Confessions

by Amber Stephens

  Verity ignored him. ‘The film we’re about to watch is called It’s Okay to be Alone.’ She pressed play and went to her seat.

  ‘Being alone isn’t my problem,’ Larry muttered from his seat behind Shelley.

  The film began; it had the feel of one of those dreadful corporate videos you have to watch at company training days. The acting was terrible and the plot involved a woman meeting a moustachioed man at a bar, then agreeing to go home with him before waking up the next day feeling used and guilty.

  Then the narrator popped out and suggested they go back in time and try it again, only this time the woman was to refuse to go with him. All ends happily. Shelley found herself yawning, looking at her watch and cursing Aidan’s name. Verity turned the lights back on. ‘I hope you all enjoyed that, just a bit of fun.’

  ‘It was fun, Verity,’ Cian said. ‘But educative as well.’

  Verity smiled back at him uncertainly, not entirely convinced of his sincerity.

  Immediately after lunch, they re-assembled in the Mounting Room, as everyone now insisted on calling it after Shelley had told them of her mistake over dinner the night before. Verity waited until they were all seated, then began.

  ‘We’ve all had a chance to think and reflect on Rose’s confessional. Let’s hear from another member of the group. Will? Would you like to share the reasons you’re here?’

  Will stood up, thought better of it and sat down again. Then changed his mind again and stood up. He ran his hands through his hair nervously.

  He hasn’t put as much thought into this as Rose, Shelley thought. Out of all of them in the group, Will was the one who seemed most uncomfortable here, herself included.

  ‘Where should I start?’ Will said absently.

  ‘Ahem,’ Verity coughed, meaningfully and gave him a pained look that reminded Shelley of the look her mother had given her once when she’d painted go-faster stripes on the dog.

  ‘Please why don’t you tell us why you cheated on your wife,’ she suggested calmly.

  ‘God,’ said Will. ‘That’s not an easy question to answer.’

  ‘It’s why you’re here,’ Verity said gently.

  Will nodded. His eyes met Shelley’s briefly and she gave him a quick smile and a nod. He clenched his fists and began.

  Chapter Nine

  Okay, so I’m not proud of what I’ve done, but I’m here to tell the whole truth, so I’m going to tell you exactly what I did, who I did it with and how I felt about it at the time. I’ve told my wife a lot of this, but not with the details, you know what I mean? And there are some parts I haven’t told her at all.

  Now the way I see it, men are hunters, right? It’s biological; you can’t do anything about it. It’s not natural for a man to sleep with just one woman. I know that having a bloke about the place is good for a kid when they’re little, but it doesn’t really matter if it’s your real dad. My real dad was never around and it didn’t do me any harm.

  I’ve always liked to get my end away. One girl was never enough. Everyone does it at school, don’t they? It’s just lads, trying to sow their oats, get a bit of a reputation, shag as many as you can and keep score with your mates. You blokes know how it is.

  Where I grew up, in Bradford, everyone lived in terraces, we all knew each other. Fridays and Saturdays you’d go out with your mates and try to score, Wednesday was ladies’ night, when you’d go out with your lass. We all had steady girlfriends, me and my mates, it didn’t mean you couldn’t snog other girls, or shag ’em if they’d let you. The girls were all doing the same on the weekends, they’d go to different pubs in different parts of the city, everyone knew the score.

  I’ve always been confident, so I always got the girls. I never had any problems and my mates used to get me to go over to a group of ladies and get talking to them, then they’d come over once I’d got in there. I got to choose whichever one I wanted as payment.

  My dad left when I was little and Mum worked all hours, so I could usually bring a girl back home with no one bothering us. I lost my virginity on my Captain Caveman duvet cover when I was fifteen. She was a lovely lass, big boned, but still young and firm back then. She’s probably pushed out fifteen kids by now and slack as a wizard’s sleeve, but she felt pretty good to me. She knew what she was doing, older than me you see. She took off her clothes and lay down on the bed, pulling me down on top of her. She kissed me for a bit. My head was full of questions. What do I do next? Can she tell I’m a virgin? What time did Mum say she’d be home? Can you get a girl pregnant by kissing her?

