And yet somehow I find myself answering him anyway.
‘Yeah, oh yeah it’s so good. Make me come, baby. Oh please, please,’ I say, as though I’ve become a babbling maniac version of myself. I can’t think, I can’t breathe, I can’t make proper sentences about normal things.
I’m just pure feeling for a long moment – like a held note before the rest of the song can continue. And when it does, when it sings out inside me in low, pulsing waves, I do something bad.
I tell him I adore him oh how I adore him, as he follows me down, down into oblivion.
Chapter Fourteen
I get a little deeper glimpse into him later on, courtesy of the pictures that are all over the walls of the narrow hallways in this place. Unlike my own home there’s evidence of him just about everywhere here – some of it neat and tidy, like the bathroom and the kitchen. Some of it sloppy, like in the magazine-littered living room.
As though he’s managed to get about half of himself in order, but the other half is still spilling out all over the place. It’s spilling out in the pictures of him, stood next to an elderly gentleman outside this very house. The older man is neat and tidy, and so sour-looking he can’t be anyone but the legendary cane-poking grandfather.
God only knows what such a miserable old man thought of the boy stood beside him, because in all my days I’ve never seen such a chubby, ridiculous-looking kid. His hair’s too long and his grin’s too big, and of all things he’s got a skateboard under his arm.
It’s a wonder his grandfather didn’t kill him during one of these inexplicable holidays – though when you know Ben you don’t really need the in on that word. It’s entirely explicable.
He’s just a lovely, lovely person, who manages to find some good in everyone.
Even me.
Because let’s be honest here: I don’t think I have any family pictures in which I am smiling. In fact, I don’t think I have any family pictures full stop. I didn’t have the kind of life that’s revealed in the third photograph on the left, in which he’s stood with his handsome and obviously proud father on some beach somewhere, in what is likely Hawaii. I didn’t have a grandfather that I gradually won over with my slow-dripping love. I didn’t have any of those things.
In truth, the only person who’s ever really been kind to me is the one who’s smiling out at the world, from those pictures.
Which is a bit too overwhelming a thought to be having at six o’clock on a Saturday morning, while wearing a gargantuan T-shirt of his with the Sprite logo on the front. I feel like a skulking, pathetic fraud in the house that his love built, and so make my way to the kitchen.
The kitchen will be safer, I reckon. In there he’s just got a fridge full of bizarre American food and a pinned note on the front of said appliance: get stuff E.H. can actually eat.
Which makes the tone I’ve suddenly found myself in somewhat lighter, I have to say. By the time I’ve snooped my way back into the living room, I’m almost feeling good again. He called me E.H. He had plans, to bring me here and maybe cook me an appalling dinner of things he only thinks I like.
He’s perfection.
Or at least, I think so until I see the pile of papers on his coffee table. Just like at the office, I think – his desk at work is still covered in mounds and mounds of God only knows what, and apparently it’s starting to spread to his home.
I see contracts that should have been forwarded. A memo from someone about something, that he probably hasn’t paid any attention to, and then finally, finally …
There’s a letter. There’s a letter, with Woods’ handwriting on the back of it.
Of course, I realise at this point that I could be wrong. I can only see a tiny corner of it peeping out, from between one massive pile of shit and another massive pile of bollocks. But even so, I’m pretty sure I recognise that E of his.
Like a backwards three, I think, and then I do something I’m not entirely proud of. I mean, this is Ben’s stack of papers. Most of it might not even be office work – it could be his private stash of secret love letters from Gregory Woods, for all I know.
Or it could be that I’m looking at a letter to me. Eleanor, it says on the back, even though I don’t want it to. I try to will it into saying something else, and then when I’ve managed to draw out the obviously read piece of paper inside, I will it even harder.
My stomach turns over, somewhere too low down inside me; my heart attempts a three-hundred-metre dash; my brain doesn’t want to process the single typed line right in the middle of this single, solitary page.
I’m sorry that I’m this way, it says.
And it still says it five minutes later when I float back into my body, and read it again.
In fact, it still says it when Benjamin comes down the stairs to probably see why I’ve passed out standing up. Though of course the moment he sees me with this … this thing in my hand, he has some rather illuminating points to make.
‘OK, I can totally explain.’
Or maybe not illuminating, exactly. More like something that makes me punch him with my heavy, disbelieving gaze.
‘You can explain why you kept a letter like this from me? A private letter. From Gregory Woods. To me.’
He can tell he’s in trouble here, I think. He doesn’t shrug effortlessly, or smile in that good good way of his. For the first time in the entire length of our ‘relationship’ he looks almost grave.
‘I just … I just didn’t want you to feel like …’ he says, but he’s not talking fast enough. He’s not. I have to grind words out from between gritted teeth to make him go faster.
‘Like what?’ I demand, which seems to work.
He barks out something almost immediately after, at least.
‘Ashamed! That’s what that letter is – shame.’
And oh God, he sounds so fierce when he does it. So disgusted somehow, as though the very worst thing he can imagine is that this feeling that’s starting to rise up inside me – this panic, that I’ve done the wrong thing all along, and just didn’t know it without this fucking letter – should put a stop to all of the blissful things we’ve done together.
