‘Yeah?’ Harvey said.
His voice had gone low again. She couldn’t even look at him. She looked out at the pool instead but she could see his reflection in the glass, see how he was leaning slightly towards her, his elbows on the table, looking at her intently.
‘Um. Yeah. Just, like, a one-off. That no one else would even have to know about. You know?’
She looked at him then and when she saw his expression, her stomach flipped painfully.
‘Do you want to—’ he started.
‘Are we all done here?’ The waitress appeared next to Harvey and Cat saw irritation flicker across his face. Good.
‘Yes,’ Harvey said. ‘Thanks. We are, right?’ he asked Cat.
Cat had finished her third glass of wine, but the thought of heading back to the room with Harvey was absolutely terrifying.
‘I was thinking about another drink maybe? Outside? Is that—’
‘That’s fine,’ the waitress said. ‘I’ll bring the menu out.’
Harvey pushed back his chair and stood, reaching for Cat’s arm. Cat stumbled, bumping her hip against the table. She shouldn’t have another drink. Not if she wanted to have sex with him. And she definitely did want to have sex with him. He steered her outside and they stood next to the pool; steam was rising off the surface of the water, the lights turning it pink.
Cat tipped her head back and looked up at the sky. They were in Central London so she couldn’t really see any stars, but the moon was bright and clear and she said, ‘Look,’ before thinking better of it.
‘Do you remember that night?’ Harvey said.
Cat didn’t look at him; she couldn’t. She carried on looking at the moon. ‘Of course.’
‘I always regretted not kissing you,’ he said, his voice low again.
The butterflies burst in Cat’s stomach again, but they fluttered up her chest and burst out of her mouth as laughter. ‘Wait. Earlier. When you were talking in that low voice – like you did just now – was that you flirting?’ She looked up at him and he carried on looking up at the moon, but he grinned.
‘Yeah. I was trying to demonstrate the difference to you. But I didn’t think you got it.’
‘I didn’t. I thought you were being a bit weird. I didn’t know it was flirting.’
‘I’ve got to say,’ Harvey said, and then he did look down at her, ‘I’m starting to think this flirting thing is a you problem.’
Cat laughed. ‘You’re probably right.’
They stared at each other. Cat looked at his mouth, the full bottom lip, the scruff of stubble across his jaw. His dimple. She wanted to lick it. All of it.
‘I don’t think I want another drink,’ she said.
‘Your poor lip,’ Harvey said, frowning at Cat’s mouth.
‘I know,’ Cat said. ‘It was very painful.’
Harvey reached up and cradled her jaw in his hand, running his thumb gently across her bottom lip.
Cat stayed very, very still.
‘I could kiss it better,’ Harvey said, still staring at her mouth.
‘I don’t think you are magic,’ Cat said. Even though she did. ‘But you could try.’
Harvey glanced up from her mouth, his eyes crinkling as he smiled.
‘I’ll be gentle,’ he said, his voice slowing.
‘I know, I know. I’ll just feel a little prick,’ Cat said, and immediately regretted it. Why couldn’t she just enjoy the moment? Why couldn’t she just let Harvey be romantic and sexy and kiss her scabby lip without making stupid jo— oh. Harvey gently brushed his lips across hers and she lost her train of thought entirely. His hand was still on her face, fingers pressing gently behind her ear. He brushed her lip with his thumb again before another gentle lip-brush and then followed it with his tongue.
Cat heard herself make an embarrassing sound. At some point, her eyes had closed, so she opened them again and looked at Harvey’s eyelashes, at the little line between his eyebrows. He was concentrating. Concentrating on kissing Cat. She closed her eyes again.
His thumb dipped between her lips, brushing against her tongue and Cat had to fight every instinct to either pull back and run away or push him down on his back and kiss him unconscious.
‘Better,’ Harvey murmured.
‘Huh?’ Cat blinked her eyes open.
‘Your lip,’ Harvey said, smiling slowly. ‘Is that better.’
‘Um.’ Cat swallowed. ‘No. I think I need more… treatment.’
