by Dawn Sister
“That’s awful.” Stephan’s voice is very quiet, and I don’t know if he’s upset or shocked now. I think he might be both, because when I chance a direct look at his face, his eyes look a little red and his cheeks are pale.
“I don’t want you to think that you have to stay out of some sort of obligation,” I tell him.
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“Okay, so you need to tell me exactly why you’re here, so that I will know for future reference.”
Stephan nods, smiling and looking pretty calm, to be honest. He definitely doesn’t look like someone who doesn’t want to be here. I can at least hope he’ll stay for the pizza. Maybe he’ll even stay for me.
Stephan takes a deep breath and speaks. “I’m here because I think you are an amazing, brave, determined man and I hope that some of that determination might rub off on me, because I’ve never had to fight for anything in my life until I met you. And by god, Kit Winters, I’ll fight for you to my last breath.”
I let out a surprised huff of air and look up, fully meeting his gaze. “I-I don’t want you to fight anything or anyone. I don’t want you to be hurt.”
“It’s not that kind of fighting I’m talking about, Kit. What I mean is, I’m willing to put in the time and effort to learn what I need to.”
I lean back against the kitchen bench as I watch him very carefully, my eyes narrowed.
“I think you already studied,” I tell him. “You studied so well you should go to the top of the class, even though there’s only one of you in the class and there isn’t really a class or a teacher.”
“Well…” He smirks as he takes a step closer to me. “I’m really flattered to be given such an accolade, but I really didn’t study anything yet, Kit.”
I click my tongue. He doesn’t know everything he needs to, or maybe he does and he just skipped over some parts. Oh well, if he’s willing to learn…
“Say my name first,” I tell him, meeting his gaze for longer than I have since I met him.
“Eh?” He takes another step closer.
“I know it’s inconvenient to try to learn a different way to speak to someone,” I explain. “But when you say my name right at the end of a sentence, I tend to focus on that and not what you’ve said. If you say my name first, then you will have my undivided attention.”
“Oh, I see.” He smirks as he takes one more step, which brings him close enough to almost touch me.
I can feel his presence prickling across my skin, like silvery tingles of blue static. Any closer without pressing firmly against me and it will hurt, but he knows this. I know he does, and when he closes the gap, he doesn’t caress me, he places his arms either side of the bench and crowds me, pushing me back with his body, firm and warm and hard against mine.
I look up at him, lost in those spring-light eyes, wanting to be lost forever, because he’s beautiful.
He leans in close and whispers into my ear, “Kit.”
“Yes, Stephan?” I whisper back, sliding my arms around his waist and pressing my hands over the muscles of his back.
“I think you are incredible and gorgeous.”
“And now you have my undivided attention.” I grin. “Although I still don’t see how you can think that. I’m not the one that’s gorgeous.”
“Oh, shush.” He chuckles. “You said my eyes were like spring.”
“That’s right.” I nod, my breath quickening as his words send a rush of hot air across my earlobe and a pool of heat to my groin.
“If I’m spring, then you’re summer. Your eyes are as green as a summer meadow.”
“Oh.” I really can’t think of anything to say in reply, since no one has ever described me this way before. “I want to say I can’t be summer, because my name’s Winters, but I know that’s just my pedantic brain working overtime.”
“Kit Winters, I think your pedantic brain is a thing of wonder, just like the rest of you.”
“And now I really do want to kiss you,” I tell him. “I mean, not that I didn’t before, but it was all happening out of order. But now, suddenly, it doesn’t seem to matter because you make it all seem so safe.”
“Oh, Kit.” His cheeks are flushed pink as he turns his head just a little in order to kiss me, lips pressed firmly on mine.
With a moan, I push my tongue against his. He tastes warm, and right somehow. Everything about him is right. His smell, his taste, the way he just knows what to do and say.
When I pull away from the kiss, liking the way his warm breath feathers across my face, I keep my focus on his eyes. The eyes are the window to everything and often give me too much information so I feel overwhelmed and have to look away. Not this time. I want to be overwhelmed by him. I want to see.
