‘That’s my girl,’ she replied.
‘Aren’t you concerned about what people will think? Amy dating a stripper.’
‘Amy, Amy, Amy. Let me say this to you. Remember when you were twelve and you went to the lake? You fell in what can only be described as a boggy quagmire. You were covered from top to toe in mud. You came home in Ethan’s hooded top and he handed me your muddy clothes on the doorstep.’ I laughed as I remembered. ‘And then the time you had your bag stolen when you were in Blackpool for Jo’s 18th birthday weekend? Ethan had tickets to see U2 that night, but he drove all the way to bring you home. He’d only just passed his driving test and he was terrified of motorways, but all he could focus on was getting to you. That’s what a mother wants for her daughter. Devotion. Dedication. Love. It doesn’t matter to me what he does for a living as long as he treats you right. And Jesus, Amy, he isn’t shooting puppies! You want to be a bit more liberated and less judgmental.’
‘Now, I’ve heard everything!’ I laughed. ‘I’m perfectly liberated, thanks. I can accept what he does for a living. In fact, I’ve seen Magic Mike…eight times.’
‘Then why are you bleating on about his job? Even his parents are fine about it. They’ve had some issues but nothing they haven’t been able to handle.’
‘Like what?’ I asked.
‘The new vicar heard about it and came to cleanse their house. Said it was a house of debauchery or something like that. Sylvia wasn’t bothered, she was just too nice to say no. She started baking some rock cakes in the kitchen while he burnt jasmine and wafted it in the corners of Ethan’s old bedroom.’
‘Oh my God!’ I laughed, covering my smile with my hands.
‘He left some holy water in a flask on the kitchen worktop for when Ethan came home for Sunday dinner. I think she put it in the cabbage water and had a good laugh.’
‘Stripping I can come to terms with, but the hurt…ripped me to pieces.’
Mum pulled me into her and I welcomed the warmth, resting my head on her shoulder.
‘I know he hurt you but listen, let’s pull it apart a few years after the event. You were both nineteen. You had lived in each other’s pockets since you were babies. There was so much pressure even just from throw-away comments about how you were adorable together and we needed to plan the wedding when you were still toddling around in nappies. I’m not doubting the connection for a second, it’s just for a certain extent, it may have been orchestrated.’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘Can you take yourself out of the hurt and think that he was a young man full of hormones, trying to find his place in the world. He wanted to be sure. It doesn’t take away the hurt but does it help to give you some perspective?’
‘No,’ I deadpanned before breaking into a smile.
‘Hey.’ I looked up to find Ethan. We locked eyes and I searched them, feeling shocked that he was standing in front of me after having such an intimately free talk with my mum about what had happened between us.
‘Hey,’ I replied, a little breathless because he looked astonishing and the air in my lungs whooshed out on that first glance. I’d been thinking about him since Saturday, talking about him all morning. Everything else had fallen into the category of not important since he came back into my life. Was that normal? A total of forty-eight hours had passed and already he was an obsession.
He chanced a look at my mum and when she smiled brightly, he leant down and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Good to see you, Lesley.’
‘You too, Ethan. How are you?’
‘Good.’ He looked at me. ‘Better. Better than I’ve been in a while.’
I glanced at mum and she had a dreamy smile on her face, which I knew would soon be replaced with the look of a mum who was planning the style of hat she was going to wear to our wedding. Ethan laughed and looked to the ground.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked, trying to make sense of, well, why the fuck he was here.
‘I was heading to your office, actually.’ He lifted a bag up. ‘I wondered if you wanted to try one of these.’ I peeked in the bag to find a box of little cupcakes in vivid yellows and pinks. ‘I said I’d pick them up for a friend. He’s proposing to his girlfriend and had these made especially.’ When I looked again each cake had a little chocolate disc spelling out, ‘Will you marry me?’
‘Hmm, which one shall I choose? “Marry” or “me”?’
He laughed and pulled out another box. ‘I may have bought a few myself. Couldn’t resist. Hungry?’ I shook my sandwich and he nodded in recognition. ‘I’m too late, obviously.’
