Summer Skin

by Kirsty Eagar

  ‘I didn’t like him,’ Adrian said, with no malice, but also no hesitation. ‘He didn’t bring out the best in Mitch either. But they’d known each other for a long time, and there was the whole rugby side of it, too. You know Mitch plays fly half? Well, Julian played scrum half.’ He noticed Jess’s blank look. ‘You’ve got zero idea, haven’t you?’

  ‘Less than zero. Like, negative one hundred.’

  ‘They’re the two most tactical positions on the team. Together, they control the game—when it works. And it worked with Mitch and Julian. They’d played with each other for a long time. So it was a pretty close relationship. Close, but also competitive and a bit fucked up.’

  Adrian drained his wine glass, picked up the empty bottle and then put it down again. ‘But now,’ he said, grinning at her suddenly, ‘Mitch has you.’ Jess dropped her gaze, chopping the capsicum more violently than was necessary. ‘You do know he’s never had a girlfriend before, right?’ Adrian continued, a teasing note in his voice.

  ‘No wonder, if this is how you were going to carry on.’

  ‘Where is he, anyway? We need more wine. Actually, hang on, I think Dad left some here. You look—it’s in that bottom cupboard on your right.’

  Jess dug around and found two bottles. ‘Shiraz, or cab sav?’

  ‘Fuck it, let’s have both. Knowing him it’ll be the good stuff,’ Adrian said, suddenly looking quite rakish.

  ‘Maybe we can be friends,’ Jess told him with a smile. She opened the shiraz, inhaled the wine’s scent—it was the good stuff—then refilled their glasses. ‘I think you’re burning that veal, by the way.’

  ‘Let it burn,’ Adrian said grandly, holding up his glass. ‘Here’s to you, Jess Gordon. I take back what I said before, about Mitch and his year off—I think you might be the best thing that’s ever happened to him. And you are welcome here anytime.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Jess said, touched to the point of it being painful. ‘Now, stop it.’ They clinked, and she gulped her wine.

  Adrian started to turn the veal, pushing his fringe back again with his arm. ‘You’re a bad influence. He’s been acting like a lovesick dickhead.’

  ‘Here, let me fix that for you,’ Jess said, wanting to distract him because she was starting to feel disloyal to Mitch. She loosened Adrian’s tie, and then repositioned it as a headband. ‘Better?’

  ‘Brilliant. I should wear it like that to work,’ Adrian said, checking his reflection in the oven door. Then he gave a start, saying, ‘Shit!’ And he turned the oven on. ‘Are we a brilliant team in the kitchen or what?’

  Jess laughed, and they clinked glasses again, drank some more.

  Adrian gave her a sharky grin, starting to look a tad inebriated, not least because his teeth stained easily. ‘But back to you—the bad influence. Do you know what I caught him doing the other day?’ Jess shook her head warily, knowing something good was coming by the way his eyebrows twitched. ‘Well, I came home early for once. And you must have been working, because he was home. He was in the shower, right? So he didn’t hear me come in—’

  ‘This isn’t going to be rude, is it?’ Jess interrupted.

  ‘No, no,’ Adrian said with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘He had music on. You know Rhye? The guy that sounds like a girl?’

  ‘I love Rhye!’ Jess cried, and then blinked as she made the connection. ‘Oh, wow, that’s actually really romantic.’

  ‘Yeah, but, listen, listen—’ Adrian stopped for a second, overcome by his whinny laugh. ‘Mitch was singing along.’

  Jess’s eyes widened. ‘No.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Adrian breathed, his eyes as wide as hers. ‘And Mitch can’t sing for shit—sounds like a baby seal being clubbed to death—but believe me, he was putting everything into it. Ooooh! Aaaah!’ Adrian lost it then, dragging Jess along with him for a while.

  ‘But he’s Mr Cool!’ she gasped. ‘Mr Cool does not do such things.’

  ‘Oh fuck, oh fuck.’ Adrian breathed rapidly, his face scrunched up as if he was in pain. He looked like he was giving birth. ‘But it gets better. Because then he just stopped, went quiet, and I got a bit worried—’

  ‘You said this wouldn’t be rude!’

  ‘No, no, stay with me. So I crept up to the bathroom door …’ As Adrian said it, he leaned towards her, looking quite maniacal now, eyes too bright, teeth red.

