New Beginnings

by Elle M Thomas

  With a shrug, she answered, “I don't know, but I'd rather be odd and disease free than knocked up and infected.”

  “I assume by your mum's weird take on pregnancy she was young and unmarried when she got pregnant?”

  “Yes. Fifteen.”

  “And your dad?” asked Gray topping their wine glasses up.

  “Dunno.”

  “What do you mean, dunno?” He was confused. Even if he wasn’t around, she must know who her father was.

  “Well,” she started as she sat up and took a gulp of the red wine they’d almost finished now. “This is smooth,” she said holding her wine glass aloft making him smile as she continued discussing her parentage. “On my birth certificate where it says father's name there is just one word, unknown,” she revealed to a stunned Gray.

  “Unknown?”

  “Apparently so, but I was never convinced. When I was about ten and she was between husbands I became a little obsessed about the whole who is my dad thing and I got the distinct feeling that she knew, but she maintained and still does that she met him, shagged him and I am the result. I begged for a name and she gave me John, Jim, Jason, Justin, or maybe it didn't start with a J.”

  “Shit, that is terrible, Eve. What about hereditary stuff you might need to know? Are you okay with not knowing him?” Gray wondered how Eve was so level-headed and took all of this in her stride.

  “I just declare hereditary stuff unknown, like him, and I have to be okay with it. I don't have a choice, do I? Although.” She began to laugh. “When Max and I returned from The Maldives with our wedding certificate we had to go and register it with a local registry office and to make Annette feel less left out he invited her along. We took the paperwork from the wedding and our birth certificates and she saw mine that had unknown down for father and she actually tried to cover it up so that the registrar wouldn't see. I then endured an hour of questions on how could you not know who had fathered your child. I told her to ask my mum, which was my second choice of things to say behind piss off,” Eve told him looking sad again. “She was right yesterday. I would never have been good enough for Max, not in her eyes.”

  “Stop fucking swearing.” he exclaimed, making Eve smile before he said, “I don't have children so I can't pretend to understand how it feels to love that unconditional love parents are supposed to feel, but she takes it to a whole new level, doesn't she?”

  “Yes. She has turned Max into more of a saint in death than she did in life, which took some doing, but she's managed it.”

  “Tell me about your mum?” asked Gray genuinely interested.

  “Pfff, where to start. Well, she was pregnant at fifteen and a mother at sixteen,” said Eve with a raised brow and wry smile. “She is a bit mad really. She is permanently looking for the next thing that will make her life complete and of course allow her to reach the potential I deprived her of. Her parents weren't particularly well off, but loved her and supported her, even with me in tow, but it wasn't enough, she was always destined for bigger and better. She'd love you with your penthouse apartment, flash car and own business, but not for me. She'd steer me clear because I would then have the potential to achieve her dreams and deprive her of them, again. She decided that sex was the way to entice rich men who would provide for her and husband number one was someone she met when she was a dancer.” Eve paused to sit up and drink more wine leaving Gray with an opportunity to speak.

  “She was a dancer?” he asked empathising with her plight as a dancer with a young child. Not that he could excuse her lack of maternal instinct for Eve, but she was only a kid herself really, a kid who had nobody there for her, no boyfriend or husband.

  “Mmm, of the exotic variety,” Eve explained making Gray frown at her. “She used to dance in this club, at night mainly, and I would stay with my grandparents, but sometimes she'd do afternoons and take me with her. I'd sit in her dressing room with crisps and pop while I waited. I say her dressing room, but she shared it with the other dancers who were always nice to me and would put make-up on me and spray their perfume so I smelled nice, especially Gloria who had the best shoe collection I have ever seen. I think that's where I got a thing for shoes from.” She smiled with fondness.

  “Thank you, Gloria,” toasted Gray with the remaining wine in his glass making Eve laugh as she thought about Gray’s love of her ‘come fuck me’ shoes.

