by Donna Alam
‘But he’s not. Rory is.’
‘Oh, I thought with that dynamic . . . ’
‘Rory’s older by fifteen minutes, but Kit’s the bigger twin. Apparently.’ Her words are so heavy with meaning; even if I hadn’t already had it pressed into my hand, I’d still know she was talking about his dick
‘I-I wouldn’t know about that.’ Much. I wouldn’t know much about that. It’s a shame we weren’t acquainted properly, really.
‘Not for me. I don’t think I could cope if Rory was any bigger—’
‘Please, unless I come across Randy’s dick in a professional capacity, I do not want to hear about it.’
‘Come across it?’ Fin repeats with a giggle, though her intonation is so not the same. ‘I’d know lots about that.’
I send her an exasperated look. Amused, but exasperated. ‘In a professional capacity, sweets. As in, he pushes you too far one day, and in retaliation, you lopped the thing off.’
‘No way. I wouldn’t! It’s too darned beautiful to be in a pickle jar.’
‘I wouldn’t be pickling it. I’d be attempting to sew it back on.’ What kind of conversation are we having here? ‘In this hypothetical scenario, at least.’
‘All the same, it would be a crime to nature.’
‘Speaking of which.’ I exhale heavily. ‘Do you really think Kit’s gay?’
She seems to waver as she pulls one leg under her bottom. Something I couldn’t do because they’re too bloody long. ‘So Rory says. And why, pray tell, would you ask?’
‘Wipe that smile off your face. It’s called a general enquiry.’
‘It’s hardly polite. Oh, you’re going red!’
‘I am not. Why would I be if, as you say, he’s gay?’
‘Because it’s a waste to straight women everywhere? Other than Rory’s say-so, I can’t say I know. I mean, it’s not like I’ve seen him with another man myself.’
‘Wouldn’t that be something,’ I respond sort of wistfully, propping my elbow on the table and my head in my hand. ‘Live in action, Kit and—’
‘Hey, no man-on-man porno movies-for-one featuring my future brother in law, thanks.’
‘Like you haven’t thought about it.’
‘I haven’t, though I do have thoughts . . . ’ Her brow quirks like a question mark, her words hanging in the air.
‘Out with them, then.’
‘Well, there was this one time. We were out for dinner and the looks between the waitress and him. Well, I’m pretty sure my water glass started to steam.’ How odd. My insides feel twisty, but it can’t be jealousy, can it? It’s hardly like she saw him kissing someone at the end of a hallway. With his hand in someone’s underwear.
‘And then, last night at the club, I could’ve sworn he was getting . . . intimate with someone near the ladies. I mean, it was at the end of a badly lit passageway, and I couldn’t see or anything, but there was just something that makes me think he was with a girl.’
‘A girl? Really?’
‘Yeah. I can’t see him being into tiny tinks.’ She hides her smile behind her coffee cup.
‘Did you tell Rory?’
‘Absolutely not,’ she says, laughing. ‘He’s like a dog with a bone. Poor Kit would never get a moment of peace.’
‘So you’re saying you think he could be bi?’
‘Look,’ she says then sort of chews the inside of her lip, ‘it’s a possibility, but it’s not for me to say. He just has a way with women. The reaction he seems to get from them, you know? Beyond them being dazzled by his good looks, he just has this look of satisfaction when they’re all hot and bothered by his presence.’
‘Huh.’ I don’t think I like the sound of all this flirting. At all.
‘And then, and this is really weird, but I met Rory for lunch a while ago, and Kit happened to be dining with another couple—husband and wife.’ Her brow furrows with the recollection. ‘We said hello, chatted for a few minutes, and then grabbed our table. That was that. But I don’t know; something was almost proprietary about the woman’s attitude toward Kit even with her husband sitting there. It was just so odd.’
‘I’m not sure what you’re saying.’
That he’s having an affair with a married woman?
‘Yeah, that’s the thing. Neither am I.’
Chapter Eight
KIT
Every morning this week, I’ve woken with a throbbing cock and a hankering for honey. A busy week at work doesn’t cool the need—same for extra sessions at the gym. It’s starting to piss me off that I can’t get the woman out of my head.
