“Maybe we should add that to the list, eh, Dee? Zero proposing?” Benji’s laugh is a little forced, but it works in softening my face into a smile.
“Just enjoy a weekend to yourselves,” Mum says as she slips her hand out from Benji’s, nudging the indicator to turn off. “No work. No other commitments. Just each other.”
See,I think.She gets it.
We don’t need any cheesy proposals. We don’t want to be like anyone else. We just want to be us.
Just. Us.
BENJI
“I’d forgotten how small hotel rooms in Paris are,” I say as I sit on the bed, and then stretch out my legs and rest my feet on the wall next to the bed. With my knees bent.
“It’s perfect,” Dion says from the window, where there’s a view of… the other side of a courtyard and little else.
“It’s a cupboard,” I come to stand behind him, wrapping my arms around the big belly that I love so much. “But you’re right. It’s perfect.”
“I’m always right,” Dion turns in my arms and kisses me. Slowly. Deeply. It’s not a typical middle-of-the-day kiss. It’s longing and leading, and I’m getting a very big hard-on, very quickly.
With literal physical effort, I pull my lips off his. “Don’t you want to… unpack, or something?”
“Something,” he pushes me back towards the bed, which takes all of two steps. “I want something.”
“Wait, Dion,” I press my hand on his chest as he straddles me on the bedspread, which smells clean and fresh at least. That must be where all our hard-earned money went – on laundry detergent and fabric softener.
“What? Don’t you want to?” He leans back and assesses me.
“Dee, I always want to,” I put his hands back on my body. “But I wanted to check in with you. You seemed a bit… grumpy on the journey.”
“I’m always grumpy,” he shrugs as he finds one of my nipples through my T-shirt and pinches, lightly. But it’s enough to have my hips rock up into him.
“Agreed, but you seemed extra grumpy today. I’m not complaining. I’m just concerned.”
“I… I guess,” he pauses as he finds my other nipple and this time twists. I hold his wrist, just in case he gets carried away, because I’m not sure how much self-control I have left, and I can sense how close Dion is to opening up to me. It’s not always easy for him to do so, and I’ve found patience and gentle encouragement to be key to providing a safe environment for him to do so. “I guess I’m just feeling a lot of pressure about this trip.”
“In what way?” I ask gently.
“In many ways,” he groans and then rolls off me, coming to lie next to me on the bed. I shift up so I am aligned with him, head on the pillow next to his and my body on its side, facing him.
“I can’t help but think about that first trip to Paris,” he says, but then stops.
“At school?” I prompt eventually.
“Yeah, when we were what, seventeen? Eighteen?”
“A lifetime ago,” I say, because it was, but also that doesn’t feel completely true. It also feels like only yesterday Dion and I walked around the Louvre together.
“Well, actually, for me, that’s kind of how it feels. Like it was another life.”
“I can understand that. So you feel pressure to what…? Have more fun? Be more yourself?”
“Yes, no. I don’t know. I just feel a lot of weird nostalgia about that first trip. I… I wasn’t myself back then.”
“I know,” I find one of his hands and squeeze it with my own. “But you were still so hot.”
“Obviously,” his cadence picks up, and that has me smiling instantly. “But it’s nice to be here… as me. I just don’t want to…”
“What, Dion?” I bring his hand to my lips and kiss his tattooed knuckles.
