"God, no!" The exclamation was out of my mouth before she'd even finished the question, the suggestion absolutely ludicrous.
Looking taken aback, Livvy was quiet for a few seconds and then prodded hesitantly, "Was he...was he a bad guy, then?"
I considered this, dredging up an image of my blunt-faced deflowerer with his grabby hands and not exactly awe-inspiring intellect.
"Brock didn't really have the imagination to be a bad guy," I eventually replied. "He was just...a guy. A horny 17 year old guy who was conveniently nearby when I decided I needed to get my first time over with."
"How old were you?"
I wasn't sure whether I'd found myself in a girly heart-to-heart or an interrogation, but either way I didn't see the point in lying.
"15. It was a couple of days after my birthday."
It seemed young looking back on it, but at the time, it felt like I'd been waiting forever.
If Livvy thought the figure seemed low, she didn't comment on it. Instead, she bit her lip and mumbled, "Did it hurt?"
"The actual act of penetration?" I asked bluntly. "Not really, I'd read up on it and made sure there was plenty of lubrication involved."
There was another moment's pause and then Livvy reached out and closed the laptop still showing the amateurs going for it, and shuffled round to look at me closely as she said, "What did hurt?"
"What?" I was a whole octave away from asking that nonchalantly, something she seemed to pick up on as she repeated gently,
"Just the way you said it, it sounded like something did hurt."
What had hurt? Oh God, it was a hell of a question.
I stared down at Livvy's lavishly embroidered bedspread, but it was Fletch's face at school the day after my first time with Brock that I was really seeing. He hadn't been horrified, I don't think, or even particularly shocked when he'd overheard a gleeful Brock telling his mates about what had happened with me in his dad's shed, he'd just looked... No, I didn't want to push myself to find a definition that.
Everyone had expected that Fletch and I would be the talk of the grade for 'doing it' first. I was pretty sure 'everyone' had included Fletch; I know it had included me. Yes, I'd been certain it'd be Fletch and me, that he'd be my first, even if even as a teenager I hadn't been able to dredge up the romanticism to think he'd be my last.
So there'd been no Fletch + Lara 4eva scrawled on my exercise books at school, but still, I'd known, from the first moment I set eyes on him, that I wanted him and that he wanted me. It was what Salida had meant when she'd asked why I hadn't taken him when I'd had the chance, back then he'd definitely been mine for the taking.
For the first couple of months it'd been great, I'd felt as bright and powerful as a lightning bolt every time I was around Fletch; seen like I'd never felt seen before. But then...then I'd realised that losing my virginity to Fletch, with Fletch, would put me in the sort of situation I would do anything to avoid, one where I would look like an inexperienced idiot. All our interactions were based on me being a femme fatale, but it, I, was fake.
I became consumed by the thought that all of my guile and strength, and anything that I thought made me even vaguely interesting or desirable, would be stripped away with one miscued fumble. I couldn't lay myself open like that, not with Fletch, so I'd sought out Brock, a guy who'd made it clear since the day my boobs had come in that he was up for whatever I was willing to give him.
I hadn't known how to tell Fletch that I couldn't deal with the idea of the unknown with him and, after my time with Brock, I hadn't had the chance. He'd withdrawn from me.
I obviously wasn't going to unload all that on Livvy, however, so I worked hard to shrug dismissively and reply, "What hurt was the way he mauled my breasts like a dog with a chew-toy. Remember that, breasts are sensitive, gently does it."
When no reply was forthcoming, I glanced up and found myself skewered by a piercing look out of those massive, insipid eyes of hers. Not that I could call them insipid anymore, I realised, not when she was capable of staring me down and calling me out for the liar I was without saying a word.
Disconcerted, I reached past her to flip the laptop back up and re-start the porn, but Livvy ignored my pointed move, distracting as it definitely should have been.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly, after a few moments where I stared firmly at the screen and she stared firmly at me.