  “But sometimes I would watch her dance from the wings. Jeez the things my mother could do with a feather boa were second to none. Noddy, not his real name was the manager and soon he and my mum were seeing each other, and he became stepdad number one. He had a detached house near the seafront and my mum thought she’d made it; he gave her money and she didn't dance anymore, except for a couple of 'special' customers, by special I mean richer than Noddy. They would come to the house when he was at the club. Like I say she is always looking for bigger and better and men were no different so when Noddy came home and found her 'dancing' he threw her out, and me, obviously. So, we moved back in with my grandparents who lived a little further inland from the seafront.”

  “Bloody hell, baby. I can understand her wanting a life, but you were a child, surely she knew she owed you stability.”

  “I have long since given up trying to figure out what my mother did and didn’t know. Husband number two was the recently widowed newsagent she'd known all her life,” mimicked Eve. “He was in his fifties by then and she was early twenties and when she shagged his son who she'd gone to school with, well we moved back in with my nan and granddad again. This is how it went, and it was never her fault, it was usually mine because she did it all for me and made all the sacrifices for me,” Eve said mimicking again. “When she took me to the dentist when I was about seven the new dentist there was Grant, husband number three and he adored her and me. I really think she loved him, but he was a drinker and a gambler so when he lost the house on the turn of a card, she was not happy.” Eve laughed. “I remember I was about ten and she was telling him that if it was just the two of them they could build everything back up, but she had me and although I was a burden to her it would be expected that she put me first and as my grandparents had refused several times to let me live with them full time without her she was obliged to take care of me.”

  “What?” asked Gray, stunned. Disbelieving this woman, Eve's mother, but the fact that when she told him the details there was no anger, no bitterness, just acceptance, he sort of envied her that, at the same time as being frustrated by it.

  Eve watched Gray’s expression flit between confusion, annoyance and then back to confusion. She understood his conflicting emotions because she often shared them, less so now. She had accepted her mother and her less than maternal traits years ago. She loved her because she was kind of duty bound to and in some ways she believed her mother herself truly believed her own words and thoughts. She briefly thought about Sam and her desperate desire to be a mother and realised that some people were just not suited to parenthood and her mother was probably one of those.

  “What happened, after the dentist?” Gray asked, with a small smile that this man’s influence was still present in Eve the grown-up with her tooth brushing and oral hygiene obsession.

  “Back we went again. I was older so she began to talk to me as an equal of sorts and would share the details of her latest crisis or dilemma, but I soon learnt not to offer any advice or opinions because they were not wanted and then she would point out that it was all my fault and she'd churn out the usual crap of me being ungrateful and she hoped I would end up just like her, which is what I meant when I said she had instilled in me the need not to get knocked up. I never wanted to be like her. It was around this time that I started asking about my dad. She had a couple of years minus a husband after Grant and when I was fifteen she met a cabaret singer and he got a job on the cruise ships and he got her a job too. I was about three months off my sixteenth birthday when she left and I moved in with my grandparents after she told me that the lease on
the flat we were living in wouldn't be renewed and I was old enough to take care of myself, like she had, blah blah. She sent me a postcard when I was seventeen with the news she'd married again.”

  Gray was staring again, he could feel his eyeballs drying out that any mother would behave in this way, although when he thought of his own mother…

  “Finally,” continued Eve, missing Gray’s sad expression. “After I met Max she was divorced and single again and turned up at a party Sally and I were throwing and after trying it on with Max, Alan, oh, and then Max's immediate boss she left and it was another year before she turned up with Joe, husband number five who was, still is a scrap metal dealer and seriously loaded.”

  “You liked him?” Gray asked as he took in the smile and a look of warmth on Eve’s face when she’d spoken about Joe.