God. This was turning into bad role play. Next thing she’d be offering to dress up as a sexy nurse and asking him to tie her up with a stethoscope.
Harvey laughed. ‘That’s what I thought.’
And then he kissed her again. This time it wasn’t a gentle brush of lips, he kissed her like he’d been thinking about kissing her forever, like he couldn’t wait and never wanted to stop. Cat wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer.
Twenty-Five
Cat pushed the key card into the slot and it flashed red.
‘Fuck OFF,’ she muttered, pulling it out and trying again. Red again. She could feel Harvey close behind her. He wasn’t touching her, but heat seemed to be emanating from his body or maybe it was his aura or some shit. Whatever it was, he was right there and she couldn’t seem to get the fucking door open.
She pushed the card in again, wiggled it a little and held her breath, but no, red again.
Harvey reached around her and took the card out of her hand.
‘I think it’s upside down.’ His voice was right next to her ear and her knees went weak. He flipped the card over, pushed it into the slot and the indicator glowed green.
‘Thank fuck,’ Cat breathed, pushing open the door.
Once they were inside the room, Cat pushed Harvey back against the door and pressed up against him, dipping her head against his chest. She took a deep breath. They were really going to do this. She was really going to sleep with Harvey. Just once. So they’d better make it count.
She slid her hands over his hips and up under the hem of his T-shirt. His skin was soft and warm and she pressed her fingertips against his flesh. He wasn’t moving and he seemed to be holding his breath. She looked up to find him looking down at her, his bottom lip captured between his teeth and a look of what seemed to be awe on his face.
‘What the fuck,’ she whispered. ‘Harvey.’
‘I’ve thought about this so much,’ he said. ‘Since that night. In the garden. Since before that night, if I’m honest. I can’t believe it’s actually happening.’
‘Jesus,’ Cat said. She stretched up on tiptoes to touch her lips to his. They were warm and soft too and he gasped against her mouth. Almost immediately she was overwhelmed with him. Kissing wasn’t going to be enough. She wanted him naked on the bed. She wanted to crawl all over him. Instead she hooked one hand around his neck and pulled him down to meet her mouth again. He pushed his hands into her hair and guided her head to one side, deepening the kiss, before pulling away and tracing his lips over her neck.
‘God,’ she murmured, letting her head drop back. She pressed up against him, pushing him back against to door, his thigh between both of her legs. She slid her hands up under his shirt, fingers gliding over his ribs, knuckles grazing the hair on his chest until she was holding onto his shoulders under his shirt. She could feel the muscles moving as he wrapped one arm around her and used it to hold her more firmly against his chest. She hooked one leg up over his hip, half-hoping he might lift her up, and carry her over to the bed. She wasn’t sure if she could walk.
‘It’s been a while,’ she said against his neck, kissing down the cord of muscle towards his shoulder.
‘Yeah?’ he murmured, fingers pressing into the nape of her neck, tongue drifting across her lower lip.
‘Yeah. Can we…’ She used the door to push herself backwards, away from him, creating a little space between them for the first time since they’d got back to the room.
Harvey didn’t move, waiting for
her to direct him. It was hot as hell.
‘Bed,’ she said.
* * *
Harvey was asleep. Afterwards, he’d stayed awake long enough to hold her and kiss her and tell her how amazing she was and how great it had been, but he’d started to doze as he was talking and then he’d snuggled into her side and drifted off.
Cat had been staring up at the ceiling for at least an hour. She’d wriggled out from under Harvey’s arm and found her phone in the pocket of her jeans, but it was too late to text Kelly. There was a possibility that she was up puking (or eating gross yellow food), but it was more likely that she was asleep and had forgotten to turn her notifications off and Cat couldn’t risk waking her up. Instead she’d gone for a pee, got a bottle of water out of the minibar, taken her make-up off, cleaned her teeth and stared at herself in the mirror until her eyes had blurred. And now she was back in bed.