I want to feel her come around something other than my fingers. I want the taste of her in my mouth and her sweat-darkened hair wrapped around my fist as I feed my dick down her throat inch by slow inch.
I’ve had obsessions before but not for a while. And none as dangerous as this. In fact, in the past, I’ve gone to great pains to make sure I keep my life compartmentalised. To keep my professional and personal lives from entwining in any way. Apart from the fact I don’t care to explain my sexual proclivities, it wouldn’t do for word to get out for me professionally. To Rory, I’m gay, and he doesn’t care. Doesn’t care to enquire, either. To the rest of the word, I’m just a hard nut to crack.
I take care of the day-to-day running of our hotel business. I’m the face of the operation, and it’s for that reason I like to keep my private life just that. Until I’m behind the doors of the Den.
As a business, we attract some attention, but it’s mostly low-grade stuff. As men, we’re often featured in the social and business pages. We get pap’d occasionally. It’s because we’re not only successful and rich but also because we’re twins.
Because we look so alike.
Once not so long ago, Rory revelled in the pussy that seemed to be available because of these facts. Because we’re rich, handsome, and move in the right circles. It didn’t help with his decision making for a while.
Thankfully, he’s done with all that now.
And me? I’m a vault.
Sure, I get hit on plenty, but I try not to fuck where I earn my keep. Not that I’m an angel, and though I try to keep it at the club, sometimes it just isn’t feasible. Or what I want. Sometimes you want an elaborate, drawn-out meal with courses that continue for hours, including delicacies you wouldn’t ordinarily try. And other times, you just want to grab something that’s potentially bad for you.
Usually in a dark alley and following a few drinks.
The analogy works for sex, too.
Not that I’m blaming my debauching of Bea on drinking because when I’d led her to the end of that hallway in the club, the only thing I was drunk on was her perfume. I don’t regret it. Only now I can’t get her out of my fucking head.
She’s like an itch I can’t reach—a craving I can’t satisfy. An itch I can’t reach. Not that I won’t try.
I’ve never had any issues getting women into my bed, and yesterday at dinner, I thought I’d had her eating out of my palm. In addition to coming on my hand in the club. She was turned on, that was clear enough. Flushed chest, huge dilated pupils stealing the golden flecks in her gaze. As her fingers strangled the life out of a paper napkin, her knuckles were as pale as the full bottom lip she’d trapped between her teeth.
She was up for it.
She might even be kinky underneath those scrubs.
I fucking crave her.
And I want more than ever to know her real name.
Chapter Nine
BEA
I work the rest of the week, from Sunday through, because if I’m busy, I don’t have to think.
If I’m busy, I don’t have time to get angry.
If I’m busy, I don’t have time to dwell.
While I’m working, I don’t hear Jon’s whispers and sighs on repeat.
It means I’m also not home for the deliveries of his apology flowers. Like that would work on any woman. And the ones delivered to work get recycled into the wards
.
I wait a few days before checking my phone. Unfortunately, my plan of putting him off from leaving a voicemail hadn’t worked.
‘This is Bea,’ my voicemail message begins. ‘Please leave your number after the tone. Oh, unless you happened to be named Jon, and then you can take your pathetic excuse and shove it so far up your own backside it comes out of your throat! Ciao!’
I chose not to go through the reams of voicemails and texts. Instead, I listen to the first few recordings. They’re not especially apologetic.
Seems it was just sex.
Seems he thinks it’d be a good idea for me to think of what I heard in those terms.
Just sex. Ya, thanks, but I caught the audio already.
He also seems to suggest I should have wild monkey sex to exact my revenge . . . before going back to him.
Because yes, things are apparently that simple.
Tit for tat? My response is to send him another text reminding him we’re through. That what I do no longer concerns him.
But I should never have touched my phone because his attitude has left me so angry and so ill-tempered that I feel unfit for company. I’ve barely been home; I’ve either creeped home in the wee hours or else slept in one of the on-call rooms.
