7 Years Bad Sex

by Nicky Wells

  And somewhere along the line, the relationship counsellor had entered the conversation. Not physically, of course, but as a concept, an idea, an avenue of exploration. He was almost sure Myles had brought it up first.

  Alex frowned. In retrospect, some of what Myles had said had sounded a little scripted, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on why he should think so. If Myles were known for his emotional literacy and eloquence, then Alex might have been more suspicious of what had been said. But the interlude was so unlike Myles that he could only assume that his best mate was genuinely worried about him.

  Which was why he had agreed to the crazy idea of taking Casey to a proper counsellor. To his enormous surprise, Casey had been somewhat unexcited by his plan when he had first suggested it. He had expected her to jump for joy, but she had seemed reluctant to go. However, her resistance had only strengthened his resolve. For once, he would be the driving force behind a touchy-feely-talky attempt to rescue their ailing relationship. And so here they were.

  ‘Here we are,’ Casey repeated. ‘Are you sure we have to do this?’

  ‘Positive.’ Alex brooked no argument, even though he felt sick to his stomach. It would have been easier to turn up here after a few pints, but he supposed that wasn’t the done thing. He breathed in and out and took Casey’s hand. ‘Let’s go.’

  He pushed open the door and led Casey up a flight of narrow and rather dark stairs. The relationship counselling service was on the third floor, and each flight of stairs grew progressively brighter. ‘It’s like emerging from the underworld,’ he joked lightly, but Casey didn’t seem to get it.

  At last, they arrived at their destination. Musak was being piped into the reception room, and the waiting area was rammed with fat sofas, rattan chairs, and potted palm trees. There was no receptionist, but a notice on the wall invited ‘guests’ to ring a bell to call for attention. Obediently, Alex pressed the button, and a bird began chirping frantically.

  ‘My word.’ Casey giggled. ‘That’s really quite annoying.’

  ‘That’s an interesting association,’ a mellifluous voice spoke up behind her. ‘I’d like to explore that further. You must be Casey.’

  Casey gave a start like a frightened deer, and Alex thought she might well bolt. He held her hand more tightly. Together, they turned around to be greeted by their counsellor.

  ‘Hi, I’m Bethany.’

  Bethany smiled widely, showing a set of sparkly white teeth, and held out a hand to each of them. She wore a floral caftan with lashings of silver necklaces, some of which fell down almost to her knees, and her hair was plaited and rolled up either side of her head in Princess Leia–style buns. She looked wholesome and healthy, as though she was eating apples and honey all day and had never had sex in her entire life.

  Belatedly, Alex realised that Bethany was waiting for a reply, and that Casey hadn’t offered one as yet.

  ‘I’m Alex,’ he issued a little more gruffly than he had intended. ‘And yes, this is Casey, my wife.’

  ‘How very nice to meet you,’ Bethany trilled. ‘Do come through and let’s get to meet each other properly.’

  She ushered them through to her ‘room of inner peace and happiness,’ as she called it, and asked them to pick a seat at random. Casey immediately sat on a light blue sofa, and, without hesitating, Alex squeezed himself next to her.

  ‘Oh good,’ Bethany sang. ‘You’re sitting next to each other. That’s a good start.’

  Alex shifted his body uncomfortably. He hated having his every move analysed. Of course they were sitting next to each other. They were still a couple. Then again, he supposed that Bethany saw couples who were beyond reconciliation. Perhaps they chose to sit opposite ends of the room. Heck, they might choose to sit in different rooms. So perhaps the fact that he had elected to share the same physical space as Casey was significant.

  ‘Who wants to tell me what worries you?’ Bethany invited in her singsong voice.

  Alex looked at Casey. Casey looked at him. ‘You go first,’ she suggested testily. ‘This was your idea.’

  ‘Ah,’ Bethany chimed in. ‘I sense a certain anger in you, Casey. You’re finding my tweetie birds annoying, and you’re clearly attributing responsibility for your problems to your husband. I see, I see.’

  Alex felt Casey stiffen next to him. He could almost smell her indignation. Once more, he was surprised by her resistance to his counselling idea, but he didn’t have time to dwell on the conundrum. ‘Shh,’ he whispered instead, trying to reassure her. ‘Take it easy. She’s only doing her job.’

