by Teagan Amici
“She’s just over a week now”, I said, smiling down at Melody.
“Well, she’s beautiful, you must both be very proud”.
As the waitress left, I glanced quickly at Blair, worrying that he might feel awkward about someone assuming he was Melody’s father, but instead he was gazing at me with a wistful look in his eye. I ducked my head, but I knew that he had seen me watching him.
“Lesley, what are you thinking?”
“Blair, I was wondering if it bothered you that anyone might think we are a couple, or that you are Melody’s father, just because we’re here together, but when I remembered what you said, it probably doesn’t, does it?”
“No, certainly not”, Blair said as he wiped his mouth and patted his stomach which by now must have been stuffed full. “If you want to bundle Melody up again, I’ll go and pay, then we can have a nice walk before we go home again, if that’s what you want?”
We walked the long way back to my house, taking our time through a park, and I noticed a change come over Blair as we briefly left the paved streets to walk among the established trees and plants of the park.
“You don’t really like the built up areas of the city much, do you Blair? I’ve just realised that you always seem more relaxed at Diane’s place than here, and you seem happier walking through the park than you do along the streets”.
“Is it that obvious? I do prefer the open spaces out further, I feel hemmed in with so many people and cars so close by. I guess you need the closeness to the city for your work though, so you’d prefer it here?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Well, there is that. This is a nice area though, but I don’t know what I like anymore, not now I have Melody. Living further from the busy traffic spots and all the fumes would be better for her health, but there’s more choice of schools around here than in the outer suburbs, so I don’t know what I prefer anymore. It’s all so new, that I just don’t know what to think”.
We talked for so long about the changes in my life, that we were home before I knew it. Melody was fast asleep from the motion of the pram, so I gently picked her up and put her in her crib while Blair checked the wheels of the pram for dirt then shifted it onto the back porch. I moved to the lounge room and turned the space heater on, turning my back towards it to warm up, and watching Blair as he entered the room. He walked right up to me, and I moved to the side, thinking that he wanted to share the warmth with me, but instead he enfolded me in his arms and dipped his head slowly to mine, seeming to watch me for permission. I lifted my arms up and wrapped them around his neck, pulling him the last little bit down so that our lips met.
It was electric, just like before. At the first brush of Blair’s mouth against mine, I felt my innards clench tightly and my breath seemed to still as I felt the warmth of Blair’s lips. At first he seemed content with gently sliding his warm lips against mine, but then he began to kiss me in a way that I had not only never been kissed before, but he made me want to respond in a way that I had never responded before. Blair’s lips were at once both soft, and hard, teasing my lips and demanding a response from me which I was only too happy to give. I found myself pressing up against him, using my tongue to tease open his lips and then exploring his mouth, unable to get enough. Blair tore his mouth from mine to rain kisses along my check, down my neck, and to the top of my chest. I felt myself being lowered gently to the carpet, and Blair’s hands were busily cupping and squeezing every part of me as he gently lowered his weight to cover me. I felt his erection digging into my leg as he gently placed kisses on the top of my breasts, before he buried his head in my chest and exhaled heavily, before shaking his head and looking up at me.
“That wasn’t my best move. I shouldn’t have kissed you, because now I just want more, and we can’t. But you looked so beautiful standing there, with that rosy glow from the cold outside, and a sparkle in your eyes that I haven’t seen for a while, and I couldn’t resist”.
As he spoke, Blair rolled off me, lying on his back and putting an arm over his face, shielding his eyes from the overhead lighting. I turned on my side and gazed at his profile, before looking down to where his jeans pulled tightly across his erection. Even with his clothes on, I could tell it would be impressive. On a sudden whim, I reached a hand down to his erection, cupping it through his jeans and squeezing gently. Blair moaned before moving his hand to mine, and capturing my roving hand, he pulled it to his chest and held it there.
