It's Not Me, It's You

by Mhairi McFarlane

  When she did, Adam stopped, pulled back a little, looked into her eyes and moved in to kiss her again, unhurriedly, as if they sat together kissing like this all the time.

  Delia felt as simultaneously terror-struck and turned on as a teenager necking when she was meant to be babysitting. Was this shameless opportunism? Did their friendship mean so little? Did he think he was going to … how dare he … why was she … oh God she was definitely kissing him a bit too enthusiastically to blame him when it stopped …

  Adam broke off again. They gazed at each other, chests rising and falling, breaths coming quite heavily.

  He waved his hand: ‘Or you know, something like that.’

  Delia gasped: ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘I’d reached the point where I couldn’t not do it. Shouldn’t I have?’

  Delia stared at him. He returned her gaze steadily. She was confused and self-conscious rather than offended, but offence was the easier pose to strike.

  ‘You thought you’d have a bash because we’ve established I’m desperate, and you’re a lothario? I thought we were friends.’

  ‘We are. I was hoping we could be more.’

  He was looking at Delia directly, and being braver than her.

  She gulped and tested her reaction to the news that Adam found her attractive.

  ‘I never thought you liked me. Like that?’ she said.

  This was daft, she thought, as soon as she said it. Adam obviously liked her enough, and her body had Thames-at-Millennium fireworks going off inside it.

  Why did she need assurances it wouldn’t spoil the friendship? This was a chance to approach sex the way other people did, ones who hadn’t spent a decade with the same person.

  ‘Seriously? I thought there had been a fair few clues. Like rescuing you from Kurt.’

  ‘I thought you thought it was the right thing to do!’

  ‘Haha. I did. It just so happened it was also what I wanted to do, given the debilitating size of my crush on you.’

  Delia flushed at this. Emma had been right all along?

  She looked at Adam to gauge if he was being truthful. He seemed bashful and even shy in that moment, shirt slightly unbuttoned, hair mussed-up and eyes a little starry with champagne and … desire? The house was quiet, still no sign of Dougie. Delia examined how she felt about how they might spend the next few hours.

  The answer from her body was an emphatic Yes please, do it, and her intellect didn’t seem much at war with it either. Her emotions were running to catch up. God, why bring emotions into it? Why was she second-guessing this? That kiss was incredible. Her emotions asked her to consider if she was going to get hurt.

  Be honest about how much you want, then move on. She’d be naïve to think anything more than a fling was on offer here. He was someone who slept with everyone. But if she was going to conquer the fear-demon of The First One After Paul, Adam could be a classy choice.

  She sat forward and kissed Adam again. He put his hand on the back of her head this time, and deepened it. Delia’s stomach did that up-down swoop you get when you lean back on swings.

  She climbed onto his lap, planting her knees either side of his legs. Who was this person? She liked her.

  ‘Delia,’ Adam said, coming up for air, hands on her waist, minutes later, ‘Delia?’

  ‘What?’ she whispered. Weird how sex moves suddenly necessitated whispering.

  ‘Are you OK with this? You’re sure?’

  She sat back, heels digging in to her thighs, and smiled.

  ‘Is this some sort of arch seducer, pick-up king tactic, getting me to officially say it was my idea? State any objections for the record?’

  ‘No,’ Adam said, gripping her waist more tightly, expression serious. ‘It obviously started as my idea. When I say I like you, I mean I like you a lot. I’d be gutted if you regret this and bolt. I don’t want this now, if now means it won’t happen again. Does that make sense?’

  Actually, it didn’t. Was he spinning her a line to close the deal? Delia was hardly acting like a deal that needed closing. Only, he’d admitted he had a short attention span with women, and what he said he felt at the outset didn’t last. Delia decided she didn’t care. Tonight, she wanted him.

  ‘Listen,’ Adam began, in a low voice. ‘About what I said earlier …’

  ‘Shhh, I feel fine about this. More than fine,’ Delia said, leaning in to kiss again.

  But when things had got heavy enough that Adam made murmured suggestions of going upstairs, she wished her nerve had held, as she blurted: ‘Wait. Can I get drunker first?’

  Adam said: ‘Oh fucking hell, THANKS!’ and they both collapsed in laughter.

