by Louise Bay
Hanna and Jules shot each other a look and stayed quiet. I’d been mean. I was being vile. I liked spending time with the boys. I just didn’t like the personal scrutiny that came with them at the moment.
“Sorry.”
Silence.
I might have been the lawyer, but Hanna was a master negotiator and she used the fact I didn’t like silences. I gave in and answered her. “He is a nice guy, and yes, I think he did like what he knew about me, although that wasn’t very much. But please, stop making it such a big deal.”
The waiter came back with my glass of champagne. I felt guilty and I smiled at him as if to offer an apology. He smiled back. It was more than I deserved. He’d probably spat in my champagne.
“Can I take your orders?” he asked.
“We’re waiting for a couple of others … oh, here they are. Can you give us a few minutes?” Hanna said.
My back was to the entrance to the restaurant and I couldn’t bring myself to look away from my menu. I prayed it wasn’t Joel.
It was Joel. Of course it was. With Adam. Fucking hell. This was officially the worst brunch ever.
“Hey, girls,” Adam seemed bright and breezy. An apocalypse must be brewing. “What are you lot gossiping about?”
“We are trying to have a serious conversation with Ava.”
“Honestly, Hanna, I love you. But can we drop this? I don’t need an intervention. I just want to enjoy my drink and gossip about someone else.”
“Ok, Ava, but I leave you with this: Guys like Will don’t come around that often. You shouldn’t be so picky.”
“Did she drive him away already?” Adam asked, trying to work out what was going on.
“I’m ready to order,” I said looking around to see if the waiter was hovering while desperately trying not to look anywhere near Joel.
“Well, Joel added to the notches on his bedpost last night, even if Ava didn’t. That girl was insanely fucking hot. I’m not sure what she saw in a drunken twat like you. You were hammered.”
Just when I thought this brunch couldn’t get any worse.
“Hanna, can you order me the eggs Benedict with some carbs the size of Africa. I’m going to the restroom.”
I had to get out of there. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
What was I doing? I was turning down perfectly nice, respectable, funny men because I had been in love with a man for the last eight years who barely knew I was alive and by all accounts was out shagging half of London. The ‘insanely hot’ half. Fuck.
For the second time in less than 24 hours I walked out of the restroom and into Joel. Again, he leaned against the wall outside the restroom. Was he waiting for me?
I didn’t know what to say so I forced a small fake smile and went to walk past him.
“Are you ok?” he mumbled.
“Why wouldn’t I be? Why would I care who you are fucking?”
“I meant about Will. And I didn’t fuck her.”
Oh, embarrassing.
Oh, he didn’t fuck her.
I shrugged.
“I’m sorry I barked at you last night,” he said. “I didn’t get it. It threw me off.”
I could feel darkness in my chest and my eyes began to well. “Don’t, Joel.” I couldn’t have him be nice to me. What was he saying? What was he asking? I wish I knew him like I used to know him.
I started to cry and he reached for me.
“God, Ava. Don’t cry.” He pleaded.
“I’m fine. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m crying.”
He stood rubbing my back. And I let him.
“Did … the necklace … wh—”
Hanna interrupted. “God I’m so sorry, Ava. I didn’t mean to upset you.” She wrapped her arms around me. Joel’s hand disappeared from my back and I felt cold suddenly.
“It’s not you. I’m just tired and hungover.” I extricated myself from Hanna’s arms and wiped my eyes. “It’s fine. You go to the restroom.” I smiled at her, patted her on the arm, and followed Joel back to the table.
“Is that her, the hot babe from last night?” Adam was peering across at Joel’s lap where Joel was fiddling with his phone.
He didn’t respond. That was a yes in Joel’s language. He said he hadn’t fucked her. Maybe he just wanted to.
“Has she got any friends?” Adam continued to jabber away and Joel continued to ignore him.
Will hadn’t worked. I was at peace with that fact, and I now knew I wouldn’t put myself or someone else through that. There was no point.
