by A. S. Kelly
I’ve been at his front door for ten minutes now. Just standing there, frozen. It won’t take much, I know, to just knock on the door, find some ridiculous reason for being here, and explain how I know his address and the code to open the door downstairs.
It’d be nothing: for a good liar.
I tug at my shirt and brush through my hair with my fingers. Well, brushing is an exaggeration. It’s more an attempt at untangling it.
I take a deep breath, knock, and wait, nervously shifting my weight from one foot to the other. The minutes pass quickly, the silence of the corridor suffocating me. I realise that I’m making a huge mistake, and I should get out right now.
I turn on my heels and march quickly towards the lift, when his voice stops me in my tracks.
“Christine?”
Shit.
I turn around slowly and my jaw drops to the floor.
Ryan is standing in the doorway to his apartment, barefoot, with a towel wrapped around his waist. A few drops of water are slipping slowly down his abs, and his wet hair is plastered to his forehead.
“Hi,” I wave, like a little girl.
“What…?”
“I…er…sorry, I’d better go.”
I start to walk away again, but he runs after me, grabbing my arm.
“Where are you going?”
I turn towards him, forcing myself to keep my eyes on his face – but I can feel them dropping a little further down. His warm hand is still wrapped around my arm. I look down at it, and he lets go, pushing his hair back from his face.
I swallow down a sigh and compose myself.
“I was just in the neighbourhood and I thought I’d come and say hi…”
He crosses his arms. “How did you know where I live?”
Shit, he’s clever, too.
“I can’t remember, maybe you told me? Maybe someone else told me…” I try, but when he opens his mouth to respond, the front door opposite us swings open.
“Ryan!” A shrill, grating voice interrupts us.
“Mel,” he says, coldly.
The woman closes the door and approaches us. Well, ‘woman’ doesn’t quite do her justice. She’s more a goddess, or a Barbie – a Barbie goddess, maybe. I’m sure that exists.
Her gaze falls onto him shamelessly, and I’m suddenly overcome by a strange longing to grab her by her platinum blonde hair and slam her head against a wall.
“Have we just had a shower?” she comments, stupidly.
Seriously? Can she not see that he’s half naked with a towel around his waist?
“Yeah,” he says tightly.
“I’m still waiting for that coffee,” she goes on, suggestively.
“Yeah, sooner or later,” he says, his beautiful face hard.
“Well, I was just going out with some friends…We’re going into town, to the George. We’re going dancing. Maybe you could come with us, when you’re done here…?” she says, shooting daggers at me.
“Sure, you got it,” he nods, before grabbing my arm again and pulling me into his apartment.
He slams the door behind us then lets go of my arm again. He paces frustratedly into the living room, then turns to face me.
He’s angry. I can see it, I can feel it. He doesn’t like that I’ve come here, interrupted his conversation with the Barbie goddess. He’s annoyed that he’s here entertaining me when he could be getting dressed and heading out with her. I’ve realised that he isn’t someone who likes to waste his time.
Anger climbs up my throat, and it tastes bitter – almost like jealousy. But it melts on my tongue.
“I’m sorry for just turning up like this. I didn’t want to intrude, or make you late for a date.”
He suddenly looks at me, his glare pinning me down.
“I can see that you’ve got someone waiting for you,” I say resentfully. But my voice sounds alien, even to me.
“Sorry?”
“That…girl,” I say, waving towards the door.
“Let me understand something…” he steps closer to me, and I flatten myself against the door. “You came here, to my house, unannounced, invaded my privacy…” he leans a hand against the wood, next to my head, “…and now you’re making a scene because a girl asked me out?”
I swallow nervously, as he leans the other hand on the other side of my head.
“Why are you here, Christine? What the hell do you want from me?”
He’s speaking right onto my lips. His voice is dark, but his gaze is lit up, dangerous.
I can feel my legs trembling, and an unexpected heat spreading through my body.
“I’ll just go,” I say, trying to turn myself around and open the door, but he pushes himself against me.
“No. Not so fast.”
41
Ryan
I press her against the door, imprisoning her. I breathe onto her face, inhaling her fear, her anxiety.
I breathe her in, and forget in an instant how I ever breathed before, when I only used my own lungs to survive.
“You shouldn’t come here, shouldn’t come looking for me.”
I try to be tough, to ignore the fact that she’s here, in my apartment, invading my space. That we’re alone, together. And that I’m terrified at the idea of her leaving.
“So, what, you can just turn up at my house whenever you like and I can’t do the same?” she says, composing herself.
“Exactly.”
“Are you serious, Ryan?” she asks, sliding out of my prison and appearing behind my back.
I turn around to face her.
“I just came to…God, you’re impossible! I don’t understand why I try so hard with you!” She starts to pace around my living room. “I just wanted to talk to you about yesterday, to thank you for taking Evan to the game, for…What an idiot!” She flops down onto my sofa.
“There was no need. You made it very clear.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You and your doctor…”
“How did you know he’s a doctor?”
