Disclaimer: this is a revised version of a story submitted last year, so may be familiar to some. It has been improved, and will be expanded.
Chapter One
Tom
It's never a good thing when you find yourself hitting your village pub alone at 8 PM on a Friday night. Just the fact of being there can make the back of your neck tingle a little with embarrassment, as you walk through the crush of bodies, occasionally nodding to people you know from around the village, trying not to look too much like a bloke who's staring down the barrel of turning forty, still single, with nothing better to do than pop into The King's Head for a quiet drink all by himself.
But the alternative was to potter around my house, streaming movies I'd already seen a few dozen times; drinking coffee that would then keep me wide awake for most of the night, leaving me powerless to stop myself from staring at my bedroom ceiling, wishing I wasn't in a half-empty bed, trying to cling on to the fast-fading memories of times I shared that bed with Jessica, the last woman I'd been with; my last girlfriend... who left me more than five years ago.
Most days, I did a pretty good job of not dwelling on how long it'd been since I'd last had sex. An upturn in the housing market the last couple years had building contractors like me pretty busy most of the time; busy enough that, during daylight hours, my mind rarely wandered over to memories of Jessica — or worse, the woman I could still hardly bear to think about...
My very first girlfriend. Dawn.
But there were always the lonely nights. Lonely nights in a half-empty bed, with nothing to do except think about who I wished might have been there. A warm, feminine form for me to reach out to, pull into me; a hand to clutch at mine as hips gently ground against me, bodies adjusting to find the right grooves in each other, and the bed, where we would lay in the night, relaxed and content. Safe and secure. For the first year or so after Jessica had left me, the memories of her had been so strong, I could almost physically
feel
her against me, could smell her scent, and hear her shallow breaths, while I'd
dwell
on replays of some of our better times together.
But eventually, this had stopped working for me. It wasn't just that the memories of Jessica had faded as time went by, my skin no longer able to summon the echo of her touch, my mouth failing to conjure the memory of her taste, resulting in significantly less powerful orgasms, that had barely felt worth my time and effort. No — once I passed the three-year-mark of being single, getting myself off had started to feel somehow
sad
. Not even the rare, surprise powerful orgasm brought a bliss strong enough to fend off the strange, creeping sense of defeat that would attack me almost immediately afterwards. The sneering voice in my head reminding me, I was by myself. I had no one with whom to be intimate. How pathetic that my "sex life" consisted of staying at home, touching myself to memories of the ex-girlfriend I could bear to remember, while trying to close my mind off to the one that I could
not
. To remember Dawn was to give myself the powerful orgasms I was otherwise missing; was to make myself not just gasp, but moan and cry out, growl her name into my pillow as a torrent exploded from me so powerfully I felt barely able to hold onto my own cock. Afterwards, it was not defeat that would charge in and attack me, but grief. I missed Dawn so much. Had always missed her, even during my relationship with Jessica. Of course I missed her — Dawn was my secondary school girlfriend, my first, and I would have been more than happy if she had been my "only."
But that wasn't how life had worked out. After secondary school had come sixth form; after sixth form, she had gone to university in London, while I stayed in our home village in Kent, an hour's train ride away, apprenticing to my dad. We'd spent less and less time together; and when, after graduating, she stayed in London for work, the "drifting apart" was inevitable. It didn't matter that I loved her so much, I could get tearful just thinking about her. It's impossible to have a functioning relationship when you live so far apart, and we were broken up before we turned twenty-five. Two years after that, my dad retired early and left me the business. It crossed my mind at the time to reach out to Dawn and ask what she thought about maybe coming home to Kent, to see if we could give it another go. But by then, she was engaged to a guy she'd met at university. (Last I heard, they had at least two kids, and she was an editorial director at a publishing company in the capital.)
After another six months of singledom (reaching three-and-a-half years by now), I had begun abstaining from masturbation, and now only indulged when I
absolutely had to
— when the ache, the sense of fullness, in my groin became too uncomfortable. But even at those times, my pursuit of relief was not a sensual act — no, I would get the job done as quickly and as quietly as possible, and then immediately seek something to distract myself from the feelings of sadness as they made to swarm me again.
And now, on this Friday night, I was getting the feeling that I'd be taking care of myself when I got home. It'd been nearly four weeks since I'd last indulged (my record was five) but now that I was thinking about Dawn, the flickering memories of times we'd been together, it felt inevitable that I'd succumb to the urge that I was beginning to feel building.
