Chapter 2 #3
God, maybe it’s just been a while for me because her taste, the feel of her mouth, her body, ignites something in me that I haven’t felt for a long time.
I grip her hip tighter, bringing my other hand to the base of her neck, fingers gently tugging her hair.
Our tongues meet, slick and hot, making my eyes close.
And when she groans into my mouth, I forget where we are, rolling my hips against her.
Then the hens are whooping, bringing me back to the pavement, and I hear someone demand, ‘Lyra, what on earth?’
But her words spur Lyra on. She slips her arms under my coat and pulls me, hard, against her. Jesus, this is as close to fucking as I’ve been for months.
‘Oh, leave the girl to it. Someone ought to enjoy him.’ I’m sure that came from Donna. It reminds me of something one of my old bandmates used to say: It’s always the older ones that want to throw their knickers at you.
Just like that, I’m thrust back to reality. Kissing a kind girl on a pavement so she can piss off her sister.
Sensing the group move away, I open one eye to confirm, then prise myself away from Lyra’s touch.
‘I guess you’re right,’ she whispers, eyes still closed as she draws a thumb along her lips in a way that makes me want to feel them on mine again. ‘I doubt the next story my sister tells will be about how her fiancé preferred her over me when we were teenagers.’
And I guess this is who I am now. All I’m good for.
Lyra gently nudges me away from her and peels herself off the car. ‘Sorry, that was… Erm…’
I have no idea what she’s going to say, and it doesn’t matter. Gone are the days when a woman would be the one wanting to take me back to her place. And I’ve no business wanting to take this sweet girl anywhere.
‘Wrong of me,’ she says. ‘And unlike me,’ she’s quick to add. No kidding. ‘I shouldn’t have done it. It’s just?—’
‘It’s okay,’ I tell her, words finally leaving me as everything that just charged in my body drains. ‘It’s all part of the job.’
‘Of course, right, because you’re a…’ She gestures from my head to my toes. ‘Oh God, are you a hooker? A male gigolo? A prostitute? An escort? What is a naked butler?’
In the wake of the charge, my dark mood returns. A joke is what I am.
Just when I think tonight really can’t possibly get any worse, I remember what I’m driving.
Shaking my head at the utter farce of my life, I pull my keys from my pocket and watch the lights of my outrageous wheels flash twice.
I don’t wait to see Lyra’s reaction to my car, which we’ve just been pressed up against. On loan from Dave’s daughter whilst she’s travelling on a gap year, the Barbie-pink Fiat 500 is ridiculous.
Bountiful eyelashes have been stuck onto the headlights and fluffy pink dice hang from the rearview mirror, whilst Dalmatian-print fur covers the seats.
Throwing my backpack onto the passenger seat, I tell her, ‘Good luck getting home, Lyra.’
‘Wh— I— Is this your girlfriend’s car?’
Forearms braced on the roof of Barbie, I ask, ‘Which is it, gigolo or boyfriend, because I’m pretty sure the two are mutually exclusive?’
I squish my frame into the driver’s seat as if I’m Debbie fucking McGee – knees almost touching pecs – and fight with the pedals that are too close together for my size-eleven feet.
The car chugs against me once, then twice, then we seem to call a truce and I pull into the road faster than I even knew a car like this could move. Angry with the entire fucking universe.
The universe that also feels like being ironic because my car radio is stuck on Heart, which is currently playing ‘She is Love’ by Oasis. Yet, in spite of the irony, I’m rubbing my lips, where I just received one of the best snogs of my life.
I’m lost in a confused reverie, which the presenter pulls me from when the song ends and he says, ‘That one was requested by Jackie from Jarrow. Next up, we have a request from Sheila in Byker, who says this song always reminds her of falling in love with her husband. Happy anniversary, Dereck, from your Sheila. Here’s “Loving You” by The Hand Me Downs. ’
It’s as if the sound of the opening riff turns me to stone – my hands still on the wheel, my foot stuck on the accelerator.
I’m cast back to being twenty-two years old and singing that song to my seventeen-year-old brother for the first time in our parents’ garage and telling him, ‘This’ll be the one, kid, I’m telling you. ’
In my memory, as I sing the lyrics I’ve just finished writing for my brother, Trev and Jay strum chords in the sequence I’ve made up, Scott picks up a tambourine and starts tapping it against his thigh, where he’s perched on an old beer barrel. Then he’s singing with me.
I remember closing my eyes and seeing a version of us in the future, playing this song to stadiums full of people.
When we made it, years after that day in the garage, it wasn’t me singing lead vocals, it was our kid.
My younger brother who got all my hand me downs when we were growing up.
My younger brother with more talent and charisma in his little finger than I have in my entire body.
Our kid, who was the star of the band I named after him.