“Seriously, Alfie? I never told you? I didn’t realize I should be telling you anything. I obviously don’t know the protocol for disclosing information to an ex- fuck buddy,” I hissed with my voice low, not wanting to draw attention to us.
“I’m sorry, Lily. I came to apologize to you. I’m sorry I hurt you, I never wanted…oh God… I never wanted to hurt you.” He looked at me sincerely.
I twisted my glass around between my fingers, and Alfie stretched his fingers over and brushed my hand with his fingertips. “I didn’t mean for you to fall in love with me, Lily.”
My eyes locked with his, and his face was still serious. “I never wanted to fall in love with you Alfie. You warned me. You’ve not kept your side of the bargain either.” He told me we could call a halt on the arrangement at any time.
He held my gaze for the longest time and sat motionless. “I know.” He gave me a half smile, but I could see the hurt in his eyes too. “Can I explain something? I wanted to talk to you. There is something you need to know. I need you to understand why I can’t love you.”
I placed both palms around my glass and rolled it back and forth, not sure that I wanted an explanation, but said, “How do you explain the stuff that you’ve done to me? How do you explain the women? How do you tell me you don’t want to be with me, yet introduce me as your girl and talk in the term ‘us’?”
Alfie focused on his thighs and began rubbing his hands up and down, rocking forward and back. I think he was formulating what he wanted to tell me. “The women?” His eyes met mine. “I told you that I didn’t want them, they picked…”
I interjected, “…you… but you picked me… yeah… I seem to remember that line.”
He swallowed. “Are you going to let me speak or do you want to go on filling in the blanks for yourself?” I nodded and gestured for him to continue. I picked up my water and took a sip, before placing my glass back on the colorful beer mat advertising a brand of cider.
He exhaled. “I can’t love you, Lily. Not with the work I do.” I bunched my brows and searched his face.
“What do you mean? You do the same as me.” Alfie closed his eyes slowly, and inhaled sharply.
“The women do pick me, Lily. The music isn’t all I do. I’m a male escort as well.”
My jaw fell, like it had suddenly become unhinged. I gasped and giggled out of nervousness. “Seriously, you’re an escort?” It actually made sense to me now; the women, all a little older, all very particularly dressed. It fit with Alfie being extremely attentive and charming towards them.
I had worried that I wasn’t the only sexual relationship Alfie was in, but we had always used protection. I heard myself more than consciously ask, “How many of them have you slept with?” Alfie shook his head and his eyes locking with mine again.
“Not one, I have never been anything more than an attentive dinner companion or plus one at an event. It’s a condition they agree to before I commit to accompany them.”
I sat staring at him, wondering how to deal with this information. “Why did you start this between us?” He smiled.
“Why wouldn’t I? Look at you, Lily. I was drawn to you from the moment I saw you. No one has ever had that effect on me.”
What was confusing to me was why he had to be an escort. His gigs probably covered his living expenses comfortably now. I wasn’t sure about his college fees, though. Not having parents and trying to make it through college must be tough.
I was really lucky that I would never have to worry about money or paying bills. “I guess Starbucks wouldn’t pay as much as escorting,” I muttered.
Alfie chuckled. “Exactly, the money I need is more than I could get doing some minimum wage, service work. I also needed something flexible with my music, especially now that the band’s popularity is growing, and we’re being offered more and more gigs. Maybe in another year we could be headlining around the state.”
“So you can’t love me, because I don’t fit in with your plan?” My hand was wet and cold, from the condensation of my glass, but he took it in his anyway. He lifted it to his lips and brushed them very lightly back and forth, his eyes still locked with mine.
“Yeah, you deserve better than me, and I can’t afford to be sidetracked from this,” he whispered, a small smile curving his lips. “It doesn’t mean I don’t want you, though, I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
I could understand the money situation, but couldn’t get past how this would make him behave the way he did towards me. “So, if you can’t be involved with me, why are you here? More importantly, how did you know where to find me? What else don’t I know about you?”
Alfie inhaled and rolled his head back, then settled his eyes firmly on mine again. “Okay, there’s more. What year do you think I’m in at college?” I twisted my mouth not sure what he meant.
“You’re a senior of course.” Alfie shook his head.
“Lily, I’m not a student, I’m not in college, I attend college.”
“Forgive me, Alfie, but you’ve lost me completely now. Are you or are you not a student at college?” Alfie shook his head as I stared at him. “You lied to me?” I felt really shocked at his admission. Holly had made reference to that in jest before.
“You’re not a student?”
“No, Lily, I’ve never lied to you. If you thought I was a student it was because you assumed I was. I’ve never spoken to you about why I was there.”
I realized that was true. “But…” He smiled.
“I asked you if you were a music major. I never said I was.”
“So why do you hang around on campus all the time?” I was stunned that I might have been involved intimately with someone and known even less about him than I thought.
“You know how you hated me ignoring you on campus?” I nodded.
“You explained that.” He shook his head again and held my hand with both of his now.
“Actually, that was the one thing that I wasn’t exactly straight with you about.” I sighed, wondering what revelation I was about to hear now.
