Author note
This is part 11 of 12, the next one I write will be the last of the story. Thank you for your patience, thanks for reading, and rating, and especially for commenting. I hope some of you have found it interesting -- I wanted to write something a bit different, something that felt plausible, something that was ultimately about the characters. A bit more planning and care could definitely have helped, but I am what I am. I've enjoyed the process and I think I've learned a lot. Thanks again..
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I did try very, very hard to reclaim my life at that point. Honestly I did -- please believe me. I went to work and applied myself. I chatted away with my colleagues and even managed to enjoy it. I let Brian take me away to the seaside for a weekend with some of his friends. We walked the beaches, ate ice creams, laughed, drank a lot. One of his besties told me I should become a lesbian, and I said that I wished I could, and meant it. In fact I told myself that I was done with men for the next three years. I made a little promise on it, and threw a pebble into the sea in some sort of symbolism. There was camaraderie that weekend, and enough fun to keep my mind mostly away from Ed. He didn't call, and neither did the police -- a relief on both counts. Maybe I had gotten away with it, I thought. The whole thing, the whole mistake of falling for that guy.
Back home, I spent my evenings of the following fortnight alone -- well, with Romeo, but he is pretty quiet company. For the first few days I watched TV and read, and listened to music, and just lay there on the sofa, thinking about what I'd lost. But eventually there creeped over me an itching desire to finish my book. Rosie's Winter of Love. I skimmed through what I'd written so far. It all seemed a bit silly, a bit naïve. But there was something nice about that.
And Ed had been right, when he said that I now had the experience to re-write those key scenes, to make them colourful and convincing. And so I went back to them, and poured myself onto the pages, channelled the thoughts and feelings from our experiments to bring life to Rosie meeting a stranger at a bar, Rosie spilling her insecurities to a boy she trusts, Rosie touching herself while the professor watches, Rosie jumping into the lake at midnight. It hurt me to write those things, and remember the joy, the excitement and the fear that I had felt in doing them myself, so recently. But I pushed through that, I got it done. Sixteen days after the car incident, the book was almost finished, and I was satisfied with it. It was better than other things I'd written, and not just because it didn't contain vampires and werewolves. It actually had a little bit of me in it. And that meant something. Perhaps my small band of loyal readers would like it, and perhaps not. Either way, I believed I'd gained something from it.
But day seventeen had a big surprise for me. It was a Friday, and at eight pm I had eaten my dinner, washed up, sent some silly messages to Brian and fed Romeo, and I was enjoying a hot shower, loving the escape from the cold, from the inefficient heating of my old, cold flat. I rubbed the soap over my arms, shoulders, the legs I hadn't bothered to shave for a good while. I thought about the weekend, and how I could spend it, whether I should go visit my parents or not. Then over the water I heard my buzzer. I considered not answering it. But my curiosity overtook. In fact I thought that it was probably Brian -- in my messages I'd mentioned that if he wanted to drink that night I was up for it, and so I thought maybe he had decided to come over and surprise me with a bottle of something nice. And so I turned off the shower, wrapped a towel around my slim frame, and went to the door. I didn't mind if it was a neighbour who needed something, they could see me in a towel, I was beyond caring about something like that. The weeks of emotional rollercoastering had burnt out my normal reserve, at least temporarily. But when I opened my door, it was Ed standing there.
"I came through the main door with one of your neighbours," he explained, instead of saying hello.
"Oh." I didn't know what to say or do, so I just stood there. And when he asked if he could come in, I shrugged, and turned and walked back inside, and he followed. He sat down on the sofa, slowly, usual sureity missing. In fact he looked lost. Buying time, I went through to my bedroom and dressed myself in jeans and my comforting old black jumper. I took a while in there, trying to figure out what I wanted to say. My mind was blank. I gave up, returning to the living room. It was quite dark, just my big standing lamp lighting up one corner, and Ed's figure was large but ill-defined, face mostly shadowed. Romeo had made himself scarce, as if predicting a fight. Ed was staring at his socks, but then he looked up -- and why did that combination always get me like that? The deep brown eyes and the strong thick eyebrows? What's really in the way someone looks at you, could someone tell me that, please? Why do we care how they look at us, what difference does it really make, how can we really use that as a basis for trust? Somebody out there must have the answers.
"Come sit with me," he pleaded, quietly.
"No thanks."
A long silence, his eyes on me while I looked at anything else but him. Then he spoke again.
"None of this makes sense to me. I really need you, you know. I don't want to be without you."
"Why not?"
He pushed his unruly hair away from his forehead, and it flopped back again. "Because you're special to me. You're not like anyone I've been with before. And I want you all the time, I think about you all the time. I'm... fucking hell. I'm in a lot of pain, alright?"
"Why... why should I believe you?"
"Come on Lizzie. Why else would I be here? And whatever happened at the road, I don't care. We all have our mad moments." He stood and approached me, and I let him take my hand, and I let him put his lips to it, and then I let him hold me to him. Everything of me was warm, and alert. I didn't put my hands on him, but I didn't move away. I didn't do anything at all, just stood there. He whispered in my ear that he loved me, that he couldn't be without me, that I was more to him than anything else, than everything else. And I found myself whispering back to him, saying that I didn't believe him. But he kept repeating his mantras of devotion, and my declarations of resistance faltered, and tailed off.