  Then she shoved my head down between her legs. I was so shocked I froze, until she said: ‘Go on then, lick it.’

  I was such an idiot: I licked the hairs at the side.

  ‘Not there you div! Between the lips!’

  Lips? What lips, I thought. But I had a good look and a bit of a feel and saw what she meant. I prised apart her sticky labia and gingerly stuck my tongue in. I expected it to taste disgusting, but it wasn’t at all. Like something alive, do you know what I mean? She wriggled a bit and I stuck my tongue in further; she really liked that so I started licking harder.

  ‘Are you a dog?’ she asked, and showed me where the clitoris was. Once I’d got my head around the idea and my tongue around her clit I sorted her out quite quickly. She spasmed silently, her mouth half open and her eyes fully closed. I remember looking up at her as I lapped away thinking this was pretty cool. She felt her tits as she came, fingering the nipples and pinching a little. I thought that was really sexy, like Kim Basinger in 9½ Weeks.

  Then it was my turn. She laid me back on the bed and got on all fours to one side of me. I stroked between her legs as she wrapped her lips around my cock-shaft. I could hardly believe it was happening as she started sucking me off. I’d never imagined it was going to be this good. I’d heard older boys talking about this at school, using that old chestnut ‘Did she spit or swallow?’, and it had taken me a while even to believe girls were willing to do this at all. Her mouth was hot, not just warm but hot. She gagged a bit as the tip of my penis stroked the back of her throat, but she kept going. She didn’t swallow or spit as it happens, but I hardly noticed. She stroked me off as I shot my load and ended up with a milk glove for her troubles.

  I lay there in a daze while she got her clothes back on. ‘Gotta get back,’ she said. Then she was gone. I cleaned myself up and went back down the pub for last orders. And to tell my mates of course.

  Anyway, there were plenty more like that over the next few years. I had a few ‘proper’ girlfriends, some of whom I slept with, some I didn’t. On the weekends we went out in a pack, hunting. Everyone did it.

  By the time I met Amanda at college, I’d calmed down a bit. Still liked the ladies, but I was tending to stick with one at a time mostly. They never lasted long; I was always on the look out for the next one. I’d done well in maths and had this idea I’d be an accountant. The mills had all pretty much closed by then, so I was keen to move away once I’d qualified. Not to London, full of poofs, I thought. I wanted to go to Leeds, or Manchester. Home was getting a bit crowded with three sisters and Mum’s new boyfriend, so I moved out of Mum’s and into student digs in Wakefield. Well, I didn’t want go too far; I still needed to go home on the weekends to get my laundry done. Amanda was there doing bookkeeping. She was the most beautiful girl in the college. Hell, she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever met. Still is.

  I asked her out as soon as I’d met her. ‘How you doing?’ I said.

  ‘Sorry, what?’ she said. She had a southern accent, not real posh, but posher than anyone I knew. ‘Bollocks,’ I thought. I didn’t know any southern girls but I knew the rules were different. Rumours were they all had sticks up their arses to start off, but if you got one in the sack, she’d suddenly transform into the most perverted hell-slut you’d ever imagined. Well, I’ve never backed away from a challenge and I wanted to find out if the rumours were true.

  ‘Do you fancy a drink?’ I said.
‘Would you like to go for a drink with me?’

  She stared at me. ‘What, on a date?’ she said, as though I’d suggested we swap heads.

  ‘Er, yeah.’ Feeling unsure of myself wasn’t something I’d had much experience with before.

  ‘Are you the chap with the souped-up Ford Capri?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s me,’ I replied proudly. Girls loved that car.

  ‘No thanks,’ she said.

  ‘Why, because of the car?’ I asked, stupidly.

  ‘No, because of the driver.’ She replied. ‘Sorry, but I don’t think we’re compatible.’