‘Mum has it covered.’
‘As always,’ he replied looking at his watch. ‘Have you got long left?’
‘Sorry, no. I should be getting back.’
‘Those phones won’t answer themselves you know,’ mum said, knocking me in the ribs.
‘Of course, she’s a vital member of the team. Whatever would they do without you?’ he laughed as I stuck my tongue out at him. ‘Can I walk you back?’ Mum and I glanced at each other, she raised an eyebrow and I struggled to contain my smile. As she wrapped her arms around me I heard her whisper, ‘Give him a chance.’
‘See you soon,’ I said, nodding to acknowledge her comment but offering no more.
‘Good to see you, Ethan.’ She reached over to hug him too, but I couldn’t quite hear what she whispered in his ear. He also nodded in recognition and she seemed content with his response.
I felt his hand on my lower back as we started to walk. I didn’t dare look back at mum, fearing excitement would have caused her to spontaneously combust by now. Unless I did first…feeling the sparks of a tingle pass down my spine making me wriggle my back. His hand remained there, he must have felt it and when I looked across to him, he was blushing. His smile was anything but embarrassed. He looked accomplished. Like he had dreamed of causing that reaction for years and finally it had happened.
He was always a master of my reactions. My master.
‘What did she say to you?’ I asked, needing to know.
‘Just then?’ He was teasing it out, knowing this meant something to me. ‘I’m not sure I want to give that up. It was personal, you know? Just between the two of us.’ We stopped outside my office, the short walk ending before it had really started. We turned to each other, our hands meeting, the ends of our shoes touching.
‘I want to know.’
He dropped his head slightly and his lips were dangerously close to mine and that whirl of excitement he always caused, the one that started at my shoulders, making my body feel weightless, swept through me once again. I sighed against his mouth.
‘She told me to give you time, that the wait had been necessary and that it was almost over.’
And then he kissed me.
Chaste and slow.
Soft and delicate.
A love conveyed.
A message threaded through it.
‘I’ll wait for you.’
Chapter 8
‘That was probably my worst experience,’ Ethan said, laughing behind his hand as he navigated telling a story and eating a spoonful of his Mississippi mud cake. I smiled as he swiped his tongue across his teeth, trying to clear away the sticky icing. ‘She was horrified. Took off down the street leaving me stripping to a bewildered farmers market.’
‘Why would anyone book a stripper for a Saturday morning market trader when they obviously hated the idea.’
Ethan thanked the waiter as he brought us our coffees and continued. ‘This woman was celebrating her retirement. When she realised I wasn’t there to talk to her about health and safety of the fruit stall and how far her lovely display of aubergines was protruding, potentially causing a trip hazard, I thought she was going to faint across the bananas.’
‘So much I want to say,’ I said, wrinkling my nose.
‘I wouldn’t go there,’ he smiled.
‘Do you like stripping?’ I asked as I finished the last bite of lemon meringue pie.
‘Yes, I suppose.’
‘Can you see yourself doing it forever?’
‘No,’ he replied, smirking. ‘I don’t think a seventy-year-old stripper would be very appealing.’
‘So, what else would you do?’ I asked. ‘You must have a backup plan.’
‘Eventually, I’d like to be a personal trainer. I’ve started looking into health and fitness qualifications, but I need to get some money behind me first. But that would be the ideal.’
This felt more familiar. The Ethan I knew. Not the jiggling firefighter or Officer Love Truncheon.
‘I think that would be great!’ I said, a little too enthusiastically. He started to smile.
‘You really don’t like it do you? The stripping.’
‘I’m not completely comfortable with it, no.’ I was being honest. I didn’t like it. I didn’t understand it. I couldn’t piece the Ethan I knew together with the Ethan that took his clothes off for a living. It didn’t make any sense to me. Maybe it highlighted the time apart and how much we had changed, and that was what I didn’t like the most.
‘You’d prefer me to be in a call centre dying of boredom?’
