Fractured

by Dani Atkins

  Electricity crackled between us. The moment in the bathroom suddenly paled into insignificance compared to the potently charged atmosphere.

  Gently, oh so gently, he drew the tips of my fingers in between his parted lips, flicking against the sensitive pads with his tongue. My entire body shuddered with a frisson of excitement.

  And then I was in his arms. I truly cannot say who made the first move, it could have been either of us. All I knew was the force of the passion in his kiss and the feel of his long hard body pressed against mine.

  Time became suspended as our kisses deepened; the heat of our passion welding my body to his with an intensity that astounded me. His hand trembled slightly as he slid the nightgown from my shoulders, but he had no need to be hesitant. I wanted this to happen just as much as he did, maybe even more. And in a sobering revelation of clarity, I finally acknowledged that I had been waiting for and wanting this very moment for years but had been too blind to see it.

  As his lips and hands travelled over my exposed flesh I heard a low throaty murmur of pleasure escape me. I couldn’t believe how wantonly and readily I was responding to his touch. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before.

  The bed covers were kicked aside and I felt no embarrassment to be naked in front of him. Given our long friendship I would have expected this to feel wrong, maybe even vaguely incestuous, but nothing before had ever felt so right. Our ragged breathing tore into the silence of the room and the trembling that coursed through Jimmy’s body as he covered mine shook me with its intensity.

  I don’t remember when he first began to pull back. One minute we were fused together, our mouths and hands exploring and delighting and then, all at once, it was just me. The hands that held my shoulders, arching me closer to him were now gently, but insistently, pushing me away.

  Embarrassingly it took me several moments to realise what was occurring. My fumbling fingers were still struggling with the buckle of his jeans when his hand came down to encircle my wrist and move it away. The red mist of passion began to lift enough for me to see his face. The fire was almost gone and had been replaced by a darkly determined steely strength. Stupidly I refused to acknowledge what he doing and reached up to kiss him once again, opening my lips against his, sure I could elicit his response and reignite the flame.

  But it was gone. Doused in sanity, where surely no sanity should belong. I didn’t care what his reasons were in stopping, I only knew I didn’t want to.

  ‘Oh God, don’t stop, please don’t stop,’ I begged, all pride abandoned. I kept my eyes riveted to his and actually caught the moment when the last ember of desire was extinguished in their blue depths.

  He lifted himself off me in a quick and decisive move, half turning away to sit upon the edge of the bed.

  ‘I have to, Rachel. Don’t you see that?’

  Clearly I did not see, and still refusing to acknowledge his withdrawal I shamelessly reached out to try to pull him back to me, but he was like a rock: cold, hard and totally immovable.

  Without turning to look at me he picked up my discarded nightdress and tossed it back in my direction.

  ‘Cover yourself up.’

  And those three words finally sliced through my desire, carving into my very core. I grasped the cotton garment and quickly struggled into it, feeling humiliated and strangely dirty at the same time. I had thrown myself at him, there was no other way to describe it; I had virtually begged him to take me and he had rejected me. How much clearer did he have to make it? Oh sure, he had responded at first, but I realised now that had just been a natural male response to a woman so obviously trying to seduce him. A physical knee-jerk reaction, nothing more.

  But even physical desire hadn’t been sufficient to allow him to follow through. It was a cold and undeniable fact: Jimmy had never wanted me in that way; neither in the past nor now, and I had just made the biggest idiot of myself by launching myself at him like some third-rate seductress in a tacky novel.

  ‘I think you should leave now,’ I said in a quiet voice that trembled enough for me to realise that tears were only moments away. The speed with which he complied told me the truth: he couldn’t get out of there fast enough. He paused just once at the door, turning to give me a long hard look.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Rachel, please forgive me.’ His voice sounded truly tortured, but before I could even think of a response he had opened the door and left.

  Sorry? He was sorry? What in hell’s name did he have to be sorry about? I was the one who should have apologised. I was the one who was apparently incapable of controlling her emotions and had to be told that what she was doing was completely out of order.

  What was Jimmy guilty of? Nothing, except of not wanting me. And I could hardly blame him for that; for at that moment I felt like the most loathsome and disgusting creature that had ever walked the face of the earth.

  Another night of crying myself to sleep. It was almost becoming a habit. If Jimmy noticed my red-rimmed eyes the following morning, he was too polite to comment on them. I had to admit that he didn’t look so great himself when we met in the corridor at the time that we’d arranged the night before. Of course, that had been during the civilised portion of the evening; before the madness had overtaken me in the middle of the night, when I had acted in such a way that I’d probably killed our friendship for ever.

  On waking I had even harboured the pathetic hope that I had dreamt the entire episode, that none of it had really happened and that nothing had been irretrievably broken or damaged. But when I’d turned my head I could see the remains of the broken lamp and knew it was as irrevocably damaged as my relationship with Jimmy.

  When I saw him waiting for me in the corridor I hesitated at the threshold of my room. I had no idea what to say. But fortunately it appeared that neither did he.

  ‘Do you want to stop for breakfast or just head back?’ were his opening words.

