by Nicky Wells
Dan caught my look, and my meaning.
“You made me promise, Sophie, remember?” he volunteered. “So don’t tempt me. I might not be able to restrain myself.”
I blushed—again. I was blushing all over the place today. My poor heart had to be doing overtime. I wondered whether all this blushing was good or bad for the skin. Meanwhile, Dan had grabbed another towel and invited me to step out of the bath. He wrapped the towel around me, briefly encircling me in his lovely, strong arms, and then picked me up and carried me to bed. The bed whose covers I had turned down before venturing into the bathroom.
“Someone is either very tired, or very keen,” he observed teasingly. “What side do you want?”
“What?” I murmured drowsily, all of a sudden overcome by the relaxing effects of the bath.
“Left or right?”
“Oh…whatever is closest to the bathroom,” I croaked.
Dan looked at me inquisitively but obligingly put me down on the right side. Then he snuck in on the other side and we snuggled into each other’s arms, towels still wrapped around us for modesty and protection. I was fading in and out of sleep fast and could barely keep my eyes open.
The last thing I heard was Dan’s lovely voice close by my ear: “You’re wonderful, my little Sophie. How I wish I wasn’t too late.”
There was an awful lot of sunshine streaming into my bedroom when I woke up the next morning—which was very peculiar because my bedroom faced west.
I luxuriated for a few minutes in a sense of complete well-being. I had slept extraordinarily well. I felt clean, smooth, lotioned and very, very relaxed. Not a sign of the residual tension in my shoulders that would typically prompt me to pull the duvet over my head again for just a few minutes of a Saturday morning. It was Saturday, wasn’t it?
I opened my eyes fully and gazed at the ceiling. That, too, was peculiar because my two-pounds-fifty paper lampshade from Ikea had transformed into some kind of chandelier sat in the middle of the most enormous ceiling rose. I blinked a few times, then squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again abruptly. The ceiling rose and chandelier were still there.
Next to register was the glow-white, smooth bed linens that I was lounging in. As I examined them more closely I became aware that I wasn’t wearing any clothes. None whatsoever. Not a stitch. Instead, there was a bundle of…something somewhere down by the foot end.
I dove under the covers to retrieve it. A bunched-up, slightly damp towel, with the words “Royal London” picked out in gold thread in the top right hand corner. The Royal?
Just as insight finally dawned, Dan stirred next to me. He extended an arm lazily and pulled me to lie in the crook of his shoulder, planting a gentle kiss on my cheek and gently ruffling my hair. He gave a big, happy grin.
“Morning, sleepyhead,” he whispered.
Oh. My. God.
Events of the previous night now came flooding back like an avalanche. Dan’s appearance in the office, the limo, the dress, the dinner at the Royal…the bath. Oh my God, the bath. What had happened afterwards? I couldn’t remember anything. Had we…? Had I…?
I searched my memories frantically, but no, I couldn’t get beyond the bath. There was nothing. Nada. Zilch.
“What happened?” I responded rather prosaically to Dan’s loving greeting. “What did we do?”
Dan kept smiling and gave me another little kiss.
“Nothing, my lovely Sophie. We did absolutely nothing untoward, just as we promised.”
That sounded…encouraging. But…
“What about the bath?”
“What about it? We had a bath together. Lots of people do that.”
“What about afterwards?”
“Afterwards,” Dan laughed, “I put you to bed and you went out like a light.” He sighed wistfully. “It’s not often that my dates…excuse me, not-dates, conk out on me like that. It was rather sweet, actually.”
I relaxed momentarily, and then cringed. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved that we hadn’t actually done it or whether I should be embarrassed at conking out.
Dan put his other arm around me and snuggled against my chest.
“I had the most wonderful evening, Sophie Penhalligan,” he declared. We lay for a few moments in absolute, blissful and innocent contentment. Apart from all the implications for my relationship with Tim, this was a perfect man-woman moment. I felt cozy, secure, comforted. And Dan didn’t look like he had had a raw deal on this non-sexual non-date either. In fact, he rather looked like the cat that got the cream.
