‘Favourite colour?’
‘I don’t have one.’
‘What? I don’t believe you,’ she says, slapping her hand against the top of the sticky-looking bar.
We didn’t make it back to the hotel. Instead, we stopped off at a sports bar on the Upper East Side, of all places, forwings and beers.Olivia seemed quite animated regarding the prospect, though changed her mind about ordering wings almost as soon as we took a seat at the bar. Call me suspicious, but I feel like she’s somehow trying to test me. Test my patience. Perhaps as a way of paying me back for the social media post and her grandmother’s visit. Lord knows, both of those were out of my usual pattern of doing things. The post? Spontaneous. And Elsie’s visit? A result of that spontaneity, a bind I’d got myself into. But also a way of making our marriage less of a secret. More official. If her grandmother knew, Olivia would be forced into the role of doting wife. And fooling her grandmother was a perfect trial run for my ultimate goal—fooling those in London.
Regardless of my reasons of being in this bar tonight, and regardless of the lack of interest I have in the ball game playing out on the screen above our heads, I find I’m happy to spend a couple of hours perched here with Olivia.
How could I not?
‘That’s not possible,’ she insists. ‘Everyone has a favourite colour, even if they don’t examine the concept. Everyone has a colour they gravitate towards. Pick one, and don’t say black.’
‘Why would I say black?’
‘I don’t know.’ Her expression slightly comedic, her shoulders rise to her ears as she pushes her palms face-up in the air. ‘Maybe because it matches the colour of your soul?’ Her hands slap the bar as she begins to cackle, and for an encore of ridiculousness she sticks out her tongue while attempting to cross her eyes unsuccessfully. ‘Did I do it?’
‘What?’ I try to frown though I expect it isn’t very convincing, given I can’t curtail my smile.
‘Make my eyes go like that?’ she asks, her index fingers crossed, still laughing. It’s fair to say buzzed was a couple of beers ago.For us both.
‘The question is, why would you want to?’ I hide my smile behind my bottle of beer, the brand recommended by Olivia. I’m not a beer drinker usually and can’t say I’ll even remember the brand as I’ve peeled the label off. This is a sign of sexual repression, according to the amateur psychologist to my left—her hair a little wild, her cheeks a little pink, and her mouth a little too tempting to ignore.
So I don’t.
She almost hums, her fingers pressed against her lips as I pull back from the sweet, lingering kiss that lacks the intensity I seek. ‘A PDA?’ she questions, all taunting tone. ‘I’ll allow it.’
‘I wasn’t asking.’ I take a swallow of my warming beer, then call the bartender over and order a couple of whiskey chasers from a bottle behind the bar that’s caught my eye.
‘Because it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission?’ Her tone is a playful reproach as she watches the bartender pours. But that doesn’t suit me.
My hand on the back of her chair, I turn her to face me, my legs bracketing hers. ‘I never apologise.’ As I lean a little closer, she moves to meet me, my mouth pressed to her ear. ‘And the only pleas for compassion you’ll hear tonight will be your own.’
‘You think?’ Her breath whispers across my neck, leaving the sense of being kissed there. And the heat of her so close yet so unavailable to my touch burning.
‘I do. Because when I’m buried so deep inside you, you won’t remember where you end and where I begin.’
We separate as a cheer goes up in response to the game; not the one we’re playing but the one on the screen.
‘Here’s to us.’ I raise my glass, Olivia reacting likewise. ‘May we get what we want but never what we deserve.’
We return to our conversation, or rather her quest to psychoanalyse by the use of a colour chart, but we’re both aware of the anticipation simmering, the underlying expectations of what tonight will bring.
A little while later, Olivia excuses herself, hopping down from the stool. I watch her weave her way through the bar, observing the eyes of other men following her in a way that’s almost instinctual as she disappears from view. I wait. And I think. And argue with myself. But then I follow her anyway.
‘My God! You frightened me.’ Her eyes are all pupils as I grasp her shoulders and push her back into the bathroom. It’s not as bad as it sounds; less aggressive. More assertive, buoyed on by the way she bites her lips as she struggles to curtail her smile.
‘What happens if—’
If the walls fall down? The roof blows clean off, or the world implodes? We won’t realise. Not as her fingers curl in my shirt and our mouths come together in the only impact we’re aware of right now. Our kiss is a fight. A battle for the upper hand.
‘What are we doing?’ Fire runs riot through veins at the sound of her breathless words, at the taste of her.
‘What’s on the table?’ My hands feed from her ribs to her breasts as my mouth finds her neck, delivering rasping, biting kisses. A quick fuck in a grubby bathroom stall isn’t my style. That’s not to say I’m a stranger to the experience, but it’s been a while. Another decade. Another life, and another kind of existence, driven by other kinds of high. But none of this matters right now, not the way she’s looking at me.
‘Be reasonable.’ Yet she still tips back her head, whimpering as I make good on the access to more of her skin.
‘I want to fuck you.’ She trembles at my dark whisper, at the touch of my teeth on her skin.