  ‘And?’ Jess breathed, leaning towards him.

  ‘And I saw …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mitch kissing his own hand.’

  ‘The corner place was closed so I had to go to Ascot.’

  Adrian and Jess froze, staring at each other with horrified faces, then Adrian launched into another round of rapid breathing, and Jess viciously pinched her own skin.

  ‘And they only had one person on the bloody registers because they must think people like standing around in supermarkets all night long.’

  Mitch arrived in the kitchen, thumping his bag of shopping down on the bench, and placing a second bag down more gently. The bottles inside clinked.

  ‘This veal parmigiana better be—’ he stopped short, taking in the mess the kitchen was in, the empty wine bottle on the bench, the two bottles next in queue, Adrian and Jess huddled together near the oven, staring back at him with guilty looks on their faces, wide-eyed, obviously a bit tipsy, Adrian wearing his tie as a headband …

  And Adrian, unable to help himself, snickered.

  Mitch frowned at his watch, and then at Jess. ‘Seriously, you’ve only been here for fifty minutes.’

  CHAPTER 37

  ISLAND

  Mitch entered the kitchen holding a stack of dirty dishes and cutlery. ‘That’s all of it,’ he announced, sliding it onto the bench beside Adrian, who appeared to either be taking part in a washing-up speed trial or just splashing water on the floor. Mitch frowned at him for a second, and then came to stand behind Jess, his hands closing on her hips. He rested his chin on her shoulder while he watched her wipe and polish a wine glass. Then he pressed his lips to her ear and murmured, ‘I’m going for a shower.’

  Jess, getting a wave of goosebumps, gave an involuntary shiver. ‘Okay.’

  He waited, and eventually she looked at him, and when she did she flushed.

  ‘And … do you want to come with me?’ he asked, with a smile and the flicker of a frown.

  ‘Mitch.’ Jess, embarrassed, glanced pointedly at Adrian, who didn’t show any signs of having heard them as he sloshed a long-stemmed and expensive-looking wine glass around in the sink. He was dancing on the spot in a special, jerky, stick-figure kind of way—Du Tonc were playing so loudly that people three blocks away could dance to it, too, if they were so inclined at one in the morning.

  ‘No. He can’t come,’ Mitch told her firmly.

  Jess laughed, but her gaze slid away from his, focusing again on the glass she was wiping. ‘I should help clean up. We can’t just leave it all to him.’

  ‘We can. He fully deserves it,’ Mitch said dryly.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ she assured him. ‘You go.’

  ‘Do you want me to take your bag to the room?’

  ‘No, it’s okay. I’ll get it.’

  Mitch still didn’t move and eventually she glanced at him again. He looked as if he wanted to say something more, but then he just kissed her on the shoulder and left. A moment later the music’s volume dropped dramatically. It brought Adrian out of his inebriated haze.

  ‘Nobody likes a spoilsport, Mitchell,’ he called, his voice a mock whine. ‘We’re the fun ones. You’re the un-fun.’

  Jess grinned, just for a second feeling some residual fizz from their night. She was quiet until she heard the bathroom door close, placing the clean glass on the bench beside the collection of items she’d already wiped. Then she said, shaking her head, ‘I cannot believe you played Rhye.’

  Adrian gave a start, as though he hadn’t realised she was still there. He looked at her, tilting his head back to see her, apparentl
y having some trouble keeping his eyelids up, and retaliated with: ‘I cannot believe you sang along.’

  She rescued the wine glass from his hands. ‘Well, you shouldn’t have kissed your hand,’ she scolded. ‘That was terrible.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have laughed.’

  ‘Poor Mitch.’

  ‘Fuck, don’t worry about it,’ Adrian slurred with an unconcerned wave of his hand, flinging suds everywhere. ‘He secretly loves it when people give it to him. Anyway, he wanted us to get along. He should be glad.’

  ‘I think he is glad,’ Jess said with a smile. But her smile faded quickly, replaced by the breathless anxiety that had started as soon as they’d begun to clear the table. Everything had been amazing all night, and then, for Jess, the weight of the occasion suddenly arrived and steamrolled her. She’d stopped drinking not long after Mitch had arrived back with supplies, but now she almost wished she hadn’t.

