Читать книгу With This Ring, I Thee Bed - Alison Tyler - Страница 9

We should be halfway to paradise by now.

I look at Susie’s blue kitchen clock. Just past twelve. The flight left three hours ago, heading to the Caribbean with two empty seats in first class.

The washing machine clicks over and I watch the clothes tumble around in the drum, soapy water sloshing from side to side. They’re all too colorful. Bikini, sarong, sundress. Clothes I’m never going to wear. I’m washing them instead of burning them.

Our honeymoon was a present from Charlie’s dad—one of the gifts that can’t be quietly returned. It’s not always possible to apologize. Some things can’t be undone. And “sorry” isn’t always enough.

I get another flash of Charlie’s face. The way his eyes kind of flickered as I ran past him on the path, the way he looked almost as if he was smiling, the way he does when he’s confused. He was a little pale, his freckles darker than usual.

Oh God.

It was all supposed to be a big white dream. We’d be like paper dolls cut out of a magazine. A pretty little church, the perfect lace dress, star-shaped flowers with delicate trails of ivy. Charlie would be nervous and I’d be trying not to laugh. We would kiss in soft focus. Bells would ring.

My phone goes—and it’s playing the fucking Wedding March. My sister must have programmed it as a joke. I pounce on my jacket, scrabble through the pockets and find it, hit the cancel button before I look at the name.

Charlie. Of course it’s Charlie. Did I think he’d just disappear? Six years don’t evaporate that easily. Even if I’ve broken his heart and ruined his life, we’re going to have to at least pretend to be grown-ups. I should call him back.

I don’t. Instead, I pick at the lace of the bright yellow garter Susie made me promise to wear. It’s a hideous thing—the color of crayon sunshine in a kid’s drawing, with too many bows and ribbons sprouting from it—but for some reason I can’t stop playing with it. Back when she gave me the garter—a hundred years ago, the night before the not-wedding—it seemed like a silly, joyous little joke. Now it makes me wince.

“The yellow ones are supposed to attract lovers. Maybe some of your good luck’ll rub off on me, eh?” Susie had given me a big, theatrical wink, but I think she meant it at least a little bit.

Susie and I are best friends from high school. We’ve been through crushes, boyfriends, breakups and make-ups. I’d always been the one with the hectic love life, Susie the one with the steady boyfriends. Until I met Charlie.

My head snaps up as the doorbell rings. I don’t want to speak to anyone, not the flower arranger, the dressmaker or the caterers, not friends and relations or in-laws. There’s not a single one of the thousand people involved in the biggest not-wedding this century that I want to hear from.

The bell goes again. Maybe Susie forgot her key, I think. Maybe it’s not even for me. I tread nervously to the door and reluctantly open it a crack.

On the step is the one person I want most, the one I fear most. The door swings open and Charlie and I are facing each other over the threshold.

“Seb.” It’s his secret name for me. Silly, I know, but it makes me feel as if I’m about to collapse, like I’m a bicycle tire with all the air let out.

I’m shaking my head but I can’t break my gaze, tear it away from those eyes the color of wet slate. Charlie is hard to read, but over the years I’ve learned his tells. Usually, I can pick up his quirking smile, some little giveaway angle of his eyebrow or how he tugs at his ear. Today, he’s standing on Susie’s front step with his arms hanging by his sides, and I can’t tell a thing. Whether he wants to hold me or hit me. I close my eyes.

I don’t know how to apologize.

“I just couldn’t. I can’t.” My voice is thin, about to break. “Where do I start, Charlie?”

What I want most is to sag into his arms. He’s my comfort, usually, my solace and support. I straighten my spine. No. Not now.

I stand back and let him in, taking a breath of his fresh-air-and-skin scent as he passes.

I follow him into the kitchen and it’s easier, somehow, when we’re not facing each other, so I turn my back on him and fuss with the kettle and the teacups. My hand shakes as I pour milk.

As the water comes to a boil, I turn and he’s got the garter, that hideous yellow badge, and he’s turning it round in his hands.

“You wore this?” he asks, a frown folded between his eyebrows.

“Susie asked me to.” I want to snatch the garter away from him. I remember the sensation, tight round my thigh, the cheap fabric stiff and prickly. I stood there being prepped for the wedding and I remember having the sudden, violent urge to run away and rip it off and scratch and scratch and scratch.

Charlie nods slowly.

Normally, he’d crack a joke. Normally, this would be easy—being together, the easiest thing in the world, like everything’s right and how it should be and … and perfect? I look at the yellow of the garter against Charlie’s skin.

“It was all too good to be true,” I say softly. Surprising myself.

He looks up and I can see for the first time a spark in his eyes. It could be dangerous. It could be promising. I take the chance.

“I’m scared, Charlie.”

“Of what?”

“Of us.” I watch his lips. I owe him honesty, at least. I take a deep breath.

“Of suffocating. I was standing up there at that altar and …”

“And what?” he says, his voice edged with flint.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I start to say, before I realize what I’m doing. I start again. Look right in his eyes.