  “He was nice. When Max was ill, they came to see me, and Joe was brilliant. He left me a cheque for twenty thousand pounds, just in case we needed it, we never did and I returned it on the day of Max's funeral which is when my mother decided to sob uncontrollably because her marriage was on the rocks. I did get a bit cross with her at that point, especially as the reason it was on the rocks was because she was refusing to have Joe's kids stay over at their house, no, mansion, because she had sacrificed enough of her life for me without doing it for other people's children. She actually said to Joe at Max's wake, it's them or me and when he said he wouldn't choose and that she should think twice before asking him to he turned it on its head and rhetorically asked her to choose between me and him. She immediately said, you, Joe, every time you and I think he knew then that she was not the woman for him. I started crying, not because of her and Joe, but because she’d hijacked my husband's funeral like she'd hijacked every occasion that was not about her and made it about her and I thought that just for once I could be first, her priority. She shouted at me for being so selfish and wallowing in self-pity when she was in pain and suffering. I tried to say that I was suffering too, and she actually said, you knew this was coming you should have prepared for it. This is so typical you Evelyn, self, self, self. What about me and the sacrifices I've made? Sally appeared at that point and took my mum for a walk and a bollocking and I haven't seen her since. I do get an occasional text though.”

  Gray stared wide mouthed and eyed, “Fucking hell Eve!”

  “What? She was apathetic, a bit neglectful, selfish, no more than that, not really and I'm okay, and she is what she is and is unlikely to change so I can either get stressed, upset about that or I can accept it. I accept it.” Eager to change topic, she asked, “What about your parents? I assume you know both of yours.” She giggled, further proving that she really did accept her own parentage.

  “You really are amazing,” he said and meant it. Who would know the things she'd been through, endured? He could never have guessed any of it when he first met her. Yet here she was; when she walked, she held her head high, she didn’t let life keep her down and it really had tried, yet she refused to be kept down by anything or anyone. She really was amazing, and she was his.

  Smiling, Gray was suddenly crawling up the sofa until he was over her and leaning in to kiss her.

  “Hey, maybe I'm not that kind of girl.” She pushed against his shoulders.

  “Ah, maybe not, but I really, really like you,” he told her, playing the game now.

  “But, but...” she said nervously as she troubled her lower lip with her top teeth and lowered her gaze before coyly looking up from beneath her lashes. “It's just that I've never done this before,” she told him convincingly and turned her head to the side where he caught it and turned her face back to his.

  “You are far too good at this, baby. So convincing that we need to pursue this.” He grinned, dipping his head briefly to kiss her on the lips before pulling back from her, but found himself wrapped in her legs that were pulling him back to her. “You know that part where I force your thighs apart and rip your knickers off to fuck you may be compromised with your legs wrapped round me,” he said as a hand slipped beneath her dress and rested on her bare thigh.

  “Kiss me,” she asked. “Please.”

  “Have you brushed your teeth?” Gray asked mocking her.

  Smacking his shoulder gently she laughed with him now until his mouth found hers and suddenly the atmosphere changed to a more serious one. One where his hands were in her hair, holding her head steady, allowing him to be totally in control of their kiss, of her. Her hands snaked up into his hair where she held him as close to her as he held her to him, inhaling him and tasting him, a mixture of chocolate and red wine along with shower gel, after shave and fresh perspiration filled her senses, arousing them all, arousing her. She was unsure how it happened but as he continued to kiss her, to lick and stroke her mouth he had pulled her hands from his hair and had them pinned down above her head, both of her wrists in one of his hands.

  Breathless and dazed she gazed up at him longingly but said nothing. He looked down at her and smiled a self-satisfied smile as he proudly viewed her red, swollen lips caused by kissing, his kissing. Her chest was as swollen as her lips and those tight, hard points that were pressing through the fabric of her dress. Unencumbered by a bra they were screaming to him, so loud that he couldn't think of anything else; licking them, sucking them, swirling the tip of his tongue around them and flicking them, gently at first to torment her and then harder before nipping them between his teeth until she begged him to bite them harder. With the hand that was still holding her head steady he pulled on one of the cords at the back of her neck before exposing her breasts with a tug of the elasticated fabric. He was beyond proud of himself as the gathered fabric sat beneath her breasts and forced them upwards showing them off perfectly. The patio doors were open and allowed a sudden breeze to wash across her naked chest and hardened her rosy nipples further.

