Come Back to Me

by Scarlett Rush

  ‘That’s my boat,’ you said with a nod. ‘And that’s the group I should be taking out fishing right about now. They all think they’re going to land Jaws but half of them will be lucky to come back with a tiddler smaller than the bait used to catch it! Tell me, Miss Miniver, will I see you again soon?’

  ‘That all depends on you,’ I said, still a bit haughty, still not realising that Anne Boleyn wasn’t necessarily the best role model when it came to landing the big one. ‘I’m not the one always out and about on the high seas.’

  ‘Come back here this time tomorrow and I’ll take you to my secret location. I’ll show you where I fish off the cliffs.’

  ‘Ooo, aren’t I the lucky one?’

  ‘Well, I’ve not shown nobody else,’ you said. And, do you know, that did indeed make my heart beat faster: just that little thing that you were doing for me and for no other, even if it did mean scrambling about the sharp rocks and grazing my ankle.

  ‘Slow down, man - you’re as nimble as a bloody mountain goat!’ I called out to you that next day. You were off and away, flitting over the surface of those dips and sharp ridges even though you had your rod in one hand and a picnic basket in the other.

  ‘Pity I’ve got a face like one too!’ you called back. I remember thinking that there weren’t many lads your age would be seen dead carrying a picnic basket. You’d made me my lunch. It was the first time a man had ever done that for me. I’d met you at the harbour wall as arranged. I didn’t get a kiss as a greeting, nor did you hold my hand as you led me away but I still had that feeling like bubbling current inside me, I still knew that it had begun. If I just played it right, I thought, I just might end up with the man of my dreams. I didn’t know how it had happened. I hadn’t had to harangue you day on day, or flash you my tits up by the swings in the park like some other girls had reputedly done. I had just eased in there somehow. It felt so effortless it was like it was simply meant to be. I’d put to the back of my mind Jacqui’s helping hand.

  You took me away past the cottages beyond the harbour wall, down the thin path where trespassers are warned to keep off. You took me inside the old shack below Mr Branwalather’s massive house up on the cliff. It used to be a boathouse but he had converted it into a sort of recreational escape pod. Anyone who had met Mrs Branwalather knew why he might need such a place. He had put a glazed front on it to keep the elements out. The winching mechanism was there but the chains had gone and a huge slab of oak had been put on the metal footings to create a giant table-cum-work surface. A wood burner had been installed on the back wall. There were a couple of wooden dining chairs and two more comfortable tub chairs in leather. It was a place for men to have quiet drinks of an evening and tell hoary tales of ones that got away.

  Apparently, because you fished so often with Mr Branwalather and had shown him so many good spots off the cliffs, he had given you pretty much a free run of his converted boathouse. You could come and go as you pleased. That’s what people were like with you. There were tackle boxes stacked up and rods in a line. There were kitchen units and a large sink, for preparation of the day’s catch. There was also an oven, giving out warm pleasant smells, from which you produced my lunch. It was a short-crust asparagus tart, you said, keen to impart that it was all your own work. It was to be served with a side salad and a beetroot dressing. It was rather an elegant meal, I thought, for a chap of your size and appetite.

  ‘I add some clotted cream to the double cream and then stir in the parmesan and a little grated nutmeg,’ you informed me. ‘It has to be served warm, not hot, so by the time I’ve taken you to my secret location it should be bang on ready to serve.’

  We sat perched on a little hollow in the rock face, looking out across the watery emptiness. The air was warm. The sea crashed and boomed in the cave down below, even though there was barely a chop on the surface. Every now and then a very fine spray, an almost imperceptible cooling mist, would breeze against my face. I felt safe there with you. I never once thought of the dangers, even perched there with imminent death down below. We ate off plastic plates in our laps and drank a crisp white wine from the plastic glasses. It was simple sophistication and felt like a wonderful treat. The food was excellent and I told you so.

  ‘You should get a job in the restaurants,’ I suggested. ‘You could end up in London, Paris, anywhere.’

  ‘What, nothing to do all winter and then holed up sweltering all summer? No, I need to be outside, out in nature.’

  ‘Where’s your ambition? The world might be begging to taste your lovely food.’

  ‘As long as you taste it, that’s fine by me. The trick with this is to chop the leeks finely and cook them very slowly in butter to bring out the sweetness. Then you line the base with it. I think you’ll agree there’s little more satisfying in this world than a nice leeky tart!’

  You waited until I had taken another mouthful before saying that last bit, just to have me choking and blowing out crumbs. You always took great pleasure in forcing me to laugh. You didn’t actually do any fishing that afternoon. You only brought the rod with you in case I wanted a go. We sat, often in contented silence, and I was just glad to be there with you, the two of us alone, where none of the others could find you and prise you away. You told me something about the currents there - the warm stream, or something - that brought the tiny plankton in, which brought the smaller fish in, which brought the bigger fish in, and so on. You said the bigger fish being there could make the magic happen and I thought you just meant some kind of incredible dish you could produce once you’d landed them but then, right on cue, the dolphins were there, jumping the water, chasing the unseen shoals below.