I raised my eyebrows questioningly, genuinely confused by the comment, and she explained, "I'm sorry for whatever happened that's made you all..." she trailed off, gesturing towards me vaguely whilst I blinked a few times, stunned by her sentiment.
"There's nothing to be sorry about," I roused myself to respond curtly. "I've always been like this. Now, focus on the porn, please, I'm not here for my own entertainment."
~*~
The afternoon I'd spent with Livvy had been difficult to stomach, and not only because I'd seen a lot more of some random couple's sex life than I'd perhaps wanted to.
I was used to being, if not an enigma, then certainly not as readable as Livvy seemed to find me. Bad enough that Fletch could practically sniff me out of a crowd, I didn't need someone else going all spirit guide on me.
It was a mark of how badly I'd been shaken by Livvy's sudden insightfulness that, upon returning to my room after the lesson, it took until I was already turning the key in my lock to realise there was a new message across my whiteboard. Breaking from tradition, however, the graffiti this time didn't read 'slut', but rather, 'for a good time call Lara...' and then my number.
I read over this new message a couple of times, enjoying the way it worked on different levels. Had I ever a need to advertise for my services, I would consider that a damn good slogan.
Leaving the whiteboard as it was, as tradition dictated, I headed inside, shrugging out of my cherry red trench-coat as I went. As it had this morning, however, the silk lining of my coat snagged on my jagged nail and any lift in my mood from seeing the pithy note on my door vanished instantly.
To other people the tiny tear in the lining of my coat would've seemed innocuous; a bit annoying, perhaps, but not particularly significant. Other people, however, were not me. To me, the combination of both damage to a gorgeous vintage coat and a persistently uneven nail told me all was not as it should be.
I kept my life running to a plan, a neat, orderly plan. It took detours to accommodate good deeds, but in essence, everything ran as I organised it to and I worked hard to keep it that way.
Looking at the rent in the delicate fabric, though, the rent that I'd caused through negligence so thoroughly unlike me, all I could think of was the little rhyme my mum used to quote to me in my younger, slacker, days.
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Fletch had made me lose my horseshoe nail or, more literally, my actual nail as thoughts of him were what had distracted me that morning when I'd broken it against the edge of my dressing table.
Still staring at the rip in the silk, these thoughts overwhelmed me again, forcing me to relive the trail of fingers, the pulse of blood and his hot breath against my neck. I ached from him yesterday, a muted throbbing that did more than just remind me of what we'd done; it demanded that we do it again…
The brisk knock on the door, when it came, was a relief so palpable I swear I actually heard a 'pop' as the bubble paralysing me was broken. Throwing my coat down onto the bed and turning to answer the summons, I caught sight of myself in my mirror and froze. No wonder Livvy had been able to read me so easily earlier; I was a bloody open book.
Bloody Fletch!
Pressing my palms against my cheeks, I gave them a swift rub, as if I could literally wipe away the horrifying openness. Seeing that it hadn't wo
rked, I snatched up a blood-red gloss and slicked it across my lips in the hope that it would distract whoever was at the door, preventing them from seeing the almost hunted look in my eye.
The knock came again, harder, more insistent, and I smiled. A good deed request, especially one with a sense of urgency to it, was just what I needed to sort myself out. Looking back I have no idea how I was so naive.
Pulling open the door, I knew, even before the person on the other side was fully revealed, that I'd made a terrible mistake. It was Fletch, and I was in a lot of trouble.
"Not good enough." He stood there, feet planted, shoulders square, a man ready for battle.
For a moment I felt like someone had swung a sledgehammer into my chest, but as I saw his tight jaw and the uneven rise and fall of his chest, I knew at least I wasn't the only one.
OK then, a battle I could do.
"Excuse me?" I asked slowly, feeling myself shifting to match his stance; chin up, chest out.
"What you pulled yesterday," he said solidly, "not good enough."
