SEVEN DAYS

by Silence Welder

  He said nothing, except: “The queues must have been horrendous. No wonder you were late. Not such a quick look, after all, eh?”

  “I didn't feel much of anything at first,” Judy went on, “but after a while it was extraordinarily erotic. I came out feeling like a different woman. It's been too long since I had some fun.”

  Peter didn't look at her.

  “Maybe you could come with me?” Judy said.

  Again, he refused to look up, as if eye-contact was dangerous now. Perhaps it was.

  She told him about some of the exhibits she had seen. She admitted to feelings that she hadn't admitted to Mark, because Mark had been wrapped up in them. She tried to explain to Peter that art had teased the emptiness inside her and inspired her to fill it.

  With his help.

  Tonight.

  “Maybe that's why I ran all the way here,” she said. “I couldn't wait to be with you.”

  Peter grunted, conflicted, as reluctant to look at her as to look at the book.

  “Open it up,” Judy whispered. “It's all yours.”

  The first image he turned to was that of a cup and saucer covered in fur. Even the spoon was covered in fur.

  “Are these postcards?” he said.

  “There are some postcards, yes,” she replied, “but there are words, too. Look properly.”

  “I've seen enough,” he said and riffled the pages noisily.

  “It's not a flip book,” Judy said.

  “Isn't it?” he replied and handed it back with a derisive sneer.

  Peter had a child from an ex-partner. He saw him at weekends. A little boy named Eric. She could imagine Peter looking at Eric's school drawings and turning them over and over in his hands before intoning:

  “Very good, Eric, very good, but what is it supposed to be?”

  Peter was smart and interesting and practical and dependable, a provider and a rock, but he wasn't kind. He had softness to him, which Judy was attracted to, but he wasn't gentle. She realised that those weren't the same things.

  A man could be firm and strong, but gentle. He could be smart and opinionated, but kind.

  She was on the brink of mentioning Mark, wanting something to throw in Peter's face, but that act of cruelty would make her a hypocrite, and she wasn't sure it would hit its target anyway. Peter seemed to be distancing himself from her. It was more than dissatisfaction with her lateness and she knew it.

  She recalled how Mark had said that he would have waited for her all night, as long as it took. In the end, however, nothing about him was credible. Perhaps it had all been a line to string her along.

  She was torn between the attentions of a mysterious liar and the frank words of someone who didn't see her at all. Was that any choice at all?

  Her mouth watered at the sight of Peter's strong, clean-shaven jaw, his immaculate appearance in his crisp shirt and perfectly-knotted tie, but it was Mark who made her stomach flutter. She kept thinking about him, even though he had let her down at the last moment.

  Still, she couldn’t help comparing them and as she did so she noted that, unlike Mark, Peter hadn't once asked for her opinion on the exhibition. He appeared to listen to her under duress.

  She downed her second gin and tonic and Peter gave her a disapproving frown. His expression made her feel angry again, but the alcohol was soaring to her head and she was taking off. Rather than succumb to her anger, she rose above it.

  Her gallery experience had evidently woken something in her, something that had been dormant since she had been at Sixth Form College, desiring to undertake a course in Art, but being pushed and pulled in other directions by teachers and parents and timetables. She had forgotten herself during the subsequent years, but Mark had given her a shake and now she was waking up again.

  It was a glorious feeling.

  The feel of her damp clothes against her skin was pleasurable this evening, something that would have been unthinkable that morning. In place of hands, for the time being, her wet clothes reminded her of her body.

  She laughed as she remembered running through the rain, shoes in hand. The past was made up of memories of such events, where an activity hadn't been pleasant at the time, but had at least allowed her to feel something. It had been such a long time since she had really felt anything.

  Now that she was awake, she didn't want to go back to sleep.

  Her body had certainly woken too. Every nerve ending seemed to be alive, so that each movement sent a rush of pleasure through her. Her damp blouse had become translucent in places and she was glad that Peter could see the outline of her bra.

  She waited until he was glancing at her breasts, which he did every now and then, and then she undid another button.

  The cold meant that her nipples were standing erect and they were ultra sensitive against the material of her bra. The sensation was so delicious that she closed her eyes, lost to it.

  She rubbed wet thigh against wet thigh.

  She thought she might come right there in the restaurant.

  But why waste a good orgasm?

  “Why do we do this every month?” she said.

  “You're drunk,” Peter said.

  “Yes, I am. I’m drunk and I asked a simple question. I'd appreciate a simple answer.”

  “I like...talking to you,” Peter volunteered.

  Not listening. Talking.

  “And?” she said.

  “People come and go, but we always stuck together.”

  “You want to do what you've always done,” Judy translated.

  “I wouldn't put it like that, but yes, it's...it's comfortable...it's nice.”

  “I don't want to be comfortable. And I'm not nice.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “I don't want to live in the past. I want more.”