“Blair, why did you make me stop? Just because we can’t have sex doesn’t mean I can’t make you feel good, if you just let me have my hand back-“
“No, Lesley, this isn’t about easing my sexual frustration or anything like that. I want your hands all over me, but only when I can get my hands all over you too. I want you, all of you, and there’s no way you’re ready for that yet”.
Blair sat up, and as he still had my hand, I had to sit up too. He turned to look at me before pulling me to sit on his lap and running his fingers through my hair.
“You have no idea how frustrating this is for me”.
I rolled my eyes, “Blair, I have some idea”.
Blair buried his face in my neck and I shivered as I felt the vibrations as he spoke quietly.
“Judging by your response to me, when I finally get you naked in my arms, it’s going to be explosive. I’m so looking forward to that. Have you thought more about what I said?”
I pulled back from him a little and lifted his chin, so that I was looking into his gorgeous eyes.
“What exactly did you mean, Blair? Did I hear you right? Did you really mean a permanent relationship? Surely you don’t propose eternity to every woman you sleep with? What if it doesn’t work out?”
An expression I couldn’t understand flashed across Blair’s eyes, then he brushed my hair back as he spoke.
“If you heard me say I wanted a permanent relationship with you, then you heard right. I don’t propose eternity to every woman I sleep with, I’ve been waiting for the right one all my life, and it’s you. Some day you’ll understand that it is eternity, or close to it, that I’m offering you, and there are no doubts on my part that you’re the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. Obviously you still have concerns, and I respect that, you have to think about your child as well as yourself, so we’ll take it slowly if that will make it easier for you. I just hope it’s not too slow, or I’ll burst!”
After that day, my relationship with Blair changed. Instead of him being a friend who I had fantasies about, he became a boyfriend that I didn’t actually sleep with. We started off gently, going out for walks and sometimes for short drives, as I still felt a little uncomfortable sitting for long distances, I didn’t travel as far as Diane’s, even though I was desperate to talk to her about Blair. Diane must have known that I was chafing at my limitations, as she arranged a coffee afternoon for me, herself, and her friend Jess. Blair offered to mind Melody for the afternoon, but I laughed at his suggestion. Diane had told me that I wasn’t to dare not to bring Melody, as both she and Jess wanted turns with the baby. So, after parking the car near the cafe that Jess had nominated near the beach, I arrived a little out of breath due to walking fast in the cold air, pushing Melody in her pram. I wondered what Jess would be like, assuming she would be similar to Diane in nature, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Chapter 8
As I entered the warm cafe, I looked around, wondering where I would find Diane, and then turned as I heard my name called, seeing Diane moving towards me.
“Lesley! It feels like I haven’t seen you in ages”. Diane cooed, as she hugged me before turning to the pram. Melody was awake, and was staring at Diane with big eyes.
“Oh, look how much she’s grown in just a few weeks! I’ve been wanting to visit, but didn’t want to get in the way of whatever is going on between you and Blair. Tell me all your secrets, Lesley, is he as head over heels with you as I thought?” As she spoke, Diane had taken over the pram, and gently pushed it to a booth where a w
oman sat, watching us intently. As I got settled, she leaned over and stage whispered to Diane, who was now busily working through the layers of pram covers and blankets to extract Melody, before sitting down with her.
“Diane? Did I hear you right? Blair? Your hunky brother in law? He’s fallen victim to cupid’s arrow has he?”
I looked at the woman suspiciously, wondering if she was one of Blair’s old girlfriends, before she laughingly reached across and put her hand over mine.
“Don’t worry about me, Diane always tells me I never know how to behave. I’ve met Blair, of course, and I have eyes, so you can’t deny he’s one hell of a good looking man, but we never got together, and never will, so forgive my big mouth and lack of class”.
I laughed then, instantly liking this woman. She was open and she was honest, and I liked that. Her next words were a little confronting, but also gave me the impetus to ask Diane what I wanted to know.
“Before I say anything further, I just want you to know that I’m really happy with Gerald, the man rocks my world you know, but I’m still curious. Is Blair as good at the horizontal mambo as I think he would be?”
