Stripped Bare: A Novella

by Stewart, Lynsey M.

  ‘Amy, it took me years to get you in my bed. I’m not expecting anything tonight.’

  He opened the car door and started walking round to me. Quick as a shot, I opened my door, slamming it and walking past him, closing my arms around my body so that he got the message that I didn’t need his acts of chivalry, certainly not from the guy who broke my heart and was making lame jokes about getting me into his bed. Swoon. He stopped in front of the bonnet mid-pose, like he’d been tasered, before following me to my front door. I pressed the buzzer. Silence.

  Please be home, please be home, please be home.

  ‘It might be better to ring them. You can borrow my phone,’ he said, pacing from foot to foot.

  ‘I don’t know their numbers. Julia only moved in a few weeks ago.’

  ‘Julia?’ he replied, before a voice pulled us away from each other.

  ‘Are you locked out, you numpty?’ I turned to find Julia taking out her ear buds as she jogged towards us, slowing down and looking like she was going to collapse when her eyes drifted to Ethan. Must have been a hard run. She often went out jogging late at night, said it helped her to sleep. I, on the other hand, felt an orgasm was a much better alternative.

  ‘Oh. Holy. Fuck,’ she said, frowning at Ethan.

  ‘Oh, bloody hell,’ he replied, rubbing his forehead with his splayed fingers. ‘Julia. How are you?’

  ‘Do you two know each other?’ I asked, hoping they were both going to say, Of course fucking not, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ Julia replied, sneering at him. ‘Ethan’s my ex.’

  Chapter 5

  A full two minutes passed by before I was able to respond to Julia’s nugget of mind blowing information. I considered myself intelligent, wordly wise, or at least able to string a sentence together when faced with a tight spot but I struggled to think of anything other to say apart from, ‘Well, isn’t this a nice reunion for you?’

  I was unable to hide my distaste that I was sleeping in close proximity to someone else Ethan had played hide the sausage with. And, Christ, his was hard to hide, but I enjoyed trying. Every bloody time.

  ‘Urgh. This is awkward,’ Julia said. ‘I didn’t think we would ever be in this situation where I would have to face my ex being my flatmate’s latest conquest.’

  ‘Believe me, this is hard for me to. And don’t bloody say it like I’m always bringing a man home. It’s been at least…’ I tried to count in my head, anxiety taking away the numbers. I looked up to get some clarity. The stars were beautiful. Didn’t help. When was the last time? ‘Erm, probably a few weeks? Months, maybe?’

  ‘That’s fine. I don’t need to know the exact details,’ Ethan mumbled, rubbing his hand along the back of his neck.

  Julia let herself in with her key and held it out to me. ‘I don’t wish to hang around with my ex- boyfriend a minute longer. If you know what’s good for you you’ll say goodbye to him now, never see him again and save yourself the heartache.’

  ‘You’ve got the wrong idea, honestly,’ I replied. ‘We knew each other a lifetime ago.’

  ‘Come up. Alone. We’ll talk,’ she said, giving Ethan the death stare.

  ‘Nice to see you again, too, Julia,’ he said, holding up his hand and putting his arms to the back of his head. She narrowed her eyes and closed the front door with a slam.

  ‘Well, I for one, have enjoyed this evening immensely,’ I said. ‘Catching up has been marvellous.’

  ‘Can we talk? I mean, can I explain?’ He threw his thumb towards the door where Julia had been standing a minute before.

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. I don’t want to stand out here in the cold and I can’t take you inside because your ex-girlfriend looks like she wants to maim you. We’ve just had a new carpet put down and blood is a bitch to get out.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ he said, dragging his hands down his face. ‘This is unbelievable.’

  ‘I’m starting to believe that carnage follows you around.’

  ‘Me too,’ he replied through his fingers.

  ‘Or maybe just a long trail of women carrying their broken hearts in their handbags.’

  ‘Oh God, don’t,’ he replied. He was now doubled over like he didn’t have the strength to hold up his own head. His dimples made an appearance when he frowned or smiled but even they didn’t seem so dimply anymore.

