Chapter 16
GUY
Summer Solstice
It’s just before midnight as I make my way out of Lyra’s parents’ house. It’s as dark outside as the sky gets this time of year. The day of the summer solstice. The longest day of the year.
It’s felt like it, too. I’ve lived as many emotions today as I’ve let myself feel for… I can’t remember how long.
Helping Dave’s mum this morning, having my cheeks pulled and my hair ruffled as if I was part of a family. It was… I don’t know. Nice?
Locked in that dungeon with Lyra and talking about things with her that I hate thinking about, let alone verbalising. It was draining, but it also felt like a relief that the words were falling out of me in a way I used to write into lyrics.
Dancing with Nanna Winnie and the way her smile encased some part of me that I’ve shut down since Scott died. No, long before then – since I was a rejected kid, not loved by his dad, cast aside by his mam whenever it suited her not to have a kid around.
All the while, through the entire day, the constant in the back of my mind has been the question, What will Lyra think? I have no idea why. It’s crazy. When I sang my words into her ear before, it was as if I’d written them for her.
What is it about her?
She put on Scott’s song and my instinct was to do exactly what I’d do if it came on the radio – turn it off. To do what I’ve done in bars – walk out.
But I couldn’t. I listened to my brother sing for the first time since he died. Because of Lyra. The woman I can’t get out of my head.
Then it came on, the song from my dreams, and I believed, in that moment between us, that she’d been the girl with the short hair, the tiny skirt and leather boots, a camera around her neck, arms out from her sides as if she was flying like an eagle.
I felt like I was in my dreams, back there, That Night.
And I wanted… No, I needed… to kiss her. The girl I was supposed to meet.
Then her mum came and I got the worst nipple bruises of my life. Worse than when Scott used to twist them as we fought.
The disdain the woman showed in her expression when she looked at me. The disappointment on her face when she looked at her daughter. It told me that it was a good thing I’d been stopped short of kissing Lyra. Helpful, kind, smart and from an entirely different class to my dragged-up existence.
I’m not the right man for her.
But goddammit, as I’m walking out of her house now, I can feel her behind me, doubting herself, wondering why I didn’t kiss her.
Because there was something there. There is something there and if I, numb from pain, addiction, fear of feeling anything again, know there’s something between us, then she must too.
At the front door, she turns to me and whispers, because her dad’s asleep upstairs, ‘Let me get the door.’
She flicks the latch and pulls down the handle, opening the door and stepping back against it to let me slip out into the darkness.
But my insides are contorting the way they do every time I drive to Earl’s Castle knowing she’ll be there.
It’s an ache, a twist, a feeling that’s so discombobulating and…
new, that I feel like I’m on a small boat on a choppy sea.
I’m sick with whatever this pull is, her magnetic draw.
Despite myself and my better judgement, the rest of my body is begging me to stay in the light with her.
Or just with her anywhere, because even in the darkness of the dungeon tonight, sitting next to her made it bearable. More than bearable. I wasn’t afraid or anxious.
I was just me. Sitting next to her on a flimsy old tabletop. The rest of the world shut out. I wanted to kiss her then, too.
But now, with her looking at me expectantly, remembering the look on her mam’s face, I take a deep breath and give myself a chance to do the right thing because I’m not the rock star who sang those songs any more.
I’m also not the man who wants to get it wrong any more.
And if I’m going to get something right, shouldn’t it be now, here, in this moment, with a woman whose heart seems to radiate goodness?
Shouldn’t I get something right for her?
‘Well, if you ever need a celebratory hot chocolate again…’ she says, and though she’s smiling, it’s not like her smile from earlier.
I see it in her eyes, and she’s killing me.
Even when she casts her gaze down to her bare feet, I still feel it, whatever it is that she’s projecting, and I don’t want to be the man to make her feel sad.
So, I’m torn. My hands balled into fists by my sides because I want to reach out to her, to take her face in my palms like I did in her music room, and press my lips to hers. Not because anyone is watching. Because they aren’t. Because it’s just her and me and this tightly wound knot in my stomach.
My next breath takes me by surprise. It’s short and sharp, a demand from my lungs to take in oxygen. To breathe.
‘Goodnight, Lyra.’
As I speak her name, she looks up to me through her lashes and she’s going to undo my final resolve. So I turn away and walk to my camp-as-Christmas car, the tiny pink sanctity with enormous eyelashes.
