Chapter 12
That hope took a battering as the days ticked by.
My faith that Dave would come back this year stretched thin as I sensed him swim farther and farther away from the coast.
It stretched and it frayed, but I kept a firm hold of it and it didn’t break.
Even when we were well into June, it didn’t break.
Although I didn’t stop checking on him entirely, I did stop doing it as often. I saw the same thing, every time: Dave, somewhere in the crushing deep, ever on the hunt.
All in all, I had only myself to blame for what happened. If I’d been checking more often, I’d have noticed that he’d changed direction. I’d have noticed the distance between us closing. I’d have noticed that his intense focus was aimed at a different target.
And I wouldn’t have opened my front door on a Wednesday morning to pick up the paper, and shrieked when I slid on the enormous brown octopus that someone had deposited on the doorstep.
I was wearing flip-flops.
There was a scant five millimetres of rubber sole between me and the wet octopus, and that only lasted half a second, because the moment I applied downward pressure, the sides bulged up and over my bare foot.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d calmly lifted my foot up and stepped to the side, but that’s not what I did. Of course it’s not what I did. It was seven o’clock in the morning! I’d had one coffee! I was surprised!
By the time I was done dancing around, I’d had tentacles slapping my ankles, something made a hideous wheezing sound—it wasn’t me, I was still busy shrieking—and for the grand finale, I all but dribbled the poor thing like a football down the garden path as I attempted to boot it into the flowerbed.
“Holy shit,” I said, bent over at the waist with my hands on my thighs as I caught my breath. “Oh my god.”
I couldn’t stop smiling.
Not because any of that was amusing. It wasn’t. If I never touched another octopus in my life, that would be great, thanks.
Dave was back.
I didn’t know why he was leaving me presents on my doorstep rather than presenting himself, and I did not care.
He was back.
He’d done this before, at the very start of our relationship. It began with an octopus then, too.
If things proceeded along the same lines, I’d have a few days of courting gifts, and then one night he’d bang on my door and treat me to the spectacle of his big naked body filling the open space as he smouldered and waited for an invitation to cross the threshold.
Then again, nothing this year had gone as expected. Maybe it wouldn’t go like that at all.
Maybe he’d bust out one of his other go-to sexy moves. He might climb through my bedroom window, creep through the shadows while I slept, and drop himself on top of me without warning to make me scream.
Or perhaps he’d sing his siren songs to me, and get me so worked up that I’d explode at the first brush of his fingertips.
Or maybe he’d throw himself up over the side of the Rosy Dawn, snatch me off the deck and drag me down into the deep with him.
I didn’t care what he did. Just as long as he did something.
Preferably tomorrow, because today, I had some serious pre-sex-marathon manscaping to do.
This wasn’t pure vanity—Dave’s physical appetite when we first came together took a good few days to burn off. There was a lot of chafing involved.
I had bits to wax. I had areas to buff and moisturise.
I had icepacks to put in the freezer.
After a thorough cleaning in a very hot shower, I had a quick breakfast of avocado toast, another coffee, and ran out to the car. I drove into town and blew straight through it, heading for the nearest Sainsbury’s.
In general, I liked to support the community and shop local.
Today I needed a large and anonymous supermarket with a well-stocked personal toiletries aisle and a self-service checkout.
That way, I wouldn’t have to spend an awkward five minutes jigging uncomfortably on the spot and avoiding eye-contact with a woman I knew socially as she scanned and packed every last bottle of lubricant the pharmacy had in stock, and then carefully placed my refilled heart medication on top.
Once was enough.
By the afternoon, I was as prepared as I could be. I stood in front of the mirror waxed, moisturised and fragrant from another shower, and stared at myself critically.
I rolled my shoulders back and tried to look burlier. It didn’t work. I just looked like I had a broomstick shoved up my arse.
I ran my hands over my groin, between my thighs, and up behind, assessing the hair situation.
Dave didn’t have so much as a stray follicle on his magnificent body.
He had hair on his head and in his eyebrows, and that was it.
I, in contrast, sprouted it about everywhere the average human male did.
Like the average human male, I worried about it being too thin in some areas, and too thick in other areas.
I tilted my hips this way and that, decided it was all neat and tidy, then turned and bent over for a better view at the back situation. Not perfect, but good enough.
I’d done my best. I wasn’t even sure that Dave noticed one way or the other.
Slinging my damp towel over the heated rail to dry, I wandered into my bedroom, pulled on an old pair of sweatpants that I wouldn’t mind being ripped off me, a plain white t-shirt ditto, and wandered on downstairs where I hopped onto the sofa, took a deep breath, and checked in on Dave.
It was hard not to be disappointed when all I saw was the inky press of water all around him.
Tomorrow, then, I thought, and picked up my Kindle. I could wait.
Tomorrow arrived, and with it came a massive lobster.
The next day it was a bass.
The day after that, a halibut.
I waited.