Chapter 4 #2
Here she was, kissing the ref they’d all wanted.
After all these years, it was happening.
His hand skated down her back. She couldn’t help but think about teenage Georgia, lying awake at night after a match he’d reffed, spinning hopeless, na?ve little daydreams that never went anywhere.
How many times had she imagined this exact scenario: the warm and familiar and new press of his mouth against hers, with his eyes focused on her alone, his hands curling into the light fabric of her dress.
A sudden, irrepressible guilty thought popped into her head. She pulled back for a second. “You are single, right?”
“Georgia. A hundred percent single,” he promised, lips millimetres from hers. His hand was on her jaw, and the way he said her name made something short-circuit all the stories she’d told herself. She let herself lean in again, her eyes fluttering closed.
“God, get a room.”
Georgia would recognise Tam’s voice anywhere, let alone right in her ear.
“Jealous?” Matt, utterly unfazed, swept into a theatrical, over the top bow. There was no panic in his eyes, no instant regret.
“Absolutely not.” Tam shook her head, her grin almost splitting her face in two. “I just don’t want to witness whatever this is in real time.”
Georgia barked out a laugh, stepping away from Matt’s grip. “Well, it only took… what, fifteen years? If that’s real time, I’d hate to wait for the replay.”
Underneath the giddiness, she could feel something coiling in her gut, the instinct to brace for impact. This had the potential to go spectacularly wrong.
“Well,” she said, brushing off the uncertainty with a joke as Tam turned back to Ollie. “My fifteen-year-old self is spinning cartwheels right about now.”
Matt laughed, low and surprised, his thumb still brushing her cheek as though he couldn’t stop touching her. “Yeah? Not sure I could manage cartwheels at any age, but if teenage me could have done, he would have done.”
***
By eleven, the dancefloor had thinned as family members and friends with children sloped off to bed. The rugby lot was still dancing, still drinking, lifting each other in fake line outs and mauls. The disco lights made the room spin to the beat.
Or perhaps it was from all the alcohol Georgia had drunk. She’d had the prosecco before the wedding, of course, and for the toasts. She’d had white wine at dinner, with Tam’s dad topping up her glass before it was even empty. So maybe three, four glasses? For once she hadn’t been counting.
The alcohol was, at least, stopping her spiralling over Matt.
It was effectively squashing the panic the kiss, and their brief conversation afterwards, would otherwise have induced.
It was stopping her following him around the venue, and it was keeping her loose limbed and bouncing on the dancefloor. The hangover would be worth it.
Tomorrow was Sunday, with no training or obligations. She could rot in bed once she got home, maybe see if her housemate Rach was free for an evening takeaway and a reality TV binge.
She’d also had several strong gins, and those tequila shots with Tam at the bar. She broke off from the group on the dancefloor in the middle of their energetic flailing to an old Killers song and headed for the bar.
“A lemonade, please.”
She leant against the wooden top while the bartender turned to the ice bucket. The drive back to Westcliffe in the morning was going to suck.
She was still leaning on the bar, waiting for the world to stop spinning, when she sensed someone standing behind her.
“If you’re going to fuck him,” Erin said without preamble, her voice low and cold. “Take it somewhere else, OK? I don’t need that shit in my room.”
Georgia had a sudden flash of fantasy. Not just ignoring Erin’s rules, but actively breaking them. Of dragging Matt back to the room on purpose. Kicking her shoes aside, dropping her dress to the floor.
He’d guide her towards her bed - but that would be too easy. Too predictable. If they were going to break the rules, they’d really break them.
Him on his knees in front of her, her on Erin’s bed.
Pushing aside Erin’s carefully folded clothes, the items on her neatly organised nightstand.
Sending it all flying in their mad, lust-driven haze.
Lying back, her head on Erin’s pillow, breathing in the lingering traces of her perfume, her shampoo.
Feeling those neat piles get rucked and crumpled under her back.
Scrunching Erin’s sheets in her fist as she came for the first time.
Maybe Erin would catch them. Maybe she’d stand in the doorway, watching the slow, deliberate drag of Matt’s body above her. Erin would stand there, silent, glowering, arms folded in the way she’d always had. Defensive, guarded.
And then, just as the rhythm hit the right notes, they’d lock eyes and Erin would watch Georgia tumble over the edge and fall into pleasure.
Fuck. She should have replied by now, said something clever or cutting. Show Erin that her opinion meant absolutely nothing. Instead, with as much poise as she could gather, she said: “Fuck off Erin, you sanctimonious prick,” and wobbled her way back over to Matt.
He grinned at her as she approached, slinging an arm around her shoulder. She leant up on her tiptoes to press her mouth to his ear, steadying herself with a hand on his hips.
“Come outside with me,” she whispered, voice rougher than she intended, emphasising it with a tug on his belt loop.
Deano grinned and elbowed Stu next to him, a drunken, lecherous grin sliding onto his face.
“Got something to teach him about rucking, have you?” He sounded pleased with himself, like it wasn’t the ten thousandth time she’d heard someone make that particular rugby pun. She stopped herself from rolling her eyes, and focused on Matt.
“Something like that,” she said and pulled on his belt loop again.
Matt raised an eyebrow but followed willingly, ignoring the hooting from his friends that followed their exit.
They weaved past the abandoned tables, the chairs strewn with jackets, empty glasses and purses.
The warm glow of the festoon lights faded as she pulled him away from the marquee, around the corner towards the shadow of the stately home.
The night was cool, the autumn air starting to bite.
Georgia felt the hairs on her arms stand up, and sensed Matt follow closer behind her.
They reached the old red brick wall of the house, and Georgia didn’t hesitate, backing Matt up against the brick.
She fisted her hands into his white shirt, mouth already seeking his again.
He kissed her back, lazy this time, hands resting lightly on her back. It wasn’t enough, wasn’t the frenzy of her fantasy, and she wanted more. She pressed forward against him, slid her hands to the buckle of his belt and to the bulge she could already feel there.
He moaned, and his head fell back against the brick. He caught her hands and exhaled, long and steady. He didn’t push her away, but he didn’t pull her closer, either.
“Hotch,” he said, voice soft.
She stilled, blinking up at him. “What?”
Matt smiled down at her, the dim lights reflecting in his dark eyes. “You’re drunk.”
Georgia frowned. “No, I’m not.”
Matt just kept looking at her with that steady smile.
“Okay,” she conceded. “Maybe I am. Just a little. Tipsy, that’s all.”
The perfect amount of tipsy, in fact, for a no-strings attached hook up.
Georgia was bad at them sober. She thought too much, talked too much.
Now, she was just the right amount of boozed to enjoy it without thinking, without running through endless what ifs in her head.
She could let go, take a risk. Have fun.
“Me too,” he said. He let go of her wrists and trailed his fingers up her arms, bringing the hairs to attention again in their wake. “And I like you too much to let this happen when we’re not thinking straight.”
For a moment she stood there, head spinning from the alcohol, the still insistent press of her desire, and from his words.
Then she let her head drop forwards, forehead bumping into the solid surface of his chest, button pressing uncomfortably between her eyebrows. “You’re really annoying, you know that?”
He chuckled, wrapping his arm around her shoulders, the movement pressing the button even harder into her face. She stepped back but stayed in the circle of his embrace.
“Yeah,” he said. “But you’ll thank me in the morning.”
Georgia sighed, letting her own hands slip to a safer position on his hips.
“Probably,” she agreed. “But you owe me.”
“Fine.” Matt dipped his head, kissed her again, softer this time. “And you should know: I always pay my debts.”