Cherry Pop Valentine

by Debbie McGowan

  He returned with our main course: roasted root vegetables in the most incredible dressing, served on top of a mushroom risotto. I wanted to cry at how magnificent it looked and smelled, and the zero chance I had of stomaching so much as one mouthful.

  Sven set our plates down and knelt next to me. He asked me what was the matter. I could see he was hurting as much as I was, but I didn’t know what to say. In that moment, I was so tempted to beg, to tell him I loved him, make him stay out of pity. Anything would be better than feeling like I did right then. And he gazed up at me, and he said, “I wanted to ask you something, but I’m really nervous about your answer. I wanted to ask…could we look for an apartment together?”

  I started to laugh. It was shock, and relief, and so much goddamn happiness. I laughed until tears rolled down my face. What an idiot I was to think he didn’t feel just the same way I did. I told him right there and then. I loved him. I loved him. Yes, we could get an apartment—we should start looking tomorrow. He smiled and nodded and started to cry, and we hugged and kissed and shared stupid snot.

  Then we fed each other the roasted vegetables, and I confessed to far too many other things, like adoring his cooking, being excited about introducing him to my parents, dreaming maybe one day we’d get married. He said yes. Yes to everything, if I washed the dishes. We laughed at that, and I washed the dishes, and then we made love in his bed, deep kisses and caresses, and we repeated those words—I love you—testing them out, getting used to saying them, hearing them, making them ours.

  Upload progress: 60%

  I should have been in bed long ago. I could have left the video uploading, but I always liked to make sure it was past the halfway mark, not that it actually made any difference. The upload could fail at any time, but it felt safer to leave it, somehow. I packed my video camera away, switched off the lights, and went to bed.

  Sven was asleep, but he stirred as I undressed and climbed in beside his sleep-warm body. He lifted his arm away so I could cuddle up closer, and we kissed. I’d intended to do no more than kiss him goodnight, but his lips opened in invitation to take it further. I rolled him onto his back without breaking the contact, tilting my head at an angle so our mouths docked, and his tongue and his cock pushed against the corresponding parts of my body.

  I rocked, creating a gentle friction between us, my legs already either side of his thighs. He searched in the dark for the lube and held it above our heads to open it, reaching around me to smear it over my hole. He always applied a good amount so that we could quickly get to fucking, because we both liked that. We liked not being quite ready for that first breach of our bodies, like being virgins again, and whichever of us was penetrating would get that same overwhelming urge at the tightness around us. Sometimes we’d just go for it, ram straight in, and fuck hard and fast, hands flying to the unattended cock and working frantically for a joint orgasm. Sometimes it worked; often it didn’t, but there wasn’t much in it, and we were both satisfied when we were done.

  Tonight, because Sven had been asleep, he was gentle and patient, and allowed me to control the speed of his entry. I did OK at first, but I was aching for him so badly I sat straight back. Sven turned on the light.

  “I want to watch your face,” he said, squinting up at me. His hand wrapped around my cock, and he held it, no movement, just a slight squeeze as I lifted my ass and eased it back down, working to stretch, feeling the burn diminish, the pressure on my g-spot. I loved having him inside me once that first stage passed. And while he was in there and we were pre-orgasm, I loved the thought of having his cum in there. After, maybe not so much, but right then I was getting into the groove.

  “I was thinking about that photo shoot with Tam,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Just waiting for the video teaser to upload. I can’t wait to see the hits tomorrow morning.” I kept moving as I spoke, which was good for making us last, plus I really was excited about the new song and the video. The band had started out as a hobby for both of us, just a bit of fun. Sven had an amazing voice. I played piano a little. He knew nothing about the mechanics of music, but he knew when it sounded right, and he could explain it to Jon and Dan—the other two guys in the band.

  Over a couple of years, our hobbies had become our careers; Sven still went out and did photo shoots, because people asked for him specifically. I wasn’t as attached to video and filming, but I’d wanted to put together our video teaser. We were ready to leave a permanent mark on the music industry: the first full mainstream music video featuring romance between two guys. There was live footage lip-synched to the recording, interspersed with scenes of a couple of young guys playing the part of being in a band, typical rock musos who have their first touch whilst tuning a guitar, holding hands, kissing, dancing—just typical romantic stuff. In the final clip of our band on stage, Sven brings a single rose across to me at the piano and kneels. I take the rose from him, and we fade to black.

  Ten years together, and even though he’d said yes to us one day getting married, we’d decided not to bother with a civil partnership and instead wait out the change in law. Now we could get married, I felt like it was he who should propose. I’d thought maybe he’d been thinking about it, until the guys in the band starting nagging about what brilliant publicity it would be if the video turned into reality. We’d recorded it a couple of months back, and the real video was going out in five days’ time, on Valentine’s Day. The teaser I’d made was band interviews, documentary style, with clips from the official video.

  “Hey!” Sven pushed up, bringing my thoughts back to what we were doing.

