‘Why are you here?’ he asked, as if he could hear my thoughts. Maybe, just maybe, because they sounded so much like his own.
I stepped forwards. ‘Would it be better if I left?’
He opened the door a fraction wider. ‘Yes.’
‘Do you want me to?’
With only a step or two between us now, I stopped. Waiting for him to make up his mind what to do about this distance. Remove it, reinforce it: an either/or that wasn’t mine to decide alone. I had taken the first step, but I wasn’t going to chase him. If he turned around, I’d let him go.
But he didn’t. He didn’t step back either. He raised his hand; I sensed it more than saw it. His fingertips at my throat, my cheek, then his thumb on my lower lip. Everything in me trembled.
He whispered: ‘No.’
‘I don’t want me to go either.’ Boldly I took the last step towards him, until the heat of his body was flickering against mine. ‘Happy New Year, Heathcliff.’
‘Happy New Year, Pica.’
I heard him smile, and then I felt it too, because I rose up on to my tiptoes, cupped his face in my hands and kissed him. Just like that, because this was madness, and it was the only solid ground we had.
Blake didn’t hesitate: he returned the kiss, pulling me in close. I stumbled over the doorstep and into something that wrapped me immediately in a warm embrace. Warm and tingling, especially where he touched me. His fingers felt their way under my coat and slid it off my shoulders. It fell onto the parquet as my heart dropped into my stomach, Blake’s hand moving to the crook of my neck before he twined his fingers into my hair and pulled my head back. It smarted a little, it hurt in the best way, and I wanted more. I wanted all of it, all of him.
Reaching for the edge of his jumper, I pushed it up until he let go and I could pull it over his head. There was a shirt underneath, too much fabric, but before I could reach for it Blake had clasped my face again and was kissing me. Kissing me more deeply, kissing me more intently, kissing me, kissing me, kissing me until it was all I could think about.
I was vaguely aware of us stumbling down the hallway intoa large living room– low lighting, black-and-white photographs on the walls, but I noticed nothing else. In any case, I didn’t care where we were, because I couldn’t let myself carewhowe were, or I couldn’t be fully in the moment. AndIwanted to be, because it felt so good. Because nothing bad could be this good. Or so I hoped.
Blake slipped the strap of my dress off my shoulder, running the pads of his fingers down my skin. I shuddered as he rubbed two fingers over the swell of my nipple beneath the lacy fabric of my cami top. It went hard, and so did he–I felt him as I slid my hand from his stomach down over his waistband, then again as he pushed me adamantly up against the wall and pressed himself close to me. Woodchip wallpaper at my back, his body on mine. I couldn’t remember the last time being trapped felt so much like the place I wanted to be.
‘Blake,’ I whispered into his mouth, without reason, because I had nothing to say. All my words had washed away, and all doubt with them. In that moment I knew I could let this happen–that it had to happen.
The second I uttered his name was the second he paused. His fingers stopped at my waist. Slowly he removed them from my body, smoothing the fabric that had ridden up around my hips, then lifting the strap back into place. His breathing seemed controlled as he stepped away slightly. His thumb brushed the corner of my mouth, where there must have been a smudge of lipstick. His lips were smeared too. Silently, I followed his touch with the tip of my tongue. He watched me, blinked, dropped his gaze. Another out-breath, then he raised his head again. ‘Hungry?’
I laughed. ‘You’re offering me something to eat?Now?’
He shrugged and walked towards the kitchen counter, which was towards the right-hand side of the room. ‘My one a.m. pancakes are legendary.’
Watching him, I shook my head. I knew he was stalling, but as long as he was letting me stall with him, that was fine by me. Wiping my throbbing mouth with the back of my hand, I followed him. ‘You’re going to have to prove it.’
* * *
Half an hour later, I was staring at a plate of pancakes that did, indeed, look legendary. They tasted it, too. Melted chocolate chips and blueberries mixed into the batter, the perfect blend of sweet and sour.
‘No raisins,’ I remarked.
‘Nope, not this time. Right now I’m kind of in the mood to just like what I like.’ He rubbed chocolate from the corner of my mouth, like he’d done with the lipstick.
We were sitting on the sofa about eight inches apart, but I felt as close to him as ever. My toes were nestled in the woollen socks Blake had given me, and he’d put his jumper back on. I looked around. The sofa separated the kitchen area from the living space. Blake followed my gaze across the grey-painted walls and simple wooden picture frames.
‘I like black-and-white photography. Black-and-white films, too,’ he explained. ‘The world inside them is so tidy. Just light and dark, just good and evil. I find it comforting.’
‘But you know, black-and-white scenarios are still made up of shades of grey. There’s so much in between.’ I hesitated, before setting the plate down on the side table and turning to Blake. ‘I’ve been thinking about it a lot this Christmas. That maybe there’s no such thing as good and evil, it’s all just different sides. To what we think, what we do, what we are, what we experience, what we feel. Like, for years I’ve been doing everything I can to just get through Christmas withoutthinking about my mum. But that meant I lost out on so much more than just the memory of her. Things are neverone-hundred-per-cent light or one-hundred-per-cent dark. They’re always both, and it just depends what we make of it. How we cope with the bad, if we can turn it into something beautiful.’
‘Yeah, I know what you mean. Pain is part of that. Of everything. And just because it hurts to lose something, it doesn’t mean you should stop looking for that stuff. Otherwise life is nothing more than a string of days and empty moments. It’s easier, but it’s less real. Less worth living.’ He was studying the hands cupped around his mug of tea, lost in one of the reveries that gave his face that familiar absent look.
‘You’ve lost something, too, haven’t you?’
He smiled half-heartedly and put the drink aside. ‘A lot, actually. I’ve lost quite a few people in my life, one way or another. I’ve come to believe that the more often you experience something like that, the more it changes you.’
‘You mean, at some point you start to miss the person you were with them just as much as you missthem?’
