Carnage

by Lesley Jones

  “Come here,” he whispers, I curl into him, my head on his shoulder, his arm around me, our bare legs tangled together, in an instant, it feels so right, so perfect, like we’d never been apart. It would be so easy to just go with it, so, so easy but I’m not a naïve little sixteen year old, I’m almost twenty-one and I know that’s not old by many people’s reckoning, but I bet there are forty-year olds out there that haven’t been through what I have in my short young life and the one thing I’ve learnt from all the drama of the past few years, is that the only person you can ever really rely on in this life, is yourself, and I’m not about to let me down, I have to protect myself from whatever tomorrow may bring.

  Sean pulls me in tight to him and whispers in to my hair, “I love you Georgia Rae, good night, sleep tight.” I close my eyes and drift into a deep, contented, dreamless sleep.

  When I wake up, it’s still dark, there’s no clock beside me so I know I’m not in my own room, my belly does a few flips as I remember where I am and who I’m with. Sean, I’m in bed with Sean, my boy, my beautiful boy, who I’ve loved, missed and longed for these past four years. I turn and face him. I can just make him out in the dark and I first study his face, he’s more handsome than beautiful now, his features much stronger than I remember, his boyish good looks are still there but his jaw is stronger and he has more stubble. I suddenly have the overwhelming urge to touch; he’s lying on his side facing me, one arm folded under his head, one around me. I reach out and using just my fingertips, I trace across his brow, over his cheek and outline his lips, he sighs softly and grinds his hips into me, then I’m totally amazed as he whispers, very, very gently, “Gia.”

  I think for a moment that he has woken up but I lay still and stop touching. I realise that he’s still sleeping; he’s sleeping and dreaming of me. My heart suddenly aches as I think of the time that we’ve wasted, nights I’ve laid in bed and dreamt of him, even nights I’ve been with other men, it’s still Sean that I’ve dreamt of. I wonder if it’s been the same for him, despite all the beautiful women he has no doubt spent the last four years shagging. I wonder if all the while, he was dreaming of me. I wonder if they heard him whisper my name. I wonder if they wondered who Gia was. I don’t want to obsess too much about the other women but I know I will ask. I don’t want to know but I need to know. I don’t know if that’s a woman thing or if it’s just my nature.

  “Tell me about your boyfriend.” Shit, I didn’t even notice he had opened his eyes and was watching me. It’s creepy that what was going through my mind was pretty much what was going through his.

  “Is it serious?” What do I say, is it serious, was it serious? I think it was important more than serious. Cam was important to me because he had helped me move on.

  Sean rolls away from me and puts on the bedside lamp, then rolls back to where he was, we mirror each other, side by side, one arm folded under our head, the other draped across each other’s hips.

  “I need to know G, if you’re in love with this other bloke and, we’re… if all of this…” He looks all over my face as he tries to think of the right words. “If it’s too late for us G, then I need to know now, before I get my hopes up, before I start... ”

  He pauses again and closes his eyes; he moves his hand from my hip, to the back of my head and pulls me toward him. He kisses my forehead and then rests his against mine. “Just tell me G, are we too late? Please tell me it’s not too late. I fuckin’ love you, so much, but if, if, fuck, I can’t even say it.”

  I take his face in my hands. “Sean, like the tattoo says, ‘There’s no one else. There never was. It’s still only ever you.’”