  “Sorry.” I changed the angle and got on with it for real, moving so that his dick pushed hard on my prostate. He increased his grip on me, keeping his hand still and waiting for the right moment. My knees spread further apart as I forced him deeper inside, grunting as he thrust upwards, his pelvis slapping against my arse. My thoughts were now only on my need to feel his cum shooting into me. His dick hardened and seemed to grow, and he jerked me off, speedy, efficient, utterly fucking awesome.

  ***

  When I awoke the next morning, Sven was already out of bed, and I lay there for a few minutes, wondering what had woken me, because I’d forgotten to set my alarm. I couldn’t hear the shower, or the coffee filter, or any of the other sounds I was accustomed to hearing first thing.

  “Sven?” I called. I got not response. Reluctantly, I hauled myself out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom, setting the shower running while I had a pee. The mirror was misty, so I knew Sven had already showered. I wondered if we were out of milk and maybe he’d gone to buy some.

  I was out of the shower and drying myself before I remembered the video I’d left uploading the night before, and with that thought in mind, I was dried and dressed in record time. I grabbed a coffee from the pot on my way through to our office/studio. The computer monitor was dark, which was to be expected. The screen went to sleep after fifteen minutes. I clicked the mouse and watched the screen illuminate, frowning at the view of the desktop. I’d been expecting to see the browser window and the ‘Upload Complete’ notification. I guessed Sven had checked his email. He must have been up really early. I opened the browser and typed YouTube into the address bar, clicking through to our videos…

  I blinked to check what I was seeing. Twelve thousand hits overnight! That was a record—by far the most we’d ever had on one video in one day, and hundreds of likes too. I was really fired up about it and couldn’t wait for Sven to get back so I could show him. The potential for the single to hit number one was right there in front of us, a dream we could almost touch.

  “Let’s see what people are saying…” I clicked on the video and opened the page, scrolling down to the comments before the video had loaded.

  Is this a joke?

  Why isn’t this X-rated?

  That’s the raunchiest trailer I’ve ever seen. ;)

  WTF??? These guys need arresting.

  Adam a
nd Eve, not Adam fucking Steve.

  Jeez, dudes, get a room!

  Not quite the sort of responses I’d been expecting, and if they were feeling like that about our pretty tame trailer, what would they make of the actual video, with all the kissing and other expressions of love and intimacy? So much for forward thinking, and some of the comments were from names I recognised—our so-called fans.

  I scrolled back to the top of the page. The video had stalled without starting to play. I stopped it, restarted it. In the bedroom, my phone started ringing. I went to get it, answering it on the way back. It was Dan, our drummer.

  “Hello?”

  “Flav. What the fuck have you done?”

  “Err, not following?”

  “The video?”

  “What d’you mean?” I made it back to my computer and saw what was on-screen. My stomach wrenched. I felt like I was going to hurl. “Oh, shit. How the…?” I pulled the chair up close and scrabbled with the mouse in panic, trying to click links, my hand shaking. “I’ll call you back,” I said, and dropped my phone. The connection was slow, too much internet traffic, to our channel—and to that fucking video! My mind was racing. How had I made such an epically stupid mistake? That wasn’t our video trailer. That wasn’t our freaking video trailer! It was Sven and me…

  I finally made it to the Video Management page and hit ‘delete’, but it was too late. Twelve thousand people had already seen it. Already watched me taking Sven from behind, his dick sticking through between the banister struts, heard him yelling as he came…seen every-fucking-thing. His secret was out. And it was all my stupid, idiotic fault.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Three

  Our manager was livid. Who could blame her?

  “I told you, Flav. Sooner or later something like this was going to happen.”

  “No, Mica, you said we’d get hacked, and—” I stopped talking. Stupid as I was for fucking up in the first place, I wasn’t so stupid as to talk myself out of the excuse she had just given me. “OK,” I said. “What do I do?”

  “Did you reset the login?”

  “No. I just…panicked. I’ll do it now.” I opened the browser window, the stomach cramps starting up again as I saw the stream of comments coming in on our Facebook and Twitter accounts. The video had gone viral, just as I’d hoped—before I accidentally gave the world an exclusive on our sex life. I needed to tell Sven, warn him, say sorry, beg for his forgiveness, whatever was necessary, but I didn’t know what that was yet. He hadn’t come back.

  In fact, it was more than an hour since he’d left, and I was still hoping and praying he’d only gone for a run—not that it was something he ever did. Or maybe he’d got caught up in the shop, gossiping with a neighbour, or…or…anything other than what I knew in my heart. He’d seen the video and walked out.

  “Have you done it?”

  Mica’s voice penetrated my morose thoughts. I zoned back in again and checked the screen. “Yeah. I’ll text you the new details now, and then I’m never touching the fucking thing again, I swear.”

  “Yeah, well. You’d best change all your other accounts too. Who knows what else they might get up to.”

  “Yeah, of course,” I said. I would change them, even though I knew there was no need, because there was no hacker, just an idiot who’d screwed the most important thing in his life.

  Mica said something else, it might have been about dealing with the press, but I wasn’t really listening anymore. I didn’t care about the press, or the band, or the ground-breaking new release. Without Sven at my side, none of it mattered.