  ‘Maybe this is payback for the pact,’ I said, addressing the very thing that split us down the middle.

  ‘Really? We’re doing this now?’ he asked, clearly exasperated.

  ‘We might as well,’ I replied, thrown for a moment when the patch of skin under his throat threw me back to the way his head fell backwards as an orgasm rushed through him, me on top, my legs to either side, him thrusting from below. Pure heaven in a bed. Or on the floor. Or against the wall. And there was that one fantastic time in a Jacuzzi. ‘I’m just waiting for another ex to show up, you know really end the night on a high,’ I said as he paced around, finally coming to a stop in front of me.

  ‘The pact was something we agreed on as kids and that’s where it should have stayed. A silly, immature agreement that neither of us had the guts to stamp out.’ He reached for me but dropped his arms by his sides before he skimmed his fingertips on my hips, unable to stop the touch. ‘We were kids, Amy.’

  ‘Then why didn’t we stop it?’ I said. ‘Why was the pact so important to us? We weren’t kids when we acted on it.’

  ‘Eighteen was still young, Amy.’

  We were kids when we first started talking about the pact. Hormones kicked in when we started secondary school together. We were fourteen when we danced around it. Sex. We had been to a party, sneaking out after our parents banned us from going, knowing there would be alcohol flowing. He held my hand as we ran towards the house of our friend whose parents really didn’t give a crap that their son was having an underage drinking party after they went out for the night. I remember reaching the house and feeling disappointed that I would have to let Ethan’s hand go. I wanted his hand in mine. It felt right to me. Like it belonged there. A special kind of destiny.

  We spent the night avoiding the teenage couples kissing like their life depended on it. They were everywhere, on the living room couch, four sets on the stairs and a couple in the bathroom. Ethan knew I wasn’t entirely comfortable and found us a safe spot in what appeared to be a toddlers bedroom. We laughed at the Thomas the Tank Engine wallpaper and did everything we could to avoid the topic of first kiss. Until we couldn’t avoid it anymore. We were surrounding by snogging teenagers and part of us felt out of the loop if we didn’t join them. I remember sighing in awe when his tentative hand stroked my cheek, shaking and warm as he threaded it through my hair, pulling me closer to him. He studied my lips, I wasn’t sure if he was deciding the best course of action to meet his there or if he genuinely just wanted to stare. He dragged his thumb across them and the feelings that fluttered around my body were unlike any I’d felt before. I’d felt butterflies in my stomach before, often when his dimples appeared because of something I’d said or just because I was there, but those fluttery tingles were entirely different. They started across my shoulders, worked down the length of my spine, caressed my stomach and whirled around places considered private and untouchable.

  ‘That night at the party. The night we first kissed,’ I said, watching his mouth turn into a smile. ‘Do you remember?’

  ‘It was a great first kiss,’ he replied, his eyes moving to my mouth, his tongue licking his lips. ‘In fact all of our first times were pretty great.’

  ‘That was the night we drew up the pact. Right after you skimmed my boob and immediately needed to use the bathroom.’

  ‘I was hard from the moment I touched your face. I had…things to deal with. Parts to re-arrange.’

  ‘Oh God. Your first stiffy.’

  ‘Not my first,’ he replied, his eyes dropping to my mouth again. ‘It happened a lot when you were around.’
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  I crouched down on the step of my front door and looked up at the man that I thought would be mine for the rest of my life. The man I had married in my imagination countless times. The man I considered to be the one. My person. I never doubted that our love was mapped out, that we were brought together by something higher, something bigger than both of us. That was until the moment he changed direction and left me stranded without the map.

  Ethan was smiling. I wondered if it was because he was running through memories, picking out good times and savouring them again because we hadn’t let ourselves do that for so long.

  ‘Who was the first to suggest it?’ I asked.

  ‘The pact? It was me and you jumped all over it.’

  That didn’t surprise me. After our first kiss my lady bits were permanently set on vibration mode.

