Chapter 19 #2
“Stop apologising. You said it. It’s fine. I’m still angry with you, but…”
“Sorry.” I said that a lot, it seemed.
“Peter, from now on. Don’t lie. Just tell me things straight.”
Easier said than done when he was standing right in front of me.
The way he looked at me.
“I don’t want to watch that…the thing…we did. I don’t. Don’t make me. I don’t want that, and I don’t want to feel like this. I wish things were different, and this is so incredibly awkward, Oliver.”
“Thank you,” he said softly. “That’s better.”
“Sorry. I just feel like I humiliated myself in front of the entire world, and I don’t want to deal with that. Not yet. I can barely deal with myself.”
“No, it’s… It was just… It’s not awkward. It’s just me.” We were standing in front of the bed, like two newlyweds on a virginal wedding night. That part slipped out of my mouth as well, which was probably the completely wrong thing to say despite the laughter spilling out of him.
“No,” he said.
“No?” I had to smile. Because we were simply…ridiculous. Both of us. It was just a bed. And…
“I’m taking this side of the bed, I assume?” He gestured to the side that had nothing on the bedside table. My side? Covered in tissues and papers and too many empty water glasses.
Yes. Looking after myself? Perhaps he was right. I wasn’t very good at it.
“I borrowed your toothbrush,” he declared.
“Oh God.” I sighed. “Very unsanitary.”
“You’re a dentist!” he spat out, but there it was. A smile. Sunshine all over my skin. “You’re supposed to have, like, free samples?”
“I do, but you didn’t ask?” Unsanitary to the max. Ugh. Oliver!
“We kissed.” He winked. “Shared spit. So whatever.”
“No, we didn’t,” I retaliated. “You kissed me. I had nothing to do with it.”
“We kiss now,” he said, the corner of his eye glittering. “Fact.”
“Oliver!” His name. It made me shake my head in disbelief.
“Get into bed, Peter. We know this. We do this all the time.”
“Do we need beer?” I needed beer. All the beer.
“What? No! We’re not stuck in some goddamn studio anymore. We’re here. Bed. We need to sleep. It’s been a long day. No hanky-panky.”
Oh God help me. What had I done? Well. I had to quickly rephrase that in my head.
What had I allowed to happen? And why on earth was I not putting a stop to all this?
“Get in,” he demanded, as I acted like the child I wasn’t. Scooting carefully around to my side, discarding my clothes onto the floor. Why was I even getting undressed? I had no clue, standing there in my boxers like this.
I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream into the universe. I wanted…
I wondered if I wanted this. All that raw honesty that was bubbling under the surface, covered with a thick layer of something I simply refused to prick through.
Because it wasn’t who I was. Wasn’t what I could be.
I could so easily destroy everything with one harsh word, but that wasn’t me either. I could say it.
No.
I’d never been good at that word. But I managed to not get into bed and instead get myself upstairs, where I brushed my teeth, vigorously and thoroughly with a brand new toothbrush, like I was somehow ashamed of everything this day had been.
His lips on mine. My hands on him.
And currently he was downstairs in my bed.
My forehead fell heavily onto the mirrored glass. I let it. And again. Thud after thud as I tried to calm the whirring of panic in my brain.
Oliver. Oliver. Oliver.
I couldn’t do this, whatever it was. I just couldn’t. I needed to go downstairs and grab my phone. I needed to ring my boys and get some normality back into my life. Eat another of Mrs Patel’s nice meals and wash the plate up afterwards. Like a normal human being.
I could hear him moving around downstairs, the movement of a chair. Padded footsteps on the wooden floor.
It brought back everything I didn’t want to remember. When my life had been so wildly different to what it was now. The before to the after.
I hated the before almost as much as I hated the after. I hated it so, so much. The realisation made me pause. Because that was the honest truth. Things had not been good. Before…or after. And now here I was. In the now. Right now.
“Peter!” he shouted up the stairs. “You okay?”
“All good.” My voice managed to hold. I swallowed. And again. Threw the toothbrush I had in my hand into the sink. Picked up the old one to chuck in the bin.
Then I stood there with it in my hand, wondering what the hell I was doing.
An Oh, Mary! sat ready on my tongue.
I just couldn’t say it. Didn’t want to. I couldn’t make myself.
You’re an idiot, Peter, she said back in my head. And you know it.
Now I had to somehow make my feet carry me back downstairs. Or I could jump out the window. Hide in the closet until morning…
That last bit made me smile and at least try to meet my reflection in the mirror. Just for a second.
I looked exactly what I was. Old. Confused. Drained. Tired. My chest moving up and down. The grey chest hair scattered across my pale skin. My stomach rounded yet firm.
I was so goddamn tired.
I was tired of the way my heart was beating inside my chest. Of how the fear radiating inside my body was crippling me. Why was I so scared? It was just…Oliver. Standing at the bottom of the stairs, wearing my shirt. Or was it Cal’s? I honestly didn’t know.
I didn’t know very much at all, but he was letting me pass and then put the palm of his hand onto my back, pushing me in the right direction. Like I was too frazzled to find the way into my own bed. And I still had a toothbrush in my hand.