That it should make me say what I then do.
‘And you think I shouldn’t be? You know, I was his subordinate. You’re my subordinate.’
He rolls his eyes, but that just makes things worse. Now my panic is like a tidal wave, and pretty soon it’s going to crush me.
‘So that somehow makes me something other than a consenting adult,’ he says, while I fumble for how I’m supposed to be feeling about this.
‘Yes. No – it just …’ I try, but I’m not really getting anywhere. I can’t say yes and no at the same time, and the word just isn’t helping matters at all. Plus, I kind of wring my hands afterwards, which is definitely the wrong thing to do.
It makes his face kind of sink, and then he delivers this doozy: ‘Don’t use this as an excuse to run away.’
I flick my gaze up to him, and when I do I see myself reflected in his eyes. Not strong and powerful at all, but nervy. Ready to bolt at a moment’s notice, because apparently real life is just too damned hard for me.
It’s an ugly image, and one I try to refute.
‘You think that’s what I’m going to do?’
Though let’s be honest, here. I don’t exactly succeed – and he seems to think so too. What other explanation is there for what he says to me next?
‘You did it to Woods.’
I think my face sinks then. Is that really what he thinks? That I abandoned Woods in some kind of conflicted time of need, instead of what actually happened?
‘He left me,’ I tell him, but I’m aware of how over-adamant my voice sounds. It’s like I’m hammering up a sign with the words painted on them in bold black lettering: I AM NOT GUILTY, YOUR HONOUR.
‘Did he?’ Ben says, but I can hardly blame him for that now. I’m the one running the campaign entitled ‘No Honestly, She’s Really Innocent’. He’s just
being rational about things, even if those things sting like a bastard – and his next words are a prime example of this. ‘Once he was out of there you didn’t try very hard to find out what happened.’
God, I wish he didn’t sound so kindly while saying these things. It’s like he really is Dr Phil, and I’m his hysterical guest.
‘Because you hid this from me!’ I cry, while actually waving the thing aloft. Any second now the audience are going to start chanting, at which point I’m going to have to change the channel. I need to change it now, before we’ve gotten to the meat of the matter.
Which he then supplies.
‘And what would you have done if I hadn’t? Would you have called him? Gone to see him?’
Oh it’s bitterly unfair for him to say these things to me – especially when my strongest urge is to blurt out something absolutely awful, like: he never meant what you do, to me. He never meant anything to me, oh God, I didn’t love him.
But I love you. I love you.
And the worst thing about it is: this is the first time I realise how much I do. Right here, in the middle of the only argument we’ve really had. In fact, I’m not sure if it qualifies as an argument, because at the end of it he says something that almost makes me swoon.
‘I’m not like he is, you know,’ he tells me, but that isn’t the part that stirs my cold, dead heart. It’s the words he follows it up with a second later, as though it barely takes him anything to let them out: ‘So if you want to run, run. I won’t sit on the side-lines and wait for you to slip away, like you never existed.’ He pauses, thickly. Takes a second, in a way I can understand. ‘I’ll fight for you, El. I’ll always fight for you.’
Funny, really, that the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard anyone say makes me sob, once I’m safe in the back of a taxi.
* * *
I don’t think I expected him to look any different, exactly, and yet it’s a shock when he doesn’t. It’s 11:35 on a Sunday morning, but he’s still in his immaculate suit, with his immaculately polished shoes, sat immaculately, on his immaculate leather sofa.
In fact, this whole room seems like it’s made out of leather – though taking that notion in only makes me realise how weird it is that I’ve never been in his apartment before.
We did all of that kinky stuff together, and I never even knew he had a gigantic stag’s head on one of his walls. Though I’ll confess: it might have made me think twice about a lot of things if I had.
The whole place is just so … clichéd. He’s a cliché. The first thing he did after he’d opened the door to me was pour himself Scotch, but I suppose it’s kind of funny, now, to see him do it. Instead of other things reminding me of Woods, Woods reminds me of other things.
I think of Aidan, and then of course I think of my Ben.
Ben would never swill Scotch before midday. In truth I’m not even sure if Ben drinks at all, which somehow makes Gregory look even sadder.
‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’ he asks, once I’m settled in the armchair opposite him. Though I’ll be honest, the word ‘settled’ is overstating it somewhat. I just sort of perch on the edge of the cushion and hope for the best.
‘I recently received a rather interesting letter,’ I say, but the funniest thing happens when I do. I get the urge to laugh, because really – I even start to sound like him, in his presence. There’s no easy back and forth like there so often is with Ben. I have to hedge around the subject with lots of rathers and recentlys before finally coming to my point.
‘From you.’
His expression doesn’t change, once everything is on the table. I don’t know why I expected it to.
‘Ah yes,’ he says, like he’s considering a particularly interesting crumb, that’s somehow found its way onto his tie. ‘I’m assuming that young fellow didn’t actually give it to you.’
‘He didn’t.’
‘And now I suppose it’s too late for it to have any sort of impact on you whatsoever.’