Is it so bad to want to be loved? And to want, desperately, to believe in the person you adore? That's all I was doing in that moment, that's all I was guilty of there, so please don't judge me too harshly. Maybe you already have, back when I told you about pushing him into the road, and I suppose I can't complain about that -- it was dangerous, brutal, stupid and irrational. But I didn't mean to do it, it wasn't a plan or even a conscious decision in the moment. And neither was this, this acceptance of him, this wordless forgiveness. It was instinct.
I touched him without realising, pawing his back, his shoulders, and I could hear someone crying, and then I realised it was me. Ed told me it was okay, that everything was going to be okay. The floodgates really opened after that, and I soaked his shirt with my tears, as he kissed my neck. Softly. Again he told me that he loved me. And I thought he did, and I thought he was going to take me and drag me onto dry land, and safety. I didn't know it would be quicksand.
"Take this off for me," he murmured, pulling at the hem of my jumper. I obeyed, lifting it over my head, dropping it to the floor, and he took my right breast in hand, gently squeezed, stooped to kiss my nipple, and I felt a jolt of anticipation shock through me. I unbuttoned his shirt, and he shrugged it off. The flat must have been very, very cold, but I didn't feel that. Eyes closed, I kissed him deeply, gently bit his lower lip, ran my hands from his ribcage to his chest, to his jaw. Breathed him in as he unzipped my jeans, helped me out of them, turned me around and pressed me against the wall, his strong body against mine -- mine which felt so weak, blissfully weak, pliable to him, faithful and obedient to him.
He took my hair in his hand, wound it up, and put his lips to my neck. I shuddered involuntarily. His other hand grabbed my hip as he ground against me, and I felt his hardness strain against his jeans and push against my bum, heard his lustful breathing in my ear, smelled his familiar scent. He released my hip, kept my hair held, moved the free fingers between my legs, parting them, rubbing the wet cotton of my knickers. It was obvious that I was ready for him. I was so, so ready. I don't think I've ever wanted it so badly. He stepped back and I heard him hurry out of his jeans and shirt, and then a moment later he was against me again, and I was against the wall, my cheek pressed against it, my heart thumping, and he was asking me if I wanted this, if I wanted him. A genuine question, seeking permission, not some kind of teasing.
"I do. I want you inside me," I gasped, and a second later he had pulled my knickers out of the way, the head of his cock was rubbing my slick labia, trial and error driving me wild with desire -- and I had to help, couldn't prolong the waiting, so I reached back and guided him to my entrance. When he pushed into me we both groaned, a simultaneous sound, a shared emission, and he shoved his full length into me, one hand firmly squeezing my bum cheek, the other braced against the wall to allow him to thrust into me harder, to find his pace. I arched my back, pushed myself back onto him, put my hands between my face and the wall so that the motion wouldn't hurt me. For a second I felt a tell-tale welling up and I thought I was going to experience the fastest orgasm I'd ever had, by far, but it subsided again, leaving me to lower, softer pleasure. And how good that pleasure was, how warm and wet and willing I felt, feeling his cock plunge into me over and over, his pelvis slapping against my bum, everything heightened and intensified by passion and surprise and sheer desperate need. He pounded me like that for a few minutes, harder than I was used to, and I liked that, liked the intensity of it, the feeling of his hardness slamming into me repeatedly. Ed heard me whimper, and asked if I was okay, I told him to keep going, keep giving it to me. He did for a few more seconds, then abruptly pulled out. I nearly fell backwards, he grabbed my waist and steadied me, turned me around and we kissed with hunger, and then I pulled back and asked him what the hell he'd stopped for.
"We forgot to use a condom -- again."
"Oh, fuck. Yeah."
"And I was this close to finishing, nearly shot a load right up into you," he said, grinning. I laughed.
"That was a close one then. Come on."
I led him through to the bedroom, and fumbled round my bedside table for the condoms I'd bought a few weeks ago. I presented him with one.
"Here you go. No charge."
He sat down on the side of the bed next to me, kissed me shoulder, ran his palm down my back.
"You put it on for me."
"Are you that lazy?"
"It'll be more fun."
I shook my head but obliged him, extracting the condom from its foil, pretending not to mind its strange latex feel and the slickness of its lubricant. I pressed it to the swollen head of his cock, held it there with the fingers of one hand, and with the other I pulled it down slowly, down the length of his shaft.
"All ready. Now back to fucking me, please." This was more direct talk than I was used to using in the bedroom, but so much arousal had accumulated, and I wanted him to take me again, to really make me his. He nodded and pushed me gently onto my back on the bed, parted my legs and entered me hard, groaning his approval when I cried out in pleasure. I let myself go to it, lay there with my hands clasped round the back of his neck, letting his body warm mine, taking his erection deep into me, feeling the bliss build up. Minutes later I came hard, shouting it out, not caring about the neighbours, not thinking about anything but my orgasm as it shook through me. Then, as I lay there quivering and spent, he thrust in quicker, shallower motions until he finished too, noisily, and collapsed forward onto me.
"Sorry about that," he mumbled as he lifted his weight off me again, and pulled out, holding the condom in place.
"You don't have to apologise for anything," I whispered, eyes closed. I suppose in that sugary moment I managed to forgot why we had split up. "That was so, so good."
"Yeah, it was." Ed disappeared for a moment to bin the filled-up protection we had used, then he was back and lying down by my side, taking me in his arms. Our naked bodies joined via a loose arrangement of limbs. I could have looked into his eyes, but instead I looked at the ceiling, because I wanted to talk to him and my rational mind was coming back. I wanted to say things that I would be too bizarrely shy to if our eyes were to meet.