And if Joel hadn’t fucked the insanely hot girl from last night, he didn’t seem to be seeing anyone, maybe we should talk. Maybe I should tell him. Maybe I needed closure and I would be able to move on, or maybe something else was possible … between us.
***
I never went to the gym. I wasn’t a gym kind of person. All that organized sweating wasn’t my thing. My exercise was running. It allowed me to physically escape and be with my own thoughts in my own head. I sorted stuff out when I was running. But today I needed distraction from my head, so I headed to Jules’ gym that she’d been telling me to try out for weeks now.
I handed over my invited guest pass to the security guy on the desk in front and headed down the stairs to the changing rooms. I dumped my bag in a locker and headed along a corridor, which seemed to lead to the workout area. As soon as I walked in I was assaulted by noises and images. The music was pounding and various half-naked women dry-humped inanimate objects on the various screens dotted around the ceiling. Looking around, I was the only woman in there. Had Jules sent me to a gay gym? I was going to kill her. Jesus, what was the matter with her? But I was here now and maybe surrounding me with gay men was what I needed. After all, wasn’t gay-time one of the universal cures for heartbreak?
I started on the cross trainer. I fucking hated it. But I could keep it up forever. My legs didn’t move properly at first, as if I’d lost all coordination, and then I got into a rhythm. Scanning the room, there were some really hot bodies in there. Tanned and tight and gay, gay, gay. I chuckled to myself. Of all people, I didn’t expect Jules to waste an opportunity to pick up guys.
“Great ass.” I heard from behind me and I spun my head. A very tall, gorgeous guy with the longest eyelashes I’d ever seen, wearing very small shorts and a very tight tank, was smirking at me.
I smirked back. “Thanks. Great abs.” What else could I say?
“Thanks,” he said. “I have a great ass, too. It takes one to know one. So I’ll take the treadmill here.” He pointed in front of me. “You know, to give you the 360-degree view. You look like a girl who appreciates a good ass.”
“That’s thoughtful.” I laughed. I totally got why Jules came here. Maybe I wouldn’t kill her after all.
I lasted about forty minutes on the cross trainer and then tried out the bike. I hated it more than the cross trainer. It felt like my vagina was being punched so I moved on and did some weights. Various people smiled and said hi, and it felt nice to be outside of my life for an afternoon.
Freshly showered and smiling from the mixture of attention and endorphins, I headed back to my flat. I’d spent about two hours in the changing rooms before I left. My hair looked amazing, if I did say so myself. The changing rooms had some super-expensive shampoos and conditioners and every hairstyling tool known to man: dryers of different shapes and sizes, curling irons, straighteners. I indulged myself to the fullest extent possible and I looked like—well, I felt like—I was ready for Annie Leibovitz to shoot me for Vogue. Kinda.
As soon as I got inside, Joel tumbled back into my head. This couldn’t go on forever. Maybe I should just bite the bullet while I had amazing hair.
***
I shifted my weight from one leg to the other while trying to decide whether to press the button to call the elevator. I was here now. I’d done the hard bit, surely. As I’d approached Joel’s building, someone had been coming out and had held the door open for me, clearly presuming I was meant to b
e here. The security guard at the desk had been on the phone and had a courier and someone else surrounding him at his desk and, like something out of an 80s spy film, I slipped past unnoticed. Maybe I should call up? Use the intercom? Did it look weird if I just appeared at his door?
Holy hell. I pressed the button. I was irritating myself with my indecision. My temperature raised at least ten degrees as I stepped in and pressed the “P” on the brushed metal panel. I’d thought about this a lot and I had nothing to lose at this point. Nothing to lose. You just have to knock on the door. The rest will just happen. The elevator was quicker than I remembered, and before I’d taken a breath, the doors pinged open.
Nothing to lose.
Nothing to lose.
I clutched at my stomach and took the three steps to his door and knocked straight away. Three confident raps to the metal door.
Yup, I was doing it. I had nothing to lose.
