‘Talking of what you’ve beensaying,missy! I would really prefer it if you stopped telling everyone – telling Lily andallher friends – that I am like a honeypot with bees swarming around everywhere I go. Firstly, not true...’
‘True.’ Cassie coughs out the word, as if we were still at school.
‘Secondly, it makes me sound like some sort of fuckboy, which I most definitely am not.’
‘Hmmm’
‘Oi!’
‘Yes, okay, you’re not a fuckboy. Which, if you let me finish what I was saying instead of butting in with your nonsense about bees, you would have heard me already. What I am trying to say, big brother of mine, is that I really respect the way you treat people, but particularly the women in your life, because, and actually especially because, you’ve got them all swarming around you like bees at dusk. You are respectful and supportive, kind and thoughtful. You don’t try to take charge or control or push. You message when you say you will, you make time for the things that are important to them instead of just expecting them to sit watching you at the gym or on a football field... Don’t make that face, some men do, they want an adoring fan at their side...’
‘Good God, I can’t think of anything worse.’
‘Right? And two things should be said here. One, I have watched you with countless –’ she pauses and rolls her eyes for comic effect ‘– countless women and I have seen them look at you. Some of them even dribble. The point is I have never seen you look at a woman like you looked at that girl last night, and I have to say she was shooting out all the love pheromones back. It’s as if the two of you are in a bubble and the outside world can’t even begin to dip inside. Real soulmate shit. But the second thing, and this is the most important, is that for all the things I’ve said about this Lily woman – how she may be polished, she may seem posh, all of that – at the end of the day that doesn’t count for much and you are not onlynotout of her league, or anyone’s for that matter, but she would be bloody lucky to have you.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Lily
Ihave swum length after length, the cold water of the lido not cold enough for me this evening. I reckon I have done a good sixty lengths and stood under the ice bucket twice and I am fairly sure it’s not the blazing heat of the day that is making me crave cold water but the fact that I woke up this morning with Jay.
Woke up with!
As in slept with, spent the night with...cuddled!
I never spend the night anywhere, and if someone is coming back to mine then I have their exit route planned before they even walk through the door. I am the queen of exits; they are seamless, they are quick and they are necessary. But it didn’t even occur to me to plan an exit strategy with Jay. Didn’t pop into my head once. I had fallen asleep in his arms after a night of sex like I have never had before.
Sex with intimacy, ofknowingthe person I was sleeping with, liking, respecting them. And yes, I know what that means and it alarms me even more.
Two more lengths and I need to get home and hope I can escape the markers of him that will now be all over the house, each room holding a memory. I may have to burn the table I do my podcast from.
When I woke this morning I had turned to see him there, watching me in a this-is-how-people-look-at-each-other-after-they’ve-made-love-in-a-movie kind of way. I think I would have been less terrified if he was there sharpening a knife with a pair of tights over his head. And yet the core of me wanted to roll myself into him even further, lift my lips up and meet his, begin this morning in the same way we had ended last night.
And then the realisation of who I am, how I am flawed, hit home. I cannot follow a path of natural progression; I cannot give this man what he deserves so I made excuses to get him out. The whole thing became worse as I claimed I had work and then realised it was Sunday.
Jay was the perfect gentleman; saw I was flustered, gave me the sweetest kiss and then left me to it.Itbeing hiding in my office and then sneaking into the lido to try and swim my fears out and stop me looking at my phone like an anxious teen.
It has always been super-easy for me to compartmentalise my life, to keep home at home, fun at the bar at the bar, my sex life firmly private and anonymous and my work at work. Jay is the first person that has successfully straddledallareas of my life and I don’t know what to do.
Neither am I unaware that, despite hiding out all day and only coming to the lido this evening when I know he has a shift, that I have looked for him at the end of every length, popping my head out of the water to see if he is here whilst trying to pretend it is just the natural taking of a breath. I have been swimming long enough to know that scanning the outside changing room floors for feet I may recognise is not a normal part of my routine. Neither is scanning the water from the sauna – which looks out through one huge floor-to-ceiling window over the pool – to see if he is here. He is not. And something in me dips in disappointment.
I towel myself off extra hard, self-flagellating punishment. I was feeling rough this morning and haven’t really picked up all day. My head is banging and I am weak all over. But then I had explosive, mind-fucking sex three times last night and barely got four hours’ sleep. It is no surprise that my stamina is flagging and my body is craving the comfort of a bed.
I sit in the boudoir, pick up the hairdryer and line up the straighteners. It takes a lot of effort to get my hair as I like. Kevin reckons if I applied the discipline to people as harshly as I did my natural state – frizzy, hairy and spotty – then I could have made a fortune as a dominatrix. I think I’ll stick with the career I’ve got, although with the session after Angela tomorrow being Andrew-the-dashing-flower-thief, maybe I should reconsider; flicking a whip around could well be the making of him.
Angela has been doing so well, making great strides with EMDR. It turns out that her traumas in childhood have led to all sorts of issues, one of which explains this need to mother, but to mother without any risk. I’m hoping that as she processes the traumas then it will decrease her anxiety and she may be able to start changing the behaviours she has in place to help her manage it. I don’t want to push but I’m hopeful at the end of this she may be able to engage in social settings without the dolls, even if just for very brief moments.
As I turn the dryer on, I suddenly am bent double, my uterus concertinaing in on itself and forcing my body to go with it.
Oh Jesus, not again. I really am not prepared for this, I thought I’d have a bit longer.
I uncurl my body and knowing another one will hit in a minute I start to do some box breathing to calm myself. And oof, there we go again. I grab the dressing table feeling like a paper fan, those ones you make in school, my insides pulling together in tight folds, stabs of pain as each fold lies on the next.
I reach for the Naproxen kept in my bag and knock some back with a quick glug of the water. It won’t take the pain away, but it should stop me bending double. I wonder if it was hormones that made me feel like crying this morning when I kicked Jay out?
I’ll be okay, I just need to head off to bed and cocoon myself there for the rest of the night and pray that this month is a gentle one.
Chapter Twenty-Six
