by Tilly Delane
I catch Silas’ eye and pass on my approval. Just because. He smirks back at me. Before we can have a longer wordless conversation about how happy we are for this little interlude, because it sure as shit is good for Sheena’s soul whenever something reminds her that she wasn’t just forgotten fodder in a relentless industry, the photographer guy finds his tongue again.
“Sorry, I should introduce myself. I’m sure you won’t remember me. Paul Green. We were only ever on set together once. I’d just got my first gig as an assistant runner. It was─“
“The Malta shoot.” Sheena finishes his sentence serenely and smiles at him.
A real smile this time. Warm and friendly, like she rarely gives to anyone but her closest circle.
She holds out her hand, so he can blow a kiss on it. And he fucking well does. But it’s not an affected or cheesy gesture on either part. When he straightens up, he looks at her with total adoration. He’s so totally absorbed by her, he doesn’t even see us.
Silas and I confer again. We like the guy.
“Of course, I remember you, Paul Green,” Sheena says sweetly. “You were the only help on that shoot who would look at my face when all the other jerk-offs were looking at my frozen tits. A girl doesn’t forget the boy who’s there with a robe as soon as the photographer shouts ‘take five’. I take it this is a regular gig for you?” she asks, indicating the theatre at large.
Paul nods.
“Yes, it is. I do all the promotional shots for this production company. There are a couple of cast changes tonight, which is why I’m here. Updated pictures for the website.”
While the two of them chat, the place suddenly starts filling up around us and a glance at my watch tells me it’s quarter of an hour till curtain time.
“Sorry,” I say to Kalina. “I think we missed the boat on people watching, Kalina. It’s time we found our box.”
She makes a gesture that tells me she doesn’t mind in the slightest, accompanied by a look that says, ‘who cares, look, Sheena’s got an admirer’.
“We will go ahead, Sheena,” Kalina informs her. “See you in a moment.” Then she turns to Paul Green. “Nice to meet you. We will be back here for the interval. See you then.”
I have to work hard not to laugh out loud. Kalina couldn’t be more obvious in her matchmaking as she practically drags me away and gives Grace and Silas a flick of the head to tell them to follow us. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Grace pulling Silas along in a similar fashion.
We have barely settled in our box, where the champagne and the mineral water I ordered are already waiting for us in coolers, when Sheena follows us.
“That was quick, Mum,” Silas teases.
She sits down and sighs.
“He had to go back to catch them going on stage,” she says dreamily, before she turns to me with laser sharp focus. “George?”
“Yes, mam?”
“Don’t fucking calling me mam. Right, if - if - I was to stay in London tonight, would you make sure Kalina gets home alright?”
I frown at her for a moment, not quite catching her drift. But then I remember that Silas and Grace have booked a room in a hotel for after the show tonight, because Grace finally wanted to go sightseeing in London. Silas, who like all true Brightonians fucking despises London, still hadn’t taken her until now, despite the fact she’s been around since the beginning of May, give or take a couple of days when she misguidedly went back to the States. They offered for Kalina to stay, too, but she refused. She’s been to London a few times and said she had work to do at home. But I think it’s mostly because she didn’t want to gatecrash their romantic weekend.
“Of course,” I answer Sheena’s question.
Sheena turns to Kalina.
“Kalina, ducky, would you mind awfully? It might not even happen but,” she grins unapologetically, “it’s been a long time since I got laid.”
“Mum!” Silas exclaims.
Sheena turns to him with a ‘what do you want, Chuck?’ face.
“I promise I’ll make him use a condom,” she tells him dryly, before she delivers the next line. “Hopefully several. But at our age, you can never tell.”
Silas looks down at the full champagne flute that I just handed him and screws his eyes shut.
“I could really murder a beer right about now,” he mutters, just as the lights in the auditorium go out and the music starts.
Tough luck.
Kalina
I have no idea what the show is like.
I am too obsessed with the potential prospect of getting George alone for the whole ride back to Brighton. Two hours. A lot can happen in two hours.
And it would be kind of perfect. Madonna and Bryan fucking in the back of a limo then parting their ways, and by tomorrow he can don his suit again and I can get back into Kalina’s dungarees ─ and nobody will be any the wiser.
But with a bit of luck, the fever will finally be gone, and I can concentrate on my job from there on out.
It’s not his fault that this assignment is taking so fucking long, as far as I can see George and his associates have nothing to do with my case, but the fact I’ve been mooning over this bad boy hasn’t exactly helped my general focus.
To finally get the chance to fuck him out of my system would be a golden opportunity.
So I spend the first half of the show hoping that Paul Green will show up in the bar for the interval.
I spend the second half grinning like a moron because he does ─ and then Sheena never returns from the bar because the two of them are too engrossed in catching up, show forgotten.
We go to find them after the final curtain and they are still so fully absorbed in each other’s company, it takes them about a minute before they realise we’re back and standing behind them. The sheepish grin on Sheena’s face is all I need to see to know it’s my lucky night.