I thought about that for a while and answered honestly. ‘No, I wouldn’t want that for you either.’
‘Spend the day with me tomorrow. If you saw for yourself what I actually do it might help,’ he said.
‘I think it might exacerbate the whole I’m not feeling your job issue.’
‘Think of it as a day in the life of Ethan.’
‘I don’t know. I’m not sure how I would cope watching you…wiggle your cock around.’
‘You’ve already seen me,’ he replied.
‘But that was before I…’ I stopped midsentence, unsure of how much I wanted to say.
‘Before?’ he said, pushing me for more.
‘Before I started liking you again.’ He nodded slowly, smiling briefly, like the truth of my words hurt him but also made him feel absolutely elated.
He cleared his throat. ‘You know, stripping isn’t all about wiggling your cock around,’ Ethan replied as he smoothed out the tablecloth with his fingers. ‘There’s an art to it.’ I sniggered, hiding my smile behind my hands. ‘I can see you’re not taking me seriously.’ He reached over and pulled them away from my face. ‘There she is,’ he replied, staring for a moment longer than necessary. It was a look that spoke adoration. A look you would only be on the receiving end of if you knew that person well and couldn’t think of anyone else you’d rather be sharing dinner with. He’d looked like that every night for the last couple of weeks. ‘I don’t even mind that you’re laughing at me.’
We were discovering each other again. Redefining our relationship. Basking in the familiarity that I had missed so much. He knew me. This evening was easy because I only had to raise my eyebrow for him to know I didn’t want to share a starter. That bad boy was mine and mine alone. Our history allowed him to know that I didn’t get on board with sharing food and sparkling water made my throat tight. He knew I would probably choose a steak and mouthed medium rare when the waiter asked me how I liked it. He didn’t need to ask if I wanted dessert even after devouring that mountain of medium-rare steak, and I’d finish the meal with an Irish coffee and after-dinner mint without needing to undo the top button of my trousers.
He had sent my favourite flowers to the office. Walked me home from the gym. Taken me to our favourite places and recharged memories that I’d forgotten about or forced to the back of my mind because they were too painful. Essentially, he was making it easier to start liking him again. The butterflies I experienced as a teenager whenever he walked in the room, the warmth that spread through my body as our relationship transformed into something more intimate and mature, all returned with a force I wasn’t sure what to do with.
I focused back on him, ending the memory fog. ‘What were you saying? An art to stripping? I need to know more,’ I said, leaning back to get a good look at him. His white shirt illuminated the delectable. His tanned skin around the collar, the stretch of cotton across his bicep. The taut nipple beneath the pocket where he had poked his glasses. Holy moly. Ethan in a pair of glasses was something else. The sharp fizz of arousal was settling in all the right places. I needed to shift from side to side to calm it somewhat, but when those dimples appeared with every smile, the fizz turned into a sparkle and the sparkle turned into a crash. My bones were like jelly. Mush. If I attempted to stand, I knew I would fall into a puddle of goo on the floor beneath me. At some stage I knew that was going to be problem, but for now I could only relish in it.
‘Stripping is more about communication. A push and pull. A dance I guess. Yeah. A dance.’
‘Communication?’ I asked, breathy like I was about to climax. Jesus.
‘It’s important that I get full permission from the other person. You have to remember that most of the time they may have no idea that I’m going to arrive and in a few minutes I’ll be naked and gyrating for them,’ he sipped his coffee, licking the foam off his lips. I wanted to be that foam. I wanted those lips. ‘I’m giving eye contact, nodding my head, watching for them to do the same. Then I know I’ve got them and they’re enjoying it. Once I’ve got that I start the dance.’
My lungs were deflating, my eyes heavy as arousal soaked through me and my jellylike bones now felt like hot, oozing liquid. This was our eighth time getting to know each other. The word date had not been mentioned and Ethan hadn’t attempted to touch me on all of our…not dates. Every night he would take me home and give me a chaste kiss to the cheek, his hand holding me firmly at the back of my neck. Making me crazy. Holding hands and entwining fingers were as far as we had gone. My body was pleading for him. I had a hunger. A thirst. A yearning. I longed for his warm firm fingers trailing across my skin, the feel of his body on mine. The final piece of those years of pining I was finally able to let fall away.
