Stripped Bare: A Novella

by Stewart, Lynsey M.

  ‘I make a lot of people happy and I earn a good living.’

  ‘I hope you can sleep at night.’

  ‘Like a baby on a mattress of fifty-pound notes.’

  How had we slipped back into the bickering after seeing each other again for all of five minutes? Bickering sealed the deal on our relationship. Bickering contributed to the very nasty end. I picked up my bag and tried to smooth myself down. I wasn’t nailing the see-what-you’re-missing, ex-girlfriend’s revenge look. The red wine stains on my dress now looked like I’d been involved in an unfortunate accident where I’d lost a vital limb or at the very least a finger. A bruise that resembled a map of Australia was decorating my ankle and as I pulled my phone out to dial a taxi, I was reminded that the screen now resembled a very expensive jigsaw. ‘Shit. Can this night get any better?’

  ‘Sit down. What the fuck have you been doing today?’ he smiled softly. ‘You look like you need to start again.’ He pushed my hair behind my ear and for a second I melted into his touch, until I felt the velvet skin of his cock against my knee.

  ‘Can you please get dressed?’ I said, pointing to it. It was still glorious. Bare and glorious. ‘That is making this even weirder than it already is.’

  He covered himself with one hand and the velvety contents spilled out the side. ‘Hang on.’ He took quick strides to his trousers that were still lying discarded on the floor. They appeared to be made of some kind of Velcro contraception. Quick pull. Easy access. But it made getting them back on swiftly quite a task. Wolf whistles and women followed him. One even asked for an autograph. A man who was also enjoying the show asked if he could have one too. He pulled open his shirt and asked for ‘To Bob, love Police Officer Love Truncheon’ on his left bicep. I was impressed when Ethan pulled out a sharpie, but God knows from where.

  He returned after promising to continue with Bianca’s strip and with his Velcro trousers and police helmet in place. ‘I want to ask you a question. It relates to one of the last things you said to me.’

  ‘If it involves the words prize pillock or ginormous heart crusher then yes, I still use those words in reference to you,’ I replied.

  ‘Still?’ he said, his eyes wide in mock disappointment.

  ‘This is ridiculous. I’m talking to my ex-boyfriend who is half dressed as a flamboyant police officer.’

  ‘Can I ask that question now?’ I rolled my eyes and the prize pillock laughed. ‘Do you still have that urge you had about three years ago?’

  Let’s see. The urge to kiss you? Yes. The urge to ask you why? Always. The urge to rub that tingle away from between my legs only you seemed to cause? Sigh. Yes.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I huffed as I tried to navigate my finger across the cracks of my phone screen without slicing it open. Distract from the tingle.

  ‘You said if you ever saw me again you’d slap me across the face with your self-help book Why You Fail at Relationships.’

  ‘That book was a great help in the healing process. It helped me understand that our breakdown was all your fault.’ I slipped my phone in my bag and walked away, determined to be the better person but knowing that I’d failed with my last comment.

  ‘Amy, stop,’ he said laughing before shaking his head. ‘I haven’t seen you in years. I can’t let you just walk away. Stay for a drink at least. A catch up. We used to be best friends. I miss the us we used to be before–’

  ‘You fucked it up,’ I replied, shrugging my shoulders and leaving it at that. I chanced a quick glance and was met with a colliding rush of emotions as he started nodding. I waited for him to speak, follow it up with an apology and a quick goodbye, it was nice to see you, but all I got were his eyes to the floor and his hands on his hips. A man deep in thought. A man I didn’t recognise.

  ‘What are we doing?’ I replied, rubbing my palm across my forehead. ‘I don’t understand Ethan-the-stripper. You were Ethan, my best friend. The boy I climbed trees with, spent my summers chasing through the woods. This is so bloody surreal. Jesus. I have to go.’ I picked up his jacket from the floor and handed it to him, taking a second to drift my eyes across his chest. Ethan, the boy I fell in love with, had filled out. He was Ethan the stripper with a body to sell his brand perfectly. His shoulders were defined with sleek muscle, beautifully stretching and coiling into the bumps of a crafted body. He was tanned. Fake possibly, although I couldn’t detect the tell-tale smell of biscuit or bright orange palms. The baby oil was causing his skin to glisten with tiny pinpricks of light, flashing and flickering like tiny sequins of gorgeousness. The nipples I used to think of as little beads of perfection – my mouth unable to get enough because licking them caused a moan so deep from him it sped my orgasm tenfold – were the only parts of his upper body that I could recognise.