  ‘Only because I’m a trifle rusty.’

  ‘Is that your porn-star name?’

  They both laughed until they ached. It helped ease the tension.

  ‘One epidural, coming up,’ Adam said, pushing himself off the couch and heading for the kitchen, and Delia found herself grinning at thin air.

  Adam brought the bottle through to top them up. Their eyes met over the glasses after the first sip, and the champagne was soon ignored in favour of grappling again. Delia found she couldn’t keep her hands, or mouth, off him.

  They barely spoke again, until they were stumbling through his bedroom and Adam whispered something urgently that surprised her.

  ‘Do you really still feel like you belong to Paul?’

  ‘No,’ Delia lied.

  Delia had expended a lot of emotional energy worrying about what if sex with someone else was rubbish. What she hadn’t considered was how disconcerting it would be if it was amazing.

  She and Paul had been pretty good. It had been more solidly enjoyable than thrilling, if she was honest. There was a ‘Get in, get the job done, clear up and get off on time’ attitude to it with him. You’d recommend Paul’s workmanlike, efficient services without qualm. Whereas an Adam performance review would involve giggling, wistful sighing, a foolish smile and pinwheel eyes.

  They were good together. Maybe this is what they mean by chemistry, Delia thought. She’d thought it was a myth.

  She’d expected Adam to feel like Not Paul and the Not Paulness to freak her out, for there to be attacks of dis-orientation or self-recrimination. But they never happened. Although Adam was different – taller, leaner, fairer, more communicative, but less into complaining about being pushed off the bed – he wasn’t unfamiliar.

  ‘You know how you’ve been with loads of people,’ Delia said, as they lay side by side in the afterglow.

  His bedroom was more classic male décor: a pine double bed, dark bedclothes, military-grey carpet, a sink with sparse masculine toiletries, a cork pinboard covered in tickets, postcards and the odd photo of his sister and the fat cat. Delia was glad of the desk lamp with the blue shade that cast subdued light.

  ‘What?’ Adam said, sharply. She glanced over. She thought he’d come back with another quip about being South London’s premier salami salesman, but he didn’t look comfortable at the line of inquiry.

  ‘Is it quite hard not to compare? Compare The Market Dot Com? Do you find yourself thinking “Her hip action reminds me of that bird from Kettering I met in Ibiza in 2006” and so on?’ Delia said.

  Adam abruptly shifted on the pillows to look at her full in the face. He was such a ridiculously handsome creature, he could plausibly audition for James Bond. Only he was scowling as if he was playing a scene where he’d been told that the arms dealer with the iguana on his shoulder had won their deadly game of blackjack.

  ‘Jesus, what a thing to say at this moment. What does that mean? “Did I think of other people while I was with you?” Absolutely not, why would I? Did you think of Paul, with me?’

  ‘No!’ said Delia, quickly, a little stung to have misjudged post-coital chat so badly, when she was congratulating herself that this whole ‘sex with people who aren’t Paul’ thing was like falling off a log.

  ‘You sure?’ Adam said. ‘Funny thing to
ask otherwise.’

  ‘I was making a casual observation about our relative experience,’ Delia said. ‘Never mind.’ It was more than that. She was jealous, it rankled her and she was determined to show that it didn’t.

  ‘Experience isn’t a tally,’ Adam said. ‘I’ve not spent a decade with someone, or proposed to them.’

  Delia thought about this.

  ‘I guess not.’

  ‘I worry about what you think of me. I did say I didn’t see this as scoring?’

  ‘I know,’ Delia said, and shifted her arm so it was draped over his chest. He was serious? She didn’t quite believe it, though she was happy to believe it for now.

  They lay in silence for a while.

  ‘Your hair is incredible,’ Adam said, stroking it as it fanned over the pillow. ‘A red-golden colour you usually only see in paintings.’

  ‘You like it?’

  ‘Why is everything nice always met with surprise, with you?’ Adam said, but warmly this time. ‘You’re beautiful.’

  Delia twanged with pleasure at hearing this: beautiful.

  ‘Not everyone likes ginger nuts,’ she said, then wished she’d used different terminology.