  ‘I’m not angry,’ Casey hissed back. ‘And I’m not blaming you. She’s winding me up already!’

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ Bethany offered, trilling again. ‘This is all part of the healing process.’

  ‘I—err. Yes.’ Alex cleared his throat. ‘I guess I better get started on why we’re here.’

  Bethany leaned forward eagerly. Her pinned plaits leaned forward, too. Wondering if they would disengage any moment soon, Alex tried hard not to stare.

  ‘Right. So. Um. You see, since we’ve got married, we’ve not really managed to—to make love.’

  ‘How fascinating. How do you feel about that?’

  Alex was taken aback, but Casey jumped in with an answer before he could gather his wits.

  ‘What do you think? Pretty crap, of course.’

  ‘Interesting. There’s that hostility again. There’s a lot of resentment in you Casey.’

  ‘I—’

  Alex squeezed Casey’s hand and started talking right over her. ‘It’s not great. But we can’t understand why, you see. Before the wedding, everything was okay between us.’

  ‘How unusual. And what happened next?’

  ‘What happened next?’ Alex scratched his head. This question seemed a bit disjointed to him. ‘We got married, and we couldn’t make love on our wedding night, so we tried the next day.’

  ‘Good, good. And how did you feel about that?’ The plaits wobbled in sympathy.

  ‘Excited.’

  Bethany gave a start. ‘How lovely. A positive reaction from you, Casey. How do you feel about that, Alex?’

  ‘Err—excited?’ Alex was beginning to feel like he was in some kind of black comedy. The entire conversation was absurd.

  ‘We’re making progress!’ Bethany enthused and clapped her hands. Her plaits shook rhythmically, and Alex could have sworn he saw a hairpin drop out.

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Alex picked up the story. ‘That’s the point. Nothing happened next.’

  ‘And how did you feel about that?’

  Alex shook his head. He was aware of a strange pain in his hands, a pain that was becoming more intense by the minute. Suddenly he realised that it was Casey’s nails digging into his palms. If she pressed any harder, she would draw blood.

  He tried to disengage his hands, but she wouldn’t let go. Worried now, he shot her a sideways look and saw that she was biting her lip in that surreptitious way she had when she was trying not to burst out laughing. Her whole body seemed to be quaking.

  ‘Alex? How did that make you feel? The nothing?’ Bethany’s eyes were open wide with sympathy.

  ‘Ah, yes. Sorry.’ Alex swallowed. ‘It—it reminded me of the time when my brother broke my favourite police car.’

  ‘It did?’ Bethany and Casey exclaimed in unison. Alex caught Casey staring at him. Thankfully, she had stopped trying to push her fingers right through his palms.

  ‘It did, yes,’ he clarified in a firm voice. ‘I felt upset and cheated, and I wanted to hit him bad.’

  ‘Did you want to hit Casey when the nothing happened?’

  ‘No! What? No! Of course not. I—’

  ‘You can say it, darling,’ Casey chimed in softly. ‘We’re in a safe place here, remember?’

  Where did she want him to go now? Alex frowned at her and shook his head. Casey drew in a deep breath and spoke again.

  ‘He won�
��t say it, Bethany, so I’ll have to tell. He cried. He cried like a baby.’

  ‘I did not!’ Alex objected truthfully. Casey winked at him. At least he thought she did, but it happened so quickly that he might have been mistaken.

  ‘You did, too, darling. Nothing to be ashamed of.’

  Alex hung his head. Bethany reached out and patted his arm. ‘That was a big step for you, Alex. Well done. And what happened next?’

  Casey jumped in. ‘The next day, we went to our next destination, Barcelona. We went sightseeing, and we had a great time, but when we got back to the yacht, there was more—nothing—in bed.’

  ‘And how did that make you feel?’

  Alex stifled a snort, and Casey had an answer at the ready. ‘Not too bad, actually, because I was feeling a bit queasy, and I hate the smell of condoms.’

  ‘You do?’ Bethany made a sympathetic face. ‘They can be a bit icky, can’t they? I totally agree.’

  Alex coughed. This was not the time to inform Bethany that Casey was on the pill.

  ‘Oh, and the floppy rubber afterwards, it’s gross. So I was quite relieved, actually.’

  ‘I was devastated,’ Alex confessed gravely. ‘I felt almost as bad as when Maisie let me down after our snog in the bike shed in sixth form.’