  He repeats my actions and takes my face in his hands. We’re so close that I can see the little flex of gold sparkle in his brown eyes. “I love you Georgia Rae Layton, so fuckin’ much, I’m gonna give you the world, the whole fuckin’ world but first, first G, I’m gonna kiss ya.” And he does, so, so, softly, so gently, all over my closed mouth, then he pushes inside with his tongue, he tangles it with mine, then swipes it over my teeth, the insides of my cheeks, like he’s trying to taste every bit of my mouth; he kisses, licks, sucks and gently drags his teeth over my lips, my jaw. He rolls over and kneels between my knees, then pulls me up to straddle him, I go to wrap my arm around his neck, but he puts them back down at my sides. Then pulls his t-shirt over my head and throws it on the floor, he uses the fingertips of both hands to trace over my face, jaw and neck, and he brushes so gently over my collar bone that I shudder. I don’t take my eyes from his, he mostly studies intently what he’s doing, but every now and then his eyes flick up and meet mine and my heart threatens to escape my chest with the way he looks at me, love, lust, desire, it’s all there. His fingers travel over my chest, then over my breasts, he circles my nipples a few times, and then cups them, he looks up at me in absolute wonder. Before he moves his mouth to suck on my right nipple, I arch my back, offering them up to him, he switches his attention to my left, except now it’s his teeth I can feel, he doesn’t bite, he just drags his teeth and his tongue over my nipple, all the while, pinching and rolling with his fingers, the right nipple that’s been abandoned by his mouth. I arch my back and tilt my head as I look up at the ceiling; I wrap my legs around him and grind against him. He moves his hands to underneath my arse cheeks and lifts me as he stands up from the bed, before lying me gently back down.

  I’m lying sideways across the bed; Sean stands in front of me and takes off his boxers. I want to look but I don’t take my eyes from his, he leans in and takes off my knickers, he bends each of my knees up as he pulls them down, I go to close them and lay them back flat on the bed when he says, “No, no G, leave them up and open them, I want to look at you.”

  I don’t hesitate, this man has kissed every part of my body, he’s watched me throw up, he’s watched me wee, fuck, he’s actually held my arms while I’ve squatted in a bush when we’ve pulled over at the side of the road. He’s bought tampons to me in the toilet when I’ve unexpectedly come on, he’s seen me drunk, he’s seen me stoned, my heart suddenly hurts as I realise exactly how much we have shared. All of the memories I have locked away for so long suddenly come rushing forward, he’s suddenly there, right between my open legs, looking right into my eyes. “I’ve dreamt about this so many times G, how you would smell, how you’d taste but now you’re here, it’s all so much better. I wanted to take my time, I wanted to make this last but now, I just want to be inside you, fuck Georgia, I really want to be inside you.”

  I can’t speak, I reach out my hand to him and he holds it as he crawls up my body, not taking his eyes from mine he laces our fingers of both hands and places them either side of my head and slides straight inside me. I let out a little rush of air and I feel my eyelids flutter. “Gia, that feels so fuckin’ good, so right, so perfect.”

  He kisses me softly on the mouth, our lips and tongues the only parts of our bodies moving as we lay completely still, kissing, and just looking at each other, our breathing in complete synchronisation. “I’ve missed you, I’ve missed us, I’ve missed this, so fuckin much G, this is all I want, all I’ve wanted for so long, just you and me, it’s like coming home.”

  I give him a small smile. “Welcome home.”

  He kisses my nose and gives a little shrug. “They say that home is where the heart is and mines never been anywhere other than with you, always G, forever and always my heart is yours and will be with you no matter what.”

  I bite down on my bottom lip and try so hard to hold the sob in, but I can’t. My tears are already running down onto my neck and into my ears. He kisses both my eyes, and then licks the tears from each side of my neck. The room sways and I feel myself clench around him, he presses his forehead against mine and chuckles, it’s the most amazing sound. “Did you like that babe, my tongue on your neck?”

  I can feel myself blush, he tilts his head and licks from the hollow of my throat, out across my left collarbone, then back and across my right, I squeeze my int
ernal muscles again. “Georgia, you keep doing that and I will come without even moving, I swear to God baby that feels good.”

  I look over his face and eventually into his eyes. “Sean?”

  “Gia?”

  “Would you make love to me please?”

  “It would be my absolute pleasure Georgia, my absolute pleasure.”

  He rocks his hips very slowly into mine and I rock back, we find our rhythm instantly, I tilt my hips so that I can feel him deeper inside and I love the sound he makes when I do this. He slides his hands around to my hips, his fingertips dig into my arse cheeks, his thumbs press onto my hip bones. I dig my nails into him, his shoulders, his back, then his bum, I pull him by his bum, into me, I want him as far inside me as he can get, no space, I want no space between us, so tight together that there’s not even room for air, nothing, just me and him, Georgia and Sean, Sean and Georgia.