  ‘I’m not sure I’d like ginger nuts,’ Adam said, and they laughed. Adam moved away from her a little, and cast his eyes downward. Delia had crossed the frontier of fear and was now in the previously unknown country of being able to be naked with new person. In the abstract, being naked was a gigantic deal. And yet it turned out that a bra and pants were a fairly small amount of material and could be on or could be off without the sky falling in.

  Their eyes met, in an intoxicated way, and Delia thought she needed to prepare for round two.

  ‘I might use the loo,’ she said, thinking she was glad of the low lighting if she was going to have to get up in front of him. Naked lying down wasn’t the same game as naked walking around.

  She sat up, and at the same time heard the rumble of a voice on the other side of the door saying: ‘Adam?’

  The handle cranked and the door started opening. With ninja-like reactions, Adam flung himself across Delia and pinned her back down on to the bed with the upper half of his body, shouting: ‘Dougie will you please LEARN TO KNOCK!’

  ‘Oh shit, sorry,’ she heard Dougie say. Pause. ‘Is that … Delia?’

  ‘YES IT’S BLOODY DELIA GO AWAY.’

  ‘Hi, Dougie,’ Delia squeaked, muffled, from underneath Adam.

  ‘Hello! You two made up then?’ Dougie sounded piddled.

  ‘No, we’re in the middle of an argument! What the fuck does it look like?!’ Adam spluttered.

  ‘Did I stay out late enough?’

  Delia burst into laughter.

  ‘Not late enough for my liking, no. BYE.’

  The door shut and Adam groaned, ‘Jesus and Joseph,’ moving off Delia so she could breathe again, through her laughter.

  ‘That was very gallant,’ Delia said, pulling the sheets up to her armpits, in case Dougie remembered something else.

  ‘Don’t mention it. I don’t want images of my Delia stored on Dougie’s mental hard drive.’

  My Delia? Her stomach fluttered. What had happened between them, exactly? Much as she wanted to be with Adam, she felt like she needed a very long walk on her own, to start figuring this out. It had moved too fast to land, yet.

  ‘So. What happens next?’ Adam said.

  Delia paused.

  ‘… You know where Dougie won’t be, next weekend?’ Adam continued, sitting up and resting his chin on his hand. ‘Paris.’

  Delia was startled.

  ‘Paris?’ she repeated, dully.

  ‘Yes,’ Adam said, tucking a strand of Delia’s hair behind her ear. ‘Would you like to go?’

  ‘Why?’ Delia said.

  ‘It’d be fun. I’d get to spend whole days and nights with you. And I refer you to my earlier point about Dougie not being there.’

  ‘Have you been there before?’

  ‘Yeah, my dad lives in France,’ Adam paused. ‘I haven’t been there with another woman, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘It’s not that …’ Delia said. ‘It’s a nice idea.’

  Adam smiled, a little sadly. ‘Not sensing a whole heap of enthusiasm, if I’m honest.’

  ‘No! It would be great … but Celine wanted to go there for a “make or break” weekend with Paul, that’s all. Strange associations.’

  Adam slumped back on the pillows, and fell silent.

  ‘You know what I would like to do? A weekend in London,’ Delia said.

  Adam squinted.

  ‘Show me all your favourite places here. Give me a tour. We can stay in a hotel. A Dougie-less hotel?’

  ‘That could work. We can start with a date? I know a very nice French restaurant where the maître d’ owes me a favour.’

  ‘Oh aye?’

  ‘MALE maître d’!’

  ‘Oh aye!’

  Adam mock-huffed and she kissed his cheek and said it sounded lovely.

  Downstairs, the television suddenly blared out and Dougie could be heard mumbling: ‘Rhodesia! Zimbabwe! It’s Zimbabwe!’

  ‘Oh, no. He’s on those quiz chat lines where a woman in hotpants gets you to call a premium-rate number again. His bank statement is like a list of indictable offences.’

  ‘I can’t believe you told him I had big norks, by the way. When I came round that time, and Dougie wouldn’t let me in. You’d given him my vital statistics?’

  ‘I had to think of characteristics that would stand out for Dougie. Personally, I’ve been far too busy concentrating on your personality to ponder your norks. The bigness or otherwise of them is neither here nor there, to me.’

  Delia wiggled the sheet down.

  ‘They’re here.’