Fuck.
“I worked it out.”
“From what?”
I scoff. “Come on, the other night, he was wearing a shirt…”
She looks at me, lifting an eyebrow.
“Anyway, you don’t owe me an explanation. You don’t owe me anything.”
“Exactly,” she jumps up, furiously.
“I don’t care who you fuck.”
“And I don’t care if you go out with that…Barbie,” she says, throwing her hands up.
What the fuck is happening? We’re fighting like a married couple. How did we get here? We’re not even a couple!
“You could’ve saved me the trouble of fucking you, seeing as you’re already…busy,” the words fly out of my stomach in flames.
I know that we’re not anything. She doesn’t owe me anything. I was the one who told her that this means nothing – but to know that she was with me while her ex was waiting at home…
“How can you say that? You know nothing about me.”
“And I don’t want to know anything.”
“Good!” she yells, heading for the front door.
“Good!” I shout back, following her.
She opens it but I slam it shut. I approach her until I’m breathing onto her neck, inhaling that perfume that fucked over all of my senses in the first place, awakening something in me right away. I press my body instinctively against hers – I want her to feel what’s happening to me down there. As soon as my erection brushes against her, I see her flinch.
“Christine…” I mutter. “This makes no sense. We make no sense.”
“Then stop,” she breathes.
“That’s the problem,” I brush against her ear with my nose. “I can’t stop.”
I see her breathing quicken, see her gasp, trying to grab onto something, to get out of this unharmed. Just like me. But now we’re both in too deep in this thing – whatever it is – and neither of us can come out
alive.
“I can’t stop thinking about how you were with me, when he…” I clench my fists tightly against the door.
Christine turns slowly and lifts her gaze to meet mine.
God, those eyes, those lips… I bite my own, trying to hold off the uncontrollable desire to pull her into me and eat her up. Because that’s what I want to do: eat her, bite her, have her…
“There’s nothing between us,” she says calmly. “He’s Evan’s father.”
“You don’t have to…”
“We’ve never been together, Ryan. He got me pregnant when I was sixteen, and we stayed friends. Me and him…we can’t.”
“You don’t have to explain it to me.”
“That’s true, I don’t.”
All my muscles tighten.
“I would never have slept with you if I had someone else. I’m not that kind of woman, despite what you think.”
“I never said that.”
“I can read it on your face.”
I take a few steps back, trying to create some distance between us. Her honesty hits me, her calmness gnawing at me. Her eyes are swallowing me whole.
“I’m not going out with her,” I say suddenly.
“Mmm?” she says, tilting her head.
“That…Barbie, as you put it. She never leaves me alone.”
“I imagine,” she says, her mouth contorting into a frown.
“I would never go out with her.”
“You don’t have to explain it to me.”
“I know,” I say, sighing. “But, for some strange reason, I’m explaining it to you anyway.”
“Okay.”
“So…” I mutter, uncertainly. “Let’s say you’re not still seeing your ex and…there’s no one else.”
She nods.
“And I’m not going out with Barbie and…there’s no one else.”
She nods again, chewing on her lip.
“Are we clear on that?”
“I’d say so.”
“Good,” I say, calmer now.
“So now that’s all clear…” she says, a blush creeping up her neck. “Can you go and put some clothes on?”
I look down.
“It isn’t easy to speak to you with all that in front of my eyes.”
I laugh. Seriously. I laugh, and I feel my heart start to beat again.
“I’m not kidding.”
“I know,” I say, still laughing, holding my stomach with my hands. There’s not actually that much to laugh about – but the situation, our anger, the ridiculous jealousy, her here, with me… I laugh, and I keep laughing. I laugh hysterically and, after a few seconds, she bursts out laughing, too.
We laugh and laugh like two idiots in my living room. We laugh as if we were partners in crime, as if there really were something beautiful between us. Something intimate, something enjoyable. Something that doesn’t hurt, but actually helps your body pump the blood from your brain to your heart.
Something that fills my mind, my body, my thoughts, and anything it can get its hands on.
Something that shocks me and scares me, but that – for some inexplicable reason – I don’t want to stop. Not before understanding what it all really means.
I wipe away my tears, as she does the same.
“I’ll go and chuck something on. Then you can stop staring at me.”
“Me? What? I wasn’t staring at you but…come on! Have you seen yourself, Ryan O’Connor?”
I look down and shrug.
“Don’t pretend to be all modest. What did they do, sculpt you? Did your mother feed you bread and marble as a kid?”
Another uncontrollable laugh escapes my lips.
“Are you laughing at me?” she asks, angry.
I shake my head and try to compose myself.
“No, Christine, I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing with you.”
“Oh,” she says, suddenly embarrassed. “O-okay.”
“Now, if we’re done, I’m actually going to go and get dressed. If you want, we can make something to eat after?”
“To-together?”
“Do you have other plans?”