“Want me to take that?” he asked gently.
“Oh,” I said.
“You’re such a granddad. I’m surprised you don’t have a pair of filthy slippers by the side of your bed.”
“I’m not that old.”
“No, you’re not,” he said gently. “Just fifteen years between us. Not that…”
“Perverted. I’m old enough to…”
“No. No, you’re not.”
Here I was, sat on the edge of my bed. The covers pulled back, like this was normal.
Him crawling into the bed on the other side.
“Don’t you fucking dare say it. It’s nothing like that. Age? It’s important when you’re younger, I get that. It’s always been important to me. I’ve always looked for men my age. It makes sense. But then, when you find someone, and I mean this. When you find someone who gets you. Like you get me?”
“I get you?”
“You do. Fuck, Peter, stop being so goddamn dry!”
Inhale. Exhale.
“Listen,” he said, now tugging at my arm. Making me move my body, shifting awkwardly as I got myself into bed. Adjusted the pillows behind my neck. Pulled at the covers.
Familiar. Normal. Terrifyingly so.
“A few months back, I decided to go fix a problem in my life. Several actually. I haven’t managed to fix any of them so far, so that is what I am doing now.”
“What problems?” I actually looked at him. Casually. Simple. Easy. Until I had to swallow and found no oxygen in my lungs. I might have coughed. He put his hand on me. Lay down on his side, adjusting his hand on my chest. Flat palm against burning skin.
“I wanted to find the love of my life. Because I think I deserve it. Don’t you? We all deserve to have someone love us. So I went on a bloody stupid show that promised to do the hard work for me.”
“Bullshit,” I spat out.
“Peter,” he warned. “I’m talking. Shut up.”
I wouldn’t have let my boys talk to me like that, but I let Oliver…shut me up? Apparently so. Weak. Pathetic, Peter.
“And?” I wasn’t going to shut up.
“You,” he said softly. “You happened.”
“Oliver, it’s… It’s a bit much.”
No shit. It was a lot. All of this.
“You’re a bit much,” he retaliated with a grin on his face. “You were, from the very first day, standing there in that awful jumper looking like some advert for the perfect midlife crisis.”
“Oh God,” I said. Again. I wanted to crawl under the covers. Hide. Disappear under the floorboards. Just kill me now.
“Nope. You don’t get to deny it. You were just standing there like the hot granddad you were, and then you stripped off and showed me your arm muscles and sat down and actually listened to me. Do you know how much that matters? That someone takes that time?”
I did. I thought I nodded. And that, in itself, seemed to calm him down. The way his body moved, laying himself down next to me. His head on the pillow. His arm slung over my chest.
“So that’s what I’m doing. When I set out to complete something, I do it. I don’t stop halfway through and sidetrack. I don’t back down. I go from A to B in one straight arrow. See what I mean?”
“No?” I was surprised I could still talk.
“I’m fixing this. Us. Because the two of us were obviously meant to be.
The TV show is bullshit and all that, but we work.
You and me. We work, so I’m going to stay here and look after you until you see it for yourself.
Which I think you do anyway, because otherwise you wouldn’t be lying here, letting me cuddle you. ”
“So we cuddle now?” I had to smile. He was so ridiculous that it actually…hurt. It hurt my head and my chest and my cheekbones from the way I was grinning.
“We do,” he stated as he rearranged himself. Moving my arm and curling up at my side. Head on my shoulder. Arm now tightly around my waist. A hand sneaking up my side. The tender touches of fingers.
He held me. And I clumsily moved my fingers up his back. I tried to find a way to make us fit.
Who was I kidding? We fit.
“And now we kiss?” came out of my mouth. Not a question. Just an opening. I knew exactly what he was doing because I was doing it too.
“We do.” He smiled, gently lifting his head.
Those eyes. And those plump, pretty lips.
I had to admit it. He was…pretty.
He was familiar. He was terrifying, yet at the same time, I couldn’t stop looking at those lips. Wondering how they felt against mine, because earlier I had been too shocked to take it in.
He’d kissed me.
I hadn’t minded. I hadn’t minded at all. I didn’t want to think about what that meant and what it made me. What I was doing here and how to make it stop.
Did I want to?
“Your turn.” He smiled.
Oh.
The neurons in my brain should have been cross-firing like crazy, blinding me with confusion. Yet they didn’t. My mind was crystal clear. Absolutely blank yet…sharp as ice.
I needed this. I wanted it. Couldn’t say it out loud if my life depended on it, and definitely couldn’t stop myself from giving him what he’d asked for.
My turn. Oh for heaven’s sake. I wanted to roll my eyes.
I wanted to laugh it off. I did neither.
Instead I put my knuckle under his chin and lifted it up.
Then I leant in. Left the tiniest of kisses on his lips.
I pulled back before I could fully commit.
Before he made me do things I could never undo.
“Good enough,” he whispered.
Then he curled up around me as I tugged the duvet up under his chin.
Like this was normal.
Nothing was normal. I wondered if it would ever be again.