I almost had a coughing fit, having unfortunately just filled a glass from the bottle of water on the table, and then taken a sip. As I choked back tears, I stared from one of the women to the other, seeing Diane staring at me apologetically before turning to her friend.
“Jess, I’ve known you for ever, and even I think you’re over the top sometimes. You’ve just met Lesley, don’t you think it’s a bit personal asking about her sex life the first time you meet someone?”
“Diane, you of all people should be unembarrassable about sex. Oh, doesn’t she know? Have I said too much?”
“Of course she knows. She’s met both Cole and Bram, and she accepts us for what we are, but that isn’t the point. Lesley and Blair are just getting to know each other, don’t you think you could have waited to see if she wanted to talk about him before you asked if he’s good in bed?”
I looked around in shock. Although people around us were pretending not to have heard, I could tell by the stillness of some of them that they had. I leaned forward and whispered urgently.
“Ladies, do you think we could keep it down a little? People are listening. I would like to talk about Blair, but later, when we don’t have an audience”.
Looking a little chastened, Diane and Jess turned to the menu. Melody was happy enough to sit in her pram while we ate, I lifted the back a little and propped her up with blankets either side so she could watch us. After we had eaten, Jess had a turn holding Melody, and Diane turned to me, rubbing her baby belly while she cocked an eyebrow at me with an expression that I knew meant she wanted me to talk.
“Now that some of our audience has left, I’ll talk to you both, but only if you promise to keep your voices down. Blair and I haven’t slept together yet”, I shushed Jess as she opened her mouth to speak, “remember I just had a baby and I wasn’t ready. I want to, and I know he wants to, but he said he isn’t looking for anything casual, and I’m worried about what will happen if we do, and then we break up”.
“What worries you most, being with him, or being without him?”
I stared at Diane after she had asked her quiet but direct question. I hadn’t thought of it in those terms. As Diane and Jess talked between themselves about how gorgeous Melody was, I tried to think it through, but couldn’t with all the distractions around me, so instead we discussed safer subjects. I talked about my labour, and how these early weeks with Melody had been, and how I was going to return to work - albeit from home - tomorrow. Now that Melody was sort of in a routine, I could manage my job, stopping when Melody needed me, and putting in my hours over the course of the day. I didn’t know how long I could continue this, so I had to look into childcare in case I had to return to the physical office soon. Diane talked about how her pregnancy was progressing, and how nervous she was getting as the birth got closer, and I reassured her that if I could do it, then so could she. I listened closely as Jess gave an update of her life, as I didn’t know much about her at all.
“Well, as you know, I met Gerald when I asked Diane for the name of her property conveyancer. It turns out that Gerald used to be a criminal lawyer, but turned to conveyancing after he had some sort of epiphany”.
“You mean he used to be a real lawyer?” I asked, earning a laugh from Jess.
“Don’t let him ever hear you say that. I said that and really offended him. ‘Conveyancing is law’ he said very haughtily, as if I was accusing him of slacking off or something. So, a word of caution about what you say there when you meet him. Anyway, we talked on the phone and by email a bit, and when our business was done, Gerald called me one day. He confessed that it was probably a bit inappropriate, but he wanted to meet the owner of the voice he’d been speaking to on the phone, he wondered if I was anything like he pictured when he spoke to me. Anyway, I agreed to meet him, and it was amazing. The first time we set eyes on each other, it was like, oh I don’t know, we were meant to be together. I know that sounds corny, but that’s how it’s like with him. I didn’t know how incomplete I felt before, but everything feels so right when I’m with him, I don’t know how I could ever have been happy without him”.
