Never Say Never
This is a story. It is a romance. It is a slow burner. The sex is at the end, Stick with it.
The backdrop to this story is the beautiful city of Budapest, a city I know well.
As always any mistakes in editing are mine and mine alone.
Thank you for reading.
David's Story
I first met Helen when I was just turned eighteen and in my first term at college. Perhaps I shouldn't use the word met since we didn't talk to one another and she didn't notice me, so encountered would be the better word. I was eating alone in the cafeteria at lunchtime when I first saw her. When I noticed her, she was sitting with a friend at a table about 30 yards away on the other side of the large room.
She was facing me, eating her lunch, and as I watched she would periodically look up, smile, and say something to her companion. I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. She had long wavy red hair, freckles, and big brown eyes, and her face lit up when she smiled. I couldn't keep my eyes off her and picked at my food and pushed it around my plate.
Eventually, she stood up and walked towards the refectory door and I was able to see her contours. She was tall, maybe five feet nine, and slim but with a well-rounded figure. She was dwarfed by the man with her, who stood a good nine inches taller and was about a yard wide. I am not small and am a good six-three tall. Back then, I was fit and worked out, but he was a giant. I found out later he was one of the first-team rugby players.
My heart sank as I saw him place his arm around her shoulder and guide her toward the cafeteria exit, and I realised they were an item.
This disappointment was, of course, quite irrational. At the time, my confidence in wooing the opposite sex was virtually non-existent. I had attended an all-boys school, had no sister, and had never had a girlfriend. At the time, I believed she was way out of my league and wouldn't look at me twice (or even once).
Nevertheless, you can dream. And dream I did. Of holding her in my arms and kissing her, although I was fairly clueless about exactly what might happen next.
All of that year I saw her around. She was often in the company of "the Hulk," and appeared to be in a stable relationship. Halfway through the second year I was gratified to see that she no longer appeared to be seeing him, now preferring to keep company with a group of her girlfriends.
I was happy that she was no longer seeing Bruce (that was his name) the rugby player for more than the obvious reason. He was a well-known person on campus and was a thief and a bully. The firsts rugby team, en masse, would often gate-crash student parties or discos and demand beer for which they rarely if ever paid. Anybody who stood up to them was threatened and intimidated and I didn't like any of them, most especially Bruce. I simply couldn't understand what she was doing with him and had convinced myself that she was far too good for him.
My dislike of Bruce and his teammates was based on personal experience. One Friday evening there was a discotheque in the hall of residence in which I lived, and Bruce and a group of rugby players removed an eleven-gallon keg of bitter and a tap and gas cylinder from the bar store. I and a few others confronted them, and a fight was looming, when help arrived in the shape of the bouncer we had hired.
He was a huge Glaswegian with the improbable name of Jock, and nobody wanted to mix it with him. The beer was returned, and I did not get a good hiding.
By the summer term of my second year, I no longer dreamed of a relationship with Helen and had moved on, having been seduced by a very confident young lady with bags of sexual experience who fancied me and had propositioned me. I accepted the offer, but the subsequent fumbling attempt to screw her was not very satisfactory and she quickly moved on.
Nonetheless, this episode gave me the confidence to understand that I did have sex appeal to at least one young lady and, rationally, there must be others about. By the time Helen became a free agent I was screwing my first real girlfriend. Her name was Julie. She was pretty enough with big tits and a big arse, and she fucked like a bunny rabbit.
And so, Helen drifted slowly into the background and eventually, I forgot her.
***
Seven years later having met and married a Hungarian lady, I was living in Budapest. I had set up my own import-export business and this was doing well. What wasn't doing so well was my marriage. I met my wife, Anna, the year after finishing University. She was dark-haired and alluring, and at first very exciting. She had come to the UK, fully funded by her father to learn English. She was also very keen to eventually return home to Hungary and, after our marriage five years previously, we had moved and rented an apartment in Budapest.
Problematically, Budapest was not where Anna had meant by home. She came from Debrecen in eastern Hungary close to the Romanian border and one hundred and twenty miles from Budapest as the crow flies. It was in Debrecen, close to her mother, father, two sisters, and numerous aunts, uncles, and their offspring, that she wanted to be. I, on the other hand, needed to be in Budapest so that I could grow my business.
Anna had been pressuring me to move to Debrecen from the second year after we arrived in Hungary. I felt I had already done enough by moving to Hungary away from my parents and two brothers who lived in and around Dundee in Scotland. Moving to Debrecen would have been a step too far. After five years in Budapest, I was well integrated into the ex-patriot community and liked to attend events such as Burns Night, the St Patricks Day March, and the St Andrews Day Ball. Although Anna had been happy to attend these events when we first arrived In Budapest, lately she had become unwilling for us to go to them, preferring the company of her Hungarian friends. To make her happy and because my long-term plan was to remain in Hungary I had taken language lessons. Many of the people I mixed with spoke good English, but unlike many of the ex-pats I had made the effort to learn Hungarian, a notoriously tortuous and difficult language to learn.
My unwillingness to move cities was not the only bone of contention between us.
Anna's father was a rich industrialist with his finger in several pies including pharmaceuticals and ball bearings. He thought of my business as very small potatoes and made that very clear at every opportunity. He also voiced his opinion that he had paid for Anna to" learn English and not marry one." Nonetheless, if we moved to Debrecen, he would give me a well-paid job within his organisation.
Whilst Anna thought this a very generous offer I knew this was a poisoned chalice. I had no intention of becoming the family lapdog dependent on the charity of others, and I told Anna this. She was not pleased.
Whilst we were in England our different political views had been unimportant. You don't talk politics when you are busy fucking. Once we got to Budapest, and the fucking became infrequent, our political differences assumed much more importance. I have always been left-wing in my beliefs whilst I found Anna's right-wing racist views increasingly abhorrent. I tried to excuse her by telling myself that these were the views that she had been brought up with, but this did not help.
Eventually, after five years in Budapest, I was married to a woman from whom I had grown apart, and whom I had grown to dislike. Divorce was looming, and I consoled myself that at least we had no children and had not made the mistake of having them to try to save a failing relationship.
***
It was a Sunday morning in early April, and I went to Bern rakpart to join the Budapest Hash House Harriers, go for a run, and then visit a bar and drink too much beer afterward. I had not been to a meeting for a few weeks. Anna did not much like my friends at the Hash or indeed any of my ex-pat friends, but that weekend had gone to Debrecen for her mother's birthday and left me alone in Budapest.
I arrived at the meeting point at half past eleven, and a small group of maybe thirty people had already congregated. I knew most of them. The group was multinational. There were folk from the British Embassy, Brits employed around the city, a couple of American guys, a Canadian lady, and assorted Europeans. We waited for another ten minutes for stragglers to turn up and were just about to start to run when a pair of young women appeared. They were both slim and wore jog suits.
"Virgins," said David the club secretary. Rang up yesterday to see if they could join. I told them to just pitch up.
"Hope they can hold their drink," I said.
"Intros at the bar," he replied.
He turned to the newcomers.
"Can you run? Do you know Budapest?"