  With every word, she felt the surface of the world she knew falling apart. Underneath, colours shone through here and there. A smile flashed and caught her eye like a shooting star. The clink of glass against glass spiralled around her like the sound of a bell. The murmur of voices and the clash of cutlery against crockery became the soundtrack to the latest installment of the evening's adventure, in which success or failure meant less than trying.

  “I don't want to be alone tonight,” she admitted, something she would never have said out loud 24 hours earlier. “Neither do you,” she added.

  “No,” Peter agreed curtly, glancing at her breasts again. “No, I don’t.”

  “So what are we going to do about it?”

  * * * *

  She used his tie to pull him towards her and she pressed her lips against his. His skin was much cooler than she expected and she felt a rush of pleasure, little explosions going off all over her neck and chest as she nipped at his lips and encouraged him to open his mouth wider. She gave his tongue an exploratory lick with hers. And again. And then she was probing deep inside his mouth.

  After a minute, he pulled away, one hand on the steering wheel of his Audi, the other on her shoulder.

  “What’s got into you?” he asked and glanced through the windscreen to see if anyone was watching them. He seemed concerned for her, but she could tell that he was enjoying her kisses and didn’t want her to stop for long.

  “Nothing’s got into me,” Judy said. “Yet.” She allowed her knees to part and she put his hand on her thigh.

  “You’re still wet,” he said.

  “You have no idea how wet.”

  “I mean your clothes. Let’s get you home.”

  “I have a better idea,” she said and she pulled her top up over her head and threw it onto the backseat. Then she reached behind her and unclipped her bra. “There,” she said. “Happy now.”

  Evidently, he was convinced. He took her breasts in his hands and began kissing her gently, earnestly and then licking her nipples, making her sigh.

  “Bite me,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Bite me.”

  Tentatively, he did as she deman
ded and she looped an arm around his neck, pulling his body closer.

  “Harder.”

  It had been too long since they’d been together. Getting it on in his car wasn’t perfect, but she didn’t think that she was perfect either. Physically they were a pretty good match though. He knew what turned her on and was patient, taking her there with his fingers, his tongue, his teeth.

  She reached down between his legs.

  “Oh my!” she said. “Is that you or the handbrake?”

  “It’s all me,” Peter said between licking one breast and the next.

  “Let me see it,” she said.

  She helped him undo his fly and within seconds his penis was standing proud, encircled by the fingers of her left hand. There was still plenty of him to go in her mouth.

  “You know what they say about men with flash cars and the size of their penises? You’re the exception to the rule.”

  She began by kissing the head of his penis, little love pecks that were maddening him. The knuckles of one hand went white as he gripped the steering wheel while his other hand had her hair in an increasingly vice-like grip.

  He used his hand to guide her, speeding her up when she was too slow, sending her deeper than was comfortable, so that his cock hit the back of her throat and she gagged. His need for her turned her on further and she did as he bid to the best of her ability, his hot hand on the back of her neck now as if to say:

  “Now that you’ve started this don’t even think about stopping.”

  She unravelled one of his condoms over his cock and then licked him from balls to tip several times, which made him throw his head back and squirm in his seat.

  “I want you,” she said. “And I can’t wait.”

  That said, she climbed, svelte, into the backseat. He couldn’t do that so he adjusted himself, forcing his massive, adorned cock back into his trousers, opened the driver’s door and got out, joining her a moment later in the back.

  “Where were we?” he said, reaching for her, but she evaded his grasp and straddled him instead. In the time it took him to get into the car, she had slipped off her panties and now she ground her naked pussy against the crotch of his trousers while arching her back to give him full access to her breasts. He made good use of them and simultaneously managed to pull his cock back out of his trousers.

  She enveloped him immediately and began a slow, undulating movement with her hips, maximising the feel of his ample shaft against her clitoris as well as manipulating the angle so that he filled her completely.

  For the first minute or so, her movements were conscious and deliberate, aiming to maximise how sexy she looked at the same time as maximising her pleasure. It worked, because his hands were all over her, gripping her too hard on her arms, her waist, her neck again.

  She laughed, because it was only when they were having sex that she saw Peter behave like this. For a few minutes he lost himself. He let go of his politeness and his chivalry and abandoned any ideas of how he was expected to behave. He took her and sought his pleasure in her, bouncing her up and down on his lap now and kissing every part of her that his mouth could reach.

  She was breathless, which only heightened the pleasure. She let Peter take charge of her.

  “That’s right,” she said. “I want you to come in me.”

  He needed no encouragement.

  He lifted her from her position on his lap and lay her down on the back seat. It was an awkward space and she ended up with one leg jammed against the back of the seat and the other resting up on headrest of the front passenger seat while Peter entered her from above now and fucked her in earnest.

  Later she would have a sore neck. Not only because of the marathon blowjob she had performed in the front seat, but because now her head was squashed up against the door behind her. At that moment, however, with Peter pounding her pussy like a machine, she didn’t think about the pain, only the pleasure.

  She couldn’t see his face clearly in the dark and for a moment she imagined that his grunts were those of another man. She wondered what it would be like to have Mark inside her like this. To have Mark’s hands on her wrists. His heat against her breasts.