  He came and sat down beside me, a whoosh of clean air and pheromones. He always did smell good. Just a sniff of his neck programmed my orgasm to full descent. ‘It sounds ridiculous now. Agreeing to be each other’s first. Most best friends of the opposite sex who find themselves in that kind of scenario–’

  ‘You mean like in a sitcom?’ It really was ridiculous.

  He laughed before carrying on. ‘Most of them set a countdown to when their body clock would start ticking or the panic set in of not finding the one before they reach forty-eight. Not to lose their virginity to each other at eighteen.’

  ‘I know. So silly.’

  ‘It made sense at the time,’ he replied, leaning in slightly and smiling.

  That night in the Thomas the Tank Engine bedroom, the fat controller watching over our first kiss, we made a pact. Ethan put it out there first. If we were still virgins by the time we reached our eighteenth birthdays, we would sleep together. A birthday gift of getting the deed out of the way. A gift of experience. A gift that would help us brush away nerves and embarrassment when we finally met our people. I’ve often thought about that night, the amount of trust I placed in him that he would be my first. I wanted it, and he did too. We just didn’t know how to label it without the fear of ruining our friendship.

  ‘I’m glad you were my first,’ he said, taking my hand just like he did the night we gave each other our virginity. The night things changed between us because how could we go back to just friendship? I realised that I was in love with him and thought he was in love with me, I didn’t question it. He had asked my permission every step of the way, held his hand over my breast waiting for my nod, or a smile, even a gasp as things started to feel good, the burn falling away. He inched himself into me, a tiny push at a time, restraining his need to go fast simply because he didn’t want to hurt me. When I lost reality, falling into the swirl of feelings I didn’t know what to do with, he encouraged me, whispering into my ear, telling me to let it happen, joining in the flush of wonderful as we reached our orgasms. My first time was perfection because it was with the boy I had fallen in love with.

  ‘I’m glad too,’ I replied, wrapping my arms around myself to stop the shivers.

  ‘I’m sorry I ruined it.’ He looked away into the distance and I lost him. The glorious memories of how he made my body come alive for the first time were replaced with the heavy thoughts of what happened after.

  ‘When did you start to question things?’ I’d never gotten a full answer to this. He became a master at deflection, proficient in avoidance.

  ‘Not for a while. Fuck.’ He stood up, turning his back to me. ‘I haven’t let myself think about this for a long time.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Too painful.’ I laughed at that. He didn’t spare me the pain.

  ‘I wasn’t enough for you, clearly,’ I replied. ‘You wanted to see if the grass was greener.’

  ‘It wasn’t.’

  ‘Didn’t need to know that.’ But I did. And it made me feel amazing.

  ‘I don’t know what it was. I saw my mates going out and meeting different people. We were devoted to each other, Amy, had known each other forever, but I didn’t know if we were together because of the pact or because we were genuinely destined to be together. It started eating me alive.’ He sighed as he sat back down beside me. ‘I started to question us, what we had and fuck, I hated myself for that.’

  A gasp escaped from deep within, I didn’t know where it came from but I didn’t want more of that emotion to escape from me. I’d worked too hard at keeping it flat, damping it down and shielding it. I knew that if I let it out piece by broken piece, I would never be able to put it back in place again.

  ‘I should go in,’ I said. ‘I can’t do this. It’s been too long.’ I got up and put the key in the door.

  ‘Can I see you again? It feels like we have unfinished business. Tonight must mean something. Like we should grab the opportunity to get it all out, all the shit bits and the hard bits but also all the bits that made us work. Because we did. We just didn’t know how good we had it. Maybe it scared us to have something so perfect at such a young age.’

  ‘I wasn’t scared,’ I replied. ‘I was never scared. I loved you. How could you question what we had?’ I was shouting, unable to hold it in, ignoring what he said after I started to question us. ‘How could you doubt us? How could you end it just to see if you could find it somewhere else? To scratch a fucking itch!’