I needed him. Needed the reconnection. But he had been on his best behaviour.
I knew why, of course I did. He was describing it to me right at this moment. Communication. Push and pull. Gaining full permission. He wanted to be sure.
Then he could start the dance.
‘I’ll spend the day with you because I want to see it all. The preparation, the performance. Everything,’ I said, totally sure and fully ready.
‘I’d like that,’ he replied, reaching for my hand across the table. The spark that followed was so bright and electric that I felt it vibrate underneath my bones.
But then the call came. Ending the ache. Squashing down the desperation. Dissipating the desire.
He squeezed his eyes shut before taking his phone from his pocket, scowling when he read who was calling.
‘Yes, it’s Ethan. Really? Now? Can’t anyone else do it? Yep. I know. I get it. Where and what time? What do I need? Fine. Yep. Thanks.’ He put the phone down and dropped his eyes to the table, drawing his mouth in.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked as he shook his head.
‘I’m sorry but I’ve got a job. Last minute. It’s an important client and I can’t let them down. We’ll lose a contract if I don’t show.’
‘That’s OK,’ I lied, biting my lip as I realised we had lost a moment that had been brewing and bubbling for years all because he had a stripping job.
He threw his napkin onto the table. ‘It’s not OK.’
‘We’ve got time,’ I said harshly as he sighed.
‘We’ve lost time,’ he replied, holding out his hand as I stood. His arms reached around me, skimming down the curve of my spine, running softly to my behind where he squeezed me gently, holding me in his hands, breathing me in like a starved man. He sighed, his fingers circling and teasing. The familiar ache returned like tortuous bliss because I knew he had to go. ‘Spend the day with me Saturday. I’ll show you everything.’
‘What you do best?’ I replied, as he held me close, stroking me, loving me. Reconnecting.
‘What I do best.’ He promised.
C
hapter 9
‘Are you ready?’
He held out his hand and I slid mine into it, catching my breath as I felt a rush of happiness at the contact. I nodded and giggled like a child, reacting to the feeling that was overwhelming me.
‘Where are we going?’
‘A day in the life of me,’ he replied, smirking. His dimples were deep today, matching my need for him. He was intoxicating and I wanted more with every day that passed. ‘We’re going to start with this.’ He held out his arms as I looked across to a doorway to what looked like an old newsagent.
‘You have a stripping job here?’ I asked, unsure of where we were and what we were going to do.
‘No!,’ he laughed. ‘I start every Saturday with a yoga class.’
‘Oh! OK.’ I looked down at my skinny jeans and heels. Not the most sensible yoga workout gear. ‘I wish you’d have told me to wear something more comfortable.’
‘All sorted,’ he said, handing me a bag. I peeked inside and found grey yoga pants and a black vest top. ‘I realised on my way to meet you that I hadn’t asked you to bring anything, so I stopped off to get these.’
I smiled at how swoony that was, but when I saw how tight they were, I had to wonder if he really thought of everything or just wanted to check out my bum. It was a favourite part of his. I still remember the sting of his bite after a particularly fast and frantic session of doggy style.
‘You ever done yoga?’
‘A couple of times. I’m more into spin. I like the fast pace and sweaty aftermath,’ I replied.
‘Takes me back,’ he grinned as I playfully slapped him on the arm.
Holy wet patch. How am I going to get through this day without mounting him?
‘I’ve never done this class before but I’ve always wanted to. It’s called Yab-Yum,’ he said.
‘What does that mean?’ I asked, laughing at the name, trying to calm the giddiness.
‘It’s a mixture of partnership yoga and tantric meditation.’
‘Couples yoga?’
‘I guess,’ he shrugged.
Stripped Bare: A Novella Page 6