I waited. No answer. Should I go? Should I knock again?
I knocked again and then I heard movement. My heart pounded through my shirt. Nothing to lose, nothing to lose.
The door opened and apparently there was something to lose. My pride. My hope.
I was faced with a tall gazelle-like woman. Well, she was a girl, really. She looked really young and insanely hot. She was wrapped in a towel. A very small towel that only just covered the tops of her thighs. So Joel did fuck her, after all. She gave me a huge grin like we were old friends that had just bumped into each other at the grocery store.
“Hi,” she said.
Fuck, I was going to have to speak.
“Hi,” I replied, hoping that I hadn’t just said it in my head, that I’d said the words aloud so she could hear me.
“Are you looking for Joel?”
I nodded. Not trusting what might come out of my mouth.
“He just popped out. Do you want to wait?”
“No no. No, no. That’s fine. I’ll catch him later.”
“Shall I say you stopped by?”
“No, no that’s fine. It’s fine. I’ll catch him another time.”
“He’ll have his cell with him, I’m sure,” she said. Probably trying to be helpful. As helpful as you can be, in a towel.
“Ok. Thanks. Bye. Nice to meet you.” I waved at her as I headed back the three steps to the lift and pressed the down arrow button furiously. I needed out. Now.
Just when I thought I had nothing to lose, I found out there was further to fall.
Past
“How’s your head, baby?” Joel asked.
I was stroking his chest after half-waking and rolling over and attaching myself to him like a limpet, my eyes still closed.
“Don’t speak. Don’t ever speak,” I croaked.
He chuckled and pulled me closer to him. He was always so fucking cheerful in the morning. If Joel had one thing that irritated me about him, that was it.
“I’ll make you feel better.” He grabbed my ass.
“If you put your penis anywhere near me, Joel Wentworth, I will throw up on you.”
“You are adorable when you are grouchy and hungover.”
“Fuck you.”
“Anytime, baby. Shall I get you some juice? Something for your headache?”
I shook my head. “Stay.” I didn’t want him to leave this bed. His bed. I sat bolt upright. “I stayed over.”
“And who said you wouldn’t make it as a lawyer? You have the ultimate powers of perception.”
“I mean I’m not at home.”
“Again with the perceptive thing.”
I flung a pillow at Joel as he lay there looking perfect, grinning at me.
“How am I going to explain this?” I asked.
“I think the questions about us making out on the dance floor will be the first ones you field.”
“Oh god.” I groaned and fell back on the bed.
“What’s the big deal, anyway?”
We’d never really discussed my need to keep Joel and me a secret. He never pushed me, never wanted an explanation from me. I assumed he was happy with the arrangement. Or at least not unhappy with the arrangement.
“You know, I just like things between us.” I was being evasive. I knew it.
Joel turned and propped his head on his elbow, looking at me as I looked at the ceiling.
“But you actively don’t want people knowing about us?”
“I don’t see how it’s anyone else’s business.”
“But it does change how we are together and how often we see each other. I don’t understand why we can’t just be ourselves, a couple, like we were over Christmas.”
He wasn’t moaning or demanding or whining, he was just raising excellent points. It irritated me. He was just so good at everything. Good at making me feel good, good at making his friends feel good, good academically, good-looking. Good at making reasoned and reasonable arguments. He should be the lawyer. I looked across at him and he stroked my face. “There’s nothing to be scared of.”
“But Joel, I don’t want people weighing in our relationship, telling us what’s right and wrong in it, people telling you how you could do better …”
“That’s what you’re worried about? That people will tell me I could do better, and that I’d have some kind of epiphany and be persuaded that they are right?”
When he said it like that, it sounded ridiculous. I knew he loved me. I pursed my lips. I didn’t have a response. At least I didn’t have one that made any objective sense and I knew it.
“And Jules likes you. I don’t want to upset her.”
Joel moved on top of me so we were nose to nose. He pushed my hair away from my face. I loved the feeling of his weight on top of me.