“I don’t know if I can promise you so much. Just you, just me, forever.” There’s a rushing over my skin, and I’m running fast down a slope. But I can’t stop now. “I saw my sex life flash in front of my eyes, Charlie. Do you understand what I’m saying?” I know I’m almost shouting.

Is that worse? I wonder. To have ditched Charlie in front of all his family and friends, to have left him awkward and alone at the church, or this? To tell him the truth, what I’ve been darkly afraid of all along? My lurid, cherry-red, heart-throbbing dirty secret.

How can I promise never to have another lover? Me, who’s always been quick to get bored, and quicker to discard unsatisfactory bedfellows. Who’s been first to try every practice and position, whose whole life is punctuated by sex—exotic and romantic and thrilling and brief and heartbreaking. Yes, I love Charlie, and yes, I love fucking him. But will I really be able to sacrifice every other man in the world—every other possible man?

I think about how Charlie is, and try and match it against the invisible future. I know it’s wrong, but I’m trying to measure him. Testing, to see how I love him, how much and how far.

Yes, I love how his eyelids kind of slide down a few degrees, so he’s giving me a snake’s gaze, one that slips over my body in a prelude to his touch. I love how his mouth goes tight. How his fingers travel, how he takes mouthfuls of me.

And this. Yes, I’d forgotten how much I love this.

“Charlie?”

“Shut up.”

How he is silent. How he pulls me to him and works his way from my wrist to my shoulders. Charlie is gentle. Most of the time. But he knows how to fix me in place. He’s clever, too—sees immediately how he could take an ugly yellow garter and twist it around my wrists, how it would hold my arms behind my back firmly, but stretch enough not to dig in too much.

“What if Susie …”

He ignores me. I think this might be what I love most about us. He knows me so well, he can tell when to listen and when to just keep on going. Like now, as he strips me methodically, slowly, almost brusquely. He pushes the cardigan off my shoulders and lets it bunch at my tied wrists. Reaches for the buttons at my throat and lets the backs of his hands scuff over my breasts.

I’m biting my lip again, trying not to moan. For some reason, it seems important to match Charlie’s wordless intensity. As though the only way I can apologize is with my silence, as though any more words would be too many.

He peels my shirt aside, bares my breasts and belly. He’s holding my shirttails in his fists and he tugs me from side to side a little as he leans in to kiss me, letting me know how he can move me, how he can turn me.

And then we’re kissing and it’s too late for explanations. I forget why I left the church, I forget where I am and what my name is. All I can think of is the heat of Charlie’s mouth, the scrape of his stubble and the hard pressure of his body against mine. The way he is kissing me recklessly, like a dare.

When he pulls away I’m breathing hard, as if we’ve been running.

“So I’m not enough for you,” he says, and his lip curls a little. His hand drops to my breast and tweaks hard. I open my mouth but no sound comes out.

“You want more.” His other hand, my other breast. I’m almost doubling over, and my nipples are burning beautifully as he pulls and pinches. When he lets go, I almost fall forward. In the sun-filled kitchen I’m gasping for breath—half-naked, disheveled and as ridiculous as the yellow garter.

Charlie knows how to tease, and today I’m wondering if he’s playing out some kind of revenge. If he’s going to teach me a lesson—how it feels to be left hanging.

“Please,” I say, even though I think I shouldn’t.

“You know what, Seb?”

He’s leaning back and looking at me thoughtfully, as if I were a painting he’s deciding whether or not he likes.

“I can understand you being chicken. I can even live with the thought of you fucking other people.” His eyes flash. I look at him and the blush storms through my cheeks. He nods. “Yes, I am aware that you like sex, Seb.”

He leans in close and whispers in my ear. “Dirty girl, aren’t you? You think I didn’t know that? You think I can’t tell how hungry you are every time you walk down the street, shaking that tight little ass of yours? You think I don’t notice how you stick your tits out when you’re talking to a nice-looking guy? How you give all my friends the once-over, like you’re just considering the possibility?”

I flinch. I really didn’t think he’d noticed.

Charlie pulls back and sighs. He reaches, almost idly, to my trousers and flicks at the buttons. As if he doesn’t care if they come loose or not. When he slides his hand into the front of my panties, he touches the tip of his tongue to his lip as if he’s doing something tricky.

“What breaks my heart, Seb, is that you think I’m so stupid.”

“I don’t!” If I weren’t tied up, I’d reach out for him. He curls his fingers inside my panties, cups my pussy in his hand and gives a little squeeze. It’s like he’s in control of my heartbeat now, as though each stinging pinch of my clit sends the blood running through my veins.

“You think I don’t know you.”

“That’s not true,” I say, although my voice is strained and cracking. “It’s not?”

I look up at him through the strands of hair that have fallen over my face. He meets my gaze, hard and direct.

“Seb, I know you. I know how you’re torn.”

While he talks, he keeps working at me, his fingers stroking my most intimate places, proving the truth of what he says.