  ‘If I were a different man, I’d call you out on your blatant ogling of my upper body,’ he said, popping his pecs, left then right in a delicious pattern.

  ‘Oh please. You’re nothing special,’ I lied. ‘Tight muscles and…smoothness around here,’ I rubbed my hand across my chest, ‘are nothing for you to gloat about. In fact, it’s unattractive to be so big-headed. You could be hairier than an afghan hound and covered in pimples and I’d find you more attractive.

  ‘Woof.’

  ‘That’s it. You’re making me question my sanity.’ I threw my hands in the air. ‘I think I’ve just been sick in my mouth. I wish I could say it was nice to see you again but that would be a lie. In fact, it’s been everything I would expect of you.’

  ‘You expected to see me as a stripper? Wow, your psychic powers have come on in the last few years,’ he replied.

  I narrowed my eyes in frustration and walked away before his nipples hypnotised me.

  ‘Come on. One drink. For old time’s sake,’ he shouted as I threw him the finger over my shoulder. He followed me outside, laughing and then sighing deeply as he scrubbed his hands through his hair. ‘Let me at least take you home. You’re not going to get anywhere with that.’ He nodded towards the phone I was shaking in mid-air in the hope the screen would magically repair itself and I could easily call myself a taxi.

  ‘I’d rather drink my own bath water.’ He laughed and folded his arms across his chest. I almost smiled. ‘Bath water that had been left for three days and there’s all this brown goop floating on top.’

  ‘Jesus, I didn’t know we had stepped back in time to when we were both five.’

  ‘Are you trying to imply I’m immature?’ I asked in horror. ‘I turned twenty-three two months ago.’

  He smiled. ‘I know. I always mark it on the calendar.’ And I didn’t know what the hell to do with that. ‘With a star for a star.’ Officially dead.

  I shook my hair out and ignored the pull that always seemed to be between us. A connection. A tie. It had been there from the start, when we were unsteady on our feet and communicated through laughs. But the memories of the hurt he had caused slashed through those ties like a knife.

  ‘You always had the gift of gab. It got you out of some tricky situations sometimes. Apart from one,’ I replied, ignoring him as he slid down the wall and dropped his head. That one tricky situation could never be recovered with a few one-liners and a flash of his award-winning smile. That tricky situation was more than tricky. It ended us.

  I felt him tug on the bottom of my dress. I glanced down at him, kneeling on the floor, his back against the wall, and caught his gaze, adoring and warm and so fucking familiar.

  ‘And you, Amy,’ he replied, smiling shyly, ‘have always been an awkward sod.’

  Chapter 3

  I finally agreed to a lift home simply because the tie that pulled us together had been magically reconnected by a messy knot and I couldn’t face picking through it to walk away from him. Again.

  I waited outside the club as he finished his strip because God knew I didn’t want to see that. He sought me out, still glistening like he’d just slipped into a vat of golden syrup, and told me he was going to cle
an up, grab his bag and change out of his ridiculous Velcro trousers. He returned ten minutes later looking slightly more recognisable. His dark hair was a messy kind of wonderful, like he had raked his hands through it with just the right amount of product and voila. He was wearing jeans that hugged all the right places and a white t-shirt with a red checked shirt and navy hooded jacket. This was more my Ethan. I looked down at the leather overnight bag he was carrying and wondered what else was hiding in his bag of tricks. He was a sexual Newt Scamander, pulling weird and wonderful things from his trusty bag. I could only imagine the debauchery going on under the zip. Bottles of oil, possibly some lube. Handcuffs and scarves. Firefighter outfits. Police hats. A sexy…astronaut. I didn’t want to know. It all seemed so far removed from my memories of him.

