The Best Ex of My Life

Prologue

We shouldn’t be doing this. The thought enters my mind like a whisper among the frantic chaos as we pull towards each other.

Hands everywhere, our bodies smashing together then coming apart only for a moment as we find new ways to get closer.

He smirks as I tug the shirt over his head and discard it on the floor near my dress.

His breath caresses my neck, shallow and shaky, before a deep gasp escapes my chest as he lifts my body, pulling my thighs up to wrap around him.

We’ve upturned a glass of wine in the rush to explore each other, and the photo on the wall no longer sits straight as he grinds against me pushing my back against the framed surface.

What did we expect when kissing went from exploratory and polite to this?

Yet in the middle of it all there’s one thing in perfect rhythm. Those five words going round and round my head.

His lips move away from my mouth, trailing down my jawbone to my neck and the words slip out.

‘We shouldn’t be doing this.’

He stops kissing me, and for a second, he hovers, his warm breath tickling the delicate skin below my collarbone. We both know where he’s heading. I don’t want him to move away, don’t want to feel the cold of his absence, but he does.

‘Do you want me to stop?’

His body uncurls as he begins to lower me down while waiting for my answer.

We’re back to our usual positions: me looking up at him, the familiar strain in my neck I get whenever I want to see his face.

Only, my right calf is still curled around the top of his thighs, pushing him against me, and his eyes are darker than I’ve ever seen them.

His black hair is dishevelled, and something within me revels in the fact that I’ve done that to him.

Yes, we should stop. That’s what I need to tell him. The further we go, the bigger the mistake becomes. We’ve gone from a whisper of a first kiss, one we could have both backed out from and pretended was something else. This next part is what tips us over the edge, what could ruin everything.

Come Monday morning, I’m going to be me again and he’s going to be him, and we’ll be faced with the checklist of reasons why this was unbelievably stupid.

The sooner we get out of this, the sooner we salvage what came before.

But right now, we’re not those people. I can’t find my way back to them, and I don’t want to, not when he’s looking down at me with his bottom lip between his teeth, his chest heaving, not when my body is arching towards him, telling me what should happen.

‘Don’t you dare,’ I say, before putting my hands to the back of his head and pulling him down to me.