by Marian Keyes
But Daniel really did place my hand on his heart. And, yes, there did seem to be a fair amount of commotion going on in his chest.
“I love you, Lucy,” he said.
“I love you, too,” I said shyly.
“Give me a kiss,” he said.
“Okay.” I turned my face up to his, but I closed my eyes. He kissed my eyes, and my eyebrows, and along my hairline and all the way down to my neck. Light, tantalizing kisses that were almost unbearably pleasurable. Then he kissed the corner of my mouth and gently pulled at my lower lip with his teeth.
“Knock off the arch-seducer stuff,” I complained, “and kiss me properly.”
“Well, if my form of kissing is not to Madam’s satisfaction…” He laughed.
Then he did the smile thing that he did so well. And I kissed him—I couldn’t help myself.
“I thought you said you were nervous,” he said.
“Shush.” I put a finger to my lips. “I nearly forgot about it for a second.”
“How about if I lie down on the bed and you lie here next to me in my arms?” he asked as he pulled me down next to him on the bed. “Is that too arch-seducery for you?”
“No, that was nice and clumsily done,” I said to his chest.
“Any chance that you might kiss me again, Lucy?” he whispered.
“Okay,” I whispered back. “But I don’t want any slick moves from you—like you taking my bra off on the first try.”
“Don’t worry, Lucy, I’ll fumble.”
“And you’re not to say ‘What’s that, Lucy?’ and take my panties out from behind my ear. Do you hear?” I said grumpily.
“But that’s my party trick,” he said. “It’s the most spectacular thing I do in bed.”
I kissed him again and I relaxed a bit. It was wonderful lying so close to him, inhaling the Daniel smell, touching his beautiful face. God, he was sexy.
“Do you really love me?” I asked again.
“Lucy, I love you so much.”
“No, I mean, do you really, really love me?”
“I really, really love you,” he said, looking into my eyes. “More than I’ve ever loved anyone, more than you can imagine.”
I relaxed for a second. But only for a second.
“Really?” I asked.
“Really.”
“No, Daniel, I mean, really, really?”
“Really, really.”
“Okay.”
There was a little pause.
“You don’t mind my asking, do you?” I asked.
“Not at all.”
“It’s just that I’ve got to be sure.”
“I completely understand. Do you believe me?”
“I believe you.”
We lay smiling at each other.
“Lucy?” asked Daniel.
“What?”
“Do you really love me?”
“Daniel, I really love you.”
“No, but, Lucy,” he said awkwardly. “I mean do you really love me? As in really, really?”
“I really, really love you, Daniel.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Very, very slowly, he took off my clothes, skillfully managing to snag zippers and yank things that shouldn’t have been yanked. Every time he opened a button he kissed me for about an hour before he opened the next one. He kissed me everywhere. Well, almost everywhere, thankfully he left my feet alone. Fergie had a lot to answer for—men seemed to think that they had to suck toes before they had fulfilled their bedtime duties. A few years ago, it had been cunnilingus—the watching paint dry of sex, I always felt. I didn’t like men going near my feet, not unless I’d had plenty of warning—enough of a warning to have had a pedicure. He kissed me and opened buttons, kissed me and peeled my shirt off one shoulder, kissed me again, peeled my shirt off my other shoulder, kissed me again, didn’t comment on the greyness of my white panties, kissed me again, said my breasts weren’t like fried eggs, kissed me again, said they were more like hamburger buns, kissed me again. “You’re so beautiful, Lucy,” he said, over and over again. “I love you.”
Until I had nothing on.
There was something very erotic about being naked while he was still dressed.
I clamped my arms around my chest and wrapped myself up in a ball.
“Get your clothes off,” I giggled.
“You’re so romantic, Lucy,” he said, peeling one arm off my chest, then the other.
“Don’t hide yourself,” he said. “You’re too beautiful.”
He gently forced my knees away from my chest.
“Get lost,” I said, trying to hide my excitement. “How come I’m not wearing a stitch and you’re still fully dressed?”
“I can take my clothes off, if you want,” he teased.
“Do it then,” I said, trying to be brisk.
“Ask me.”
“No.”
“You’ll have to do it, in that case.”
I took off his clothes. My fingers were trembling so much that I could hardly open the buttons of his shirt. But it was worth it.
He had such a beautiful chest, such smooth skin, such a flat stomach.
I traced the line of hair from his bellybutton with my fingernail, as far as the waistband of his trousers and a shiver ran through me when I heard him gasp.
Out of the corner of my eye, I had a quick look at the groin area of his pants, and was appalled and thrilled when I saw the way the fabric strained.
Eventually I plucked up enough courage to slowly start opening his pants. But I wasn’t used to men in suits. Daniel’s trousers had a system of buttons and zips that could rival Fort Knox.
Eventually we liberated his straining erection.
He passed the underpants test. Which was more than could be said for me. My panties had seen better days, most of them inside a washing machine, mistakenly put in with a black wash.
He was gorgeous—and something that made him even more attractive to me—he wasn’t perfect. Although his body was beautiful, it wasn’t one of those muscular elaborately patterned ones that Chippendales seem to have.