“I’m not a student, Lily, I’m a mentor. I graduated two years ago summa cum laude. I mentor for extra money, but I have to sit in on some of the classes. You are my first breech of the rules. The university has a no fraternization policy. We could both be excluded if we were found out.”
I sat silent, too stunned by everything he had just told me to speak. I looked over at Alfie, who for the first time seemed very nervous about my reaction to what he had told me. “So everything has been lies and deception?”
“If it helps you with college, I can admit to the sexual relationship we had, but you weren’t fraternizing, because you didn’t know my position. I’m sorry, Lily, I couldn’t help myself with you.”
I pulled my hand back and set both of them on my lap. Tears threatened my eyes and I glanced up. His beautiful face was looking pleadingly at me.
“You make me want to scream, Alfie.” I was frustrated by the mixed messages he continued to throw at me.
Alfie grinned at my statement and raised his eyebrow. “That statement can be taken both ways, you know.”
I smiled in spite of myself, even though I was feeling angry with him. “Lily, can I say this? When I saw you, I had to have you. I really didn’t think beyond that. All reasoning went out of the window with you, and that has never happened to me before.”
“So what does that mean? Why are you continuing to chase me around when you don’t want a relationship? Do you know what it’s like to be me? To know you have that kind of power over me?” He grasped my hand and laced his fingers in mine.
“I really, really want to spend time with you, Lily. I really want you. God… I want you so much, it’s like I need you to breathe sometimes.” He looked uncomfortable confessing this to me.
“Do you know what it feels like for me, to see you right now, and not pull you close to me, hold you tight, bury my face in your neck, and smell your amazing skin?”
“You want a relationship, Lily? I’ll give you one, be your boyfriend, but you need to know that nothing will come of it, I can’t commit to loving you above all else.”
Alfie leaned forward, the table wobbling under the weight of his elbow as the table leg balanced against the uneven flagstone floor. His eyes showed a bit more fight in them now.
“What I can offer you is my time, when I can, above anything outside of my work. That’s the most I am able to give right now.”
He stared seriously at me, his eyes showing concern. “If I hadn’t been honest with you from the start, what is there to say that we wouldn’t have been together all this time? I could have kept things close to my chest. I need you, Lily, I miss you. I didn’t expect to feel so drawn to you. I can’t function without seeing you.”
I knew that I was struggling. All the while he was talking, I was drinking in his appearance, imagining what his touch felt like, wanting to touch him. How it would feel to be in his arms again.
I was remembering how gentle he could be with me. I missed him and wanted nothing more than to curl up on his lap and get lost in his mouth. My gaze centred on it, and he licked his lips.
“Do you mind if I fill up?” he asked, tapping the side of his glass with the silver ring on his thumb. I shook my head. He put his hand between his knees and pulled the small stool away between his legs as he stood up.
I watched as he walked to the bar, and felt slightly shaky at the effect he still had on me. Just seeing his smooth movements and that damned sexy walk of his made me weak at the knees. His ass was just so perfect in his low rise dark blue jeans.
The studded belt, although kind of cliché on a rock star, still managed to make me want to whip it through the belt loops and toss it aside on the way to peeling those jeans down his legs.
I smiled and realized that even though we were here, and I was hearing him give me some less than happy, honest truths, I was still fantasizing about getting him naked.
“Hey, have I ever told you how beautiful your smile is?” I realized that he had been watching me from the bar and had made his way back. Yet, I was too busy, lost in my daydream to notice.
“Do we have to name it?” I found myself saying.
Alfie’s brows furrowed. “Name it?” My eyes rolled up as I thought about what I was about to say and mentally chastised myself before the words were even out.
“This…thing.” I wagged my finger between the two of us. “I’m not sure what I’m saying.”
He moved closer, sitting on the stool next to me. His hand swept past my face and gripped my hair lightly at the nape of my neck, as his eyes grew hooded and intense as they stared into mine.
“Try! Tell me what you want to say.” He held my gaze, and the touch of his hand on my neck sent a familiar current of electricity through me. I shuddered involuntarily, and he smiled slowly at my reaction.
I could see the effect I had on him when his hand touched me as well. His eyes had gone dark and were like a window to his soul, changing colors and reacting to his moods. Right now, they were mainly green, as well as being seductive and smoky.
I shrugged. “You’re here, and I’m here. I guess we mean enough to each other that we’ve spent so much time trying to label this ‘thing’ between us.” I pointed my finger and wagged it between us again.
He dipped his head and rested his forehead on mine. “Damn straight, I can admit to that.” His words, as little as they were, felt like a glimmer of hope to me.
The knowledge that he felt something for me gave me something to work with. The problem with that being that I risked falling deeper in love with someone I couldn’t have.
I inhaled his scent. He smelled of bodywash, Jack Daniel’s, and him, and being this close to him, if I turned my face just slightly our lips would touch. I stayed perfectly still. “So what do you want, Alfie? What do you want from me?”