Harvey was snoring gently, his mouth hanging open. Cat wanted to kiss him. His mouth and his eyebrows and his cheekbones and his jaw. His neck and shoulders and arms and ribs. She wanted to bite his nipple and trace her tongue along the line of hair that ran almost from his throat to his crotch. She’d done all of that already, but she really really wanted to do it all again. Instead, she lay on her back and stared up at the ceiling.
It wasn’t like the ceiling at home, with cracks and cobwebs and a brown water stain in one corner; it was smooth and clean and pristine, and Cat could see all the mistakes she’d made in her life scrolling across it as if it were a cinema screen.
She’d already watched her childhood and most of her teens. She’d watched her dad leaving and her mum falling apart. And she knew what was next so she rolled onto her side and tried to sleep, but she was kidding herself. Even with eyes closed, without the blank page of the white ceiling, she could still see how she and her mum struggled after her dad left. How her mum worked various jobs to fit around Cat and school. How she’d cleaned for friends who’d treated her like shit, and then for companies who treated her like shit. How Cat had taken shitty weekend jobs to help out but there was still never enough. And how then she’d moved to London and left her mum alone. Her mum had said she would be fine, was fine, had insisted that Cat go, said she wanted better for her than she had. Even said that Cat’s dad was going to help out, but Cat was pretty sure he never had. And then her mum hadn’t even told her when she’d got her breast cancer diagnosis; Cat had found out from one of her mum’s friends, who had no idea she didn’t know. And Cat had managed to bluff her way through the rest of the conversation, her chest hurting and throat burning, desperate to get away so she could phone her mum.
She’d gone home that weekend and her mum told her that originally she hadn’t wanted to worry her and she’d thought it would all be dealt with quickly. But it had spread and the prognosis wasn’t good. Cat had gone home to look after her mum, but she’d died just a few weeks later.
‘Hey,’ Harvey said.
Cat looked over. He was still in the same position – on his side, face smushed into the pillow – but she could see his eyes glittering in the dark.
‘Hey,’ she said back, rolling onto her side to face him.
‘Sorry I fell asleep,’ he said.
‘That’s OK. You exerted a lot of energy.’
He grinned. ‘You too. But you’re still awake.’
‘I started thinking,’ Cat said.
‘Oh no.’
‘I know, right? I usually try to avoid it, but sometimes…’
‘Is there anything I can do to distract you?’ He reached out and rested his hand on her hip and she shivered even though the room was perfectly warm.
‘No, it’s OK. You can sleep.’
‘Listen, if we’ve only got one night, I don’t want to waste it sleeping.’
He was shuffling closer, his hand curled around her waist now.
‘Oh, I told you that, did I? I obviously had more wine than I thought.’
‘You had three glasses. But yeah. You told me. Like Lost in Translation, right? One and done.’
‘They didn’t actuall—’
But she didn’t get to finish because Harvey kissed her. And she let him roll her on top of him and brace his hips with her thighs. And then she stopped thinking about her mum and university and everything that was wrong with her life. And she thought about Harvey instead.
Twenty-Six
‘I can’t believe you actually did it,’ Kelly said, glancing over at the garden where Sean and Arnold were working on a snowman.
She was leaning back on the sofa, propped up against a pile of cushions, a bowl of frozen peas balanced on her growing belly. Occasionally she grabbed it when she felt a kick and pointed it out to Cat, but Cat hadn’t caught one yet.
‘Me neither.’ Cat grinned. She was eating a family bag of Giant Chocolate Buttons.
‘It was obviously good. Since you can’t stop smiling.’
‘It was really good. I mean, that’s not right. Good isn’t a strong enough word. It was amazing. The best—’
‘Ah.’
‘What?’
‘I mean, I wasn’t going to ask.’
‘It’s awful though, isn’t it?’ Cat curled her hands around her mug of tea. ‘To compare them, I mean. But how could I not?’
‘Did you talk to Harvey about it?’
‘About him being a better shag than his brother? Yeah, I printed him a certificate.’
‘Not that! About the whole… situation.’
‘No. I mean, not last night. We did the first time we had dinner. After the spa.’