A whoosh of nerves goes through me at the thought, settling in the pit of my stomach as a throb of anticipation.
“So,” Silas pins Paul Green in his gaze, “is Mum staying with you tonight?”
He says it evenly but because he is Silas, the threat is always implied. Even with the remnants of Simon le Bon’s makeup and in a silly New Romantic shirt, he looks nothing short of the deathly fighter that he is.
Sheena rolls her eyes at her son’s bluntness but appears unflustered.
“I hadn’t quite got there, darling, but thanks for brokering the deal for your old mother. I feel cherished,” she tells him caustically.
Then she turns to Paul Green.
“Am I?” she asks him softly.
He smiles at her and holds out his hand to help her off the barstool.
It’s all the answer she needs.
Diego
I have no idea what I just watched on that stage.
I was too preoccupied with the idea that I might have to sit through a two-hour journey with Kalina as my only company, sans chaperone.
It’s going to be torture.
But I have morals.
Not many but I do where it counts.
She is too young for me. Too innocent. Too nice.
She does not belong in my world.
When I first met her, I had her down as a bit of a gold digger, but the more I got to be around her, the more I realised to my shame that that was just a preconception about Eastern bloc women, which I inherited from my father.
Dad propagates two sorts of racism. Openly cuntish, and in the form of subliminal messaging. Whereas I learned to recognize his openly cuntish ways early on, I still find myself caught up in thoughts sometimes that spring from the more surreptitiously racist shite he subjected me to during my formative years.
Kalina isn’t in England because she is looking for a well-off husband. She is just a real sweetheart EFL student, who likes to flirt and who plays with fires she wouldn’t be able to handle if they got out of hand.
She’s also wicked smart and doesn’t need to choose life as a kept woman. She could
probably go to work for the United Nations with that language brain of hers.
“Where do you live, Peter?” I ask the photographer once it’s clear that’s where Sheena is headed tonight.
“Willesden,” he answers, and I sigh inwardly.
Willesden is a very decent neighbourhood, but it’s the opposite direction for us and dropping those two off will put another hour on the time I will end up spending in Kalina’s company, alone. But no way am I letting Sheena go to an address we haven’t checked out.
“You here by car?” I ask Green, and he shakes his head.
“No, motorbike, actually,” he answers, and his face drops.
Presumably, he has just realised he hasn’t got a second helmet to sling on Sheena to take her on the back of it.
“Oh, what’ya got?” Silas throws in, because he’s still hankering after getting another bike after he had to sell his.
I scrub my face to hide my annoyance because I already know before Green answers that between here and when we drop Silas and Grace off, the conversation will now be solely about motorbikes. Something I have zero interest in. Not my thing. Wearing a helmet makes me feel claustrophobic. And not wearing one is a) illegal and b) fucking stupid.
“Ducati,” Green answers to an approving nod from Silas. “But I can leave that in the garage here and pick it up tomorrow. We’ll take a cab.”
“No,” I tell him resolutely. “I will drop you two off at your place in my limo,” I inform him and pre-empting protest, I add bluntly, “I want to make sure we know where you live.”
Silas gives me a small smile and even Sheena smirks. She is wise enough not to protest. She might be our senior and guiding star in life, but she is still a woman going home with a man she’s only just re-met. She is also a woman with an appalling track record in relationships, so even if she did have objections, she’d just be outvoted by us.
There is no further discussion on the matter, and Peter excuses himself to get his kit before we leave. Silas catches my attention, while we carry on milling in the rapidly emptying bar.
“A word,” he says.
We move away from the women to stand out of earshot.
“So,” he starts, pinning me in his hazel gaze.
Silas’ stare when he gets intense is fucking scary. Right now he’s doing scary plus on me and I have no idea what I’ve done.
“Yes?”
“You’re dropping Grace and me at the hotel, then you’re making sure Mum and that guy get safely to his place. Make sure you watch them go into the building.”
“You trying to teach me to suck eggs here?”
He holds up a hand and that’s when I see that he’s actually barely suppressing a grin. The bastard is fucking with me.
“I’ll take a picture of them before you drop G and me off, so we have a record of his face, and he knows it,” he carries on as if I hadn’t interrupted, before he starts grinning openly. “And then, you will have a long ride home. A very long ride. With Kalina. Alone. In the privacy of a limo.”
I get serious at that.
“Look, Si.” I haven’t called him Si since we were twelve. “You don’t need to give me the big brother speech. I’m not touching her. Don’t worry.”
He outright laughs at that. Then he looks across to the three women until Kalina gives him a little wave, Grace blows him a kiss and his mum cocks her head at us. He turns back to me.
“Get real. If any of those three has set her sights on a man, you don’t stand a chance in hell, mate. And I’ve been watching the way she looks at you since I took them to the track that time. And I’ve seen her suck an ice lolly, too. If she decides tonight’s the night, you’re toast, Benson.”
He comes closer as if he’s about to hug me, slides an arm around my waist and slips something into my back pocket.
