Chapter 27
Peter
He ripped at my clothes, like he was trying to get closer.
Close. He was so close to me, his mouth on mine and his hand under my shirt.
“We…” I tried to speak, at the same time as I was dragging him back to my bed. The bedroom door slamming shut behind us.
“This is all new to me,” he said quietly. “I may not…be what you expect.”
“I know,” I replied, surprisingly calm as well. “I have no expectations. I just want to be with you. Even if we just lie in bed and…”
“We cuddle now,” he said.
“We do.”
“And we kiss.”
“Mmm.”
He kissed me. “And I am as sober as anything. It’s…really… Fuck, Peter. There is so much in my head. So many questions. I want to ask so much, but at the same time, it’s really none of my business.”
“You can ask. I may…or may not answer.”
“No secrets,” he reminded me.
“Don’t you start,” I growled. “I’m not sharing you. Ever. It was never really my thing. I mean, at the time? Yes. Watching your wife fuck someone else? Sometimes it was pretty interesting. Most of the time? I felt…an enormous sense of…wrongness. Everything was wrong.”
“I don’t want that.” And I didn’t. Nothing like that. “Even the thought of that makes me nervous.”
“I don’t want it. I just want you.”
“Good. So…”
“I feel another question coming.” And just like that? I was unbuttoning his shirt. One silly little button at a time. Gently pulling one sleeve to the side, exposing his shoulder. Then I kissed it. My cheek. My lips. Against his warm skin. “You’re so beautiful. All of you.”
“I’m your hot, young boyfriend, get used to it.”
“And what does that make me?”
“Mine,” he said with conviction.
“Yours?” I laughed. I loved how simple this was becoming. Where there was…no fear.
“Who else is looking after you? That is my job now. Apart from Mary. She’s dead, but she’s all right. As long as none of those saucepans hit you on the head, then that’s okay.”
“Oliver,” I growled.
“We have to talk about it. Otherwise, this will… I don’t want the castle. I don’t want the fractures. I just want this, at the baseline. Both of us on solid ground.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
“I’m not on solid ground, not yet. But I will be. Let me work at it, go to therapy and get some help and just make sense of everything in my head.”
“We will do that. And I will be right here.”
“I’m really scared where it will take me. There are some dark places I really don’t want to revisit.”
“You may have to.”
“I know.”
“Maybe I should too. Go…you know. Talk to someone.”
“You should talk to my boss. She’s badass. She can like whip up two sentences, and I feel like she’s stabbed me in the guts.”
“Good.” I had to laugh. Because…
This was so easy. So lovely. His chest now bare. My hands on his shoulders.
“Are you…into topping? Bottoming?” He was looking straight at me. Like this was the conversation we were now having.
I wanted to laugh. But that would have been so wildly inappropriate that I couldn’t even…
“One day, when we are both ready for it. I would love to fuck you. Does that answer your question?”
“So we are very well matched then.”
“I suppose we are.”
“I think I would like you to. You know. Eventually. I think it would be good.”
“I would make it good. I’ve got…some experience.”
“I don’t. I like being… It’s what I like. I think. When…”
He took a deep breath.
“We have time,” I said sternly. “I want you to know that. No pressure. No stress. Just…”
“Just what?”
“Do you…” Oh God. I couldn’t help it. Perhaps I was giving him time? But I had none. I wanted this. So much. “Can we just lie in bed. Please.”
“Naked?” He smiled.
I probably blushed. I didn’t think I cared anymore.
“I just want you. However you’ll let me have you.”
“Maybe…” He smiled. “I don’t know. I’d like to try…something.”
“Okay?”
This was when I pulled the hand brake. This was when I took charge. Where I ensured we didn’t do anything rash. No wild ideas. Nothing we could never undo if it went wrong.
And here I was again.
I hadn’t learnt any lessons, had I?
“You can do anything,” I breathed out, as he removed my clothes. Carefully and deliberately. Relieved my skin of fabric. Small, soothing touches to my skin.
“Lie down. And let’s kill the ceiling light. Easier that way.”
I ran to the switch. Then laid myself down next to him on the bed. He was on his side. Briefs on. Feet bare. He had such lovely legs. One bent gracefully over the other.
Elegant.
“Do you think…” he said, biting his lip. “Can you just, not watch?”
“Okay.”
“Close your eyes.”
I did.
“No peeking.”
I nodded. Back in the darkness. The bedside table light was on. The house…silent. I was somehow grateful for the silence. The way everything went…
Calm.
He did that. Made my world quiet.
And there were those long, slender fingers, running down my ribs. Stroking me carefully as my cock… Ugh. I was hard. And I think…I had no shame about that.
“Can I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
“It’s not good.”
“Whatever it is…I can deal with it. We can deal with it.”
“I…I have worked since the day I left uni. Did my year abroad. Got headhunted into this company, did my master’s whilst I was someone’s dogsbody in the office. Learnt the ropes. Got taken on. I loved it. I really did.”
“You did good.”
“I did. But…there is this culture at work, and…I got…cocky.”
I bet he did. He had form. I didn’t mind. I held him. Stroked his hair as his fingers traced over my stomach.
We were naked. In a way, perhaps that felt…symbolic? Why was he telling me all this now?
“I got handed a new account, one that had been transferred in from one of our European branches. A difficult client. I love that sort of thing. The account nobody can handle? I’ll take it. Make it a challenge.”
“I can see that.”
“Operation Make Peter Fall In Love With Me is my best work yet.”
I loved how we laughed. That even in the most serious of conversations? He made me smile.
“You’re very good at what you do.”