  Stuck-up cow, I thought. I was furious. So you know what I did? I asked her best friend out. Now this was a northern gal. Jules her name was. Big arse and no tits but she banged like a mental carpenter. When I stayed over at their flat, I made sure Jules squealed nice and loud to show Mand what she was missing. I was an arse. I told you I’m not proud of myself. Mand probably didn’t care, but I did. I hated to see her with other blokes, especially when she brought them back to the flat.

  I tried to become friends with Mand, wheedle my way in, you know? But she was always polite without ever seeming to warm to me. Sometimes I’d just be sitting on the couch with her, watching telly, and I’d say something, then she’d just walk off into her room and slam the door.

  She used to mock me, too. She’d mimic my accent, singing ‘Ilkley Moor’ and calling me Geoffrey Boycott. Worse yet, she’d make jokes about my car. ‘What holds a Ford Capri together? All the screws in the back.’

  So I realised after a while that I was wasting my time. There were plenty of other girls out there and that I had to get used to the fact that I couldn’t have just anyone I wanted. Some girls would always say no. I decided to dump Jules and give up on the project.

  But then Jules got hit by a car and ended up in hospital. It looked like she was going to die. Mand and I would sit there by her bed, waiting for her to open her eyes, and just chatting. I felt awful, I’d lied to Jules, I’d lied to Mand and now here I was, sitting, pretending I felt something more than I did for a dying girl. I made up my mind that, whatever happened, once I’d got out of it all, I’d stop lying, stop shagging and just find one nice girl and stick with her.

  But as the days went on, and Jules didn’t look like waking up, Mand and I would spend more time together. Now I didn’t have an agenda, now I felt some shame. I was more like my real self, I think. That’s what she said to me later. We just talked about normal stuff. We’d go for coffees together, then for meals. We’d walk by the river to get the stuffy hospital air out of our lungs, and one day we found ourselves stood in the park and hugging each other, she had tears running down her face and I was blubbing like Gazza when he got that second yellow card in the ’90 World Cup.

  Then she was kissing me and I still don’t remember how that happened but everything was mad just then and my head was screwed. Jules died the next day. Amanda and I slept together for the first time when we got back to the flat after the funeral. The rumours about posh southern girls were true, she was like a demon. I put it down to the fact she was out of her head with grief, but I woke up with scratches down my back and she was walking funny when she got up to go to the loo.

  She cried for most of that day.

  ‘Are you crying because she’s gone, or because of what we did?’ I asked her quietly.

  She shrugged, hiding her puffy little face from me behind that soft black hair of hers.

  I didn’t feel too good about what we’d done, at least in terms of guilt. I hadn’t loved Jules but it did feel a bit like being unfaithful; especially with her only a few days cold.

  But we needed the physical contact. We both did. I bet that sort of thing happens a lot. And remember, I genuinely had feelings for Amanda. I didn’t think she felt the same way but that was her problem.

  ‘I’d better go,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She sat up and looked at me like I’d stabbed her.

  ‘That’s it? You’re just going to wipe your cock on the curtain, jump in the Capri and ride off to find some other poor cow?’

  I stared back. What was she on about? ‘I thought you hated me?’ I said. ‘All those jokes about my accent and my car?’

  ‘Did it seem like I hated you when I had your dick in my mouth last night?’ she snapped.

  ‘I thought … I thought you just hopped into bed with me because you were upset about Jules,’ I said, totally floored by now.

  ‘Is that what you think of me?’ she said. ‘That I’m so shallow I’ll just fuck whoever’s nearby when I’m feeling a little sad?’

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘Because I love you, you … moron!’ she spat, in a voice that didn’t sound like she loved me, but then again maybe it did.

  I didn’t get it, and told her.

  ‘When I told you I didn’t want to go out with you that time, of course I wanted to go out with you.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I didn’t expect you to give up just like that. You were supposed to pursue me.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You had a reputation back then. You seemed to be trying to get as many notches on your bedpost as you could. I didn’t know you like I do now: I believed what people said about you.’