“God.” He breathes out the word as a soft sigh as the kiss ends. “Kit, you’ve got my insides tied in knots. Have done since the first moment I set eyes on you. I could fall hard for you, keep falling and never stop.”
“Oh dear! You’ve already fallen into a ditch this week. I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself again,” I say, trying to sound serious, but his mouth curls in a delighted smirk.
“You know I don’t mean that literally, don’t you?”
I grin. “Maybe.”
“Definitely.” He leans back in for another kiss and I go with the flow, because that’s how this kind of thing works. If I think about it too much, I’ll get swamped in the organisation, when really, my body knows exactly what it’s doing and what it wants.
Right now, it wants Stephan Cassillis very much.
Stephan Cassillis’s body, however, wants food, because his stomach picks this very moment to rumble very loudly.
“Oh dear.” I pull back a little to regard his stomach before looking up into his eyes again. “I think maybe we should eat.”
“Hey, good idea, and sorry.” He grimaces. “That kind of killed the moment.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it.” I pat his shoulder. “Makes a refreshing change for it not to be me.”
“Kit, you don’t kill the moments, mate, you make them.”
***
Later, after we have made and eaten our pizzas, we sit together on the sofa. I’d quite like to do some more kissing, but before I can suggest it Bessie joins us from the bedroom and attempts to sit on Stephan’s knee.
“I’ll have to walk her soon.” I comment, as Stephan manages to fend her off by scratching her ears.
“I can come with you if you want,” he offers.
“Okay, as long as your ankle isn’t hurting too much. I realise this is the first time I’ve mentioned it, and I know it’s been a few days but hardly long enough for it to be fully better. I feel a bit bad about that.”
“My ankle’s fine, Kit. Light exercise is good, and don’t worry about not mentioning it. You had other things on your mind.”
“Okay.”
We fall into a comfortable silence for a little while, and Stephan slides his arm around my shoulders as we sit. I shuffle a little closer, enjoying his warmth and the way he just knows how much pressure to use when he’s holding me.
“As far as first dates go, this one has been quite nice,” Stephan states.
I shrug. “I wouldn’t know. This is the first first date I’ve ever been on.”
“Really?” He turns a little so he can face me. “But you and Harry…?”
“We never dated.” I shrug. “Harry moved in because he thought I needed him to, and I told you, I just let him take over.”
“Oh.” He returns to the relaxed position he was sitting in before he spoke, with Bessie sitting on the floor at his feet, her head resting on his knee.
He scratches her ear, a thoughtful expression on his face.
Would now be a good time to talk about the rest of the night? I’ve resisted so far because, well, when I talk about how much I’ve planned something, it can sometimes kill the moment, except, Stephan thinks I make the moments. Perhaps now is a good time.
“Stephan,
can I ask you something?”
“I think you just did, mate.” He smirks.
I click my tongue and shake my head. “Then can I ask you something after this?”
“Of course you can. You don’t have to ask to ask.”
“Oh, stop confusing me, doofus.” I hit him with a cushion and he curls up in self-defence.
Bessie gets in on the act, finally seeing her chance to jump up onto Stephan’s knee.
“Bessie, get down. You’re ten tons of solid dog,” Stephan complains, still trying to defend himself from my cushion assault as well as her tongue. “Okay, I yield.”
“I yield?” I laugh, but stop hitting him. “Who says things like that anymore?”
“I do.” He huffs, smoothing his dishevelled hair. “Right.” He turns to smile at me. “What did you want to ask?”
“Are you planning on staying the night?”
His lips part, as if he is half in the act of saying something but he doesn’t quite know what to say.
“Bloody hell, Kit. That was a bit direct and to the point.”
“I’m sorry.” I grimace. “I don’t know any other way to be. I mean, I don’t do subtle, and I don’t do spontaneous. I mean, I need to have these things planned out. I don’t like uncertainty. It stresses me to the point, of, well, you saw what happened this afternoon.”