  ‘You snogged Maisie?’ Casey pretended to be shocked. ‘As in, the Maisie?’

  ‘She promised to go the whole way,’ Alex defended himself, looking somewhat crestfallen. ‘She led me on, and then she let me down. That felt pretty crap.’

  Bethany held up her hands. ‘This is wonderful! You’re really communicating here. Now let me—’

  Casey locked gaze with Alex and ignored Bethany. The corners of her mouth twitched, and her eyes glinted.

  ‘Maisie Grawcock? You snogged Maisie Grawcock?’

  Alex lifted his shoulders and adopted a contrite face as if he had really snogged Maisie Grawcock. In fact, he knew no Maisie Grawcock, quite apart from the fact that he and Casey had not gone to the same high school.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Alex, I’m shocked. This explains everything.’

  ‘It does?’ Alex was stunned.

  ‘It does?’ Bethany was also surprised. ‘How do you feel about that?’

  ‘Ecstatic,’ Casey pronounced. ‘Wonderful. Light as a feather.’ She rose and threw her arms in the bird. ‘Free as a bird. I can fly again!’

  ‘Oh my goodness.’ Bethany stood too. ‘This is one of the most radical results I’ve ever seen in my entire career. What a change in you, Casey!’

  ‘Bethany, I feel amazing. Magnificent. Ecstatic. And I’m really sorry, but I must go and take my husband to bed right now.’ She pulled Alex up.

  ‘Maisie Grawcock,’ she muttered softly. ‘Now I know what I have to do.’

  ‘People, people, don’t leave,’ Bethany trilled urgently. ‘We haven’t done the big hug of reconciliation yet.’

  ‘We’ll do that in bed,’ Casey shouted over her shoulder. Alex followed her blindly. He was shaking so badly with suppressed laughter that he couldn’t see for tears of mirth.

  Together, they raced down the dark and narrow stairs. They kept in step as they loped along Notting Hill Gate, and they didn’t stop until they reached their favourite coffee shop. They ordered drinks and bagged a table in the corner.

  ‘You wanted to beat your brother because he broke your police car?’ Casey gasped.

  ‘You hate the smell of the condoms we’re not using?’ Alex hiccupped.

  ‘And you snogged Maisie in the bike shed? I’m so disappointed in you!’

  They collapsed in an embrace of giggles. Relationship counselling was clearly not the answer, but at least it had brought them closer. Alex hadn’t hugged Casey like this for weeks.

  ‘If she’d asked us one more time, “and how did you feel about that”, I swear I’d have lost my mind,’ Casey wheezed eventually.

  ‘And what happened next?’ Alex intoned in an ululating trill.

  ‘Poor woman. As you said, she’s only doing her job,’ Casey mused, calmer now.

  ‘Whatever is wrong with us, Bethany won’t fix it.’

  ‘No,’ Casey agreed again. ‘But you know what? She did make us laugh, and I do feel better than I have done for a while. What say we go to the cinema and maybe have a spot of dinner in the pub?’

  Alex stared at her in astonishment. He could feel his mouth hanging open. ‘What, now?’

  ‘Why not? We’ve nothing else to do, and I don’t want to go home yet. How about a new direction? How about we go for a spot of squeezing the moment?’ Casey grinned. ‘Well, at least the good ones, when they happen.’

  ‘Shouldn’t that be “seizing”?’

  Casey frowned. ‘So it should, I guess. But you know what? I actually like “squeeze” better. It’s more us. Let’s not just seize the moment, let’s squeeze it for all it’s worth.’

  ‘I get it.’ Alex nodded slowly. ‘We’ve been too worried. We’ve stopped enjoying life. I think you’re right. Let’s get squeezing.’

  Chapter Twelve:

  A Therapeutic Visit

  ~Casey~

  ‘Well, well, well! If it isn’t little Miss Horny Breadstick!’ The voice rang out loud and clear over the din of animated conversation in the White Lion pub, where Casey and Alex had settled for dinner.

  Casey ducked. Alex gave her a quizzical look, but she didn’t get a chance to say anything by way of response because the voice shouted out again.

  ‘Rodge! Look who’s here! Look, Rodge!’

  The owner of the voice was approaching their table, and Casey sank even lower in her chair. Too late. James and Rodge were upon them.