I drove home late that afternoon with both Diane’s and Jess’s words playing over and over in my head. After settling Melody down for a few hours, I poured myself a glass of wine and sat in front of the heater, remembering when Blair and I had kissed in that very spot. I thought about what Diane had said. Was I more worried about being with Blair, or not being with him? What worried me about being with him was his intensity. Blair was clearly a passionate man, would I be enough for him? I thought back to my relationship with Darren, and how things had been between us. I had thought they were good, and that’s how things were. I didn’t think real life was like romance novels or movies, where the lead characters were so head over heels about each other that nothing else mattered, but I could see that Blair was like that. In fact, as I thought about it, he had spent an awful lot of time with me over the last few months, both while I was still pregnant, and since Melody had been born. What did he do for a living? I knew he worked in the family business, but he never seemed to be there, so was it ok for him to take off just to spend so much time with me? What really worried me about being with Blair was that I might not be enough for him, and eventually he might get tired of me. After all, Darren had been happier with me at the start than at the end, so when the first flush of a new relationship had passed, would any man be happy to stay with me? Did I have enough to offer to make him want to stay? I knew that the second part of Diane’s question also made me uncomfortable. It worried me being without Blair. I had enjoyed his company so much, that just the thought of being without it made me despair. It wasn’t that I had taken him for granted just because he had done so much for me, for so long I hadn’t realised that he felt anything for me, but I had secretly enjoyed having him around. Once I had dared to hope that he might actually want to be with me, I had certainly done nothing to discourage him from spending so much time around me.
I yawned as I stood up and stretched. I really should get some sleep, as I would have to log on and do a day’s work tomorrow, and I needed to work myself up to have a talk with Blair. Over the last few weeks, my body had started to go back into shape, and all the walking I had been doing with Melody in the pram had certainly helped me to tone up again. Maybe it was time to be brave.
Chapter 9
The next morning I felt anything but brave. Melody had a good night, so the day started well, but then a couple of phone calls put me into a bad mood. The first was from Blair, telling me that he was needed at home, and wouldn’t be able to stop by until the afternoon if at all, and if that wasn’t enough to spoil my day, the phone call from my father certainly was. He had bumped into Darren at the local hotel the evening before. Dad and Stephanie went out for dinner, and the trip from the car park to the bistro took th
em through the public bar. Darren was there, drinking with some of his mates, and Dad had stopped to congratulate him on the birth of Melody. Darren had been taken aback, as I hadn’t spoken to him, and Dad had decided to leave it until today to call me and berate me. He didn’t seem to understand that Darren had never wanted to be a father, and if he had seemed interested, it was probably only because he had been too embarrassed to admit to his mates just how badly he had behaved. If they were the same group I had known, although they were not the most upstanding citizens - they were Darren’s mates after all - a couple of them were fathers, even if it was unplanned, and were involved in their children’s lives to some degree. After an uncomfortable phone call with Dad, I thumbed the phone off and slammed it down on the table, and that woke Melody up, who grumbled for attention. I had to save the file I had been working on, and by the time I got back to it, it took me a while to remember my train of thought again before I could pick it up and keep working.
Consequently, by the time I logged off that evening, I was grumbling to myself as I stood staring in the fridge, wondering if I could even be bothered cooking anything for dinner. Of course I knew that as I was breastfeeding, I needed to eat properly, but I was tired, grumpy, and missing Blair more than I thought I could. I hadn’t seen him since Friday, and I was cursing everything that had come between us since then. The football games that were played at Diane’s house, my coffee afternoon with the girls, my work, everything seemed a waste of time if it meant I couldn’t see Blair, especially now that I had worked up the courage to enter into whatever sort of relationship we could make work. I spun as I heard a strange thumping at the front door, and let the fridge door self close as I crept to the peephole. I stepped back and flung open the door joyfully, my day all of a sudden seeming much brighter as Blair stood on my doorstep, his hands full of pizza boxes and plastic bags that I could see contained bottles. As he stepped past me, I closed my eyes as I breathed in several appalling aromas. Apart from the delicious smell of pizza, that made me realise I was hungrier than I thought, there was the intoxicating smell that was Blair. I followed him into the kitchen, where he was chatting as he gathered plates and emptied the contents of his bag onto the bench.