I manipulate myself into the driver’s seat and start the engine, flicking on the headlamps, putting Lyra in the spotlight. A star.
I watch her close the door and through the stained glass of the window, I see her press her back to it, arms on her head, gaze to the ceiling.
Clunking the car into reverse, I back out of the driveway.
Lyra turns out the lights inside and with it, the lightness I’ve felt today.
And all I can think is, Fuck it, I want it back.
Grinding the gear box into first, I pull back up to the house, kill the engine and head to the door.
I raise my knuckles to rap on the glass but they don’t make it because Lyra opens the door and she’s looking at me through hooded eyes.
I’ll be damned if I can walk away without?—
I step up to the door, finally holding her face in my palm, my other hand sliding into her hair. When she raises her chin towards me, I bring my lips down to meet the soft skin of hers.
She’s my longest day of the year. My favourite day of the year. And she’s pulling me in like gravity. A force I can’t see, one that’s hard to explain, but it’s real, it exists, and I’m powerless to stop it.
It’s slow at first, tentative. I let our mouths connect, the tip of my nose gently nudging hers, silently asking her if this is okay, painstakingly waiting for her response.
Her lips part and I tease the space with my tongue, waiting for her to be the one to give me a signal, to give me more, to tell me to stop holding back.
She moans in response, the sound vibrating against my skin, and it’s the request I want. I deepen our kiss, tightening my grip on her hair because, damn it, I can’t get enough of her.
I’m not sure which of us leads but we’re walking into the house, her back meeting the wall of the hallway, her hands on the skin above my hips, fingers digging into my muscles, tugging me into her. Our tongues meet, the rich, creamy taste of chocolate still in her mouth.
It’s not going further than this. I’m not in the headspace to know what I want, except to know that I don’t want to hurt her.
But when she drags my lip between her teeth, my body’s reaction is instinctive; the hard length of me presses against her in those tiny fucking bed shorts and it’s my turn to groan.
In response, she tugs my shirt free from my trousers and I’m trying to say no, we shouldn’t, but the feel of her fingertips on my skin, her nails drawing up the responsive sides of my body, take over every sensible thought I have.
Instead, our fingers entwine and I take her hands above her head, pressing them into the wall, my body flush to hers.
It’s messy. It’s fast. The need I have for her, the unfathomable familiarity, the curiosity, the outright awe and want I’ve been trying to repress for weeks, it’s all combining into a perfect storm. Strong, undeniable, unbeatable.
I don’t know who makes the first move and my rational mind is telling me to stop as I take hold of her thighs and lift her legs around me.
As we reconnect with the wall, we also collide with a sideboard, knocking a heavy old clock to the floor with an insanely loud clatter in the otherwise quiet house.
We still. The darkness in Lyra’s eyes and the wideness of her pupils both recede. Her lust, our lust, turn down a notch.
There’s a loud noise upstairs, above our heads, as if something’s been dropped in a bedroom, too. Lyra’s breath hitches, her fingertips coming to her mouth, and I lower her legs from around my waist, resting my forehead against hers.
This is a good thing. Necessary. We got carried away. I got carried away.
‘I need to check on my dad,’ she whispers.
I want to kiss her one last time, just briefly, to tell her it’s okay, but for some reason, I don’t. Maybe it would be too intimate and honestly, I have zero clue what the fuck just happened. How I just lost myself in her like that, all sense gone.
She licks her lips, her teeth worrying the same spot as she casts her beautiful eyes down to the hallway floor.
I take hold of her chin, encouraging her to look at me and softly pulling her lip free from her own bite.
The confusion she wears is an exact reflection of mine.
And the plumpness of her lips makes me want to kiss her all over again.
I force myself to tell her, ‘Goodnight, Lyra.’
Then I take a step back from her, back towards the open door and the cool of the night, a contrast against my body that’s still a smouldering fire.
She nods. ‘Guy.’
I watch her walk up the staircase to check on her dad before I close the door and head back to my borrowed car for a second time.
Borrowed because I’m a skint has-been, who has no business messing with a nice girl’s head.
* * *
She’s just a girl, I try to convince myself for the entire drive home to Roker. It’s not like I haven’t kissed a girl before. Show me a musician who got famous in his twenties and didn’t enjoy the girls who threw themselves at him.