“That was a pretty stressful situation. Anyone might have reacted the same way you did.”
“I doubt that.” I look away. How can he always manage to make even my worst behaviours seem so acceptable? “But are you? Staying the night, I mean?”
Stephan sits up a little straighter, clasping his hands in his lap as if he is nervous now.
“You don’t have to,” I tell him, trying to make him not nervous. “It’s just, I need to know, so I can, you know, put all my plans into place for, you know…” I grimace as I wave my hands in the vague direction of the bedroom.
“You have contingency plans for sex?” Stephan gapes at me, and I hang my head, knowing I’ve gone too far this time. I mean, who the hell has contingency plans for sex? And worse still, who the hell tells their potential partner they have already planned out their first bedtime activities to the last letter? He’ll be running for the door, screaming that I’m a loony…
“Mate, that is awesome.” His smile is broad, and his eyes, when I chance a look, are dancing with spring-light.
Once again he has managed to surprise me. I stare at him in surprise as his smile broadens once more.
“Kit, I think I need to see those contingency plans, because I really would like to stay the night at some point, if that’s what you want, but only if I’m absolutely sure I know enough not to mess this up, because I don’t want to, you know, mess this up.”
“Do you really want to see my contingency plans?” I regard him dubiously. “I mean, I think I already told you that Harry never wanted to. He thought they were stupid, especially the ones for bed.”
“But the bedtime ones are the most important ones to get right.” Stephan frowns. “How did he know what you liked if he didn’t read them? Did you tell him?”
“I would try to, but it never worked out the same way. Sometimes I’d get in a bit of a muddle, and he would just get impatient with me and we would end up doing everything he wanted and very little of what I did. I mean most of the time it was fine, because it felt good but at the same time, it all felt a bit out of control. Not that I’m a control freak, because I’m not. That’s not the reason I need to know what’s happening next.”
“Oh god.” Stephan sounds a little upset now, and he looks a bit pale as he falls back into the sofa cushions, his hand across his mouth.
“Are you all right?” I could remind him about my first-aid training, but I don’t think this is an appropriate time.
He recovers quickly, his smile returning as he gazes at me. “I’m fine, mate. Never better.”
His words make me laugh and he tips his head to one side, smiling. “What’s funny?” he asks.
“I like the way you say mate, that’s all, and I like that it has several meanings, one of which, has…”
“Sexual connotations.” He nods in understanding. “I get it. It also means friend.”
“We’re not friends, though, are we? We’re boyfriends. At least, that’s what you said. If you want to change that after tonight then that’s fine, I don’t mind. Eating pizza with a friend is still better than eating on my own.”
“Kit.” His hand presses down firmly on my leg. He always uses just the right amount of pressure. He is so good at remembering. “I still do want to be your boyfriend, but boyfriends can be friends too. In fact, it’s much better if they are.”
“Do you think so?”
“I know so, mate.” He smiles at me, taking my hand in his and twining our fingers together. “Now, why don’t you go and get those contingency plans and we’ll read them together. I’m not saying we need to do anything with them just yet, because I’m in no hurry. I just want to make sure I get everything right when we do.”
“I don’t think you could possibly get anything wrong, Stephan. You’ve been on a roll since we first met.”
He laughs and is still laughing when I return from my bedroom with my backpack full of notebooks and other important stuff.
“Ah, the infamous backpack.” He chuckles.
“Infamous? It isn’t the villain in a movie. It’s just a backpack.”
“Maybe, but it is important. And if it hadn’t been for that backpack, I might not have followed you home that day at the library or learned your name or asked you out on a date.”
“No. I suppose you’re right.” I stare down at the unassuming black bag. It doesn’t seem possible for something so nondescript to have been so integral to Stephan and I getting together. “It wasn’t just the backpack, of course. If Bessie hadn’t crashed that wedding…” I leave the sentence hanging.
