Chapter 33
Lesson 32: I am a raging idiot.
Bridget Jones Tally:
OH—1
MY—1
GOD—1
It was all well and good, causing trouble and airing my discontent, but I did not want to have a sit-down heart-to-heart. I was fairly drunk now, but even if I hadn’t been, what would I say? How could I
possibly explain? I loved the friendship that had been growing between us: it was a joy and a comfort. I had found myself
waking every morning in a hurry to spend as much time in the warm glow of his hilarious company as possible, waiting for the
precious few moments we snatched alone together.
How could I talk about my anger tonight without ripping the foundation of our friendship to shreds, and irredeemably humiliating
myself in the process? We’d never recover. And then, before I knew it, I would be back to the US, and we’d be grateful not
to have to awkwardly keep in touch. The thought was a slow knife to the gut.
I jerked at my hand, but he wasn’t giving an inch. I felt like an animal with its leg in a trap. The more I pulled, the more his grip tightened, and the more furious I became.
We turned the corner swiftly into an empty room. My eyes blinked at the darkness. A bit of light spilled in from the hallway
and illuminated rows of empty chairs. I stopped dead in my tracks, and managed to stop him as well. But he changed track too
quickly for me to think. Rather than jerking me over to the chairs like a rag doll, he swung around, closed the space between
us in one stride, and backed me against the wall. His body pressed on mine to keep me in place. His hand, still encircling
my wrist, pinned it to the wall next to my face, his other arm caging me in.
He stared at me so intensely for a moment that it burned inside of me. In the shadows I saw emotion chase over his face: confusion,
irritation, determination, and a flash of wry amusement. The air was thick and heavy as we both breathed hard into the silence.
He searched my eyes as if he might find some answer there.
Then he lowered his face. Our warm, heavy breath mingled in the air together, much louder now than the sounds of the band
playing in another room.
“Alright.” His voice was a low rumble, steady and dangerous. “What is this?” He looked stern. Then something softer crossed
his face, an entreaty, a promise that he would listen.
“Nothing. It’s nothing.”
“Alice.” A warning.
I tried to turn things around. “I was just annoyed. I told you before. We’ve already talked about this.” His chest squeezed
against mine, pinning me closer, and his jaw tightened.
“So. Let me get this straight. You’re this upset with me because my mom is alive, and I can play the fiddle?” His voice was flat and even, willing me to stand up for
myself, to explain.
Instead I looked away. His face was so close to mine that when I turned, his lips brushed my cheekbone. My skin prickled with heat that made me squirm. “Alice,” he said more softly. With his free hand he took my chin and moved my face back to his, searching again. “Please.”
He waited, our chests rising and falling in unison, our eyes locked together with so much tension that my entire body hummed
from the force of it.
I sighed and my resolve crumbled.
“I thought your mom was your girlfriend.”
He started to laugh, but then he looked angry, and let out an annoyed gust of air through his nose. “What?” he asked very
slowly, forcing himself to stay calm.
“I thought. Well, I thought... you’re always on the phone all the time.” He cocked his head, as if to tell me that this
wasn’t making any sense and I had better hurry up with a clear explanation. “You’re always talking to a woman on the phone,
and calling her gorgeous, and telling her that you love her.”
“And so? It couldn’t be anyone else?”
“You told me that you wanted to take her straight to bed!’’
“What? No, I didn’t!”
“At the pub.”
“No. I said that she should go straight to bed. Because she’d be tired from all the traveling, and I still worry about her doing too much.”
“Well, I thought you were going to ravish your sexy girlfriend.”
“Ew, Alice. Jesus!”
“But then, you called your mom gorgeous tonight and, well, I thought your mom was dead, but anyway, then I thought maybe you
didn’t have a girlfriend after all.”
He stared at me. His blue eyes were wide and dark.
“Well?” I huffed when he refused to speak. “Do you have a girlfriend?” I had wanted it to sound firm and accusatory, but that’s not how it sounded at all. I had to look away. I tried limply to wriggle out again, to get a bit of space, to get away from his eyes, but he held me like steel shackles.
“No. Of course not.” He ground it out. “So... you’re upset because I don’t have a girlfriend?”
“Yes!” I finally shouted in exasperation, breaking the oppressive quiet of the room. “ Yes , okay?” I thrashed now and pushed him away. He gave a few inches, no more. “Because if you don’t have—because I thought you...
obviously—”
His eyes widened and he sucked in a breath. Suddenly I was slammed back into the wall and his mouth was on mine, his hand
around the back of my head, holding me closer. He kissed me hard and deep—an angry, frustrated kiss, pulling me into him like
the oxygen he needed to live.
I was rigid with shock for a moment. Then I kissed him back.
It was hungry and desperate, blind to everything else. He grabbed my other wrist and pinned it up, one on each side, keeping
me firmly in place until he would decide that the kiss was finished. I heard a small sound escape from low in my throat. It
was an animalistic cry muffled against his open mouth. He hardened in response. He deepened his kiss, devouring me. His stubble
scratched against me, and my pulse pounded in my ears.
My body arched to bring my hips closer to his, and he let go of my wrists, his hands sliding down my body. Grabbing me by
the waist, he lifted me and held me up against the wall until my legs locked around his hips and drew him in closer. I bit
his lip, and he gasped, moving his hands to my stockinged thighs, and pushing my bunched-up dress back to get his hands on
either side, holding me up with my legs spread wide around him.
I moved one hand into his hair, the soft black hair that I’d wanted to touch every day since I could remember. I tangled my fingers through the thick mess of it and grabbed a fistful tightly. My other hand was on his arm, the muscles hard and smooth moving under his skin as he pushed his hands down my thighs. The sensation of it burned inside of me. I dug my nails in, wracked with a tightening longing, losing control, desperate for more of him, as he growled deep in his chest. We pushed against each other. Needy. Panting. Grasping.
I do not know how long we kissed like that in the dark, but I know that he did not stop until I was shaking, and we were both
struggling to catch our breath.
When he finally lowered me down, my legs were too weak and shaky to walk. He supported me, his arms around me until I regained
my strength. My dress slithered back down over my hips, my stockings still in place—though, I would discover later, with a
telltale run where his fingers had torn through, now laddering down my thigh.
He pressed his forehead against mine and closed his eyes. Breathing me in in ragged breaths, kissing me gently on the nose,
the forehead, the soft space where my eyelashes met near my temple.
He started to laugh then. Slowly at first, and then losing himself to it. The jumping of his chest shook us both.
“Alice. Surely.” His voice was slow and hazy. “Surely, you must have known.” He opened his eyes and searched my face.
“I...” I said breathlessly, but nothing else would come.
“You’re far too clever to have imagined that I wanted to do anything else but this since the moment you walked up to my bus
and started swearing at me.”
“But then why...”
“You’re recovering from a breakup, sweetheart. You told me to back off. I didn’t want to push you.”
“Oh.”
It was all I could say as my world turned itself inside out.