Then I reached the bar, casting a glance left and right to get a handle on who was where in the informal queue. And that's when I saw a familiar shape, that I recognised even though she had her back to me. A shape I would have recognised anywhere. A woman, barely five-feet tall, in a simple jeans-and-jumper ensemble; her dark brown hair tied in a tight, long ponytail that tumbled down her back like a waterfall, drawing attention to an hourglass figure that I could tell had been softened, just a little, by age.
Dawn.
Dawn
Somehow, I knew Tom was there. I could feel him. I've always been able to feel his presence, ever since we were teenagers. It was my body that tipped me off — a gentle prickling at the back of my neck; a tightening of my chest; a slight shiver as the ghost of his touch from almost fifteen years ago ran along the skin of my arms, my shoulders, my neck. And even though I knew I was just imagining it, that I
had
to be just imagining it, I began to smell his scent as if he was leaning over me, the way I remembered him doing (and had remembered regularly over the years, even during my marriage). That strong, warm, masculine scent that I remembered so well I had to close my eyes and shake my head clear of the memories that flickered on the movie screen in my mind — or else, I might have just stood there at the bar in a trance, my breathing becoming increasingly shallow, as a heat rose in my cheeks, and in other parts of me...
Before I'd even turned around to confirm my suspicions that he was there, I knew there was a good chance I'd soon be texting my sister, Hayley, to let her know that I'd be arriving at her house later than planned, and that she maybe shouldn't wait up for me. I would leave out, for now, the fact that it was because I'd run into Tom. Hayley wouldn't be pleased to know that I was having anything to do with a guy I broke up with well over a decade ago. A break-up that was so devastating, both me and my sister feared I would never recover.
It was an entirely different break-up that had brought me to my hometown in Kent, to my sister's house, that night. I was fleeing London after the break-up of my ten-year marriage. Nothing dramatic, really — there had been no adultery, no abuse. Not even any really serious arguments. Boredom, and incompatibility, had led me and Mark to deciding to call it quits rather than go back to counselling for the sake of our two young daughters. I wasn't looking forward to all the faff that would have to be dealt with — custody of the girls, division of assets and possessions — but that was for later. This weekend, I'd just wanted to have some time to myself, and Mark had been good enough to say he'd have the girls all weekend while I went home to either sleep or cry (maybe both) on my sister's settee. So I'd packed a small overnight bag, kissed the kids, stopped myself from instinctively, automatically kissing my soon-to-be-ex-husband, and caught a train, watching the London skyline fade into the late winter night. I would be returning soon, I knew — London was where my life was. My career, my two girls — I could not take them with me, and I didn't want to. But at that moment, I felt a relief to be leaving it behind, just for a night or two.
When I got off the train at the village station, something stopped me from walking to the minicab office around the corner. Something had led me to The King's Head pub a ten-minute walk away. And it was as the shivers kept travelling up my skin, breaking out in little goose bumps as if his fingertips, his lips, were lightly grazing me the way they once did, that I started to suspect I had known, or at least been hoping, this very thing would happen.
I took a deep breath and turned around. My gaze locked on to his without my having to search for him amid the crowd at the bar, because we had always just seemed to
find
each other, no matter where we were — instantly, I was plunged into his rich brown eyes set deep into sharp, sculpted features. I couldn't remember how many years it had been since I'd last seen him, but those sharp and sculpted features were still present and correct, as was his height (six-foot-one) and his wide, muscular frame, maintained by the building work that had kept him here in the village, rather than follow me to London. The only differences, really, were the occasional line traced in his lightly tanned face, and a tinge of grey in his wavy, dark hair. Tom had aged, just as I had, but every sign of it seemed to me not an imperfection, but a signpost on the road his life had taken since last I saw him. A life that I had mostly missed, and the thought made my heart clench in my chest, filling me with an urge to barge past the other drinkers, jump into Tom's arms, wrap my legs around his waist and sob into his neck how sorry I was to have missed so many years with him.
When he took a step towards me, I thought I might hyperventilate. When he smiled at me, and those sharp cheekbones lifted as if to hug those deep brown eyes, I thought I might literally pass out.
"Dawn..." My name on his lips always sounded somehow different than usual. Like he had found some way of saying it that gave it a new meaning, that was all his own. "What... what are you doing back? Everything OK with the family, your sister...?"
"Yeah, yeah, everything's fine." I was waving a hand to chase away his concerns and felt like I would need to use my
other
hand to pull it back, or else I'd be reaching out for him. And I didn't think we were there yet. "I'm just..." I felt a sharp sting of tears behind both eyes, almost laughing at how I was about to instantly blurt out everything about the breakdown of my marriage, and all the stresses that were about to come with it. We definitely weren't