“So you agree with me?”
“I’m falling in love with you,” I whispered.
He was mine. I wasn’t denying anything here.
“Anyway. The client turned out to be exactly that. Very difficult. Flighty. Demanding on every level. Wanted wining and dining and all of that. Easy. I took him out and entertained his every need. Until the needs got a little… I mean, he wanted party drugs. I could get that. Wasn’t good enough.
He wanted harder things. Not really my expertise, but…
that’s when I should have stopped. I should have gone to the boss and laid my cards on the table.
I was out of my depth and getting into some underhanded methods that didn’t align with our company ethos, and I… Peter, I fucked up.”
“I thought you might have.”
“And it didn’t help that I was stuffing all that shit up my nose.”
“Hmmm.”
“I also…slept with him.”
“Oliver.”
“I know. I know. Not cool. Not clever. Definitely not smart.”
I stayed quiet this time. Not even a disappointed sigh. Honesty. I valued it. And it made things so much calmer in my chest. I knew he was broken. But he was healing me. One little word at a time.
“I fucked up,” he admitted. “And it was nobody else’s fault. I brought it on myself. I got carried away. I was so focused on winning over the client and retaining the account, and it would have been a great addition to our portfolio and… Fuck, it was stupid. All of it.”
“Hindsight is a great thing.”
“At the time, all I saw was big promotions and a massive bonus.”
“And instead?”
“I got you.”
He tightened his grip around me, like I was keeping him afloat, when the truth was? He was keeping me from drowning in my own self-pity. That pathetic part of me that I’d carried for years? I hated it. I absolutely hated it.
“I hated myself, and I hated who I’d become and that I wasn’t strong enough to stop what I was doing, and that I was spinning so wildly out of control, and I was still me?
I was me, and I couldn’t stop anything. It just went on and on and on…
and then I saw the ad for Save the mother-fucking-Date, and in my infinite stupidity, I saw a way out. ”
I had to laugh. Because yes. I could see exactly that happening.
“You weren’t thinking clearly.”
“Amen to that.” He kissed my collarbone. My chest. My cheek. “And in all of that horrible mess in my head? There you were.”
The wetness at the corners of my eyes didn’t help. But he was right. He was so very, very right.
“The boys put me up to it, the show.” My fingers tangled in his hair.
Those heavy curls wrapping around my fingertips.
“They had some mate who worked for that production company, drumming up people for the show. I thought it was ridiculous. Absolutely insane. After everything we’d been through as a family, had we not learnt our lesson?
But then I thought…maybe it was my one chance to finally put the record straight.
To show the world that I wasn’t a bad person.
All the vitriol and hate had perhaps not been undeserved, but I hadn’t been everything the press had made me out to be.
I never got the chance to put anything right because nothing turned out the way it was supposed to.
You can be in love with a woman, you can find her the most attractive person in the world and adore everything she is.
You can have a strong, solid relationship and a happy marriage.
But at the same time? Love is fluid. Attraction is too.
And falling in love with a man. A woman.
A human being who just makes you feel whole?
Bisexuality is real. Love is real. Attraction…
It’s a mysterious little thing. It’s just there. "
“A vibe.”
“Exactly. And it doesn’t make it any more real or worthwhile just because you put a name on it.”
“True.”
“We had an agreement, from the very first year we were together, Mary and I. We agreed not to seek out other partners but let things take us where they needed to go. We were open and brutally honest. And I cared. She did too. It wasn’t abusive or unbalanced.
It worked. For a long time, it worked really well. ”
“Until it didn’t,” he filled in.
“I wanted to be able to speak up, when everything happened. To say that these kinds of relationships exist. That sometimes, it gives us everything we need as people. And that sometimes, it’s just human nature to let the people we love be free. Other times?”
“I love you.”
I held him. Everything that he was, right here in my arms.
“Sometimes everything turns out to be completely out of our control. We just have to trust that it will be alright in the end.”
I felt out of breath getting those words out. Too many. Too meaningful. Too little for what he needed.
He stayed silent. Just little movements of his fingers against my skin. This hadn’t been at all what I expected. Perhaps I had hoped for relief. For us to take another step forward. Instead? It felt like we’d jumped light years ahead.
“I may no longer have a job,” he admitted.
“It depends on how this addiction therapy goes. My boss has me in a vice. I get clean, or I’m out.
I may be out anyway. There’s a lot of shit going on behind the scenes and…
Well. I caused most of it. Then I lied. I never told them I’d signed up for the show.
They put me on gardening leave whilst the client tried to sue the hell out of us. I was supposed to keep a low profile.”
I had to laugh. Loudly and desperately. Kissing the top of his head as I did.
Emotionally? I was in hysterics.
And I was drained to the core. In a very good way. The compass just kept spinning.
“You never got to speak up then,” he said quietly. “You never had your closure.”
“It didn’t matter. Not in the end. I learnt a lot, and in a way? When I remember the trauma of what my whole life has been? This part of it was? I think, for me?”
“It was good.” He kept completing my sentences. I didn’t mind.
“It was, in the end. Really good.”
“Because you got me. And you don’t have to say it back. Like. I get that. It’s early, and you don’t even know if you really fancy me like that, and here I am again, all naked… Fuck, Peter. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“I love you.” I had to say it because it was the absolute truth. “I love you, and the whole sex thing? It doesn’t fucking matter. This matters, this right here. You and me like this. Talking, and talking properly. This fucking matters.”
“No swearing.”
“I don’t fucking care.”
I was laughing. He was too. And I think in the end? It actually didn’t fucking matter.