The feel of his skin on my skin was indescribable. Everything felt so sensitive, the skin on the inside of my arms tingled as I wrapped them around his back. The feel of the roughness of his thighs against the softness of mine made me weak, his hardness against my wetness was explosive.
All embarrassment had gone. Only desire remained. When I caught his eye I no longer felt a hysterical urge to laugh. We’d passed over the line—we were no longer Daniel and Lucy, we were a man and a woman.
We hadn’t mentioned birth control, but when the time came we were both responsible adults living in the HIV positive nineties.
He produced a condom and I helped him put it on. And then, we…um, you know…
He came in about three seconds. It was mind-blowingly erotic to see Daniel’s face scrunched up in ecstasy—ecstasy that I’d caused.
“Sorry, Lucy,” he gasped. “I couldn’t stop myself, you’re so beautiful and I’ve wanted you for so long.”
“I thought you were supposed to be great in bed,” I complained teasingly. “I never heard that you were a premature-ejaculation merchant.”
“I’m not,” he protested anxiously. “I haven’t done that since I was a teenager. Just give me five minutes and I’ll prove it to you.”
I lay in the circle of his arms and he kept up the constant volley of kisses and stroked my back and my thighs and my stomach.
And in an admirably short time, he made love to me again.
The second time lasted for much longer and he did it achingly slowly and tantalizingly and with all the attention focused on me and what I wanted. No one had ever been as selfless and giving in bed to me before. And I climaxed as I never had before, shuddering and trembling, my eyes wide with shock and pleasure.
This time when he came, he kept his eyes open and looked at me. I nearly dissolved, it was so erotic.
We
hugged each other fiercely, we couldn’t get close enough.
“I wish I could unzip my skin and put you inside me,” he said. And I knew what he meant.
We lay in silence for a while.
“There now, that wasn’t too bad, was it?” asked Daniel. “What were you afraid of?”
“Lots of things,” I laughed. “That you might think I had a horrible body. That you might make me do weird stuff.”
“You have a beautiful body. And what kind of weird stuff?”
“Well,” I explained, “there are some men who say things like, ‘Can you just stand on your head, here, don’t worry about the pain, I’m told it gets easier to bear after a while. Now, keeping your legs at a one-thirty-degree angle to each other, I’m going to enter you from behind, now you can move your entire body in a kind of pincer like movement, approximately eight inches, no, I said eight inches, that’s more like ten—stupid bitch, are you trying to kill me?’—that kind of thing.”
He laughed and laughed, and that felt wonderful too.
And then, more sleepily, more relaxed, we made love again.
“What time is it?” I asked later.
“About two.”
“Do you have to work in the morning?”
“Yes, do you?”
“Yes, I suppose we should get some sleep,” I said.
But we didn’t.
I was starving, so Daniel went to the kitchen and came back with a packet of chocolate cookies, and we lay in bed and ate them and hugged each other and kissed each other and talked about nothing in particular.
“I should join a gym,” he said ruefully, poking a finger into his stomach. “If I had known that this was going to happen, I would have joined months ago.”
That, more than anything, endeared him to me.
When we finished the cookies, he commanded me, “Sit up.”
I sat.
He brushed the sheets with vigour.
“I can’t have my woman sleeping on chocolate cookie crumbs,” he said.
As I smiled at him, the phone rang and I jumped about a foot. Daniel answered it.
“Hello, oh hello, Karen, yes, I am in bed actually.”
A pause.
“Lucy?” he asked slowly, as if he’d never heard such a name. “Lucy Sullivan?”
Another pause.
“Lucy Sullivan, your roommate? That Lucy Sullivan? Yes, she’s right here beside me… Yes, right here beside me in bed,” he said. “Would you like to speak to her?”
I made all kinds of frantic denial actions and made a cross of my two index fingers and held them toward the phone.
“Oh yes,” said Daniel cheerfully. “Three times. Wasn’t it three times, Lucy?”
“Wasn’t what three times?” I asked.
“The number of times I’ve made love to you in the last couple of hours.”
“Um, yes, three,” I said faintly.
“Yes, it was definitely three, Karen. Although we might do it again before the night is over. Is there anything else you need to know?”
I heard screaming and ranting from Karen. Even I heard the crunch when she banged down the phone.
“What did she say?” I asked.
“She said she hopes we give each other AIDS.”
“Is that all?”
“Er, yes.”
“Come on, Dan, what else did she say?”
“Lucy, I don’t want to upset you…”
“You’ve got to tell me now.”
“She said that she slept with Gus when you were going out with him.”
He looked at me anxiously. “Have I upset you?”
“No, I’m kind of relieved. I always felt that there was someone else. But are you upset?”
“Why would I be upset? I wasn’t going out with Gus.”
“No, but you were going out with Karen when I was going out with Gus. If she slept with Gus, then…”
“Oh, I see,” he said cheerfully. “It means that she two-timed me.”
“Do you mind?” I asked anxiously.
“Of course I don’t mind. I couldn’t care less about Karen sleeping with him. It was you sleeping with him that bothered me.”
We lay in silence, the circle of bliss ruptured.
