She looks up at me and alarm is all over her face. She looks petrified. Actually frozen in stone and ready to splinter into tiny shards.
That’s not good.
‘Ah,’ she says. And then pauses.
What the hell does ‘ah’ mean? Getting to know Lily has been nothing short of amazing for me. Like nothing I have ever experienced in my life. I don’t just mean that the sex was red hot – it was – but there was so much more than that. There was a serious connection. That’s how it feels to me: sleeping with her wasn’t mere physical release but a meeting of two souls.
‘Ah?’ I repeat back. Mentioning the soul thing will send her running into the bushes.
‘Yes, um...’ Lily is looking at the ground and has pulled up a bit of grass and is fiddling with it. It is the most awkward I have ever seen her, even more than when she did the caww thing on the rooftop of the bar, even more than when she made me close my eyes before throwing me out of her room.
‘I know you don’t usually do commitment,’ I say, ‘but I’m not asking for that from you. I understand all you have said about not wanting that. I’m just saying if you would like to keep doing what we did the other night –’ she flushes at this and I am reminded of her face, flushed for a wholly different reason as I had moved inside her, as she had clung to me ‘– if you would like to keep doing that then I would like to too. With you and me something just seems to fit. I want you to know that I am keen to explore this, to take little steps. I’m not racing ahead and asking you to marry me or have my babies.’ At this point she goes white and starts to aggressively pull up pieces of the grass we are sat on.
I’m not trying to make this worse, I’m trying to reassure her.
‘Honestly, I am just trying to live in the moment, not make plans. I really am not thinking that way. What happened between us meant something to me and I wondered if it was the same for you. But you went quiet and now I’m getting the distinct impression that it didn’t.’ My words are calm but I feel I’m on the border of begging for a clear answer.
She is shredding the pile of grass she has collected in her lap. Any hope of her face turning to mine, her lips gently meeting mine as we agree that we feel the same, has disappeared. But there are still things that need to be said. I’m not letting my personal life mess up the opportunities Lily can give the girls.
‘Look, Jay, this is not what I need right now.’ Her eyes are still downcast and her tone is not friendly, more bear-forced-into-a-corner than oh-wow-I-think-I-love-you-too. Half an acre of ripped-up grass currently sat in her skirt backs that up.
‘For me, that whole evening was one of the best nights of my life. We were perfect together. We had adventures, didn’t we?’ I say. I can’t believe she did not enjoy the evening as I did. Sheseemedto be fully on board at the time. I remember her telling meThis is not just a tonight thing, she promised.
I thought she meant it.
Have I completely misunderstood? I thought from the things she said that we were in this together. That her silence afterwards was her vulnerabilities coming to the fore and could be worked through. Today is showing none of that is the case.
‘We did.’ Her answer was slow to come.
I persevere. ‘We sat under the stars until the wee hours, telling each other things we hadn’t told anyone else.’
‘We did.’
‘And then we made love.’
She winces.
‘Yes,’ she says curtly, ‘and we never should have done. It was a mistake. Unprofessional of both of us. We knew it at the time. We stayed up silly late and then we had sex and it was great, it really was...’
I do not need her to reassure my fragile male ego that my penis works properly. That is not what this is about. For me it’s about more than the sex, it’s the way Lily and I feel together, as if I have found my missing half, my one. I want to get that across, make her realise that what we have is unusual, has differed from anything I have ever felt before. I need to give this my best shot.
‘But—’ I say.
‘But we are not some rosy-glow romance story,’ she interrupts, her firmness unmistakable, and I can feel all the hopes I had, all the hope that has carried through me to this point, shrivel. ‘You and I do not have a Happy Ever After. Ever. I am sorry that I have ignored your messages, that was rude of me and I do want to work with you on the Youth project but it can only be—’
‘Yo, yo yo....look at this. Ice-cream, chilling in the sunshine, that’s where it all starts, eh?’ Some random bloke, drunk, has jumped behind us and is making weird leery noises and doing a pretty crass motion with his hands and mouth. I realise he is attached to a wedding party who have appeared from nowhere and are hovering around the harp, and us, and looking like they are getting ready to take pictures with the Suspension Bridge in the background
Great.
If I wasn’t doing a great job of sabotaging things, then Drunken Wedding Uncle is here to help me finish it off.
I just need the bride to offer to lend Lily her dress and I’ll have a hat-trick of disaster.
‘Look, mate, congratulations to your friends and everything, but we’re trying to have a talk here.’ I smile but my tone makes it clear I’m politely saying Fuck Off.
‘Oh, you’re a pretty one, ain’t you?’ He is dancing around – all kinds of messy for a Tuesday afternoon, wedding or not – and comes in up close to Lily’s face. I lean forward between the two of them and say, ‘Seriously, back up.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ He raises his hands and stumbles back and I turn to Lily and make a grimace.
