Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
But selfishly, I want it most for me and Sharon. I want to keep the future at bay – for Danny, for us – and just dance in the safest place I think I have ever known: her arms.
*****
All good things must come to an end. It’s a motto I have somehow come to live by.
It’s been true for every relationship in my life – whether they were exceptionally good, just good enough or downright awful – and it’s been true for every other high I’ve enjoyed, the most memorable of which are the stolen minutes with Sharon in dark corners of this hospital.
It’s true now as the music stops, the overhead lights come back on and, unprompted by me, the nurses start to usher the boys back to their beds.
And I force myself to untangle my limbs from Sharon’s but not before I place a lingering kiss on the lapel of her suit jacket.
When she doesn’t move, I look up and track her gaze.
It takes me to the motionless Deepak and Danny, lips pressed together, eyes closed, and I just know that for them, for whatever reason, time has stopped.
Sharon and I bear witness to their kiss, my hand finding hers like it so often does of its own free will.
I wish I could read her mind, know her every thought, until I don’t.
Because it would be too much. It’s already too much just knowing her body and her heartbeat and her smiles and the way her voice hardens and softens depending on her mood.
It’s all too much, which is why I’ve kept my distance. Which is why I will continue to do so. Especially now…
When Danny and Deepak finally pull apart, they share a smile before realising they have an audience.
“Getting a good look, were you?” Danny teases us before slowly getting off Deepak’s lap. He hobbles around to the back of the wheelchair – his nimbleness on the dance floor minutes ago already gone – and he pushes Deepak back to his bed. “Looks like the party’s over, Dee.”
“What, no kebab shop? No afterparty?” Deepak calls out as they move away from us.
I turn back to Sharon. A single tear is sliding down her cheek, having just emerged from under the mask. I panic. She knows, I think. I brace myself to offer her everything I can.
“Did you see him?” she says in a husky whisper. “He was the old Danny again. He was the life and soul of the party. He was… he was happy.”
I swallow the ball of emotions that has gotten lodged in my throat. “Yes, he was happy.”
“I’m so glad we did this.” She grabs my other hand and squeezes our fingers together between us.
“Maybe we can do it every Saturday night. On a smaller scale, perhaps. But still. Just do something for the boys. Music, dress-up, a dance floor. I think it really could help them feel better, maybe even get better.”
I nod. Words are too difficult.
With a deeply content sigh, Sharon relaxes her hold on my hands. She looks around the ward behind me. “I guess we should tidy up.”
“That can wait,” I say and before I can even care if anybody sees, or tries to stop us for any number of reasons, I drag Sharon through the double doors and into the Ladies toilets.
*****
I practically throw her into a cubicle – that cubicle – and close the door behind us with a loud slam.
I didn’t even check if anybody else was in the toilets.
I don’t care. I just want to touch Sharon and make her high last a bit longer.
I don’t want her good thing to end just yet, and not in the way I fear it is going to crash and burn.
Or maybe… maybe I want to feel good again. Maybe I need this as much as her, or possibly more, because nothing and nobody has made me feel as calm and crazy as this woman and I love that it’s happened, but I hate that it can’t continue.
I push her up against the closed door and slide her jacket off her shoulders.
I check in. “You want this?”
“I always want you.” She looks at me with wide, warm eyes.
The knot in my throat tightens.
“I have to have you,” I tell her.
She chuckles. “I’m right here.”
“You won’t try to touch me? You’ll just let me do what I want? Take what I want?”
Her pupils dilate. “If that’s what you want.”
I look down at her body, so full, so soft, so ready for my attention. “That’s what I want.”
And that’s what I get. She is perfectly compliant as I pull off her tie and start to undo the buttons of her white shirt.
She doesn’t move her hands to touch me as I lower the cups of her bra and play with her nipples with my tongue and teeth.
She doesn’t try to undress me when I start to undo her trousers and slide my hand inside.
She is even reluctant to kiss me back when I finally slam my lips against hers.
But even her half-kisses are intoxicating enough and I feel my self-control start to slip.
Moving my mouth down to her neck, I kiss and suck and nip at her skin.
She starts to moan and grunt and sigh and I wish I could collect every sound she makes and bottle them up so I could listen to them whenever I want, for the rest of my life.
So that when I’m old and bored and lonely, I can open up that bottle and remember these dizzy few weeks when I met a woman who really felt like my match.
I stop kissing her when I feel warmth and wetness pool in my cunt.
I try to slow my heart rate and catch my breath before I move – a sinus rhythm is no match for Sharon Goldblatt when she’s moaning in my ear.
When I realise it’s not meant to be, that even when Sharon isn’t touching me, I’m still painfully turned on by her, I focus on getting her off hard and fast.
I slip my hand lower and find her clit. It’s swollen and all too easily I can imagine its colour – pinky-red – and I rub the tip of my index finger over its silky-smooth texture, feeling that little nub of nerves under the surface throb from my touch.
“Oh, God,” Sharon groans.
“I want you to come,” I say, rubbing. “Now.”
“But I—” She swallows whatever was going to come next and she throws her head back against the door. The same door I stare at in my brief but necessary moments of despair, mindlessly reading the how to dispose of needles’ sign.
“It’s all I fucking want,” I say and I’m not even sure I’m telling her. I’ve lost myself despite her not touching me. My plan has failed.
“Kate, I, oh, God, ahhh…” she makes the obscenest noise and I am furiously unforgiving with her clit, and yet she seems to like it.
Her chest is heaving and that’s all the invitation I need to bury my face against one of her magnificent breasts and pull her nipple into my mouth. “Oh, shit, yes, like that. Like that.”
And then she comes. Just like I wanted. Just like I demanded. She comes and she comes and she comes. Pussy pulsing, arousal gushing around my fingers, long moans full of feeling.
“Good girl,” I tell her, because I have nothing else safe to say. Nothing else that would be appropriate or acceptable or not land me in a world of trouble. “Such a good girl.”
“Shit, that was…”
“Yeah,” I say, somehow knowing exactly what she wanted to say even though I don’t have the right words either. “Which is why I want more.”