  Adrian’s head might have been drooping—lower, lower, lower—but he certainly seemed impervious to doubt and worry. He frowned down at the sink, a toy with flat batteries. Then he plunged his hand into the water and pulled out the plug. ‘Leave this. We’ll do it in the morning.’ He was still wearing her apron and he wiped his hands on it. Then he grabbed the open bottle of wine on the bench by the neck. ‘I’ve got a date with the couch and Billy Bragg.’

  ‘Who’s Billy Bragg?’

  Adrian froze, then looked at her out of the corner of his eye. ‘You’re hurting me, Jess. I thought we had something. Billy Bragg. Singer. Socialist. Music best enjoyed with a bottle of expensive red, courtesy of my father, the dick doctor.’

  ‘Is that irony?’ Jess asked, briefly distracted.

  ‘Probably. Come on, you. Enough man time. You’ve got a boy waiting.’ With that, Adrian lurched out of the kitchen.

  Jess stared after him, all too aware that Mitch was waiting for her; paralysed by the thought, actually. She turned back to the sink, ran more hot water, feeling like a coward and a failure. Only when she’d finished the pile of dishes, leaving them to drain in the rack, did she venture out of the kitchen. By then, the bathroom door was open, a pool of golden light spilling out of Mitch’s room. Adrian had fallen asleep and was snoring soundly, the empty bottle of wine nestled against his chest like a baby. Jess turned off the music, set the heater to low, and left one lamp burning in case he woke later and decided to go to bed. She picked up her bag, feeling her legs turn to water. And then, losing her nerve, she put off the inevitable by deciding to take a shower too.

  When she emerged, a towel wrapped around her, she was greeted by a heavy stillness. Mitch’s bedroom was in darkness, the doorway gaping like a cavity in the white wall of the hall. Jess took a slow breath, exhaled it on an unspoken prayer, but for what, she couldn’t say—some kind of mercy?—then slipped inside, placing her bag on the floor and closing the door softly behind her.

  It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. The curtains were open, the room washed with the otherworldly light of a full moon. Jess could see Mitch’s shape under the covers, the gleam of his blond hair, but not the expression on his face. He was lying on his back, one arm tucked under his head. For an odd moment, they just looked at each other. At least, Jess assumed he was looking at her. Maybe his eyes were closed.

  ‘Mitch?’

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yeah, I … I thought maybe you were asleep.’ She dropped her towel and climbed onto the bed, sliding under the covers, shivering with cold and nerves. Mitch lifted his arm so she could tuck into him, her head resting on his shoulder, and then hugged her tightly. His chest was bare, but he wasn’t, as she’d initially thought, naked: he was wearing a pair of track pants. They were silent for a little while, Jess rubbing her cold feet against his warm ones. That was another thing that Mitch was generous with: his warmth.

  ‘I was starting to feel like you were avoiding me,’ he said.

  ‘I’m just …’ Jess couldn’t even finish the sentence. Her skin felt stretched; her heart beating too hard beneath it. Surely he could feel it? The words came out in a rush: ‘I’m so nervous about this, Mitch. Honestly. I’m dying I’m so nervous.’

  He shifted so he could look at her, and Jess responded very maturely—burying her face in his chest. ‘What are you nervous about?’ he asked.

  ‘You know,’ Jess said, her words muffled.

  She felt his chest rise, fall. Then he kissed her head. ‘We don’t have to do anything,’ he told her, his voice low, reassuring. Jess made a noise like a laugh. ‘We don’t. It doesn’t matter. We said we were taking things slow. We’ve never spent a whole night together before. So that’s still pretty good.’

  ‘But we set it all up.’

  ‘Maybe we shouldn’t have. Too much pressure.’ Mitch paused, and then added, ‘I’m nervous, too, you know.’

  Jess, feeling a little better, a little braver, raised her head to look at him—in the moonlight, close up, their faces were visible to each other, but smudged, softened by shadow; so much easier that way. ‘What are you nervous about? You’ve had heaps of sex.’

  He shook his head and she heard the rasp of his hair on the pillow. ‘Not lately.’

  ‘Don’t say that. Say something nice.’

  ‘Okay. Not like this, then.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  There was thin, reverberating silence; the sort of delicately plucked note that isn’t heard, but felt in the heart.

