I move closer to him, his arm weaves its way around my neck. ‘But he’s not here any more, Archie.’
‘No.’
‘And you are.’ My hand finds its way to his knee.
‘Yes, I am.’ He turns to me, the gap between us diminishing by the second. I reach my hands around his shoulders and swing my legs around so that I’m straddling him. He sighs with relief, happy that we have returned to the territory we are comfortable with. He flexes his hips, moving me closer to him, his thumbs hooking themselves into the back pockets of my jeans.
‘And I like you, Archie,’ I say as I loosen the top button on his shirt. ‘But this doesn’t work if we overthink things. If we spend too long questioning whatthisis then we kill it.’
‘But it’s… this is more than sex, isn’t it, Ava?’ It comes out as a long groan, as if he doesn’t really want to say it but knows he doesn’t have a choice. I feel an unpleasant heat start to spread around my body, crawl its way up my back. I can’t have this conversation now, at least not when I’m sitting on his lap.
‘It is. Now do you want to watch a film… or sign some sort of pact or… exchange a blood vow?’ I pretend to leave but his hands secure me against moving, pulling my hips deeper into his. I let out an involuntary little groan.
‘No.’ He shakes his head emphatically. ‘No, I do not want to do anything else than this, right now.’ He kisses me. It’s gentle at first, soft and sweet, but as I start to move against him, sinking into his lap, the kiss grows harder, faster, more desperate.
He reaches underneath my top and tugs at my shirt until I pull away and he strips me of it. He clumsily works at my bra, he always struggles with this bit; after tugging at the clasp for a while he grows frustrated but when I go to attempt it, he shakes his head and yanks at the fabric. I hear the material tear.
‘Did you just break my bra?’ I push myself off him a little. He isn’t the sensible Archie any more; he is a sweating, panting stranger below me.
‘Oh shut up,’ he chuckles, taking my breasts in his palms and rocking me forward so I’m back where he wants me, back where I want him, with only our jeans between us. ‘I’ll buy you five more.’ He peppers my neck with short, sharp kisses stretching from my ear to my collarbone, his thumb brushing my nipple, and I groan, louder this time. I start to unbutton his jeans and when I reach the last one, see his white boxers, I try to slip my hand underneath the fabric but he stops me.
‘Not here.’ He shakes his head.
‘Oh come on…’ I object, gesture to the perfectly good sofa that would serve any purpose we would require, but his face isn’t budging. ‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously,’ he echoes.
‘Square.’ I roll my eyes but get to my feet anyway. I don’t want to argue, I just want to keep this going. This is what Archie and I do best, the safe ground that both of us know. If we lose momentum he might stop again, decide that he isn’t doing this unless I wear a promise ring. I pull him to his feet and lead him through the door to the bedroom. He winds me back into him; he’s only slightly taller so it isn’t any effort to kiss him and we do. We take our time, trying to recapture what we had on the sofa, that immediate urge to be everything to each other, but it’s different in here, things slow down. His kisses are long, slow. I let him undress me, peeling off my jeans until I’m standing there in my knickers, the good pair. His hands trace down every inch of my body until he’s pressing me down onto the bed, my arms thrown up around his shoulders. He takes his own jeans off, tugging at them until they get slightly stuck around his ankles and he has to kick them off. He looks at me slightly apologetically for the disruption of the mood but I take his face in my hands, kiss him long and hard, until I realise that he has managed to manoeuvre my knickers off of my body. He takes one last look at me, his head cocked to one side. I manage a smile, a nod of my head and then my hands reach for him.
Chapter 19
The sunlight filters throughthe curtains, casting intricate lace shadows on the wall and over Archie’s body. I trace them into his abdomen, tiny impermanent tattoos. He’s not asleep; instead his own fingers are brushing over my shoulder but we’re not moving.
‘It’s strange,’ Archie says to the ceiling. ‘I’m sort of waiting for you to tell me you’ve got to go.’
I let the comment hang in the air, think of all the times he played it cool, acted like I was doing him a favour by leaving as soon as we were finished, until he stopped, until he did everything other than actually saying that he wanted me to stay.
‘I can if you like.’ I sit up in bed, pull the covers to my chest and try to slip out.
‘Oh no you don’t.’ He reaches for me quickly with a grunt, both hands clasping around my waist and pulling me back to the bed with a thump. I shriek – it feels strange to laugh quite so early in the morning, before the coffee, before warming up for the day. We stay there, his arms cocooned around me, his warmth, the sleep still in my eyes, and he presses his lips to my neck in a long, languid kiss. I take it, take him all in.
‘I want this,’ he says quietly into my ear. ‘I want this, all of the time.’ I feel an ache in my stomach, a momentary chasm of sadness that disappears when my rational brain kicks in. This is Archie: gorgeous, talented, safe Archie. There’s nothing to be sad about. Here he is, wanting me.
‘It won’t be like this all the time,’ I reason, the frustratingly logical spoilsport coming out. ‘We’ll only get a handful of nights likethatand mornings like this.’
He sighs, goes back to pressing his lips into my neck. ‘I guess I don’t really mean the sex and the lie-ins,’ he murmurs. ‘I mean you, Avie. I want you.’
‘Why?’ I scoff. I sound mildly irritated and I don’t know why; any other girl would be swooning. I should be swooning. I pull away from his arms and look at him, tugging the covers up to my shoulders as if last night hadn’t happened.
‘What?’
‘Why do you want me, Archie? You could have anyone, girls must be throwing themselves at you. Why on earth are you here, putting up with me and my baggage, wanting me?’
He lets out a frustrated sigh and looks up at the beams in the ceiling, biting the corner of his lip so hard it starts to blanche. When he has gathered himself, he looks at me with a clarity that is terrifying: all of his features sharpen, the whites of his eyes are brighter, the green of his pupils practically radiating. ‘You really don’t get it, do you?’
‘No, I really don’t.’
‘That night when I met you, before I knew who you were and what had happened, you looked so out of place there was this sort of halo of sadness around you and it didn’t suit you one bit because you don’t look like a person who should be sad. And those first few times we hooked up, you came to me this kind of despondent flight risk, but then when we were together, there were these… glimmers of happiness.’ His hands wave about in the air a little and he smirks as if he knows how poetic he’s being, how uncomfortable this is for both of us. ‘It was like I could kind of help mend you in some way, and I wanted to. I never knew the person you were before you lost him, but I see echoes of her sometimes.’ He is picking his words so carefully, so gently, I wonder if he has thought about them before, practised them, maybe even written them down somewhere. My throat starts to ache with a lump of emotion and I have to swallow it back to regain control.