  ‘You can’t stay mad at me, can you?’ Ethan said smiling, watching me from the corner of his eye.

  He was right. I couldn’t.

  He always had a way of making me feel all was right with my world. Even the day he made me climb over the park railings and my shorts got speared on the metal, essentially holding me in place, upside down as I lost my footing. He left me hanging there, doubled over in laughter as I screamed. The next day he posted a king size chocolate bar through our letterbox and mum said my smile was ‘infectious’ for the rest of the day.

  I would always forgive, and that was one of the reasons why I left my family, the town I grew up in. And him. My first and only love. I had to create some distance. Remove myself. It was easier that way.

  ‘There are some things you can’t forgive,’ I replied, trying to hide my true emotions under fake bravado.

  ‘You can’t forgive and forget?’ he asked, looking hopeful.

  ‘I don’t believe in either of them.’

  The hopeful spark in his eyes left immediately, my words like water to snuff out the tiny flame.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘The car’s just round here.’ I followed behind him, repeating to myself, Do not look at his bum, before a wolf whistle and various high-pitched laughter came bounding towards us in the form of a gaggle of women who were more than a little tipsy.

  ‘Look, it’s the stripper! Show us your love truncheon! How about a free show?’ Sarah and Gail, followed by a few people I recognised from work, started crowding him.

  ‘Have a great rest of your evening, ladies,’ he said graciously, stepping back and giving them a wave.

  ‘Amy?’ Sarah said, looking from Ethan to me.

  ‘Oh! Hi, Sarah. Gail. Didn’t see you there. Have you had a…good night?’

  ‘Not as good as the night you’re going to have! Fuck, are you going home with the stripper?’

  ‘His name is Ethan,’ I said as the whistles died down. ‘He has a name. He’s not called the stripper. He’s called…Ethan.’ I wasn’t sure why that term bothered me so much. Searching through the comments that labelled him as something I didn’t know stung a little. All I could pin it down to was that they didn’t have a right to call him that. I knew him as the man who could make my soul vibrate. He deserved more than drunken women talking to him like he wasn’t there or thinking they could touch him in places they hadn’t paid for.

  ‘I didn’t ask for his name, Amy! I asked if you were going home with him,’ Sarah replied, laughing as the other girls encouraged her on.

  ‘Come on ladies. There’s plenty to go around. Maybe I’ll see you all another time.’ Ethan took my hand and kissed it before holding his arm out. I stared at it for a second too long, memories bouncing through, images flashing before my eyes. The good times. Me jumping on his back to give me a ride home when my feet were sore, me sitting with my legs outstretched, grass tickling the backs of my thighs as I watched him throw the javelin on the school playing fields. Both of us embracing each other, pulling in tight the night we agreed to lose our virginity to each other if we didn’t find the right person by the time we turned eighteen.

  The pact.

  ‘Amy.’ I came back from memory overload and glanced at his arm still open for me to slip mine through. I focused on my hand, watching in slow motion as I reached through and connected my body to his. Warmth spread through me, a slight shiver tip-tapping across my shoulders. He noticed it. His smile told me he did. ‘Night ladies.’

  ‘I want to know all the juicy details Monday morning, Amy!’ Sarah shouted as we turned our backs to them, their voices becoming quieter the further away we walked. Neither of us gave a backwards glance but we didn’t look at each other either. Maybe that was safer for both of us.

  He led us down an alley at the back of the club. ‘Oh, holy fuck.’ I slipped my arm out from his and stood, mouth open as I took in his car. ‘You have got to be kidding me.’ Across the passenger side was a large colour photo of Ethan wearing aviator glasses and full navy officer costume. Think An Officer and a Gentleman and you’d be spot on. Apart from the stripper part, of course. I slowly made my way around the car, taking it all in. The back window was wrapped in Ethan dressed as a firefighter, pointing to the camera with, ‘Hot damn, this firefighter will make you want to commit arson!’ printed underneath. The other side of the car featured him in his police officer outfit, his chest gleaming and golden and various social media links and phone numbers printed between his nipples. ‘You drive this?’ I asked, bewildered and ready to call it a night. ‘Let me rephrase that. You choose to drive this?’