“I’ll have to move out,” I said finally.
“You can move in here,” he offered.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “We’ve only been going out with each other three and a half hours. Isn’t it a bit soon to be talking about living together?”
“Living together?” Daniel sounded shocked. “Who mentioned living together?”
“You did.”
“No, I didn’t. I’m far too frightened of your mother to suggest living in sin with her only daughter.”
“Well, in that case, what are you talking about?”
“Lucy,” he said sheepishly, “I was, er, you know wondering if…”
“What?”
“Would there be any chance…? You know…?”
“Any chance of what?”
“You’ll probably think I have an awful nerve asking, but I love you so much and…”
“Daniel,” I begged. “Please tell me what you’re on about.”
“You don’t have to give me your answer straight away, or anything.”
“My answer to what?” I pleaded.
“Take forever to think about it, as long as you like.”
“To think about WHAT?” I yelled.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to annoy you, but, it’s just that, um, well, er…”
“Daniel, what are you trying to say?”
He paused, took a deep breath and blurted out, “Lucy Carmel Sullivan, will you marry me?”
Epilogue
Hetty never came back to work. She divorced Dick, left Roger, got rid of the tweed skirts, bought lots of leggings, enrolled in Women’s Studies and is now happily romantically involved with an earnest Swedish woman called Agnetha. According to Meredia neither of them shave under their arms.
Frank Erskine never came back to work either, he took early retirement and left without fanfare. Apparently he plays a lot of golf.
Adrian now only works weekends at the video shop because he’s taking a film-making course, where I hope he meets a nice girl who knows her Walt Disney from her Quentin Tarantino.
Daniel’s Ruth, the woman he was going out with before Karen, was in the News of the World for having sex with a politician.
Jed moved in with Meredia and they both seem to be blissfully happy. Despite his small stature he is very protective of large Meredia, and gets many opportunities to prove it.
Meredia’s real name is Valerie and she’s thirty-eight. I found out by accident when I was called to Personnel for being late once too often. Her record file was just lying open in Blandina’s filing cabinet and I couldn’t help but see. I haven’t told Megan. In fact, I haven’t told anyone.
Charlotte still hasn’t found a man to take her seriously and is talking about having a breast reduction. She is going to apply to study psychology. Just as soon as she’s learned how to spell it.
Karen started going out with Simon shortly after Daniel and I got together, and the pair of them have matching His’n’Hers lifestyles. They buy a lot of expensive clothes and go to bars that have only been open a week and that are photographed for architectural magazines.
Dennis still hasn’t found Mr. Right, although he’s having a lot of fun looking. He had a bad knock when Michael Flatley left the cast of Riverdance, but he’s over it now.
Megan is pregnant.
And Gus is the father. Apparently they’ve been together since the summer that I was allegedly going out with him. Megan even wrote Gus’s farewell speech to me.
Although I haven’t seen Gus, I gather that imminent fatherhood hasn’t made him any less irresponsible. Poor Megan looks constantly exhausted and miserable. I feel really sorry for her and I’m not saying that in the way that you do when you don’t feel sorry for the person at all an
d instead you really hate them. My heart genuinely goes out to her.
My mother is still living with Ken Kearns and they’re like love-struck teenagers. Ken has new false teeth, they look like expensive, deluxe, top of the line ones. My mother looks younger and younger every time I see her. Soon they won’t serve her in pubs. Mum and I have had a tentative reunion. And although we’re not the best of pals yet, we’re working on it.
My father is still drinking, but he’s being taken care of. He has a social worker and home help. Chris, Peter and I take turns visiting him. Whenever it’s my turn, Daniel comes with me, which is great because it means that Dad has to divide his insults between the two of us. I still feel guilty, I suppose I always will, but it’s only guilt and it’s not going to kill me.
Daniel keeps asking me to marry him. And I keep telling him to get lost. “Be practical,” I say. “Who would give me away? Even if Dad didn’t hate me he still wouldn’t be sober enough to lurch up the aisle with me.” But the real reason that I won’t agree to marry Daniel is because I’m afraid of being jilted at the altar. I obviously haven’t got used to a guy being nice to me yet. But Daniel says that he’ll always love me and never leave me and that, short of lopping off his penis and presenting it to me in a jar of preservative, getting married is the most extreme thing he can think of to convince me of his unending devotion.
I’ve told him I’ll think about it. The getting married part, I mean. Not the lopping off of his…oh, you know what I mean.
And if we do get married I want Mrs. Nolan as my matron of honor.
Daniel swears he loves me. He certainly acts as if he does.
And, you know, I’m halfway to believing him.
One thing I’m sure of, I love Daniel.
So, watch this space…
Acknowledgments
Thank you to everyone who has worked on this book. Thanks to my agent, Russ Galen; thanks to all at Avon Books; and special thanks to my editor, Jennifer Hershey, for her enthusiastic support and careful, sensitive editing.
About the Author
MARIAN KEYES is Irish, but lived in London for ten years before returning to Dublin. She is the author of six novels: Watermelon, Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married, Rachel’s Holiday, Last Chance Saloon, Angels, and Sushi for Beginners.