Then I said the unthinkable. “How I wish it wasn’t too late,” I mumbled, hastily suppressing tears that threatened to spill from my eyes. Dan squeezed me gently.
“That’s how it goes, sometimes,” he stated simply. “We could agree to be friends…but that doesn’t really work, does it?”
I thought about that for a minute. “No, it doesn’t,” I agreed. “But it’s breaking my heart that I can’t see you again. I don’t know why, but somehow…without wanting to be unfaithful to Tim…well, somehow, having you back in my life has made such a difference.” I let out an involuntary sob.
Dan held me even closer. “You are like no woman I have ever met,” he ventured. “Usually the girls that want to get into bed with me are so…obvious. They all look the same and behave the same. They are all pretty, and then there’s nothing behind their facade. And yes, I have a good time, but…it leaves me empty. You”—he stroked my face again—“you are just so different. You just wanted to be with me. And yes, there are undertones, but then I’m a bloke and you’re a girl; platonic relationships just don’t exist. But with you, I felt like you were interested in me as a person. That never happens. And now it turns out the one time I could really, really fall for someone…or maybe have, even…I’m too late.”
He petered out. I wanted to cry at the very unfairness of life. Why did it have to be too late when you finally might have got what you wanted? For the teensiest second, I wondered if there was a way out, another solution perhaps that would get us together. But reason prevailed. After all, I still hardly knew Dan and I couldn’t just up-end my entire life on a whim. Or could I?
I sighed, and propped myself up on one elbow. Reaching up, I planted a chaste kiss on Dan’s cheek, a kind of anticipated farewell. Oh, but he smelled nice.
I had closed my eyes for a moment, enjoying the proximity, and merely felt a shift in Dan’s posture. Suddenly, his lips brushed against mine, gently at first and then we were kissing frantically. Hot, urgent kisses on our foreheads, eyes, cheeks and mouths. Like a drowning couple, we clung together and started caressing each other. Dan ran his hand down my back and then up again round my front and chest, lingering briefly around my breasts to test my reaction. I pressed myself closer to him and touched his back, his chest, his belly. We were breathing fast and in perfect rhythm and, for the longest time, nothing mattered but the sensation of our entwined bodies.
I felt passion and attraction like never before, and when Dan chanced his fingers onto my best place—perhaps deliberately, perhaps by accident, I couldn’t tell and I didn’t care, his hands seemed to be everywhere, don’t stop, don’t stop…So when his fingers danced on my most sensitive parts, I rejoiced in one tremendous wave of excitement and release. Impossible to say who was more surprised by this turn of events, but Dan’s eyes lit up even more and he pulled me yet closer to him.
He murmured sweet nothings into my hair. I wanted to give in to the delicious lassitude that was coursing through my body. Instead, I found my hands wandering across Dan’s anatomy, eager to return the favor of excitement and release. When he was spent, we lay back and looked at each other in wonderment and awe.
I spoke first. Well, I didn’t really say much, but I managed to utter a heart-felt “Wow.” And before I could think about it, I added, “That was special.”
Dan simply nodded his agreement. He had closed his eyes and was smiling broadly, playing lazily with a curl of my hair that had s
naked across his chest. I wanted to hold on to this moment forever. There was no guilt, no shame—nothing at all that would betray the perfection of the moment. What we had done had felt so right, so natural. And, I added as an afterthought to myself, we hadn’t actually done it. There had been no actual action. We had just…well, really, we had just held each other and our bodies had done the rest.
Dan wriggled, and then sat up slightly against the pillows. Eyes now open wide, he gazed at me with a look of concern.
“Sophie…,” he began, “I am sorry if I broke my promise. I just couldn’t help it.”
“I know,” I purred by way of initial response. “Neither could I. But—” I hesitated, trying to organize my thoughts. “But I’m not sure you really broke your promise.”
“I didn’t?” Dan asked hopefully.
“Well, I’m not sure. I don’t quite know what just happened there, but…well, we didn’t do it, really, did we?”