Go home, Bea, you’ll wear yourself out, my colleagues have said, and when I have, I’m out of the flat before Fin even wakes.
Trauma clinics. Scrubbing in wherever I can. I’d sweep the floors if it meant I didn’t have to think about it.
As the week passes, I become angrier. So angry, I can’t even begin to contemplate repeating that I heard my ex-boyfriend cheating on me, never mind discuss it with him. In my mind, I’ve worded a million conversations—from sarcasm and indifference to rage and tears. Who was it and why? From calm dialogue to bouts of rage to silent arguments with him—all inside my head. And I still haven’t picked up the phone, sent him an email, or even posted a hateful rant on his Facebook page.
Because I just don’t know where to go from here. How do I tell people what he did to me?
I don’t know what to think.
I don’t know what to feel, other than angry.
My unfaithful boyfriend. The man I thought I’d marry someday.
The sack of shit.
Then add to my confusion the dreams I’ve been having.
I’ve dreamt of Jon screwing a hundred girls—a harem in the throes of ecstasy at his touch—which is bizarre as, lately, he hasn’t been that good.
And I’ve dreamt of Kit and all his fingering glory. Those dreams have made more sense, but they haven’t always been relegated to night. Images of him touching me and echoes of the things he said send my insides a flutter and my pussy pulsing.
And from the sublime to the ridiculous, I’ve also dreamt about Mr Becker, the consultant—and the boss of the multidisciplinary team I work in—pushing me to my knees as those long fingers that I’ve watched so intently during surgery slide down the zip of his pants.
And it didn’t stop there.
In my dream, he pulled out a monstrous dick—monstrous as in huge, not ugly—and pushed me to my knees, murmuring, ‘Suck it, Dr Honey Bea.’
As I’d opened my mouth to comply, he’d murmured what a good girl I was, and when I looked up, he’d turned into Kit.
And that’s some sick and confusing shit right there.
I fought my way out of a home full of testosterone; a house where women were home and baby makers. I want more than that—I deserve more than that. I didn’t get to where I am today on the strength of my cock sucking skills.
To make matters worse, during Mr Becker’s rounds on Wednesday, I’d been totally off my game, remembering the elegance of his fingers on his zip and the feel of his pants against my cheek. It didn’t matter that I’d been invited to scrub in on a reconstructive surgery just days before—which was a bit of a coup for someone in my position of the food chain. Or that I’d earned my boss’s approval because I’d washed it all away by behaving like a stammering foundation year med student, a bloody F1, when he’d asked me a simple question at the bedside.
I both abhorred and enjoyed the sting of shame, the redness creeping up my neck and chest as he’d delivered his rebuke.
I don’t know what to blame more.
Jon for screwing someone else.
Jon for not screwing me properly for months.
Myself for not demanding more from him.
More for myself!
Or fucking Kit Tremaine for having his hands in my pants after dinner last week.
Maybe Kit morphed into Mr Becker in my dream because of the similarity between the two. The Saville Row suiting. The manner. The way it seems both men can see right through you as if they’ve pierced your skin.
‘You’ve been here eighteen hours. Go home, Zante.’ I look up from the chart I’m holding—the chart I’m looking at but not seeing—to Dr Burgess, the on-call consultant this morning, and her frown.
‘But—’
‘You’ve been staring at that obs chart like it insulted your parentage.’
‘No, I was just thinking.’
‘Far too hard,’ she says, taking my elbow and steering me farther away from the bedside and the nurses’ station with their inquisitive looks.
‘I was just trying to . . .’ What was I planning on doing? Ever speaking to Jon again? Propositioning my boss for kicks? ‘I was about to speak to the nurse for—’
‘Not with that chart, you don’t,’ she says, snatching it out of my hands. ‘Don’t make me pull the whole I’m superior thing. I’m not sure what’s going on with you.’ I open my mouth to protest when she cuts my words off. ‘And frankly, I don’t really care. I’m sick of the sight of you. You’re frightening the patients.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I reply, straightening my spine and attempting to project a little professional calm.