  “I'm going to have to suck on these, baby,” he told her hoarsely as he traced the pad of a finger across each nipple.

  Her low moan broke the silence and smiling he dragged a nail back across them.

  “Grayson,” she called, needing more.

  “Ssh. I'm going to suck them, Evie. Then I think I might have to pinch them a little, and hold them between my teeth and then I'll bite them Eve and then I will do it again and again and again until you're coming baby, for me, only me,” he told her darkly.

  Eve couldn't believe just how turned on she was already and if her thighs weren't spread and wrapped around him, she knew she'd be pressing them together, attempting to gain some relief.

  Gray's erection was pushing against her damp, no, wet underwear now and as he pressed it into her deliberately her legs tightened around him.

  “Then,” he said, picking up where he'd left off previously, “I will have no choice but to come across your tits again. God!” he groaned. “That was so good last time, Evie, but this time I think I may fuck your tits, would you like that?” He tightened his grip on her wrists and pressed his body against hers more firmly to prevent her from continuing to squirm beneath him.

  “Please!” she cried. If he didn't do something soon, she may cry real tears. Tears of need and frustration.

  “Welcome to date night, baby!” He grinned before lowering his head to her breasts where in a haze of lights, stars and expletives she knew this was going to be the best date of her life.

  Chapter 17

  Eve woke in Gray's bed and felt slightly disappointed that he wasn't in it with her until she realised that she was desperate for the toilet and decided that this was the disadvantage of an en-suite bathroom; she didn't want Gray listening to her on the toilet, or worse watching her, although it had been handy last night when they'd showered together after getting hot and sweaty and in her case covered in semen. She scurried off to the bathroom and after relieving herself in peace, alone, she brushed her teeth and hair before noticing the marks all over her breasts, bruises, teeth marks and bloody love bites covered them. How old was she? Fifteen? Love bites at almost
twenty-seven-years old.

  Laughing and blushing at her reflection she called to herself, “Slapper!”

  Returning to the bedroom, she threw on Gray's discarded stripy t-shirt from the previous night and put on a pair of pants, clean ones, before heading downstairs to find him.

  “Hey, Skip,” she called brightly as she entered the kitchen and found Gray boiling the kettle.

  “Hey, yourself.” He turned, smiling. “Did you sleep okay?” He grabbed a second cup for her.

  “Hmmm, eventually,” she replied with the hint of a blush. “Your bed is very comfy if a little empty this morning.”

  “I woke early, you were sleeping and looking far too gorgeous so I decided I should get up,” he told her seriously as the kettle boiled. “Nice t-shirt.”

  She smiled down at her own appearance. “Well, I needed something a little more conservative today to cover up my war wounds from last night.”

  “What? What war wounds?” asked Gray with a frown as he returned the kettle after filling the cups.

  Eve laughed, despite how ridiculous it sounded that he hadn't realised just how roughly he'd treated her or how he'd marked her any more than she had until faced with the evidence in the mirror this morning.

  “You, Mr Sharp appear to have been a little too enthusiastic with your mouth last night.” She spoke as if chiding him whilst lifting his t-shirt to reveal her bruised and blemished body to him.

  “Shit, Eve! I am so sorry.” He reached out towards the marks but stopped short of touching them. “I may have gotten a little carried away,” he admitted running a hand through his hair nervously, guiltily. “You should have said,” he told her but without accusation.

  “I didn't realise until this morning when I saw them in the mirror and I liked you getting carried away, don't you remember?” she asked grinning. “I thought I'd made it perfectly clear how much I enjoyed your enthusiasm.” She meant every word and accepted the cup he offered her. “I may need to consider my wardrobe choices after a night with you and your enthusiasm though.”