  ***

  I spent the rest of the day trying to get hold of him. At first he ignored my calls, then Dan called to offer me advice. What a joke! Dan, our if it breathes stick your dick in it drummer, advising me on how to fix a relationship. Aside from the fact that Dan, like the rest of the world, thought our YouTube account had been hacked, this was way beyond his level of expertise—if he stayed with a girl a week it would be a Personal Best. Me and Sven were coming up on ten years together. Valentine’s was our unofficial anniversary—unofficial in the sense that it was the first time we spent the night together, but we didn’t make it official until a couple of months later.

  To think: only yesterday I was daydreaming about him doing that whole rose and proposal thing when we played our new song live on TV for the Valentine’s Day Rock Wild Special. Now I was living through a nightmare, imagining what it would be like to spend the rest of my life without him.

  After an hour or more of calling his number and it going straight to voicemail, I gave up and sent him an email.

  I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I love you.

  I grabbed a beer and sat at my piano, staring at the keys and thinking about nothing. I went through to the living room, switched on the TV, turned over to a drama channel so I didn’t accidentally catch any celebrity gossip, and that was where I stayed for the rest of the night. I don’t think I slept—I don’t actually recall sleeping or being awake, I was so out of it—and I only had the one beer because I couldn’t gather the energy to pull myself up off the sofa. The TV schedule went around again. I needed a piss. It was daylight. I should probably take a shower. Had I eaten? I should probably answer the phone…

  The phone!

  I bolted from the sofa and snatched up the phone, gutted when I saw the caller ID. Jon, our guitarist. Not Sven. That was all I needed to know. I answered anyway.

  “Hey, Jon.”

  “Flav. How you doing, man?”

  “Shit.”

  “Not surprising. Did you see what went out?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s low, man. Fucking low. How’s Sven handling it?”

  “Fuck knows.”

  “He’s not with you?”

  “Nope. He walked out.”

  “Surely he’s not blaming you. I mean—”

  “Jon, mate…” I rubbed my eyes. My head was killing me, and much as I didn’t want to, I thought it might help to tell someone. I said, “I fucked up.”

  “It could’ve happened to anyone. You know, like all that News International shit with the email hacking that happened a while back? Not your fault, man. Sven’s just keeping a low profile, you know what he’s like better than anyone. Still, what is it they say about all publicity being good publicity?”

  “Ha. Yeah, right.”

  “You’ve not been online?”

  “Why?”

  “See for yourself. Look, I’m heading out to the gym, but I’ll call round later, yeah?”

  “Actually, Jon—”

  He hung up. So much for telling someone. He had sparked my interest a little, though. I went through to the office and woke the computer, that urge to throw up returning at the sight of the YouTube shortcut on the desktop. I didn’t click it. Instead, I opened the browser, googled our band name, and clicked the first link after our website, blog, Facebook page and everything else.

  It was a press release from Mica, explaining we’d been hacked and that it was likely someone trying to sabotage our new release. Next link: a Guardian commentary on the significance of our video and how the hacking was an appalling invasion of privacy for lowly political means. Next link: a petition demanding justice for me and Sven.

  There was no getting out of it now. The world thought we’d been hacked, that we were victims, and it would be pointless and stupid of me to reveal the truth. Mica had done what she always did and turned the whole fiasco into something positive, saving the band’s reputation, enhancing it, even. But whether Sven believed the spin or not, the damage was done and couldn’t be undone. I wouldn’t lie to him.

  I opened my email and logged in; it took me three attempts and almost locking myself before I remembered I’d changed the password. I wasn’t really sure what my intentions were—to confess all, I think—but I didn’t get that far. Sven had replied to my previous email. No Dear Flav or anything so civil:

  Staying at Dan’s. I’ve booked
a flight to Stockholm on Saturday evening – will arrange to have my belongings shipped once I’ve found an apartment.

  That’s all it said, but I read it over and over again and then stared at the dark screen. I wanted to reply, plead with him to stay, but just like that first dinner date at his uni house, I couldn’t find the words to tell him honestly how I felt, and this time it wasn’t just a fear my imagination had concocted. He was really leaving. I’d already said I was sorry, and it wasn’t enough. What else could I do? There was no taking it back. The damage couldn’t be undone.

  In my pocket, my phone vibrated, and I dismissed the call without bothering to look who it was from. It wasn’t going to be him, so whoever it was could fuck off. I finally dragged myself out of the chair and went for the piss I’d needed since Jon called. Then I switched on the shower, stripped and stood under the water, letting the tears fall.

  I sobbed, unabashedly. No-one was there to hear me; it wasn’t for effect. I was truly the most miserable I had been in my entire life. If I could have turned back time…how many people had thought that very same thing? How many people had destroyed their relationship as spectacularly as I had? We’d been so perfect. Too perfect. And right at the point where the band was set to hit the big time, I’d broken it.

  After however long it took to turn all of me crinkly, I scrubbed my body with Sven’s shower gel, the smell reminding me of what I was already missing so much I would gladly have chopped off all four limbs just to have him back. I couldn’t even be bothered to dry off and padded through the apartment, leaving dark drops on the wooden floors. My bleeding heart.