  ‘They make me drive it. It’s a good way to advertise if it’s seen outside the venue where they’ve hired me. It’s not mine. I don’t do the weekly food shop in it or park it on my parents drive when I pop round for Sunday lunch. Christ.’

  He lifted the boot and I had to stifle a laugh when I saw a firefighter’s helmet sitting on top of a car jack. It could only be described as bejewelled. In fact, bejewelled didn’t cover it. Yellow crystals sparkled like a light show and across the front, silver crystals spelt out, ‘Fire Officer Long Hose.’ I tried not to laugh.

  ‘What do your parents think about your new career?’ I asked. I still kept in touch with them occasionally, mainly through Christmas cards and an email on birthdays but they never once hinted at Ethan’s new venture into stripping. Our families remained close even after we separated. I guess that’s what happens when you’ve been friends with someone since you were kids.

  ‘They don’t shout it from the rooftops,’ he replied as he opened the car door, allowing me to slip inside. ‘But they don’t hide it either. Paying for them to go to Antigua this year might have helped them warm to the situation.’

  ‘Ah, so you’ve bribed them.’

  ‘Treated them,’ he replied, slamming the door. He opened his a few seconds after and slid in to the driving seat. ‘I like to think of it as treating them.’

  ‘Don’t you mind…getting it out?’ I asked, pointing to his love truncheon. FML.

  ‘It’s my choice, Amy. No one is making me do it.’

  He dropped a set of keys into the small compartment next to the gearstick. A Mercedes symbol glistened under the light of the streetlamp above. ‘Wow, your other car is a Mercedes,’ I said. ‘Getting your cock out really does pay well. If only we all had the same choice. I could do a few shifts on reception in the nuddy, no problem.’

  ‘That would be very distracting,’ he replied, his eyes skating over me, allowing me to confirm that the heat of his gaze was still there. Always had been. We sat in silence, both averting our eyes and staring out of the windscreen. Tonight had been a head fuck. He must be feeling the same way. Aside from naked re-introductions, there was also the small issue of our once upon a time history.

  We were connected to each other since we were children, completely oblivious to the friendship we were nurturing. We started nursery together, went to the same school and attended prom as unofficial dates. We hated weekends. Weekends meant there was no school and that meant we didn’t get to spend the whole day together. But over the years, I’d learnt that memories could be fickle. One minute I could be reminiscing about the good times
as they held me in a good place and the next I would be plunged back into the reasons for my resentment and hurt. The good and the bad were all threaded through the memory bank of Ethan. My childhood, my teenage years and my first kiss. He featured in all of them. There was a time I thought he defined me, but I was naïve and immature to think that. Most of all I was wrong.

  Was I?

  Things were simple when we were ten-year-old best friends. Before hormones got in the way to complicate and ultimately destroy an important friendship.

  Ethan started the engine, turning off the radio as the music kicked in. I’d never heard silence so loudly. ‘I just freaked out a little,’ he said, panic threaded through the words. ‘I have no idea where you live and that just feels…wrong. I used to know everything about you. Now, I know nothing.’

  ‘It’s been years,’ I said simply. ‘Three years.’

  Time had continued slipping by, quickly at times and more slowly at others. Our lives had continued without each other. I always likened our separation to a kind of grief without the finality of death. Ethan still surrounded me, even though we didn’t see each other like we did before. Every day. Sometimes every minute of the day.

  ‘It hasn’t been that long, you know,’ he said sadly. ‘Can’t you remember Esther’s wedding?’ I could. It was a memory I had long buried. Our mutual friend’s wedding day. The first time we had seen each other since our relationship ended. ‘You were there with that guy. What was his name?’

  ‘Gary.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Gary the butcher,’ he smirked. ‘Mum told me it didn’t last. Something about the smell of raw meat and blood under the fingernails.’

  I snorted out a laugh. ‘Alright. So, he wasn’t my soulmate.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me that,’ he replied.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because that would be me.’ I flicked my head to him, shocked by his admission. He met my eyes briefly before looking away, a deep sigh highlighting the moment.