“You think that getting married is a death sentence. That we’d be stuck fast together and we’d never be able to leave.”

I bite my lip. I can’t really deny this, not without lying. He strums at me, turning the dial up toward orgasm. He can make me come with a flick of his wrist. I rock on his hand, lean on his arm so that he’s virtually propping me up. I think of his cock, how long it is and how full it makes me.

“Charlie,” I say, losing the thread of our conversation. I know I have to concentrate, have to hold back. But when he tweaks at my aching nipple, I nearly give in.

“Nothing is forever,” he says, his voice so soft it breaks my heart. He tugs on my nipples, left and right, dosing me with little shocks of pain.

“You like this.” It’s not a question, but I respond anyway.

“Yes. God, yes.”

“And if you didn’t want it? If you stopped liking it?”

I won’t ever, I say in my mind. Please don’t stop. He’s alternating pinches of my clit and my nipples now, digging his fingers into me, burying them inside me.

“Seb. Answer me.”

I shake my head.

I whisper our pact, our long-ago agreement. What we discussed back when we were laying down the ground rules. When we were still falling in love.

“I say the word. And it’s over.”

“Yes. You say the word. It’s that simple.”

He holds on tight to my clit, rubbing it between his forefinger and thumb until it burns. “Or,” he says, “of course, I can also say the word.” His voice is low and creaky. Suddenly, I’m terrified.

I want to kiss him. I want to stop him from saying anything more. I moan and reach out for him, want his body slammed against mine, want him to rub against me, crush me, bore into me. Prove that he’s here, with me and not lost.

“Charlie,” I say, and there’s panic sliding in my voice. “Please.”

He cradles my head in the crook of his shoulder while he reaches to undo his jeans. At the same time he loosens the garter and throws it on the ground. Hands free, I grab for him.

We’re swaying now, falling against the kitchen table and bumping into the chairs. I push my clothes roughly down around my ankles, still leaning into Charlie, nuzzling at him. He smells of the soap he uses, maybe a little of last night’s whisky. I wonder what he did last night. Whether he slept. Whether he cried.

He turns me roughly and bends me over the kitchen table. Now I can’t see his face and I’m even more scared—is this his goodbye fuck? Is he going to say the word, cut me loose, banish me from his life?

His hands are on my hips, holding me steady and firm, and I butt back against him, wanting him to be inside me, yes, but also wanting to be inside him somehow. I spread my legs, feel the head of his cock slip between my thighs.

“Come into me, baby,” I say, tilting my ass up as though begging. His thighs are warm on the back of my legs. He pushes into me and I could weep again. My legs are shaking, about to start bucking and jerking against him, almost out of my control.

“Shhh,” he says, stroking from the base of my spine to between my shoulder blades, dragging his hand over my body to soothe me. And it does—I rock slowly, taking a little more of him at a time until he’s nestled deep in me and can’t go any farther.

“More,” I murmur, wiggling my hips from side to side. Charlie keeps caressing me, slow and steady. I hear him laugh.

“S’funny?” I ask, although I can’t stop swaying against him, working myself up and down on his shaft.

“I’ll give you as much as you want,” he says lightly, while he withdraws in a rush and plunges back into me, making me gasp. “Whenever you want, however you want.”

He punctuates his words with thrusts that get harder, more emphatic and blunter each time. His cock is thickening in me, corkscrewing deeper and deeper.

“And if you want me to stop …” He pulls out so that just the tip of him is in me, an unbearable loss. “You just say the word.”

“Charlie,” I say. He’s hovering on the brink, I know it. The orgasm gathers in my fingertips, in my toes, rushes back and forth over me, crisscrosses from my nipples to my pussy and back to my mouth, my eyes, my heart. Just as I come, holding tight to the edge of the kitchen table, I get it. I get what he means. We’ll be married if we want it, for as long as we want it, just how we want it.

Charlie slides forward, sinks into me, and gives me what I need. I rise up to meet him and we surge together, rocking, responding, fucking like we always do.

“This is how they fuck in heaven,” Charlie said back in the first flush of our relationship, after six weeks of springtime courting and delirious sleepless nights. It was one of those embarrassing thoughts that spill out after especially good sex, and the way he said it—like a teenage boy awestruck and mad horny, made me blush. I remember we both laughed at the time.

Years later, and only after I’d managed to wreck our picture-perfect day, I realized he was right. It’s why I wasn’t all that unhappy that we missed the flight to Saint Lucia. Charlie and I know exactly how to make heaven on earth. We made it that afternoon in Susie’s kitchen, with the yellow garter lying trashed on the floor and the sky outside turning a really pretty shade of pale blue, like shirts when they’re fresh out of the laundry.

It was a strange day. We should have been brokenhearted that we’d created such a public disaster of our marriage. We were shipwrecked and empty-handed, and we probably both looked like fools. But in the space left behind we were free to make our own promises, say them quietly, in our own time.

There were no flowers, no speeches, no guests and no garter. Just me, Charlie and the words between us—the only ones that really mattered.