“Present.” My mother continued, smiling knowingly at Fox. “Every year since Noah moved away, we try to get him a gift. It gets boring when you’re grown up because we all have everything we need. When he was a child, it was so fun, finding those toys he wanted. Then he grew up, and things got tricky. We did things, like, we paid for his car service, paid his phone bill, bought him new tyres. You know, practical and helpful little things. Awfully dull. Then we started replacing his furniture and buying him hideous armchairs. He has quite the collection.”
“Please,” I growled. “No more armchairs. Last year I got a bright yellow one, with red flowers. It screams at me every time I walk in the room.”
He was laughing. As long as he was happy? Maybe I was too. My parents’ smiles lit up the room. The dull ache in my stomach.
He wasn’t mine. This wasn’t real. And I had no idea what to do with myself.
“So, darling. We thought of buying you a car. That Peugeot you’re driving is ten years old.”
“I like it.” I sighed. Oh God. Please don’t.
“We were going to sign you up for motorcycle lessons.”
“Mum!” I shrieked. That wasn’t happening.
“Well, in light of the current situation.” She stopped and smiled for an elaborate pause. Nodded for effect. “We’ve bought you an open-ended flight to Glasgow. You know. Future use, dates are fully re-bookable, so you can use it whenever you fancy seeing our Fox again.”
Fuck. And he was laughing, smiling like the sun, and looking at me like this was actually a possibility, when it clearly wasn’t.
I didn’t know what to do with this. This… All of this. It was too much. Too much expectation and this goddamn situation and everything else…and him.
Fox-fucking-Riley and his perfect curls and pretty face and perfect body and his stupid dick, and all I could think of was that I wanted to blow him again. All the way. Swallow his cum down as he screamed out my name.
“Thanks,” I said weakly, my heart beating out of my chest. I would need that defibrillator in a second. I needed my head examined. I definitely needed new parents. “Just going to get some air,” I huffed out.
Then I fled. Because… Fuck. It was all too much. Too real, when everything was so bloody unreal.
I walked all around the island, with no care in the world, just trying to let my mind stay completely focused on the horizon. I wasn’t cut out for this, trying to keep something going the way my parents apparently expected things to go. Fly up to Glasgow? What were they thinking?
Yes, he lived there. No, I wasn’t going. Was I supposed to keep that up? Travel up every weekend? Would he come down to my bloody house with my weird furniture and unmade bed? No, he wouldn’t because I wasn’t like that and he was the kind of guy who fancied a life with someone like Thomas. Tall, handsome, tanned with a fancy job in IT and no doubt a posh car. Not some lowlife GP who drove a clapped-out Peugeot.
A ten-year-old rust bucket of a vehicle where I collected old takeaway wrappers in the footwell and had too many packets of chewing gum in the glove compartment that I never remembered I had, so I always bought more when I filled up with petrol.
Because I was ridiculous. I didn’t even chew gum.
Also? I’d made some weird request about lovemaking, and now I hatedmyself.
He made me do that. He made me let my guard down, and I said stupid things and now I had to live with everything that I had let out of my mouth.
I made it back to my room, eventually, and the relief that he wasn’t sat on the deckchair waiting for me was immense. I felt like I could temporarily breathe, closing the door behind me and just throwing myself on the bed.
The bed smelled of him.
For fuck’s sake.
But I lay there and let my heartbeat slow down. Allowed myself space. It was my birthday after all; I was forty, and I was a mess. If Fox was a mess? I was a double mess. Triple. Whatever. I was me, and I lived in my house, and I drove my car and went to work, and on the weekends when I wasn’t working, I read and cleaned and did my laundry. It worked. My life worked, and it was fine.
And now the expectations were too much, and my parents would ask questions and demand answers that I couldn’t give.
And I’d run away again. I’d promised I wouldn’t. Yet I had. I was unreliable and not suited for this. He had to see that. I could?
I was hoping to sleep but couldn’t, lying there in the dark with the curtains drawn and the door shut. The room was far too warm, and despite not wearing much, I was overheating. The fan wasn’t doing the job, so I finally got up and opened the patio doors, letting the sea breeze soothe my skin. The sand and the sea. People lounging on chairs out there on the beach. The sound of waves and happy people. People like…well. Not like me. Nobody was anxious and full of fear out there. In here, I was wanting to vomit up all that breakfast and go back home so I could be my normal boring self. I needed routine. I needed…peace.
I weirdly hoped he would come back, but I didn’t even know his room number. We hadn’t swapped phone numbers. I didn’t even know the name of the school where he worked, despite him probably having mentioned it.I was like that. I didn’t take things in unless they were important, and then I forgot just as quickly.
Stupid. But it was easier that way. Just so I didn’t dwell on things.
Newsflash. I was dwelling. I wasn’t joking about the nausea or the stomach-ache. I was nervous and ripped up, and I didn’t give a damn about it being my birthday and I could hear my dad laughing somewhere outside, when all I wanted to do was cry.