  ‘… Oh yeah. Hadn’t noticed.’

  Adam lunged and Round Two kicked off, punctuated by an offstage scream of: ‘CALCIUM CARBONATE!’

  Delia flew back in the door, dying to tell Emma, in broadbrush outline terms, of the vigorous ransacking she’d had and thorough plundering she’d done the night before.

  She was aglow, exhilarated. She felt as if she was soft clay and she could still see Adam’s fingerprints on her. They’d barely slept and she was on an adrenaline high. Could this be the start of …? She didn’t know. She was in the air, flying, suspended between one place and another. What had Adam said – ‘neither here nor there’? That described Delia’s state perfectly.

  Surprisingly, Emma wore a look of consternation rather than anticipation of Delia’s tale of having been out all night. She was emphatically shaking her head and making ‘fingertip across neck’ slashing gestures.

  ‘I called you and left a message, didn’t you get it?’ she said in a high, brittle voice.

  Delia frowned. ‘Oh. I haven’t looked at my phone.’

  She’d been on the Tube wearing a sappy happy face, blasting music on her iPod and grinning loopily at strangers. She slipped it out of her pocket now and saw she had many missed calls, an answerphone symbol and three unread texts.

  ‘I’ve been at Adam’s,’ she said, knowing this was somehow the thing Emma didn’t want her to say and yet not able to stop herself.

  Emma did a ‘pulling rope knot tight at side of neck and tongue lolling out’ gesture.

  ‘Paul’s here to see you,’ she added, in a More Tea, Vicar? sprightly way.

  Paul appeared in the sitting-room doorway, hands shoved in pockets.

  Delia and he eyed each other, equally surprised and wary. His gaze travelled over her dress and low heels and pale, slept-in, semi-made-up face. She took in his unusually smart attire, new dark blue jumper, jeans. Even the flashes of white on the Gazelles were Tippex-bright, not puddle grey.

  ‘I’m going to leave you two to it!’ Emma said, bustling around and grabbing her handbag.

  Delia was going to reflex-reply: ‘You don’t have to,’ but that was plainly quite silly and she couldn’t think of anything else to say
in the seconds it took for Emma to gather herself to depart.

  ‘Thanks, Bez,’ Paul said and she trilled ‘no problem!’ as she clattered away down the stairs. Bez, he was back to Bezzing her? It was Paul’s nickname for her, based on Berry, and showed he’d been sat on her sofa for longer than five minutes. Paul was a big one for nicknames.

  Once they were alone, a chilly silence settled over the pair of them like a fine layer of snow.

  ‘So,’ Paul said, eventually, and Delia could see he was shocked and hurt at her dirty stop-out status, yet trying to stay level. ‘Who’s Adam?’

  ‘A friend,’ Delia said. Why did she feel guilty? She had no reason to feel guilty.

  Another pause.

  Delia had wanted to know everything when Paul had been with someone else. Although Paul didn’t have the same rights to interrogate her, Delia felt he wouldn’t want to know even if he did. He grimaced. A moment passed and he said:

  ‘Sorry for landing on you like this. Sometimes the phone isn’t showing enough respect, you know?’

  Delia nodded. Also, she’d had a policy of ignoring Paul’s calls, and he’d obviously thought better than to mention this. He must’ve got the red eye to be in London at this hour.

  ‘Can I talk to you?’ he said.

  Delia dropped her bag and followed him to the front room. Sun was streaming in through Emma’s majestic curtains, casting pools of light on the honeyed floorboards. They sat at either ends of the giant L-shaped couch.

  ‘Uhm,’ Paul cleared his throat. ‘I’ve done some thinking since I last saw you. It’s been a quiet house, without you, or the boy …’

  He shared a look with Delia and she shook her head: not now, and Paul nodded back and ploughed on.

  ‘I realised that to have any chance of you forgiving me, you needed to know why I did what I did. I didn’t have an answer for you, because I wouldn’t ask myself what my reasons were. I want to find a better phrase than soul searching, but it’s all I’m coming up with.’

  He gave Delia a wan smile and put his palms together.

  ‘OK. Here goes. When my folks died …’

  Delia stiffened. He better not try for the sympathy vote. He’d irrevocably cheapened that in his lying over the Valentine’s card.