  My orgasm starts as heat warming my core, then spreads, my blood, my skin, my internal organs, everything burns, everything, every single part of me is on fire but there is no pain, just absolute pleasure. I feel it in every cell, in every hair follicle, pleasure like I have never known, I’m calling his name and telling him I love him and I can hear him saying similar things to me and then at the exact same moment we are both silent and just look at each other. At the exact moment I feel him come inside me, he whispers, “Gia,” and my second orgasm hits me, entirely different to the first. It’s short, sharp and unexpected and I whimper and I just know that I have tears again and in a whisper that I can barely hear, he sings a song to me, a song that came out not long after we first met, when I was just a girl and he was just the boy that I knew I would always love. A song that I haven’t heard in such a long time, it’s just the two lines but we change the words slightly, like we always did and sings the first line of Dire Straits Romeo and Juliet, then waits for me to sing the second, it was just a thing, that we did.

  “Georgia Rae, when we made love you used to cry… ” He waits for me to sing my bit, I try to swallow down a sob but I end up singing through it…

  “I said I love you like the stars above, I’ll love you till I die.”

  And it’s suddenly all too much, he cries, I cry, we cling to each other and everything is just as it should be, Sean and Georgia, Georgia and Sean, us against the world.

  We fall back to sleep with our arms, legs, bodies, hearts and minds completely tangled up with each other, no telling where one starts and the other one ends.

  CHAPTER 19

  We spend Friday morning lying in bed at my brother’s house talking. Well Sean talks, I listen as he tells me about the huge success that the band has had, the places he’s been, the people that he’s met. He tells me about the warehouse him and Marley have bought in the old docklands area of East London and with the help of my Dad’s firm, they have had converted into eight luxury apartments. Sean and Marls now share the penthouse on the top floor, complete with a roof garden. He tells me how he’s back in contact with his Dad and they now seem to have a pretty good relationship; he does ask me about my life and my work but oddly enough, he already knows everything that there is to tell. It would seem that we’ve handled our separation in the exact opposite way to each other, where I shut everything out and wanted no reminder of anything to do with Sean or his life, he has sort out every piece of information that he can about me. He knows about my work and how successful we’ve been, he knows about the countries I’ve visited, he even knows that I finally got to own my dream car and then says something really strange.

  “You have no idea how hard it was to find one in that colour, I knew you wouldn’t settle…” he trails off.

  “How do you know what colour my car is?”

  “You always said you wanted it burnt orange and black, ever since we saw that one down the Kings Road years ago, remember?”

  “Yeah, but how do you know that’s what I’ve got? What did you mean about it took ages to find one that colour.”

  “I bought you the car.”

  “What?”

  “I bought you the car, alright?”

  “But, how, why? I don’t understand.”

  “You were what, thirteen, fourteen when we first saw that car and you told me that was the car you wanted. I swore back then, that if the band… if we were doing okay and I had the money, then I’d buy you that car, I never said anything, I never told you, in case I couldn’t afford it.”

  He looks up at me, we are naked, his head in my lap, my fingers are raking through his hair, exactly the way I used to, we are, exactly the way we were and yet, so entirely different…

  “Jim told me you had passed your test and were driving around in a Beamer your Dad had given you and I just knew that you’d be hating it. Then Jim said that Frank was looking for some old car for you and was having trouble finding it.” He looks away for a second, as if debating something.

  “Then she told me that your Dad wasn’t really looking too hard because he didn’t think an old car was safe, he wanted you to have something German or a Land Rover or something similar.” He shrugs his shoulders. “So I found your car, that disgusting colour you wanted, the soft top and the tacky fake walnut dashboard and got it delivered to your Dad’s car place in Epping and they fixed it all up and…” He shrugs again. “The rest is history.”

  I’m gobsmacked! “You did all of that for me, but you didn’t come for me, you never thought… you never just thought fuck it, I don’t care if she wants to see me, I’m gonna see her anyway?”