“Oh god, yes.” Stephan chuckles. “I don’t think anyone there that night will ever forget. My dad plays that CCTV footage over and over on a loop. He’s still laughing about it.”
“Oh dear. Now I feel I’m infamous, or Bessie.”
“Not infamous, mate, just famous, amongst my family, anyway. Are these the contingency plans?” he asks as I hand him a stack of three books.
“Yes.” I nod. “Well, these are the most important ones. I don’t carry all of them around with me. There are rather a lot, and some of them are quite detailed.”
“Yes, I remember your shopping list,” Stephan muses as he studies the intricately decorated front cover of the first book. He runs his fingers over the designs. “Did you draw these? They’re beautiful.”
“They’re just scribbles,” I tell him, surprised he could think they were anything else. “Sometimes I doodle when I’m thinking.”
“You could sell these designs. People would love them.”
“Bollocks.” I laugh out loud. “Surely no one would want to pay money for my scribbles.”
“I think they would.” Stephan shrugs. His hand hesitates before he opens the first book and he looks up at me. “May I?”
He’s about to delve deeper into my world than anyone, even Yenta, has gone. She sometimes helps me write the contingency plans, but she has never read one herself. With a little trepidation, I nod. He said he was willing to do anything to be part of my life, and these plans are a big part of who I am and how I make sense of the world.
I watch as he reads, first one book then the next. The ones about shopping and walking Bessie; about having conversations and waiting for others to have their say. The ones about friendships, and how not to be an arse when someone is trying to be nice to me. I still need to do a bit of work on that one. And finally, he reads the one about being intimate. I try not to squirm.
“I haven’t quite finished that one,” I explain. “It all got a bit too graphic and I had to take a break.”
“You’re not kidding,” Stephan whispers as he closes the book and
holds it in his lap, his eyes wide and his cheeks a little flushed. “I can see why you had to take a break, mate.”
For a moment, he just sits there, staring at nothing, probably deep in thought. It’s a lot to take in all at once. When he does eventually speak, his voice is quiet, subdued even.
“What would your contingency plan be if someone told you that they love you?” he asks, not meeting my eye, staring down at the notebook in his hand, his finger tracing slowly over the designs I have drawn on the cover.
I think for a little while and I get the sense that Stephan is holding his breath.
“Love is a big word,” I begin, still thinking. “I mean, technically, it’s a small word, only four letters, but it takes up a big space in your head.” I take a shaky breath. “And your heart.” This is getting into territory I didn’t really want to cross right now. Love is not a subject I feel I can speak of with any confidence. I don’t understand emotions at the best of times, but when they are expressed and not meant… “No one should ever say it,” I whisper, “unless they really, really mean it.”
“Is that your rule?” Stephan looks up from the book but he does not leave go of it, holding it tight as if his life depended on it.
“Not just mine. It should be everyone’s rule. But I…” I take a deep breath and sigh. Why are we talking about this? Would it be appropriate to try and change the subject? I don’t want to get all flustered and upset in front of him, but if he pursues this, I will.
“Someone said it to you,” he states before I can think of anything to say as a diversion. “And didn’t mean it?”
I nod. “Yes.”
“Was it Harry?”
“Yes,” I say, my voice getting quieter with each question.
“Tell me,” he urges, his voice gentle and caring.
“He said he loved me, and then he said I wasn’t what he wanted. But if I wasn’t, why would he say he loved me? When you say something like that, it means you’ll stay forever, so he can’t have meant it, because he left. I don’t always understand how other people feel. I mean, I’m not very good at guessing how they feel, but I’m not an emotionless android. I can relate if the person talks to me and explains how they’re feeling. If he was unhappy, he should have said, but he never did, and when he left…” I take another deep breath, because this is where it gets most difficult and where I have to explain a little more about myself than I really wanted to share right at this moment… “I find it hard enough to deal with small changes. Big changes are even harder to accept. When he left, it was one change too many?”