  It was magical, just as you predicted. The first time I had spent any proper time with you alone and it was as if you had summoned the pod there just to impress me. You must have seen them dozens of times but that didn’t stop you looking like it was your birthday. I was on air. I had ached with how much I had wanted you and now that I was there with you I saw that all the yearning was justified. I knew even that afternoon that my life would mean nothing if you weren’t in it.

  ‘Couldn’t you have picked us somewhere more jagged to sit?’ I said to you. ‘It’s like I’ve got a whole stalagmite stuck up my arse!’

  And then that first time, etched ever into me. We had been out on the rocks again, a few weeks after the picnic, in the evening this time. I have to admit I was wondering why you hadn’t already made your move. I was beginning to think that you didn’t fancy me after all. Turns out you just wanted it perfect. You had brought a quilt with you to wrap around me because the breeze can always gust a little down on those rocks. The dolphins came again, as if on your command. We were joking and giggling as the pinkness set across the sky. Then you led me back to Branwalather’s boathouse and this time you did have me by the hand.

  We sat with the tub chairs at the window. You stoked up the fire, more for effect rather than necessity. You brought out some candles and lit them, just two or three, just to avoid the starkness of the electric bulb. You also produced a bottle of whisky - Mr Branwalather’s no doubt - and poured me some, although I turned my nose up at the idea. You told me to try it, I might like it. Take in the aroma first, you said. No need to hurry. Only ever rush the things that aren’t worth the wait, that’s what you told me. It was a special whisky, apparently: a single malt, 25 years old. A year older than you, as you pointed out, which if nothing else goes to prove that from that first night, for all the subsequent dreams dreamt together and promises made, they only lasted a mere two years. Why the hell did you go to her? After all those things you said to me, how could none of them make you stay?

  What that boathouse needed was a two-seater. We had to sit apart. The high sides of the chair meant I couldn’t sit sideways upon your legs, gazing down at you. I’d have had to plonk myself down right on your lap, facing forward, as if we were on some kind of squa
shed bus. Sitting apart meant you could look at me. You liked to do that, did you not, always with that barely contained grin on your face and those bright eyes.

  ‘I have to tell you something,’ you said.

  ‘This sounds ominous!’

  ‘When I first saw you I thought you were the prettiest girl I could imagine. I didn’t think I could ever see better. But in those three years away, somehow, you have still managed to bloom. I have to say, Miss Miniver, you appear to have become truly beautiful.’

  I remember feeling all melty and flushed. No one had said anything like that to me before. It seemed impossible to be so liked. I should have just thanked you.

  ‘And how many others in those three years have you said that to? How many girls all told?’

  You looked put out. You didn’t want to talk names or numbers because it wasn’t important and it wasn’t anywhere near as many as I apparently assumed. I was misjudging you and no matter what you told me on that score, you claimed, I seemed determined to disbelieve it.

  ‘When you were gone those three years I felt like I couldn’t breathe,’ you said. ‘I have never felt like that about anyone - not even close. I know we had barely spoken back then, hardly connected, but there was something. It wasn’t just about fancying you either. I didn’t just used to think about how much I’d like to jump your bones, I thought about you. I thought there was no one else I would ever need to be with again, other than you.’

  They were big words back then and you were like a living, breathing version of that fire behind you: so enticing and warming and comforting, so compelling. The scene outside was gorgeous, the candles were flickering, the whisky was sweet and relaxing and your smile was everything.

  ‘Not that I would mind jumping your bones,’ you added, just for good measure, in that grinning, half-embarrassed way of yours.

  ‘Then you had better prove it, hadn’t you?’ I said.

  The kiss was more passionate than our first one three years before on the harbour wall - a measure of the connection and the yearning that had built between us through not rushing things. It wasn’t tentative; we felt cemented this time. I couldn’t help but have the mental picture of Jacqui with her hand down there squeezing your crotch, and her on-going contention that this was the thing that made you go for me. She always said that without her intervention I would have been forgotten. I never really could mount much of a counter-argument because I never really did know what you saw in me, why you were still there waiting after my three years away. Worse still, I doubted I could ever have been so forward. It just wasn’t me - not out there, in public, with someone else watching. I had to privately concede that this need for me, which kept you breathless in my absence, was not caused by my own hand. The thing that made you want me wasn’t something I would have done.

  Even with that second kiss, safely alone and inside, it didn’t seem like the type of thing I would do. But I did it - there’s irony for you! Not because I thought you would be expecting it but because of desire, because of jealousy from knowing she had felt it when I had not. It was there growing against my belly and I wanted it. You were twisted uncomfortably so that you could still kiss me as I pulled you in close to feel the swell against me. Then my hand was creeping in between us, fingers stretched, sliding over the bulge. I felt rude but I felt full of lusty passion too, like you had unleashed the naughty girl you wanted me to be. I was grasping it, squeezing it, your fabulous stiff cock, knowing exactly the excitement she would have felt those years before.