  ‘I’d just like to go back,’ I answered quickly.

  Some response flickered in his eyes but he just nodded, as though this was what he had been expecting. He lifted the bag from my fingers and turned in the direction of the lifts.

  ‘Let’s go then.’

  There may have been more uncomfortable car journeys in my life, but that one was right up there with the worst of them. The strain of not talking about the topic we both couldn’t avoid thinking about was monumental. And yet, as mile followed mile, neither of us dared to voice the subject and when finally we passed the sign that announced we were now in our home town there was, thankfully, no time left.

  As we manoeuvred through the familiar side streets and turnings, I was itching to get out of the car, desperately hoping that by exiting the vehicle I could somehow leave behind the debris of last night. And then, just when I thought that the day couldn’t possibly get any worse, it just did.

  We rounded the last bend and there, parked directly in front of my house, was a low sleek car.

  ‘Terrific,’ muttered Jimmy, pulling in to the kerb to park behind it.

  I looked up in confusion at the unfamiliar vehicle and then my eye fell upon the registration plate: MR 10. Matt’s car.

  Jimmy switched off the engine and turned to look at me, properly at me, for the first time since last night.

  ‘Rachel, I wanted to say… to explain…’

  I shook my head. ‘Please, don’t say anything, it’s not necessary.’

  He reached out and took my hand, and part of me wanted to jerk back from his touch and an even greater part wanted to hold him against me for ever. He saw my hand judder under his and misinterpreted the reaction.

  ‘I know you must hate me right now,’ he continued, ‘but please give me a chance to—’

  I never heard what he wanted the chance to do or say, for at that moment the passenger door was swung widely open by a rather impatient-looking Matt.

  He saw my hand in Jimmy’s, even though I had yanked it away as speedily as if it were caught in a flame. Forestallin
g any comment, I quickly scrambled out of the car.

  ‘Matt, what are you doing here? I thought you were in Germany for another three days?’

  Matt drew me into an enveloping embrace, which I think was more for Jimmy’s benefit than mine. By the time I was released, Jimmy had also climbed out of the car.

  ‘I wound things up really quickly; thought you might need me more back here. But I see you managed to make… alternative arrangements.’

  God, here it was again. That old revisited teenage rivalry that had so fascinated me in the hospital, only now it was just petty and irritating.

  ‘Jimmy very kindly gave up his day off to take me into London. I had a lot of things I needed to sort out and he offered to take me.’

  Matt raised his gaze to meet Jimmy’s over the roof of the car that stood between them.

  ‘And his night, of course. He gave up his night too.’

  I could see where this was going and I didn’t like it one little bit. So far, Jimmy hadn’t risen to the bait, but I could feel the testosterone-infused tension eddying around me like a miniature tornado.

  ‘It was too late to come back last night, so we found a hotel and stayed in town. Dad knew what our plans were.’

  Matt nodded, and I wondered what his reaction had been when he had arrived here and learnt from my father that Jimmy and I had been away together overnight.

  ‘We were lucky to find somewhere that had two rooms available at such short notice,’ I supplied, clumsily attempting to let Matt know that everything had been above board. I was babbling, I could hear that even to my own ears. And I was also annoyed at my compulsion to explain our movements, knowing all the time that as my fiancé, Matt was perfectly entitled to ask where I had been. I was also embarrassed at the need to lie.

  ‘It was all perfectly respectable,’ I assured Matt, moving away from Jimmy’s car and turning to walk up the path.

  ‘I’m sure it was,’ replied Matt, and while his words implied he had never doubted it for a minute, the look he gave Jimmy said something different entirely. ‘You not coming in?’ he asked, as Jimmy walked towards him, passing over my small overnight bag. I stopped then, halfway to door; I had assumed they were both following me inside.

  ‘No, not this time. I’ve got some things I have to do. And I’m sure you want to spend some time alone with Rachel. She has a lot to tell you.’

  I felt the betraying colour begin to warm my cheeks. Don’t blush, don’t blush, oh please, God, don’t let me blush.

  Matt looked from Jimmy to me, the suspicion on his face only just managing to masquerade as curiosity.

  ‘About the magazine,’ Jimmy provided, already half back into the car. ‘G’bye, Rachel.’

  I wanted to run to him then, to launch into his arms and beg him not to go. Ridiculous. Completely and utterly ridiculous. And of course I did nothing of the sort, my feet remaining rooted to the path as though fixed there in cement. But I didn’t like the permanent tone of Jimmy’s goodbye: I didn’t like it at all.

  As Matt walked past the open driver’s door to join me on the path, Jimmy’s hand reached out to stall him. His voice was low, and he probably never intended me to hear what he had to say, but the street was suddenly quiet and I clearly heard his low entreaty.

  ‘Take good care of her, Matt. She’s had quite a tough twenty-four hours.’

  To say my father looked relieved to see me walk through the door was an understatement. And although I knew that a large part of that was due to his natural instinct to worry about me, I realised too that an even greater part was that the burden of entertaining a less-than-good-humoured Matt could now be handed over to me. I correctly guessed it had been a pretty tough several hours since his arrival while they awaited our return.

