on the thick, squashy rug in the middle of the lounge and lay down beside me, caressing, exploring all the while. We were truly lost in each other, in the sensation of being with each other, and when we finally came together, we created an almighty explosion.
“So…did you have sex with him?” Rachel asked conversationally while she was blowing on her cappuccino to cool it.
We were at our local coffee shop in Tooting to resurrect our old tradition of debriefing each other on our love lives on a Saturday morning. Having overheard her very direct question, the couple at the next table gave me an amused glance. I could feel myself blushing. Instead of a response, I tried a meaningful eye-rolling, mouth-twisting kind of gesture that was meant to say, “well, yes.”
Rachel wasn’t having it. She wanted to hear it.
“Did you? Come on, you must have done,” she teased.
I held my hands up in surrender. “Okay, yes, I did.” Muffled snorts from the next table indicated that the couple was still listening to our conversation.
“It was great,” I elaborated. Inspiration struck, and I continued wickedly. “Especially when the others arrived.” Complete silence next door now. Good.
Rach was confused. “What others?”
I pretended coyness once more. “You know,” I said pointedly. “The
others.
”
Rachel leaned back in her chair and sipped at her cappuccino. The couple at the next table sat frozen, she with her teaspoon mid-stir, he with his toast halfway up his mouth. Rachel’s eyes twinkled. She had cottoned on.
“Oh,” she said. “The
others
. I see.” She took another sip of her cappuccino while she was working out how to take this charade further.
“I thought you guys had stopped all that kinky stuff.”
I grinned wistfully. “We had. But, you know…well, it’s quite addictive.” She
next door
had now put her spoon down, her eyes as big as saucers. She was trying hard not to stare, but not quite succeeding. I pretended not to notice.
“Was Big Dick there?” Rachel demanded randomly.
“Absolutely,” I deadpanned. “And Bender. And Pussy.”
Bender?
Rachel mouthed in amusement, but kept going. “Gosh, I’m sorry I missed it. Where did you do it this time?”
“In the cellar,” I was quick to respond. I had this worked out in my head now.
“Which one?” Rach asked, as though there was a whole array of S&M places we were both used to frequenting. “The one with the chains and the spikes, or the dark room?”
“The
wet
one. With the water boards,” I shot back, totally nonchalant. Rachel drew in a fake breath of horror. “Not the wet room?” she stage-whispered.
A vicious clattering next door suggested that
she
had knocked over her teacup. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that
he
put down his toast and got up. Throwing me an extremely dirty look, he pulled his girlfriend to her feet and they left, a picture of moral outrage and disgust.
Rachel and I burst out laughing before the door had closed behind them.
When all was relatively quiet again, Rachel returned her attention to the subject at hand.
“So, did you sleep with him?” she asked once more.
“I did,” I admitted, and felt my face splitting into a huge grin. “Of course I did. It was wonderful.”
“Tell me everything,” Rachel invited, as she would have done of old. I opened my mouth to relate the whole lovely evening but changed my mind. Suddenly, I found that I didn’t want to share every last detail, as I once would have done. Stalling for time by taking a big bite out of my breakfast deluxe roll, I pondered this change.
One reason was clearly that I didn’t want to make Rachel uncomfortable. But the other reason was quite simply that I didn’t feel the need. How to proceed?
“It was wonderful,” I reiterated cautiously. “It was warm. And loving. And exciting.” I smiled at the recollection.
“You are all loved-up,” Rachel observed, also smiling widely. “It’s okay, you don’t have to share the gory detail. I can see you don’t want to.”
I swallowed a big gulp of latte.
“I’m sorry,” I ventured apologetically. “It’s not that I don’t want to share, it’s not like that. It’s just—”
“—
not necessary?” Rachel offered. I stared at her. How could she know how I felt?
“It’s okay,” Rachel said again. “I can tell by the look on your face that you are happy, and safe, and secure. This relationship with Steve, it’s doing you good. You’re glowing from the inside. I don’t really need to know anything more. Besides which, it’s none of my business anyway. I’m only after gossip, that’s all.”
I tried to take all of this in. It wasn’t just me who had moved on from the girlie tattler that I once was. Rachel had changed, too, for reasons of her own. A tiny part of me felt a pang of nostalgia for all the giggles we had shared over dissecting each other’s love lives. The rest of me realized that we had been bound to grow out of that sooner or later. And we were definitely on the late side as it was.
We ate in silence for a few minutes. Eventually, Rach reached out to touch my hand.
“I’m so happy for you,” she said sincerely. “And it gives me faith that you two found each other; it means there’s hope for the rest of us.”
I smiled and didn’t know what to say.
“And do you know what’s the biggest tell of all?” Rach mused idly, for her own benefit as well as mine. I shook my head. “The biggest tell is that we haven’t speculated about how Steve and you are going to, you know, develop. Whether and when you’ll get married, or something. That’s a given, and you know it, and he knows it, and I know it, too. And that tells me everything I need to know.”
“You make it sound like I’m lost, or going away, or something,” I blurted out, suddenly feeling all wrong. “I’m still me, I can still go and have a good time and all that.”
“Indubitably,” Rach concurred. “But we’re moving on, both of us, and that’s good. That’s life.”
This new, philosophical side of Rach was a bit of a surprise. She had always been such a live wire. Only a little while ago, she had given me the third degree about going to Berlin with Dan, sounding quite like her old self. Today she came across so very serene and calm, and quite unlike herself.
“Are you okay?” I found myself asking gently, carefully.
“I’m fine,” she smiled. “No, really. I’m good.”
And that was when it dawned on me.
“No!
” I exclaimed, examining her closely. “You have met someone, haven’t you?”
Rachel blushed.
“You have, too,” I continued triumphantly. “Go on, your turn to tell.” But she clammed up instead.
“I’ve only met him once or twice,” she said evasively. “There’s nothing to tell.”
“You’re bullshitting me,” I accused her, correctly as it would turn out later, much later. “‘Once or twice,’ that’s a big difference, and you know it. So…what is it, once, or twice?”
Rachel sighed theatrically. I put her discomfort down to the fact that her dramatic break-up with Jordan wasn’t even two months old, and that perhaps she felt I was going to judge her to be on the rebound.
“Twice,” she acknowledged shyly.
“And? What’s he like? What’s his name?” So I wasn’t quite over the gossipy stage after all.
“He’s tall, with brown hair—quite handsome,” she elaborated, seeming a touch cagey.
“And? His name?” I prompted again. Surely I was allowed to know his name? I would refrain from asking about their sex life, but—
There was an infinitesimal hesitation before Rachel offered his name. “Charles.”
I stared in disbelief. Realizing all the while that I was being terribly judgmental, I nonetheless couldn’t help thinking that a “Charles” didn’t sound like a Rachel kind of guy at all.
“I call him Charlie,” she added as an afterthought.
Ah, now, Charlie; that I could see.
“How did you meet? And when?” I was utterly intrigued.
There was that hesitation again. Followed by an evasive hand-flapping gesture. What was going on? Then I had an idea. “Do I
know
him?”
“No!
” This, too fast and too forceful. Rachel was looking decidedly shifty, and I knew she wasn’t telling me the whole story. Whatever it was, for some reason she was uncomfortable filling me in.
“Okay, okay,” I backed down quickly. “Just tell me that I haven’t upset you in some way. ‘Cause you would tell me, normally. Please say that it’s not that you don’t trust me anymore?”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you anymore,” Rachel repeated obligingly. “It’s complicated.”
Oh gosh, not that old chestnut. Now I was having visions of wives, pre-existing children, messy divorces, guys twenty years her senior.