“We didn’t?” Dan didn’t follow my logic.
“Well, what is having sex? Does stroking and caressing count? Or do you have to go, I don’t know, all the way to be unfaithful?”
“Hm. I don’t know. I’d never thought about that before,” Dan admitted.
I carried on my philosophical ruminations, half-aware that I might be trying to rationalize my behavior in order to reason my potential transgression out of existence, and half-sincere in what I was saying.
“Here’s the problem,” I went on. “I don’t feel like I’ve just been unfaithful to Tim.” I winced at saying his name, though. “Anyway, I really don’t feel like I’ve just done something bad. I just don’t. I can’t, I don’t know why. It felt too right. Like, long overdue, somehow.”
Dan nodded his head. “I think I know what you mean.”
“But,” I continued, eager now to complete my train of thought. “I know I have been with another man in a manner of speaking, but have we really slept together?”
“Apart from sleeping the night in the same bed, you mean?” Dan interjected with a chuckle.
“Well, yeah. Apart from that. But there was no actual…” I hesitated, never having been particularly good at explicit talk.
“Penetration,” Dan finished for me.
We thought for a moment. Dan gave another chuckle. “Can you remember what the verdict on the whole president thing was? Did he have sex with that woman or not in the end, given the absence of…well, you know?”
“I don’t know. But didn’t he argue that they didn’t have sex?”
“He sure did,” Dan confirmed. “Although I don’t recall whether the jury agreed.”
At this impasse, I gave Dan another—a final—big kiss on the mouth, feeling all grown-up all of sudden. After all, I couldn’t undo what we had done. I still resolutely refused to feel guilty. Maybe the guilt would come later, but for now, I was just ludicrously happy. I was also fully aware that tonight was the night of my engagement party. Somehow I had found a way to make my relationship with Tim and my…whatever-just-happened-with-Dan coexist comfortably. I had grown tired of putting myself through the emotional wringer.
“Thank you,” I ventured, stroking Dan’s hair and face. “Thank you for a wonderful evening, and for being you, and for not taking things too far. I had a great time.”
“Me too,” Dan immediately agreed. “Perhaps we can…?”
“No,” I interrupted immediately. “I don’t think we can. I’d love to, but I think that would be too dangerous. We can’t undo this morning, and I really don’t want to. I’ll treasure this forever.” I had to laugh at my treacly use of language. “Sorry if I sound like tacky romance novel,” I apologized, “but I’m totally serious. We are too late, remember?”
We smiled at each other, sadly this time.
“You are right,” Dan conceded. “Well, if there’s no looking backward, we’ll just have to look forward and move on. Are you hungry?”
I gasped at this dramatic shift in gear, then accepted that there was no further point in mooching, mooning, and complaining about things that would now never be.
“Starving,” I said, at which Dan jumped out of bed with alacrity.
“Oh, I feel a room service brekkie coming on,” he announced.
“Isn’t it too late for that?” I asked in surprise. “I mean, shouldn’t we have ordered that last night?”
“Not in a deluxe suite in the Royal,” Dan clamored cheerfully. “What do you want? Shall we have everything? ”
“Sure,” I managed, not sure what everything would entail, but hoping for some strong coffee, fresh orange juice, and strawberries.
Dan got busy with ordering our breakfast. I turned my attention to thinking about the remainder of the day. I would have to ring Tim to see what needed doing for the party. And of course, I would have to ring Rachel to arrange for a quick…debrief. Another one. I smiled as I went to retrieve my mobile from my handbag in the living room. I pressed the on button, and, just as the signal came on, the phone shrilled in my hand. I hit answer—more out of surprise at the loud noise rather than through any intention of talking to someone. Immediately Tim’s voice burst forth. “Sophie! Where on earth are you?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Bloomin’ heck!
I sat down heavily on a sofa and waved frantically at Dan to keep his voice down. The past hour might have made me comfortable with having Tim and Dan coexist in my own private moral universe, at least for a limited time, but actual deception, outright lying, was another matter altogether.
