She couldn’t help glancing over to him as she made small talk with the people around her. What did he and Caitlin have to discuss? He might have been shocked and alarmed to find that she would be part of the guest entourage, but he didn’t look particularly uncomfortable in her presence, so what was that all about?
Had he been so in love with the other woman that he was willing to put the past behind him and give her a second chance?
He’d certainly said absolutely nothing about what had been behind the end of the relationship and now all sorts of questions were jumping out from hiding places Jess hadn’t even known existed in her head.
Coming here might allow her to put things in perspective insofar as she was being afforded a glimpse of what kind of life he led and how inappropriate he was and always would be as a candidate for her heart because their worlds could not have been more different but, conversely, it was also opening up a Pandora’s box of curiosity.
‘Huh?’ She blinked and realised that someone had asked her a question about the National Curriculum and, by rote, she launched into a conversation about Independent versus State education.
She half turned so that Curtis and Caitlin were no longer in her line of vision and when, after twenty minutes, she felt hands on her shoulders she practically leapt with surprise.
‘Time to wend our weary way back,’ he murmured and, to her consternation, he did more than slide a hand across her waist as he had earlier done. This time he bent and brushed her neck with his mouth, a feathery kiss that temporarily turned her to stone. The smile froze on her lips, her eyes glazed over. He then rested his hand on the nape of her neck, under her hair, and left it there. The sounds around them suddenly became background white noise, over which she swore she could hear the crashing of her heart against her ribcage.
What the heck was going on?
This wasn’t part of any scenario she had imagined! Was he playing games with her? Somehow trying to make his ex jealous? Was that it?
Her body was as heavy as lead and yet, curiously, wobbly and shaky. Every nerve in her body was alive to the thrill of his hand against her neck, absently caressing underneath her hairline. She should be angry but she was too wildly aware of his touch for any other emotion to find a way through.
She breathed slowly, steadying her nerves.
This was what came of an inappropriate crush, she agonised, while her nerves continued to fray and her body sizzled with dark, forbidden excitement.
If she could track back, she could work out just when she’d become aware that what she felt for Curtis had morphed into a crush.
If she traced through time, and she frequently had over the past few months, she could work out that there was a point when adolescence, with all its complexities, had replaced the innocence of childhood.
Everyone in her class and at the afterschool club, all the girls, had started to change, physically and mentally. Boys had gone from annoying and stupid to riveting and worth getting dressed up for. And how her friends, who were all so much smaller and skinnier than her, had enjoyed the transition!
Yet she, Jess, had been the one to develop the fastest, shooting up in height, taller and bustier than all her friends.
And boys had stared. She could remember shying away from the attention, well aware that they hadn’t been staring atherbut at her breasts, which no school uniform could successfully conceal.
She’d become adept at covering up and maybe, she often thought, that had become a habit, a display of insecurity about her body that had lasted for years, dictating what she wore and how she interacted with the opposite sex.
When her father had died she’d turned to comfort eating and the heavier she had become, the more she had hidden herself under shapeless, baggy outfits. As a teacher, it was a manner of dressing she could get away with because comfort always trumped style.
And yet, through it all, Curtis had been there for her, from the very moment she had met him as a kid in his godfather’s house, right through adolescence, with all its challenges, none of which she’d ever talked to him about because she’d been just so happy to be in his company.
Was it any wonder that she had developed an almighty crush on him over the years? Was it any wonder that, between her own insecurities and that idiotic crush, there had been no room to actually contemplate the business of getting out there and dating?
Until now...
Until she had woken up in the wake of his engagement, despite the fact that it had not led down the aisle. Until she had seen just how much of her life was being wasted in a hopeless infatuation with someone who would never look at her inthatway. Until she had got her act together and changed her lifestyle and now, recently, started dating. Her confidence levels had risen so much in the past few months.
Unfortunately, lack of experience when it came to men was not standing her in good stead now, and she couldn’t help but feel knocked back when she had looked down at the tiny blonde girl who had stolen Curtis’s heart.
So how did she deal with that hand caressing the back of her neck? How did she get past her lack of experience to handle a body that had gone into meltdown? The truth was that Curtis liked the fact that she spoke back to him, that she didn’t bow and scrape in an attempt to please. He liked her outspoken irreverence. What would he do were he to realise that that was only a thin veneer concealing an inherent shyness and the hangover of self-consciousness from way back when?
She surfaced to find that goodbyes had been said and she smiled and said all the right things, though her mind whirled with the confusion of knowing, at least for her, that the status quo that had existed between them was being called to account, that foundations were shaking and the comfort of knowing where things stood could no longer be relied upon.
When she looked around, it was to find, to her surprise, that the room had emptied. They weren’t the first to leave. They were among the last and there was no sign of Caitlin.
They went to gather their coats, Jess having shaken his hand off, making sure to keep a healthy distance between them, but when they were in the back of the chauffeur-driven four-wheel drive she turned to him and said, with driven urgency, ‘Are you going to tell me what all that was about?’
‘Did you find it disconcerting?’
Had she found it disconcerting?Jess nearly guffawed with manic laughter at that question. She couldn’t think when she had last been so disconcerted by anything.