"What wasn't good enough? The sex?" I laughed a brittle laugh and gestured towards the whiteboard hanging at his eyelevel on my door. "Well, you can see that's not the consensus. You'll note it says for a 'good' time, so I must be doing something, or someone, right."
My facetiousness made him curse then reach up and smear a hand across the board, erasing the message in one swift swipe.
"You ran away," he challenged me, dark eyes thunderous. "For all your mouthy bravado you just ran away."
A couple of girls hurried past in the beige corridor, stealing quick looks at us over their shoulders, no doubt drinking in every detail to relay to their friends later. I should really have shoved Fletch into my room so we could continue whatever this was in private, but the thought of being shut up in my tiny room with him somehow felt infinitely more exposing than being on display for the whole building. So I accepted that we'd be the talking point of the campus come tomorrow, wouldn't be like it'd be different from any other day, after all.
"And what were you expecting me to do?" I demanded, instead. "Hang around to give you a review? An in-depth analysis of your sexual prowess? Because, from what I can recall, I was the one doing most of the work, you just sat there."
He made a disbelieving sound, somewhere between a laugh and a scoff. "Isn't that what you wanted? Me to just sit there? Me to keep my mouth shut and not make any move so that you could get the jollies you were after and not have to acknowledge that it was me you were rooting?"
The honest response to that, the one that swelled inside me and demanded to be released, was that of course I'd known it was him. It was always him, even when it'd been others, even when it'd been Brock Baines and I'd been clumsily opening myself to someone for the first time, in my head it'd always been Fletcher bloody Townsend.
I couldn't say that, of course, and I scrambled for another reply, one that wouldn't dissolve me into dust at his feet.
"I don't remember your mouth being shut," I mustered up. "I could've sworn there was tongue involved…"
In another person I might have been concerned he'd hit me, such was the frustration I saw roping through his tendons then, but of course, not Fletch. He didn't even shout. No, after a charged moment of silence he just very quietly said two words, "You're shaking."
"What?" I followed his gaze down and then blanched.
I'd been so focused on what his physicality was telling me, on the rough, dark stubble along his jaw and the muscles bunched in his arms as he held himself rigid, that I'd forgotten about what my own physicality would be saying. And, without my knowledge or consent, it looked like my body language was being quite…chatty.
The material of my top stretched tight against my breasts was practically vibrating as I shook like a leaf. Damn.
"So what's your point?" I snapped, all bravado even as the realisation that I was trembling seemed to make it 100 times worse; like seeing Fletch had sent me into shock.
"My point, babe, is that you're barely keeping yourself upright, so can we stop pretending that I'm not getting to you?"
As if his words weren't striking enough, the sneaky Canadian accent, the one he'd inherited from his mum and which I knew he'd worked hard to stamp out of himself, snuck in when he called me 'babe'. If I was losing control, then so was he.
That I knew that as instinctively as I knew how to breathe got to me just as much as what he'd said, and, for once, I found myself with nothing to say.
We stood there for a few seconds in profound silence, and then Fletch dropped his head and murmured, "It's not working."
"What's not?" I asked, trying to surreptitiously lean back against the chipped doorjamb, seeking the security of something solid at my back.
"Whatever it is we've been doing for the past three years." His words were heavy with annoyance. "It's not changing anything."
"Anything being...?"
He lifted his head again and I saw that something in the institutionally plain tiles at his feet must have given him confidence because now his eyes were blazing. "That we're seconds away from jumping each other at any given moment," he said directly. "I don't like it, but damned if I know how to stop it."
It was the truth, but where the hell did he get off announcing it like that? That wasn't what we did, we might occasionally act on it, but we didn't name it up!
"So if we can't halt this supposedly uncontrollable lust of ours," I said with a poor attempt at droll, "what are you suggesting?"
He laughed, a short chuckle that slipped under my skin and pulled at me just as surely as if he'd reached out and yanked me to him.