“Errm, errm,” I stalled, hoping for inspiration. Just then, Dan laughed particularly gaily into the room phone, still negotiating our breakfast, and I could tell that Tim had heard. Bugger!
I jumped off the sofa and started pacing the room furiously, trying to give myself the kind of breathless voice that would support the upcoming lie. “I’m…just on my way…to Rachel’s…” I panted into the phone, completing my second and then third circuit of the room. Dan, having concluded his call, watched me with undisguised amusement.
“Where…are…you?” I asked Tim in return.
“At home, where else?” he informed me. “Who’s the bloke?”
“What bloke?” I returned automatically, momentarily truly thrown off balance.
“The bloke laughing in the background.”
I increased my pace even further, pretending to look around to discover the source of the disturbance, imagining that Tim could hear, if not see, my every move.
“Oh…oh, that bloke. Oh, just some geezer on his mobile phone.” I motioned for Dan to make more inane, mobile-phone type noises and he rose to the challenge beautifully.
“Hello,” he screamed. “What? I can’t hear you.”
I was completely taken aback, but now Dan was unstoppable. He used my hairbrush as a prop and was doing some strutting around of his own. “No, I’m in Tooting,” Dan continued, still at full volume. “In Tooting. South of the River, I know…what? Hello?”
He sounded like Dom Joly in one of his many mobile phone sketches, and I barely suppressed a giggle.
“What is going on at your end?” Tim wanted to know.
“What?” I screamed for my part, pretending now to lose connection. “Hang on, let me call you back.” I rung off abruptly, clutching my sides as I was shaking with laughter. Dan was still continuing his performance, now solely for my benefit.
“Stop, stop,” I implored, “I’ve got to ring him back and be normal.”
Dan raised his arms in mock surrender and settled on one of the sofas. “You know,” he mused, “usually it’s me trying to keep up the pretense with one girlfriend or another. It’s quite funny to be the observing party for once.”
“Funny for you, maybe, but not for me,” I grumbled, already punching Tim’s number into my phone.
“Hey there, sorry about that, I’m back. Just walking down Franciscan Road actually. Will be at Rachel’s shortly. You okay?”
There was a silence while Tim strained to hear an
y compromising noises.
“I’m fine,” he finally said. “Except I’ve got to go into the office now. I won’t have time to make those final vol-au-vents and cheese-pastry parcels. Any chance you could take care of those?” he asked, hopefully.
“Why do you have to go into the office today?” I wanted to know. “That’s a bit annoying.” Blimey, that had to be the guilt speaking. Making him feel bad about going to the office for undisclosed reasons seemed a good tactic to deflect his attention from my own whereabouts.
“Oh, something has come up,” he said vaguely. “You know I can’t talk about that.” Just then, it occurred to me that this would be a perfect cover for him to conduct illicit affairs of his own, because his job did require a lot of unsocial hours. He was never allowed to talk about what was going on. Not that I thought he was up to anything, but…well, being guilty of some kind of deception myself, it made it natural to suspect deception in other places too.
“Ah. Well, no worries about those finger foods, I’ll sort something out,” I assured him.
“Now don’t you go buying any stuff. Here, let me give you the recipes…” he began, but I cut in quickly. I was worried that room service might knock any minute now—Dan was making warning look at your watch motions and pointing at the door—and I couldn’t be doing with taking down complicated recipes.
“No worries. I read them at your house. I’ve got a good memory. It’ll be a breeze.”
Tim’s sighed doubtfully but rung off nonetheless.
“Love you,” he chirped. “See you later then. I’ll be home by five at the latest.”
“Me you too,” I responded, not quite managing to get the “L” word out in Dan’s presence. “I’ll be there when you get home.”
No sooner had I hung up than room service knocked on the door. Another close escape. Dan and I enjoyed a lovely but somewhat hasty breakfast in bed. Surprisingly, our mood was neither sad nor gloomy. We were two pragmatic adults having spent an enjoyable time together and now having to get on with ordinary life chores. We were comfortable together, like two longstanding friends should be, and the only fly in my ointment was that we wouldn’t see each other again.