  “A million times G, more than a million. I sat outside your Mum and Dad’s old house and almost broke in one night. I was gonna break in and just sit and watch you sleep but then I remembered that Frank has a gun and I didn’t want him to shoot me.” As sad as I feel, I still manage a small smile.

  “I went to the shops once, I waited outside for a bit and then just as I plucked up the courage to go in and speak to ya, you came walking along with your Mum, you looked…” He closes his eyes and smiles. “You looked so beautiful. So grown up. You had a cream suit on and sling back shoes, you reminded me of Audrey Hepburn, all elegant and ladylike.”

  His eyes sparkle as he looks up at me. “Nothing like the Georgia I remembered in her monkey boots, camouflage trousers and Sex Pistols t-shirt. Anyway, once I saw your Mum was there, I knew it was pointless, I knew she wouldn’t let me near you.” Again I’m floored by what he’s just told me.

  “I know that day, I remember wearing that suit to a business lunch with my Mum and she had told me to put my hair in a beehive because the suit was very Hepburn. Sean that was only last year, less than that, last summer sometime.”

  “I know when it was G, there’s been other times since then but that was just driving past, I just didn’t know what to do. I had the note remember; it told me to stay away, to never make contact.” My belly goes over and then ties itself into a complete knot. “Babe, you’re pulling my hair.” I look down at my hand, twisting a handful of Sean’s hair, I release it.

  “Sorry, sorry, that’s what thinking about her and what she’s done to us does to me, I wanna kill her Sean. I should’ve done it years ago, I should’ve done it that night she licked your face.” He throws his head back and laughs, his shoulders shake in my lap.

  “What’s funny?”

  He has tears rolling down the side of his head. ”You were, that night, you beat the crap out of her, there were handfuls of her hair everywhere, and I’ve never seen you move so fast.”

  I don’t know why he’s laughing, I wish I had stomped on her head and as if reading my thoughts he says, “G, don’t even think about it, just let it go. If we keep going over it, it means she’s won. killing her is not an option so let’s just ignore her, we’re here, we’ve ended up right here, naked, like this, talking like this, loving each other like this, despite everything that she’s done, we’re right where we were always meant to be, together.”

  I shake my head at him. “You are such a song writer, hark at
all this shit.”

  In one swift move, he throws me down on the bed, pinning me underneath him. “What I just said is not shit G; I mean every word of it. One way or another, we’re gonna find our way back to each other. One way or another I was gonna fight and win you back, even if I died doing it.”

  He rakes his hand through his hair and his fingers meet mine. “Fuck G, the things that have gone through my mind, the things I’ve thought of doing to try and see ya and then, everything else, the band, touring, the fuckin’ press up my arse all the time. It’s been a nightmare. There’ve been times, when I seriously thought that I was gonna go mental, that I was actually gonna end up in the nut house.”

  My eyes wander over his face, hating but at the same time feeling overjoyed that he’d pretty much gone through the exact same emotions I had for the last four years.

  We eventually make our way down to the kitchen around midday and that’s only because Sean is complaining that he’s starving, my stomach is still too all over the place to even consider food; there’s a note taped to the fridge.

  Morning young lovers

  Help yourselves to food, shower, whatever.

  Stay as long as you want, you know that you’re always welcome.

  Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do, although,

  Judging by the sounds coming from the bedroom in the early hours of this morning, the deed’s already been done.

  We love you both so very much and truly hope you can work things out.

  If you need to hide out here for a while that’s fine with us.

  George, ring me, Maca, I’ve cancelled all your appointments until next Wednesday.

  Luv ya’s

  J & L

  X

  For some reason, the note made me teary but I managed to swallow them down as I pulled out a frying pan to make Sean some fried eggs on toast. It was just a natural thing to do. I made his tea exactly how he liked it, strong, no sugar; he liked his yokes runny and his toast well done, three eggs, three slices of toast, well-buttered and a dollop of HP sauce on the side, oh and white pepper and salt on his eggs. White pepper, never black on his fried eggs.