“So have a few of these,” he says merrily. “I went to the loo earlier and got some out of the dispenser for Mum, then I thought I’d better make sure you’re covered and all. But,” he adds, and his tone suddenly drops an octave, making it tricky to understand him without listening very carefully, because Silas only ever talks under his breath in the first place, “if you two do it, you treat her like the person she is, you hear? Don’t treat her like one of Diego’s whores. Treat her like George’s friend who he’s sleeping with, if you catch my drift.”
I panic at that.
“What does that mean?” I ask him.
I manage to make it sound like a challenge but, actually, I’d really like to fucking know, because, frankly, I have no idea. My life hasn’t exactly been full of male role models that show you how to treat a female with decency.
“You make sure she comes, either before or after you, doesn’t matter. You don’t take more than she is willing to give. And you don’t drop her afterwards like a piece of meat. You take her back to our house, make sure she is snuggled up in bed and bring her a cup of tea or hot chocolate before you leave. And make it with milk not with water like it says on the packet. The packet is bollocks. Leave on a good note. And if per chance the two of you feel that fucking in the back of the limo is not enough and you stay the night, then you don’t leave tomorrow without taking her for breakfast first. Got it?”
“Fuck off,” I say good-naturedly.
And I swear to myself that I will never ever tell him how fucking grateful I am for his unsolicited advice.
Kalina
There is something about time when you are waiting for a particular moment to happen. It bends. On the one hand, it takes forever to get there and on the other, it’s too soon when it arrives.
Today my moment arrives when George climbs back into the limo after standing outside to watch Sheena and Peter Green disappear into a really normal looking semi-detached house. I’m peeking through the open window and it looks like on the inside Green’s house is probably as big as Sheena’s, but unlike our place in Shoreham, this has a full driveway frontage. It’s funny because when I think of London, I always forget that most of it doesn’t really look like a big city at all. Most of the boroughs look like any other English town.
I say as much to George as soon as he slips back into the seat opposite me and tells our driver through the intercom that we are ready to roll.
It’s kind of an inane comment and makes me sound like an airhead tourist, but it hides my nerves. And also, Kalina was always supposed to be a bit of an airhead. Just didn’t pan out that way on the night, so to speak. Sometimes a role takes on a life of its own, especially if you play it for a long time, all day every day.
George smiles and nods politely at my comment before he pushes a button that operates the window and lets it slide back up, but he doesn’t reply.
And then we look into each other’s eyes across the distance between us.
And look.
And look.
My heart is racing.
My clit is pulsing.
My insides are clenching.
And suddenly I’m tired of the charade.
I like this guy.
I like him a lot.
Once my job here is done, I will never see him again but, no, I don’t want to fuck him like this.
I once fucked a guy with mirrored sunglasses and he never took them off. It was erotic at the time but after I felt like shit.
I don’t want George to feel like shit when I leave the limo and he gets taken home.
I don’t want Madonna and Bryan.
I want us.
I want him to look into my eyes when he enters me.
I want him to see me when I come.
“Shut your eyes,” I tell him.
They are my first words in fifteen minutes, but he doesn’t flinch, just smiles and does as he is told.
I grab my handbag and take out a contact lens container and small bottle of saline solution. I fill the compartments, balancing the little double pot on my thigh. It makes a hissy sound and I hear George chuckle.
“Sounds naughty,” he says. “What are you doi
ng?”
“Shhh,” I say, looking across to make sure he’s still got his eyes shut.
I pop the contacts out and feel my eyeballs expand. I never wear a bra, I really don’t have use for them, but I imagine the feeling is similar to what Grace feels when she releases her tits from their daily prison.
“No peeping,” I mumble, while I put the lenses away.
Next, I shimmy out of my panties, fold them and stow them in my handbag.
I hitch my dress up a bit more, so that the hem sits just a hand width below my butt.
Then I take in the sight of him for a moment, while his eyes remain closed. He really is unbearably handsome. And right now, he looks nothing like the slick gangster I met a few months ago. He still looks like trouble but of a very different kind. A hot, dishevelled guy with dirty blond hair long enough to sink my hands into, but short enough not to look untidy, high cheekbones and the most luscious lips on the planet. They pull into a smile.
“Can I open them yet?”
I lean back and spread my legs just enough so he will see I’m pantiless.
My heart is about to explode with equal parts anxiety and lust, but before I can dwell on just how embarrassing it would be if he refuses me now, I take the plunge.
“Yes.”
His eyelids flutter open, and he takes in a sharp breath as he stares. At my face.
“You’ve taken them out,” he says in wonder.
Quick as a flash, he gets out of his seat, reaches across and pulls me over onto his lap, so my knees land next to his hips and my naked pussy settles right on top of the buttons of his Levi’s and the sizable hard rod beneath them.
Not that he’s noticed I’m bare.
He’s too busy looking into my eyes, my cheeks clasped in his big palms and his thumbs sweeping over my cheekbones.
“I can see your eyes,” he says on a happy sigh.
And then he kisses me.
Not gently but like he owns me.
No, wrong. Like I own him.