  Then I was at your zip and I was trying to get my hand in, to the heat of it. You talked of not rushing things but I thought this is what you would want and I couldn’t stop myself anyway. The smoothness of you was divine, the sheer swollen hardness of it as my fingers curled around. I wanted to pump it with my fist at blurring relentless speed, and only just overcame this urge and kept my stroking less desperate. You breathed hard and your hands slid down to grasp my behind - the first obviously sexual rather than tender advance you had made upon my body.

  Your grip couldn’t hold me for long and I was down on my knees. Perhaps you thought I wanted it to be more romantic than this but more than three years torment is enough for any girl. I surprised myself that day with how much I wanted you in my mouth, how much of you I wanted to take, how rude I wanted my slurps and sighs to sound. I even had both hands at work - one around you, the other squeezing at your heavy balls. You won’t believe me but it was the first time I had ever done that to a man - the ball-squeezing thing. You drove the wantonness into me. It was good to make your knees sink and make you feel some of the helplessness I always felt when we were not together.

  I didn’t even want you to lick me that first time. I was ready enough. I wanted you inside me. I wanted to capture that cock of yours and have it deep where no one else could get it. Whilst a man is inside you, you know he is yours. It was always going to be about keeping you there. You threw the quilt across the huge oak table top to give me some padding and then laid me down upon it. Our first time was so much better than my first time, or any other in between. It felt meaningful and mature. Everything was heightened. Every touch counted.

  You were on your elbows so that you could see me, kiss me, keeping us close but without the crush of your weight down upon me. You were like a beautiful canopy, shielding me from the world and all my doubts. I had to spread wide to accommodate you and my knees were raised up. I remember I had my hands on that hard butt of yours, encouraging your thrust and wriggle. You told me sometime afterwards that this was the first time you’d had a girl do this. You thought it sexy though forward - the intimacy of it and the way I wanted to urge you on deeper inside me. I thought you were just saying this and wasn’t sure whether to believe you or not - which girl wouldn’t get a grip of their guy’s backside, especially one as perfect as yours?

  You turned me and had me flat to the table, a shield of muscle over me, writhing against me, slowly moving in and out. Your breath was at my neck, your kisses tingling there, my earlobe caught between your teeth to make me gasp and shiver. When my eyes were forced open I saw the gentle pink sky and the calm sea below, not dark enough yet to be scary. I had been rushing things before; scared I might lose you if the pleasure wasn’t immediate. Now you slowed it all down, wanting it to last - and it was the best ever. It made me feel warm and loved and it made me come.

  ‘I don’t know what it is you do to me,’ you breathed, sometime in the afterglow, ‘but you most certainly do something.’

  I thought my heart might burst out of my chest. I couldn’t imagine possibly feeling happier.

  Dark Days

  I’ve gone back to the harbour wall, driven into the darkness by the forlorn hope that I might find you. There is no sign of you and no relief for me. I hate to think where you are now. This is where I caught you. This is the same place that I stood with you in the calm sunshine, watching the pootling tourists below us, feeling like I might have to shriek for joy. Now the wind is swirling and the splash is coming over the breakwater. It is raw and comfortless, nothing like that sunny morning. At night the sea out there is like a black monster, darker than my moods on my down days. All you can do is bob around on that huge mass of motion, no way of ever controlling it, getting dragged into the pits and troughs knowing it might devour you at any moment. Your one hope is that when calmer times come you are still there somehow clinging on.

  I would like to say that after our first time I felt more secure but that isn’t strictly true. Being an item didn’t stop all those other girls wanting you. If anything it just made them want to try harder to prise you away, as if I had laid down some kind of challenge. Down at the Galleon or at the Social Club they’d be milling around you the same as always, all tipsy and flirty, as if I wasn’t even there. Woe betide I left you alone or they’d be in my place as quick as cats, trying to sit on your lap - even the ones who already had boyfriends. />
  ‘Why can’t you just tell them to fuck off?’ I used to implore, exasperated. That wasn’t you though, was it? You couldn’t set out to offend anyone. No one raised any eyebrows either. Everyone just took it for granted that the girls would flock to you and try their luck. I was supposed to grin and bear it. But I couldn’t. The jealousies took hold, a couple of times so bad it would send me down into those pits, for weeks that second time, and I was stunned that you were still there on my return.

  ‘Why do you stay with me?’ I asked you, on more than one occasion. You used to smile and shrug, stalling to make sense of it in your head, searching for romanticisms although I wasn’t asking just to fish for compliments - I really couldn’t understand what it was you liked in me.

  ‘I don’t know if my need to be with you is chemical or spiritual or what, but it is constant. I couldn’t shift it even if I wanted to,’ you said. ‘Once, if you’d asked me what my “type” was I wouldn’t have described you. That just proves how little you know yourself. It’s true we don’t always connect. I know we have different outlooks on certain things, but for me that just makes the attraction stronger. That first time we got close enough to talk, something else happened inside me. It’s like you reversed my polarity or something. You jumbled my brain and made my insides swirl. You changed all the cells in my body, mixed up all my chemicals so that now they won’t work properly unless you are near. You changed the picture in my head so that now I can’t see anything but you. I reckon you must be a witch - a sexy witch, mind!’