  I sat down and waited for her to go on, amazed at what I was hearing.

  ‘How do you think it made me feel when I was the only girl in the college you didn’t seem interested in?’ she said.

  ‘I was interested. I did ask you out!’ I protested. ‘The moment I first saw you, but you said no.’

  ‘You only asked once,’ she replied. ‘Then you gave up and went out with my best mate instead. How do you think it was for me lying in bed listening to you two together? I hated you, and I hated her.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you move out?’

  ‘I don’t know. Because I hoped that one day, if I stayed around you and Jules, one day something would happen. And of course I didn’t hate you all the time. I didn’t hate Jules. I just … hated how things were. You used to try to be so nice to me, to be my friend, and I knew I was being cold with you, but I couldn’t get closer because of how I felt about you. I’m sorry.’

  Then she started crying again, so I took hold of her, stroked her hair and waited for her to look up at me. Then I kissed her. It had been a bit of a roundabout journey, but I’d got what I wanted.

  She was wearing a baggy t-shirt, full of holes. I tore it off and threw it on the ground, then I lifted her and carried her back to her bed. She lay beneath me, my prize for all the time and effort I’d put in. My cock was pushing hard, trying to find its way out of my boxers to see what was going on. I slipped them off and climbed on to the bed, shuffling towards her on my knees. I lifted her legs and swung them over so she was lying on her side, jack-knifed across the bed. I leaned over her and kissed her hard, pulling her head back by the hair and working my lips over her chin and down her soft white neck. As I leaned across the tip of my cock tickled her backside and she reached down to take firm hold. Her breasts were firm but busty and they hung heavily to the side. I took hold of her left breast and took the nipple in my mouth, massaging it with my tongue. I caressed the other breast gently as I worked the dark brown nub with my teeth and lips. Then I lifted myself up and looked at her. She tried to sit up but I pushed her back down in the same position.

  She looked up at me, her nostrils flaring as she wondered what I had in mind. I rubbed a thumb against her labia to check she was wet enough, and then positioned myself. By stretching one leg out behind me and hooking the other over her bent upper thigh, I had just enough access to her vagina, once I’d lifted her leg up a little. I worked my cock in gradually. In that position, with the weight of her right leg bearing down on my cock as it forced entry, she felt very tight. She moaned in appreciation.

  It was a slightly awkward position for me, but I knew she’d like it. It was comfortable for her and I could reach around and play with her nip
ples or clitoris as I pumped into her. We could also kiss and I wanted to make sure we did a lot of that. I knew she was still vulnerable and I would have done anything to make her feel happier.

  Soon though we both wanted to shift position and she turned face down on the bed. She spread her legs, giving me better access and I lay on her back, holding her shoulders tight as I thrust myself into her, eyes closed in effort and lust.

  ‘I want to look at your face as you finish,’ she whispered. So I got up and let her turn around before re-entering her. I finished off quickly, supporting myself with my elbows as I gazed into her eyes. She smiled and thrust back with passion as I climaxed, flooding her with my come.

  That’s when I started to think I was in love.

  It wasn’t the only time I came that night. I generally don’t manage more than one, but that night I had three. The third time, I was sure I couldn’t manage it, and my old feller was complaining a bit, so she flipped me over and snuck a couple of fingers up my arse. I was too surprised to resist. ‘Wait,’ she said as she felt around inside me. It felt weird, but I liked it. I liked the fact she was doing it more than anything. These posh girls knew a thing or two.

  ‘What am I waiting for?’ I said. I was breathing heavily.

  ‘This!’ she said and jabbed at a spot inside me somewhere.

  Something flipped inside my head and I found myself coming again. It was extraordinary. The feeling was so good, I just couldn’t bear it. I wanted it to be over but it just kept going on and on. I was thrashing my legs on the bed and clutching the pillow so tight. It went on for what seemed like a ridiculous amount of time, totally different to a normal orgasm. If that’s what gay blokes are feeling then maybe I should think about biting the pillow.