  ‘He’s been pacing up and down the living room like a caged lion,’ whispered Dad as we stood together in the welcoming kitchen, making a fresh round of teas and some toast. I wasn’t really hungry but it had been a welcome excuse to escape to the kitchen and find out what exactly had happened when Matt had turned up and found us gone.

  ‘Sorry you had to deal with that. I don’t know what he’s so wound up about.’

  My dad stopped placing mugs and spoons on the tray and turned to give me a long appraising look. No words, just a look.

  ‘What?’ I asked, playing dumb. ‘What?’

  My attempt at nonchalance was ruined by the warm flush that suffused my cheeks. And the more my dad continued to stare at me in that knowing parental fashion, the hotter they grew. I don’t know what he knew exactly, or guessed, but I don’t think he was that far off the mark.

  ‘Just be careful, Rachel, or someone will get hurt.’ And then he softened the entreaty by wrapping his arm around me and pulling me tight to his side. ‘And I don’t want it to be you.’

  By the time the tea and toast were consumed, a little good humour seemed to have been restored and naturally enough they both wanted to hear about everything that had happened in London. It took quite a while to regale the entire account of the last twenty-four hours, obviously omitting all that had occurred the previous evening from my narrative. I was pretty certain no one in the room wanted to hear that sorry tale – especially me.

  There was a long pause when I eventually finished, while they both absorbed what I had told them.

  ‘So do you remember everything now?’ pressed Matt hopefully.

  ‘No, not really. Well, not at all, if I’m being totally honest. But at least now I guess I know what hasn’t happened.’

  The disappointment on Matt’s face was obvious, and I couldn’t help but think that some of it was aimed at me personally, rather than the situation. It was almost as if he suspected that I just wasn’t trying hard enough to remember: and that if I put a little more effort into it, everything would come flooding back.

  ‘Never mind, love,’ supplied Dad, reaching over to squeeze my hand reassuringly. ‘It’s still early days yet. At least now you have somewhere positive to start from when you meet the amnesia guy this week.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what Jimmy said.’

  Matt’s face stiffened in irritation at the name, but fortunately he let the comment pass unchallenged.

  ‘And in the meantime, I’ve sorted out anything I could find around here from the last five years that could help you remember.’

  He sounded so delighted that it was hard to suppress a groan when several hefty-looking albums and a box of selected memorabilia were produced from the side of the settee and laid onto the coffee table before me.

  ‘Now, I’ve just got to go into town for a while, so you two can browse through these. I’m sure Matt will be able to answer any questions you have – probably far better than me. I don’t suppose you tell me the half of what’s really going on in your life!’

  Considering recent events, that was probably just as well.

  I was several pages into the first album when the front door clicked shut at my father’s departure. Moving closer to my side on the settee, Matt gently removed the album from my hands and slid his arms about me, drawing me towards him.

  ‘Let’s leave the old photos for now, huh? I think I can find a much better way of helping you to remember.’

  And before I could say anything to stop him, or even consider if I wanted to stop him at all, his mouth was on mine, powerfully and persuasively commanding me to respond. And after a moment of immobility, I did. Perhaps this was the very thing I needed to jolt my memory back. Maybe it wasn’t just in fairy tales that the prince could kiss the sleeping princess back to life. And Matt, with his sexy good looks and masterful self-confidence, was accomplished enough to elicit a response from a shop mannequin – let alone the woman who’d been on the receiving end of those kisses for the past seven years.

  And as his lips moved in sync with mine and his hands travelled possessively up and down my back, suddenly I did remember. I remembered how deeply I had fallen in love with him as a teenager; how much he had meant to me back then. I
remembered him, as women do the world over, in the way they never forget their first love. But I also remembered how I’d brutally severed him from my life when Jimmy died, cutting away all vestiges of memory of our relationship. And what I remembered most of all, was that while ending things with Matt had caused me pain, it had been insignificant weighed up against the incomparable agony of my grief. And if it did transpire that those events had only ever existed in my imagination – and the evidence for that was now pretty compelling – well, you didn’t need a degree in psychology to work out the message my subconscious had been trying to get across.

  I didn’t push him away from me, but my lack of response eventually filtered through.

  ‘Rachel?’ he murmured into my ear, pausing to nip gently upon my neck, making me shiver in spite of myself. He drew back to survey my face, his own a clear portrait of passion and desire.

  ‘Too much for now? Do you want me to stop?’

  I nodded silently, and thankfully he understood. I could see the effort it took him to regain his composure and I felt horribly guilty at having led him on, knowing all the while that this was probably something I shouldn’t be doing. I wondered if this was exactly how Jimmy had felt the night before. The thread that wound the tapestry of our lives together suddenly seemed heavily laced in irony.

  ‘Maybe we could just look through the stuff Dad left out?’ I suggested lamely.

  ‘If that’s what you want,’ he agreed, but added in a soft vow, ‘But don’t think I’m giving up on you that easily.’

  I’m certain he meant it as a pledge of things to come, so why couldn’t I shake the feeling his words sounded more like a threat than a promise?