“You are just grasping at straws now. Jules likes everyone. She doesn’t discriminate, and you know she wouldn’t be upset if we were together.”
He was right, as usual. I trailed my fingers down his back in response.
“Are you trying to distract me?” he asked.
“You’re the one lying on top of me.”
“I just like you waking up in my bed. I can’t resist you in the mornings. Or the afternoons. Or the evenings.” He knew just what to say and when.
“Even when I’m grouchy and unreasonable?”
“Especially when you’re grouchy and unreasonable.”
“You’re sick, you know that? Perverted.”
“Maybe.” He smiled at me and dipped his head to push his lips to mine.
I felt a shiver go down my spine. He moved his lips across to my neck, his arms braced either side of me and began to nip and lick and suck my neck.
“So, if people saw us together …” I was distracted by his mouth.
“… then I guess we can just … oh god … tell people we are together.” He pushed his erection against my thigh in response and he moved down my body to my breasts.
“And if they didn’t see …” My back arched at the feel of his teeth around my nipple. “We can just … FUCK …” I screamed as he pushed inside of me, bringing his eyes back to mine, watching the reaction he had on me.
“I couldn’t wait another moment to be inside you, Ava.” He started to move slowly above me and all I could think about was how perfect he was, how good he felt, how much he wanted me. “How does that feel?”
“Perfect.”
“Perfect?” he asked. “Perfectly hard? Perfectly deep? Tell me.”
“Joel.” I was embarrassed that I was so turned on by his words, but I couldn’t answer him.
“You are perfect. Perfectly beautiful, perfectly soft, perfectly wet, perfectly mine.”
I clenched and pushed my hips further toward him, meeting his rhythm. He tightened his jaw and I could tell he was holding himself back, waiting for me. I gripped his shoulders and felt him push deeper with every thrust. I wanted this feeling to last forever, the feeling of being right on the edge of the most numbingly pleasurable moment, and then I was lost. I exploded deep within, the waves pulsing across m
y belly, down my arms and legs as my back arched and I called Joel’s name.
Joel’s thrusts quickened. “You look fucking amazing when you come for me.” And then he tensed as he came deep inside me.
I would do anything for this man.
Present
“Don’t sweat it about Will, babe.”
Jules and I had been on the phone for about twenty minutes, but I couldn’t recall anything she’d been telling me. I’d not engaged. Part of me was watching a muted episode of Nashville. I’d seen it before. Part of me was reliving my encounter with Insanely Hot Girl. Part of me was wondering how long it would take before my spoon would be able to dig into the cookies and cream ice-cream that I had between my knees, willing it to defrost. That didn’t leave much room for me to focus on Jules. Apparently she’d noticed.
“Sorry, my mind wandered.”
“You must have really liked him. You seem cut up about it. Why don’t you give him another chance?”
I rolled my eyes. I wish I could scream at people that Will wasn’t the fucking problem.
“Will wasn’t right for me. He wasn’t the one.”
“Fucking hell, babe. You need Mr. Right Now, not Mr. Right. Just find someone you can have some fun with. Someone who’s good in bed. Did you even let Will into your bed?”
“You know I didn’t.”
“I bet he had a huge cock. You could see it in the way he walked.”
“What?” Jules was officially losing it. “You could tell by his gait that he had a big cock?”
“I’m not saying that having it swinging between his legs made him walk differently, just that he was confident.”
“Whatever.”
“You could have missed out there.”
“Well, why don’t you go and find out since you’re so obsessed with his cock? He’s single now, from what I’ve heard.”
“No need to get snarky.”
“Sorry. I just—I wasn’t thinking about Will. I wish we could just drop it.”
“So, what were you thinking about?” I must have really upset Jules if she was asking me questions like this. Upset her or worried her. I hated to think I’d done either.
“That I need a change.” I wasn’t thinking that, but as it came out, it felt good. Maybe a new job or a hobby. “Maybe I’ll go work abroad. Take a year out or something.”