"I'm suggesting," he said lowly, "that we give in to it."
Well shit. There went the horseshoe nail, my kingdom was lost.
----------
He watched his words sink in, watched her previously white cheeks suddenly flood with colour and her eyes fly to his and start searching for some hidden meaning in what he'd said. The thing was, though, there wasn't any hidden meaning. He'd just out and out named up what he saw as their best option.
"Give in?" Lara finally managed to say incredulously. "To what? Casual sex?"
"With all the trimmings," he agreed. "Quit the drama and the crap and just-" he ran out of words and, in their place, reached out to slowly run his thumb across her glossy bottom lip.
She leant into his touch for the briefest second, and then slapped his hand away.
"Have you lost your mind?" She asked, her shrill, almost panicked, voice echoing through the deserted corridor. "We don't like each other, Fletch!"
"It's never stopped us before," he pointed out and her mouth closed with an audible snap.
Maybe he was being a prick, but he was kind of enjoying seeing her so thrown. Still, as she remained stunned into uncharacteristic silence, he knew it was time to take a step back. Before he did, however, he was unable to stop himself ducking his head down and briefly pressing his lips to hers.
He wasn't surprised to feel her mouth move back against his, she'd always communicated better physically, and maybe that was what kept him coming back, that had him on her doorstep suggesting that they give over to their chemistry or whatever you wanted to call it. For every snarl, there was the way her hands clung to his shoulders even in this, fairly chaste, kiss; for every complaint there was that little noise of appreciation she made low in her throat when he leant his hand softly against her neck.
He forced himself to pull back, however, literally having to take two steps back to stop himself bundling her backwards into her room and slamming the door shut behind them.
"So that's it," he said brusquely, reaching up to wipe away the sticky redness her lipstick, or whatever it was, had left on him, "that's where I reckon this goes. It's back on you now."
This, at least, he knew she'd like. She had back the control, it just remained to be seen what she did with it.
He turned and started back down the corridor, walking away with the feel and tas
te of her still on his lips. He was almost at the door that led to the stairs when he heard her call after him.
He stopped, but didn't turn around as he asked, "Yeah?"
"I want my boots back," the imperious note was back in her voice, but it was a tremulous facsimile of her usual demands, the last clutch of a straw.
He laughed. "So come get 'em."
Chapter 12 – Fine
"Did you see that Gavin Wyley's pretty much running the second years now? This is the guy who barely looked anyone in the eye last year and now it's like if you're not his Facebook friend you might as well not exist. I know you're good, but that's a hell of a result even by your standards; your fake fondles are practically magic."
Merry pursed her lips round the straw jutting out of her orange juice and took a long pull. Then, although it seemed to me that she couldn't possibly have had time to swallow, she continued, "On the other end of the spectrum, Patricia told me that Darren hasn't been turning up to their tutoring sessions so I don't reckon that's a deed that's gonna happen. His loss. Then there's Ellen of the unfortunate ears and I'm undecided on her..."
Merry's debrief had been running almost non-stop for the whole ten minutes since I'd sat down opposite her at the sunny cafe just off-campus. I wasn't a brunch person, but Merry most definitely was so this wasn't the first report on good-deed outcomes I'd listened to over scrambled eggs.
Not that I was eating. It was exactly 18 hours since Fletch had blindsided me with his proposition and I'd only been able to stomach a few sips of water since. Apparently there was no room in my body for anything other than constant replays of the way he'd said those last four words of his. 'So come get 'em', like it was that easy.
"Oh, and here's something interesting."
It was only when I heard Merry's sudden change in tone that I realised I'd tuned out the last few minutes of her nattering. Glancing up from where I'd been gazing, unseeingly, down at Big Blue, I saw immediately that my inattention had been impolitic. There was a look to Merry that suggested she'd been building up to whatever she was about to say and that I'd been an idiot for missing the intro.
The Do-Gooder Page 14