He stared into my eyes, and I was transfixed, my question echoing back at me. He moved his nose to brush mine before putting his lips to my ear.
Before I could think about it, he whispered, “Time, I want time with you. Today, tomorrow…we need time together.”
I wanted that too, what if we never got this time again? What if I didn’t take the opportunity to have some unhurried time, without schedules and commitments and other people interrupting us? Maybe I would learn more about him.
Maybe, just maybe, I would begin to see his flaws and instead of seeing him as being unobtainable, I would see him as just a guy that I could live without.
Or maybe spending time with me would make him feel more for me. Could I risk spending time with him? At least I was in my home territory. I decided that it was a risk worth taking.
“What’s your schedule?”
He leaned back to focus better on me. “I have rehearsals, two to five pm daily, all afternoon from midday on New Year’s Eve until five pm, then showtime at seven pm until eight thirty pm. We don’t have to tear down. It’s a big gig, so there are a guitar technicians and roadies to pack up for us. We head out on the third back to the USA. So I have, what… two days off after for sightseeing, or partying… whatever.”
CHAPTER 8 – TAKING A CHANCE
I looked at my wrist watch. It was almost one o’clock in the afternoon. “Where is the gig going to be?” Alfie smiled his eyes wide.
“The O2 arena, you know it?” I was impressed.
“Seriously?” He nodded. Crakt Soundzz was certainly raising their profile if they were supporting at that venue.
Most world-class artists performed there. “Okay, you better get a move on if you’re going to make those rehearsals.” He checked the time on his smart phone and nodded in agreement.
Alfie’s eyes dropped, and he lifted his glass. He placed the rim to his lips and swiftly threw back the remaining Jack Daniel’s left in it. My mind was in conflict that he would be gone any minute, and I wanted to see him again. “I’ll meet you at the Cutty Sark at seven pm.”
Alfie placed his wide stumpy glass on the beer mat, and his eyes flicked back up to my face. “What’s that?” he looked puzzled.
“It’s on the river near the O2 venue. You know Greenwich is by the river, right? It’s an original clipper ship that’s moored there… it’s a tourist attraction, you can’t miss it. Find it and you can take me to dinner.” Alfie’s mouth spread in a wide grin.
“Don’t!” I put my hand up with my palm facing his chest as a warning. “I’m making a concession here. Don’t let me down, Alfie.”
He nodded. “Thank you, Lily. I promise you won’t regret it.”
Alfie stood holding the door open for me to leave the pub ahead of him. I walked with him towards Sloan Square Tube station.
“Can I ask something? Well… it’s more of a request really?” He flicked his eyes quickly to meet mine as we walked along the road awkwardly avoiding contact with each other.
“Sure,” I said, trying to sound lighthearted.
“Will you wear exactly what you’re wearing right now to dinner tonight? I haven’t really been able to enjoy how you look with our heavy conversation today.”
I chuckled, and he grinned, his dimple showing for the first time today. “Really, you want me to wear this old thing?” I tried to downplay my earlier effort to look great.
I snickered when he looked away for a second to cross a road, feeling delighted that he commented on it.
He turned his head back when we were safely on the sidewalk, and his hungry eyes glanced very slowly down the length of me. “Lily, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more perfect on you, and you know how I feel about your choices of attire. You’ve got great taste, but this…” He tugged lightly at the material near my waist.
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“Dayum! The color, the cut, the slit at your thigh. Jesus, Lily, you kill me. Every time I think you definitely can’t top the outfit you’re wearing, you do exactly that.”
I smiled a little, but his gaze was full of arousal and was becoming intense. It was a look that was dangerous for me. I could get lost in it, and I forced myself to look away from him.
I was glad that he could still manage to appreciate me while I was fully clothed, and he hadn’t been trying to seduce me earlier. His head turned to me, a smile playing on his lips, but he wasn’t being cocky. This wasn’t the Alfie that played with my feelings. I liked this one much better.
We arrived at the tube station, and Alfie awkwardly pulled me in for a hug. Well, it started out as a friendly goodbye hug, but he couldn’t quite let me go and his arms tightened just as I was about to pull back. His face nestled in my hair, and he inhaled sharply. “God, Lily, I’ve never held a woman that fit in my arms so perfectly and smelled as good as you…ever.”
I pulled back then, and gave him a half smile, but didn’t comment. I let my arms go loose, and he had no choice but to do the same. I knew I had to manage this thing between us, and I couldn’t afford to be lax about the effect he always had on me, or I would be miserable again in no time.
His handsome face looked pained to be leaving me, and he turned to walk away. I stood watching him. His head turned back in my direction; there was a vulnerability to him as his eyes locked with mine again. “Seven pm… Cutty Sark.”
I nodded, and the bustle of the crowd entering and leaving the station swallowed him from my view. I rang Jack. “You took your time, everything okay, honey?” He sounded concerned. I told him that I was fine and that my talk with Alfie went better than I expected.
“I got a few answers to some things that were real issues for me.” Jack was crunching noisily down the line at me.
Everything She Needs (The Everything Trilogy) Page 6