  ‘Casey, you gorgeous thing! How lovely to see you!’ Rodge bent down and air-kissed her like they were long lost friends.

  ‘I’m having a really strong déjà vu,’ James exclaimed cheerfully. ‘Fancy meeting you here! Mind if we join you?’

  Casey grinned at his exuberance. ‘What, even though I’ve no suggestive food items in front of me?’

  She caught Alex frowning and grasped his hand reassuringly. Before she could explain herself, Rodge and James had pulled up chairs, and Rodge got saucy with her food.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, delicately manipulating one of her sausages with the help of her knife and fork. ‘There’s a lot to be said for a traditional meat-and-two-veg arrangement. Don’t you think?’

  At the sight of his artistic display, Casey snorted a mouthful of beer over the table.

  ‘See?’ Rodge nudged James excitedly. ‘A golden… deluge! She’s getting into the zone again.’

  Casey dissolved in a fit of giggles while Alex looked on confused.

  ‘Would someone care to explain to me what you’re going on about?’ he demanded.

  ‘Peter’s Place,’ Casey hiccupped. ‘Remember I told you about the restaurant in Brighton?’

  ‘Yes. And? What’s that got to do with—upstanding sausages?’

  ‘Everything,’ James deadpanned. ‘You’ll simply have to go sometime.’

  ‘Alex,’ Casey finally managed. ‘This is James and Rodge. Remember I told you about the two very nice gentlemen who saved me from myself?’

  Alex’s brow cleared. ‘Oh, indeed. Yes, I remember.’ He smiled. ‘Nice to meet you both.’

  ‘Oh, darling, nice to meet you, too!’ James poked Alex gently on the arm. ‘What brings you to our local watering hole? And how are you both?’

  Casey coughed. Of course he would cut right to the chase.

  ‘This is our local too. And we’re fine,’ Alex said innocently. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Really?’ James shot them both a probing look. His eyes had that penetrating quality, and Casey could feel herself blushing.

  ‘Same as before,’ she qualified. ‘And you never told me that you were based in Notting Hill!’

  ‘Dear girl, you never asked,’ Rudge chuckled.

  ‘Oh dear lord,’ James said at the same time, looking horrified and ignori
ng the geographic part of the discussion. ‘We’ve got to fix that, and pronto. You know I said I could help you.’

  Alex looked confused again.

  ‘Err—you know how I said one of the sweet blokes was a sex therapist?’ Casey stage-whispered. ‘Meet James. James is convinced he can help us.’

  Alex shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, mate. Sorry. No offence.’

  James narrowed his eyes but said nothing. Casey jumped in again. ‘You see, we’ve actually, this very afternoon, been to see a relationship counsellor, and it was a bit of a disaster.’

  ‘A relationship counsellor?’ James managed to make it sound like a dirty word. ‘What an utter waste of your time and energy.’

  ‘She did manage to unite us, though, in a manner of speaking,’ Casey offered, before relating the gist of their therapy session. ‘We legged it out of there laughing like naughty teenagers. Which was what brought us here.’

  ‘Good! That’s good,’ James pronounced. ‘There’s insight in there. You haven’t lost your spark, I can see that. Oh guys, I really wish you’d let me work with you.’

  Alex shook his head again. ‘It’s not my cup of tea. Sorry. Really.’

  Rodge spoke up. He dropped all his affectations and used a calm, low, very reasonable voice. One that, Casey could see, struck a note with Alex.

  ‘It really isn’t what you think,’ Rodge explained. ‘It’s not dodgy. You won’t be watching porn together. Well, not unless you want to.’

  ‘Been there, done that, didn’t work,’ Alex interrupted testily.

  Rodge inclined his head. ‘Fascinating. Why don’t you go and see James properly to tell him in more detail everything you tried? You might find he has some other suggestions, things you two may decide to try on your own, at your own pace, if and when—and only if and when—you fancy. The whole point of therapy is to liberate you from the perception that sex is a duty to be performed.’

  ‘But I don’t think of it that way,’ Alex protested. Casey could see the tendons in his neck standing out, and she knew Alex was getting tenser by the second.

  ‘Maybe you didn’t used to, but I think you’ve very much got to that place now,’ James observed gently. ‘It’s written all over your face.’