Читать книгу Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You - Nikki Gemmell - Страница 21

it is our greatest happiness to be unselfish

Cole fell asleep inside you once. He laughs at the memory, finds it erotic and silly and comforting. The morning after, to soothe your indignation, he’d said that falling asleep inside a woman was a sign of true love.

What? Shaking your head as if rattling out a fly.

It means that the man’s truly comfortable with the woman, so comfortable that he can fall asleep in the process of making love to her. I could never do that to anyone else. Think yourself honoured, Lovely.

Hmm, you’d replied.

You love Cole in a way you haven’t loved before. Calmly. It glows like a candle rather than glitters. You love him even when he falls asleep in the process of making love to you. You’d never loved calmly before, in your twenties. That was the time of greedy love, full of exhilaration and terror, and when you said I love you you always felt stripped; there was no sense, ever, of love as a rescue. Sometimes, now, you wonder what happened to the intensity of your youth, when everything seemed so vivid and desperate and bright. Sometimes you imagine a varnisher’s hand whipping over the quietness of your life now and flooding it with brightness, combusting it, in a way, with light.

But Cole. When he enfolds you in his arm you feel his love running as quiet and strong and deep as an underground river right through you. He stills your agitation in the way a visit to Choral Evensong does, or a long swim after work. The bond between you seems so clear-headed: the marriage is not perfect, by any means, but you’re old enough now to know you cannot demand perfection from the gift of love. It’s a lot more than most people have. Like Theo.

Your dear, restless, vivid-hearted friend. Sometimes you feel a sharp envy at the sensuality of her home, all candles and wood and stone, her fluid working hours, weekly massages, Kelly bags. But you remind yourself that she isn’t happy and probably never will be and it’s a comfort, that. For no matter how much Theo achieves and acquires and out-dazzles everyone else, she never seems content. She’s taught you that people who shine more lavishly than everyone else seem to be penalised by discontent, as if they’re being punished for craving a brighter life. I’ve been knocked down so many times I can’t remember the number plates, she said once.

Many people are afraid of Theo but you’ve never been, perhaps that’s why you’re so close. All the noise of her personality is a mask and when it slips off, on the rare occasion, the vulnerability riddled through her is always a shock.