‘And?’
‘I told you. We agreed not to talk about him.’
‘So you’re both pretending this isn’t anything.’
‘We’re not pretending. It isn’t anything. It’s no-strings sex.’ Cat sipped her drink. ‘It was your idea!’
‘Tell me about it,’ Kelly said, glancing at the garden again. ‘Give me all the sordid details.’
Cat laughed. ‘No! Don’t be weird.’
‘Did you go on top? Did he go down on you? Did you go down on him? What’s his dick like?’
‘Your child is right there!’ Cat said, pointing to Arnold in the garden.
‘He’s busy, he’s not listening. Come on, tell me. I’m really horny.’
‘So have sex with your super-hot husband. Look at him!’
They both looked out at the garden where Sean was patting an enormous sphere of snow while Arnold hopped up and down with excitement.
‘He is super hot, isn’t he,’ Kelly said. ‘Pregnancy hormones are such a bastard. I already miss his parts.’
‘Should I go and tell him to get them out? I’ll finish the snowman off, Sean can finish you off.’
‘Don’t tempt me.’
She pushed her bare toes into the side of Cat’s thigh. ‘So when are you seeing him again?’
‘I told you,’ Cat said, sandwiching two Buttons together. ‘We’re not. It was just the one night. We agreed.’
‘But you want to see him again.’
Cat sighed and stacked four Buttons together in a little tower. ‘I mean, if literally everything was different, yeah. But it’s not. So.’
* * *
The problem was Cat couldn’t stop thinking about Harvey. Since they’d slept together, he was on her mind all the time. She woke up thinking about him. She went to sleep thinking about him. When she didn’t have any work to do, she scrolled deep into his Facebook. She even dreamt about him. It was becoming a problem.
‘Just. Fucking. Call. Him,’ Kelly said when Cat went over after work.
Kelly wasn’t throwing up quite as much but she felt like she was going to almost all of the time. Sean was working shortened hours and Kelly was spending every minute he was home lying in a darkened room. Cat lay across the foot of her friend’s bed and idly massaged her feet.
‘No,’ Cat said. ‘I’ve told you. We’re done. I cut it off.’
‘Brutal.’ Kelly smiled. ‘What if you took
him to New York?’
Cat had finally told Kelly that she was going out to New York for work, but not that Nick had offered her a job out there. For a second, Cat considered Kelly’s suggestion – New York with Harvey would be amazing. They’d have fun. In and out of bed. If they ever actually made it out of bed.
‘No, that would be way too distracting.’
‘God, yeah.’ Kelly rolled her eyes. ‘All that distracting sex. Terrible. Just tell me why you won’t even consider actually trying to make this work,’ Kelly said.
‘I’ve told you why.’
‘Because you think you’ll hurt him. Or you think you’ll get hurt.’
‘Because I’ve been here before and it doesn’t work out. And Harvey’s so… I couldn’t bear it when it inevitably ended.’
Kelly groaned and Cat wasn’t sure if it was because of the pregnancy or the conversation.
‘But what if it didn’t end? What if you fell madly in love and lived happily ever after?’
‘We wouldn’t.’
‘If it didn’t work out that would be bad, yeah. But if you don’t even try—’
‘I’ve tried. With Sam. Before Sam. Everyone leaves.’
‘That’s not true,’ Kelly said.
But it was. Cat knew it was. She could give Kelly plenty of examples. But when she’d finished massaging her feet, Kelly was asleep.
Twenty-Seven
Cat had read an article about how airports are liminal spaces. Places you’d never go unless you were going – or coming back from – somewhere else. So they sort of exist outside of normal life. Like limbo.
Cat’s life felt like limbo at the moment. Had for a while, in fact. (Possibly for five years, but she didn’t really want to accept that.) The trip to New York, the idea of moving to New York, was the first step in changing this. Which was why, she assumed, her stomach had been churning with nerves since the moment her alarm had gone off that morning.
The One Who's Not the One: A feel-good, laugh-out-loud romantic comedy Page 15