  ‘With my girlfriend.’

  ‘Oh.’ Jess smiled at Mitch, her eyes burning, just a little. ‘That’s really lovely. I like you calling me that.’

  ‘I mean it.’

  ‘I know you do.’ She kissed his lips softly and then studied him some more. Then she took a noisy breath, released it, and when she spoke, her voice was much less subdued: ‘I’m sorry for wrecking everything. I have, haven’t I? We can’t do it now.’

  ‘Might be a bit hard to make it seem spontaneous,’ Mitch commented, and she giggled. ‘Look, let’s just cuddle. Wake up together.’

  ‘Okay,’ Jess told him, snuggling into him again, feeling weak—not with relief, more from the release of tension. She started to rub her feet against his once more, marvelling that even that simple thing could feel so good. There was something hypnotic about doing it, relaxing. Time drifted and there was only that sound, the soft susurration of skin on skin. But then Jess grew aware that Mitch’s breathing was deeper, slower, and she stopped rubbing abruptly.

  He’s gone to sleep, she thought. Unbelievable. He’s actually gone to sleep.

  Bastard.

  She made a noise in the back of her throat, kicking her legs and rolling on top of him in a quick flick of movement, but she didn’t get a chance to speak. Because Mitch reached for her, one hand pressed to the back of her head, rising up, bringing his mouth to hers. And he kissed her desperately, with more passion than she’d ever been kissed with in her life. She kissed him back with the same lack of restraint, losing herself, and she knew then he hadn’t been going to sleep at all; he’d been waiting and wanting in the dark. But it wasn’t a conscious thought, more a feeling, because that kiss left no room for thinking—it took everything. It went on and on and on, and Jess never wanted to break it, never wanted to stop, her whole body tingling, drunk with feeling, and if Mitch had asked her then, she could have told him honestly it was the best kiss she’d ever had.

  And then Mitch was rolling her off him, his hand still cupping her head, keeping the kiss going even as he attempted to take off his track pants one-handed. There was the snap of elastic and Jess reached for his waistband, suddenly impatient, and he broke away from her, sliding his pants off quickly and kicking them away. He pulled her back on top of him, except that as he did it, she was trying to pull him on top of her, so that for a moment they were nearly wrestling, and they laughed. He succeeded, though, and then, suddenly, they were still.

  Jess looked down at his face; saw he felt it, too. Reverence. The naked length of her pressed ag
ainst the naked length of him. She could feel his erection on her inner thigh, and that seemed beautiful, natural, and made her feel even more close to him.

  ‘Stay there,’ he whispered, and she knew what he meant.

  She widened her legs, straddling him now, reaching down to guide things, leaning forwards at the same time so her lips met his again as he started to push inside her, not kissing now, just pressed there, both of them concentrating on the other pressure. He dipped his hips slightly and then pushed again, small movements, trying to get her to ease for him. Until finally, she moved, bearing down, and when she did, Mitch said her name in a shot of breath, and she gasped, shocked by it, too. The feeling of it was so intense, so much more than pleasure.

  Then slowly, surely, they began to find a rhythm together.

  •

  Afterwards, for a long stretch of time, they didn’t speak at all. Jess lay motionless on top of him, her head turned to the side, feeling the heat trapped in his skin, feeling his lungs working, slowing as he recovered, while he ran his hands over her back in lazy sweeps. Eventually, though, Mitch took a deep breath and exhaled it again, whispering, ‘Jessie, Jessie, Jessie,’ and she raised herself up so they could smile at each other.

  Because after two weeks and five months they had not just had sex for the first time, they had made love. And it had been perfect.

  CHAPTER 38

  MY DELIRIUM

  Jess and Mitch finally emerged late the next morning, their bodies glowing pink and still steaming from a shower together, their eyes smudged by shadows but painfully bright—that special look shared by new mothers and new lovers, after tender, sleepless nights.

  Adrian, by contrast, seemed a little wilted. He was slumped at the dining table, his chin propped on his hand, still in what he’d been wearing the night before, including Jess’s apron, something orange fizzing in the glass on the table in front of him, a pair of sunglasses shielding his eyes. The window framed a ruthlessly beautiful winter’s day. Hell for the hung over. Heaven if you were in love.