“Me, plans? Are you kidding? Evan’s out with his friends and all I have waiting for me at home is a sad, empty house.”
“Then stay.”
“Stay?”
I nod.
“I’ll stay then,” she says, smiling. I already know that she doesn’t just mean dinner – she means the whole evening.
I know deep down exactly what that means, and even though I try not to acknowledge it, my mind is heading somewhere else. Somewhere way more dangerous than my thoughts, let alone my body.
Something I thought was dead is stirring inside me. It was just lost, waiting to be found.
42
Ryan
Chris parks in front of Kealy’s, one of the pubs on Swords Road, near the airport. I would’ve preferred to stay at mine, but I had next to nothing in the fridge and I don’t know my way around a kitchen like Ian does. It might’ve been a bit too intense to be alone at mine, anyway, with too much temptation to just jump on each other. Let’s be honest: Christine’s hot, and I can’t think of anything but her face, the expressions and the sounds she could make the moment she…
“I’ve been here a few times before,” she says, interrupting my fantasy as we step into the pub.
“Me too. Maybe once or twice.”
“Not that there’s a lot of choice in Santry.”
“No.”
We sit down at a table: her on the bench, and me opposite her. The waitress brings us our menus and asks us what we’d like to drink. I have a beer, and she goes for a glass of wine.
“Have you lived in Santry for long?” she asks me as soon as the waitress walks away.
She likes to make conversation.
“I grew up here.”
She nods, sipping at the glass of wine she’s just been served.
“I moved away for a while, you know…for work.”
“Did you play for a different team?”
“I played in England.”
“How come you came back?” she asks innocently.
“My…dad,” I manage.
“Oh…I’m sorry.”
I sigh heavily.
“That can’t be easy for any of you.”
“It isn’t.”
“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“Thanks.”
She smiles kindly at me, as the waitress comes back to take our orders.
I’m not used to face-to-face conversation, unless it’s with one of my brothers. And I definitely didn’t expect to find myself in this situation again, alone with a woman, trying to…do what? What am I trying to do? Why did I ask her to stay? Why did I bring her out? Why can’t I stop staring at her lips, resting against that wine glass? And where the fuck is my paper bag?
“So now you play for Leinster with your brother, right?”
“Uh-huh,” I say, sipping at my beer to try and calm my nerves.
“What’s that like, playing with your brother? Is it weird?”
“A bit.”
“You don’t like conversation, do you?”
I sigh. “Not really…”
“It doesn’t matter, you know. If you want, we can just sit quietly.”
I lift my eyes to hers.
“Maybe you could talk.”
The corner of her mouth twitches.
“Tell me everything that goes through your mind.”
“Seriously? Do you care?”
“Yes,” I say, honestly. “I care, Christine.”
“Well, unlucky for you, because I love chatting… You’re going to have to shut me up by force.”
God, yes. I’d love to. In my own way.
And she talks. She talks and talks, without pausing for breath. I don’t know if she’s doing it just to fill my silences or to cover up the awkwardness of this strange, unlikely situation: but I like it.
&n
bsp; She gesticulates, gets excited, her face moulding into silly but sexy expressions. She is herself, that much I’m sure of. Simply herself. She doesn’t hide away, doesn’t spare any details. She doesn’t need to. She doesn’t need to mask anything, because she’s so natural, so alive, that I can’t do anything but watch her, mesmerised by everything she does.
I listen to bits and pieces of what she’s saying. Every so often I lose myself in the movement of her soft lips, the corners of her mouth upturning, her eyes that mirror her soul. Her cheeks redden slightly when she becomes more animated, the freckles sprinkled across her face making her look mischievous. Her wild hair slips in front of her face, and every few minutes she brushes it away with a finger. Her hands move in time with the rhythm of her words: hands that I want to feel all over me, sliding over my body. I want to feel them wrap themselves around me, holding me tight.
“I’m boring you,” she says suddenly, bringing me back down to reality. Because this is a dream – one of those dreams that wakes you up with an infinite emptiness.
“No,” I shake my head. “Not at all.”
“I’ve been talking for over an hour,” she points out, embarrassed.
“It’s okay…I like it.”
She looks at me questioningly.
The waitress comes back to clear our plates. We both had steak sandwiches with fries and pepper sauce. She asks us if we’d like any dessert, and Christine nibbles on her lip hopefully.
“Why not,” I say, shrugging.
“I saw that you have brownies?” she asks, narrowing her eyes.
“Sure, with ice cream and chocolate sauce.”
“Oh God, yes,” Chris says, almost moaning with pleasure, giving me another little problem under the table.
“Do you want to share it?” the waitress asks.
Christine looks at me with her huge, sweet eyes, and I find myself nodding.
When they bring our dessert, she slowly plunges her spoon into the brownie, then slips the spoon into her mouth; my problem under the table is almost unbearable now.
“Mmm,” she says, closing her eyes and licking her lips.
And I can’t stop thinking about how much I want to lick those full, plump lips.