  ‘I don’t know!’ he replied, holding out his arms like whatever he was carrying was too big to hold. ‘I know now that I’d fallen hard for you. Way before our eighteenth birthdays. Years before I had you in the way I’d been thinking about every night before I went to bed, every morning before I started the day and all the fucking little bits in between.’ He held my hand again, like the touch was anchoring him to the ground and allowing him to spill the truth. ‘I had this niggling doubt that I needed to be sure. I needed to test what we had. I wanted to know we were together for the right reasons. Not because we made some stupid agreement to be each other’s firsts because it would make it easy with someone else.’

  ‘You broke me,’ I whispered, brushing the tears from my face. ‘You broke me so much that I still haven’t pieced myself back together.’ His head dropped to the curve of my neck, his warmth surrounding me, trying to protect me from the truth now that it was out there. I scratched my face against his stubble, hoping to find reality but all I found were the lost feelings I’d started to fling away that were already finding their way back.

  ‘If it helps in any way, I broke myself too.’

  My hand found his hair, my fingers threaded through the long strands and in the darkness, under the small light above the door I welcomed having him so close to me again.

  ‘I’ve missed you, Amy. The friendship, the love, the laughter. Everything. Sleeping with Julia was the worst mistake I’ve ever made.’

  My hand left his face slowly as I glanced at him, scared to make sense of the words he had just muttered against my hair, still wet from what I assumed were his tears.

  ‘What did you say?’ His smile dropped, a deep line forming on his forehead falling between his eyebrows that were narrowed in confusion. ‘Oh my God,’ I said, my hand suddenly clutching my mouth. ‘It was her wasn’t it? Julia was the woman you slept with after we split.’

  He dropped his head and pressed the edges of both palms into his eyes before uttering the word that confirmed it all.

  ‘Yes.’

  Chapter 6

  I thought Julia was some random woman he’d been out with, not THE woman. The woman he ultimately broke us for.

  I turned the key in the lock, listening to the click and pushing the door open slowly. So slowly. I knew what I had to face when I reached the flat and I didn’t know if I had the emotional strength. I bypassed the lift and took the stairs, teasing out the moment, delaying the inevitable until our flat door came into view and I couldn’t put it off any longer.

  Julia was sitting in the kitchen, chopping up some strawberries and dropping them into a bowl of natural yoghurt before adding a drizzle of honey. She looked up and then over
my shoulder, a small smile forming when she realised Ethan wasn’t with me.

  ‘I have just saved you from a disaster, my friend. Once the sting of losing out on a night of casual sex subsides, you’ll be thanking me.’

  ‘He wasn’t getting sex,’ I replied.

  ‘Hey, no judgement here. I wouldn’t blame you. He’s hot. And appears to have had a significant career change since I last saw him. Sex with a stripper is on your bucket list, surely? It’s on mine. Hey, does it still count if you’ve had sex with someone before they become a stripper?

  I felt my phone vibrate in my bag, thankful for the distraction of the topic of conversation I really wanted to avoid. I picked it out, holding it carefully and seeing a message from Ethan between the cracks. I was surprised my phone was even working. Before he left, I managed to enter his number into it but wasn’t holding hope for much else. I questioned my decision to exchange numbers. Even after the bomb dropped, I still wasn’t able to let him go completely. He said tonight meant something and I was inclined to believe him.

  Heart crusher: Just checking you gave me the right number…

  Heart crusher: I hope you did

  Heart crusher: I don’t want to be spilling my guts out to a random stranger

  Heart crusher: I’ve missed you

  Heart crusher: Tell me this isn’t a sign

  Heart crusher: Tell me you didn’t feel it

  Heart crusher: Tingles

  Heart crusher: Shivers

  Heart crusher: Are you there?

  Heart crusher: If this is a random stranger please excuse my guts

  ‘Amy?’ Julia said. ‘Is he texting you? No! Delete his number right now!’

  ‘Listen, we’ve know each other forever. We’re just catching up.’

  ‘Can I also highlight the fact that he appears to be driving around in a car with his naked torso splashed across the bonnet. Not classy.’ She popped a blueberry in her mouth.

  ‘You didn’t know he was a stripper?’ I asked, trying to piece together the timeline.