  All the while that she fantasised, she kept coming back to Peter, because he was the only man she had ever slept with who was this selfish during sex, using her body as if she was a conveniently soft object to give his penis a home.

  He wasn’t always like this. He was often smart and caring and sensitive. Knowing that her body had transformed him into the hungry beast above her gave her great satisfaction.

  Being an opposable object for a few minutes made her wet. Being a disposable object was a problem.

  Thinking this prevented her from tipping over into her own orgasm. She stared up at his shadowy face, trying to gauge whether or not he really saw her. Were his eyes even open?

  He came inside her with a stifled roar, his voice cracking and his cum caught in the bulbous tip of his condom.

  She gazed up at him, but his eyes were shut. She could have been anyone.

  Latex wasn’t the only thing separating them and she knew it.

  He withdrew from her much more quickly than she would have liked, even though her head was jammed up against the door and she was beginning to get cramp. She unhooked her right leg from the headrest of the passenger seat and massaged her hamstring.

  “Oh my God,” Peter said, catching his breath and wiping sweat from his nose. “That was amazing.”

  “Was it?” she said.

  “You’re so hot. What’s going on with you tonight?”

  Mark, she thought.

  But there was no way she was going to say that. And certainly not then, while she was looking for her knickers.

  “Come on,” he said, seeming awkward again suddenly. “I’ll drive you home.”

  “My place or yours?” she asked.

  “Yours,” he said. “I’ll drop you off and then I need to go back to mine. Big day tomorrow.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “I do like you, Judy. But I can’t get involved. It’s the wrong time in my life. I have too many other responsibilities.”

  “You don’t have to explain,” she said, pulling her knickers up and rolling her skirt back down.

  “Tonight was great,” he added. “I’d love to do it again. But I don’t think we should try to take it further than what it is.”

  “Just a bit of fun?” Judy suggested.

  “Yeah,” said Peter, relieved.

  “I understand,” Judy told him.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” Peter said.

  “I didn’t say I was okay. I said I understood.” She upended her handbag on the backseat, searching for her wallet. I don’t want you to drive me home. I’ll get a cab.”

  “Don’t be like that,” Peter said.

  “Please,” Judy said. “Afford me a semblance of dignity. Let me take a cab.”

  Her broken heel tumbled out of her handbag, along with a compact, a notepad and pen, some hair clips. Cotton buds.

  Now that she no longer wished to impress Peter, she found that she no longer had anything to hide. That was a kind of freedom. Not caring what he thought of her or the contents of her handbag was a kind of freedom from him and from herself.

  A sanitary towel. A USB key.

  Not only had she lost her phone, it seemed, but her wallet was missing too.

  She closed her eyes, assailed by a headache.

  There was only so far positive thinking could take you.

  ****

  It was still raining, so he put his coat over her shoulders and then his arm around her. Admitting that they were friends and nothing more seemed to have taken the pressure off him. Now he was allowing himself to be nice to her. It felt good to be looked after, even if their relationship wasn't going as far as she had once hoped.

  He walked her to the cash machine and a moment later was handing her two hundred and fifty pounds.

  “I lost my wallet,” she
said, “not my perspective.” She took fifty. “Thank you.”

  “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” he said. “Let me drive you home.”

  She was already flagging down a taxi.

  She kissed her finger and pressed it to his cardboard, passionless lips.

  “I hope you find someone you really love, someone you can really fall for” she said.

  He looked pained, but then he said:

  “Same to you, Judy.”

  There it was. Finished. Clean. Closed. Like a healed wound. Time to move on.

  She got into the cab and smiled as it pulled away. She kept the smile on her face for as long as she could. Not long.

  * * * *

  She'd lost her phone and her wallet. For a moment, she suspected Mark of having lifted them from her. She thought for a moment that perhaps that was all he had been interested in and wondered when he might have done it. Maybe when they were side by side in the Rothko room, when she had allowed her eyes to close and had been enjoying the feel of his leg against hers.

  Was he that quick? Or had it happened earlier? As they bumped and jostled with the crowds, he could have slipped his hand into her bag and she wouldn't have noticed it as any different to the feel of pushing through the mass of bodies.

  She thought these things for a couple of minutes, but her mind settled on one moment in particular and she knew that not only was that the moment in which she had lost her belongings, but that it was entirely her fault, too. She had set her bag down on the counter in the bookshop and, unable to find her credit card, she had pulled items from her bag and set them down beside her, fully intending of course to return them to her bag after paying.

  She had been in such a rush, however, and in such a state of excitement with Mark, that she had neglected to do so. She recalled taking the card and putting it in its rightful place in her wallet, but she couldn't recall putting the wallet in the handbag.

  So stupid.

  Her purse and her phone would be there on the counter in the bookshop.

  The snarky shop assistant had been in such a hurry to close she might not have noticed them sitting on the counter. Even if she had noticed the items, she might have decided not to say anything in favour of a quiet night.