‘Then my second suggestion is to go find a bloody mirror and look. Zombie chic doesn’t suit you. A couple of the oldies think they’ve been visited by Death and gotten a reprieve. Go home. Go eat a sandwich or something.’ She waves her hand like it’ll make me disappear. ‘That’s an order. Come back when you’re supposed to and not an hour before.’
My shoulders slump, the fight draining out of me, because I realise there’s no response to that.
Chapter Ten
BEA
Outside, an early grey gloom hangs over the city—a city that’s mostly asleep. At least the sensible people are still wrapped up in bed. The lucky ones are probably curled around the warm body of their other half; a thought that makes me maudlin. Makes me resentful and sad—emotions I’ve avoided all week by hanging around the hospital and keeping myself busy. I worry that the fallout of our breakup is like an acquaintance you see coming towards you on the street, one you’re not ready to face. You’re fully aware of them—standing there on the pavement, facing you—but you avoid making eye contact at all costs, so you don’t have to deal.
That has been my week. Weird, randy dreams and a whole gamut of emotions from anger and self-pity to sad.
So I still don’t want to go home—not yet, at least. If I can avoid the flat for a few more hours, I’ll probably avoid seeing Rory, who would’ve slept over last night. It’s happening more and more since the remodelling in his penthouse apartment began. It’s not that I don’t want to see him, but he’ll make me think of Kit when I’m trying not to.
I’m not envious of Fin and Rory’s relationship. But I still feel sorry for myself. And I just can’t face Fin because when I do, I know I’ll come apart at the seams and tell her everything that’s happened, including what happened with Kit.
And that would be disastrous.
As I plot a course of action for my morning, I pull my phone out of my pocket and read Jon’s last text message.
When are we going to talk?
The twelfth of never, preferably.
When will he get the hint?
I hit delete because if I r
espond, the numbness I’m currently fostering will be gone. I know I’ll need to talk to him at some point, but it’ll be on my terms, not his. And while that day might not be as far away as the same day hell freezes over, it sure as shit isn’t yet.
I’m about to slot away my phone again when I notice a couple of missed calls from Fin.
Shit. What day is it? Saturday. Did I miss last night’s dinner? Did I say I’d be there?
I’m such a poor friend. It’s a good thing she asks so little of me because I deliver so much less. Not that Fin accepts this. If I was supposed to be there, she’ll put it down to my study load, my work hours, and my dedication to the job.
Unless I tell her the truth.
Not yet.
A coffee place appears in front of me—it’s not a Starbucks or another chain, but one of those places that offers the basics of a full belly. Bacon and eggs. I realise I’m not entirely sure where I am, having walked out of the hospital without direction or a solid plan. Unless you count avoiding going home. The street I find myself on is quiet and genteel. Lots of grey and sage painted shopfronts with accents in shades of white. There are a few boutiques and a bathroom showroom, a florist, and then this . . . a very incongruous looking café-cum-greasy spoon. The signage is faded and worn, the door’s once white paintwork peeling. I know from experience of living here in London that this kind of establishment offers exactly two types of coffee, white or black, in addition to very strong cups of tea. And the background music is likely to be the sound of frying bacon and eggs.
I decide this is as good a place as any to hide in for a while.
I order black coffee and a fry-up from a man with as much grease on his apron as in his hair. I’m not hungry, and even less so after ordering, but I figure it’ll allow me a little longer to loiter here. I carry my mug to a window setting, the tiny table covered with a wipe clean cloth and decorated by a glass sugar bowl and ketchup bottle masquerading as a red tomato.
I didn’t think they made these anymore.
I place my phone on the sticky plastic and scald my tongue with hot instant coffee as I watch the street begin to awaken. It’s not long after six a.m., and I decide I’ll likely be here for an hour—maybe a little more if I appropriate the second-hand newspaper I spot on the table in front. But then, through the steamed-up window, and through the early morning gloom, I notice a very stylishly dressed couple coming out of the building across the street. At first glance, the building appears to be a house. Old but immaculate and very much in keeping with the rest of that side of the street. Georgian merchant homes turned into tasteful offices and the like, retaining their genteel façades.