My breath catches in my throat, but I plunge on regardless. You have to catch him quick, that’s the thing. You have to grab his tail and hang on, before he slithers away.
‘Is that what you wanted? Impact?’
He regards me coolly, which somewhat lessens the power of what he says next.
‘I wanted to offer you an apology.’
In fact, once he’s said it I find myself snorting with something like derision.
‘Is that what you think that was? An apology? You weren’t sorry about anything other than how you felt about yourself,’ I say, and this time I get a reaction. It’s not a big one – just a flicker of one eyelid, a smoothing of a non-existent crease in his trousers – but on Gregory, it looks immense.
He really is ashamed, I think, and it makes him pitiful.
‘And you think I should have been? I should have been remorseful for giving you exactly what you wanted?’
Suddenly I understand how Ben felt when for one brief moment I agreed with what the letter said. Fierceness just blooms through me, and it comes out in my words.
‘No, Greg,’ I spit, and oh I’d be lying if I said that using his first name doesn’t thrill me. I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t sound awesome when I let it out in that contemptuous, patronising manner. It’s like sticking my finger in a wound somewhere on him, and I cap it off with words I’ve been longing to say since for ever.
‘You should be sorry for just walking away without a word.’
But of course, no real explanation comes.
‘I had an opportunity somewhere else, and felt it best to make a clean break,’ he says, which just about sums him up.
Silence, cryptic notes, and self-service.
‘You know, Greg,’ I start, and this time I actually see him wince, on that use of his first name. It’s satisfying in a way it probably shouldn’t be, but what the hell – he tried to leave me mired in shame-filled confusion for absolutely fucking nothing. ‘I kind of suspected that it was you holding me back all of this time. Your example that made me this way. But now that I’m here, looking at you …’
I shake my head before I can continue, and when I do I think some of the bitterness drains out of me. You can’t be bitter in the face of this – it’s too sad. He’s too sad, somehow, in a way that makes me realise something heartening.
I’ll never be like him, because I actually do know myself. I know myself so well that I have no problems laying it all out for him.
‘It wasn’t you at all. It’s been me, right from the start. I’m the one who wanted those games, I’m the one who cut you off, like a limb I didn’t need any more. And I’m the one who’s pushing away a man who’s worth a thousand of you, for no reason at all.’
Now those grey eyes regard me with something that could almost be emotion, though I can’t read it exactly. If I had to guess I’d say it was amused wistfulness, but reasonably it could be anything.
‘And is it working?’ he asks, finally, softly.
‘Is what working?’
‘The pushing away.’
The rest of my bitterness goes with those words. It can’t possibly stay when he’s looking at me with actual gentleness, and the answer is rising up inside me like the crescendo at the end of a long piece of music.
‘No,’ I tell him, and he nods, as though that’s how things should be.
‘It’s different when you care for someone, isn’t it?’ he asks. ‘Unfortunately, I just don’t have that in me. Whereas you, Eleanor, you … well. You’re filled with all the love in the world, and just waiting for the right person to coax it out.’
Is it weird that I have to hold back tears, then? I didn’t expect to be upset – I expected to be angry. Though I suppose all of this crying is something of a recurring theme lately.
‘You’re wrong,’ I tell him, though I only do so because I suspect the opposite. I’ve known it for some time, but it’s crashing hard over me now – that knowledge of how easy it could be, oh so easy. ‘I can’t
even say the words.’
At which he laughs in a way I don’t think I’ve ever heard before, and raises his glass to me, his once-was-protégé.
‘Put it in a letter,’ he says.
Because I guess some things never change.
Chapter Fifteen
I know what his expression means, when he walks into my office. He doesn’t try to hide it – that sweet look of sadness that says he knows which way this is going to go. I’m going to tell him that all of this is over, and then maybe I’m going to take up some ‘other opportunity’, and finally I’m going to be an aloof asshole, in a leather-lined room.
We can’t be a couple, you see. It would never work out with someone like me.
No matter how insistently he stands on his spot with his arms behind his back.
‘I have something for you,’ he says, but he doesn’t step forward to give it to me. Of course he doesn’t. He has to wait until I say it’s all right to move from the position I like him to stand in.
He has to wait for my command, and oh he’s right. It is relaxing to know he’ll always obey me no matter what. I don’t have to worry about him causing a scene or making a fuss. He just waits, and waits, and waits – as patient as the tide – for me to tell him he can leave it on my desk.
And he does.
He lays an envelope down on my desk, and because I’m only looking at him and it out of the corner of my eye I almost imagine it’s the one from Woods. Everything about it looks the same – the crisp paper, the letter E like a backwards number three.
But once I draw it off my desk I can see it’s not. It’s from Ben, and for a moment I’m so convinced it’s going to be another letter littered with mistakes that it almost startles me when it’s not. It’s just one line, typed across the page – perfect down to the last detail.
I’m not sorry that I’m this way, it says, and oh it’s enough. It makes a mockery of those last words Woods gave to me, because of course I know what he meant. He meant to suggest the most impersonal way of communicating, but this …
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