18. One orgasm and done
Chapter eighteen
One orgasm and done
That night their desire to get to know one another was stronger than their need for sex, sleep, food, or anything else. They lay in bed facing one another, smiling and watching as their fingers interlaced.
‘Where did the name Dylan come from?’
‘Guess.’
‘Thomas?’
‘Nope.’ Dylan popped the 'p' with a breathy chuckle.
‘The Magic Roundabout?’
‘The what?’
‘Oh, piss off.’ Greta rolled her eyes. ‘Bob?’
‘Yep.’ Dylan laughed at the predictably obvious guess. ‘Margs loves him. I think she thought she was being edgy. I’m just pleased I got Dylan and not Bob. I’m also grateful she wasn’t a massive Kylie Minogue, or Beyonce fan.’
‘Yeeeah, I’m not sure you’d pull off Kylie, or Minogue and definitely not Beyonce. You know Dylan from The Magic Roundabout was named after Bob too?’
‘Yeah, no, I didn’t watch black and white telly, G.’
‘You should’ve seen me when the wheel was invented, Dylan. Ecstatic.’ Greta huffed out a sarcastic sigh.
Dylan chuckled. ‘Well they are wheely good.’
Greta couldn’t suppress her genuine amusement at Dylan’s silliness. The silliness that was warming her from within.
‘I love your name,’ she said softly. ‘Your surname, too. It’s beautiful.’
‘Oooo,’ Dylan teased in a high-pitched tone. ‘Stop being so complimentary, Greta. I feel like you’ll take it too far and have to balance it out by punching me or something.’
‘Ha ha,’ Greta replied playfully.
‘It’s rare that someone pronounces it right,’ Dylan said with a heavy eye roll.
‘I get Saint John all the time. It confuses the shit out of folks. They’re like, are you sure that’s how you pronounce your own name, Miss Saint John?
!’ Dylan laughed. ‘When you said it right in your office, I wanted to rip your knickers off and fu—’
‘Well, it’s good that people get it wrong then, or you’d most likely be in prison.’ A wide smile moved over Greta’s face as she watched Dylan belly laugh. ‘Your thigh tattoo…the date. What does it mean?’ Greta looked down, tenderly running her fingers over the ink.
‘It’s the date I stopped drinking.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’m not an alcoholic, don’t worry. Just a bit of a dickhead. Well, a massive dickhead actually.’
‘I wouldn’t be worried.’
‘It’s also the date Mum was injured. The day life got kicked off its feet, landed on its tits, rolled onto its arse and has stayed there ever since.’ Dylan gave a humourless chuckle before drawing in a slow, steadying breath.
‘What happened? You don’t have to tell me, I just—’
‘Mum was a vet,’ Dylan interrupted as though needing the words out quickly.
‘She was birthing a foal, and the fucking mare kicked her. I mean, for fuck’s sake, of all the bastard things to happen.
When I was younger, it never even occurred to me that she’d ever be in danger at work.
’ She paused for a heavy beat, the tension in her jaw settling as she softly shook her head.
‘She had a traumatic brain injury, and since then, she’s had two massive strokes.
She can’t communicate anymore, as you saw, but she understands.
She’s locked in, which is just… It’s been awful watching her slowly ebb away.
When she was first injured, she could still get by speech-wise but now she can’t speak, and her swallow is shit—hence her gastrostomy and rubbish chest. Her muscle weakness from her strokes is so dense, it’s…
’ She paused as her blinking quickened. ‘It’s just hard to see, you know?
’ She tongued her cheek and sucked in a sharp breath.
‘But I know what she needs. Me and Crew Mamacita keep her ticking over. I can’t afford a nurse every day, but we work it out with what I can get NHS wise.
She loves Jord and Pri… I just wish they could be there all the time.
They’re amazing. In all the years we’ve been looking after her, she’s never had a pressure sore or anything, but she got one during an admission to South Manchester General last year.
They didn’t give her a feed for two nights either once because they didn’t have her specific one on the ward.
They could have just asked me, I’d have sorted it…
I know it’s not the nurses, it’s the system.
It’s the underfunded pressure keg. As you know.
’ Greta nodded softly with a sigh. ‘That’s why I can’t stand it when she needs to go in.
But I know when I have reached the limit of what I can do for her, and there’s nothing I can do when she’s acutely unwell.
I hate it. But…it makes me feel guilty because sometimes, when she is admitted, it’s like the knee lifts off my throat, and I can breathe for a minute.
It’s such a mind fuck. I don’t want her in hospital, but—’
‘That’s respite, Dylan. You need respite.’
Dylan shrugged, sucking her bottom lip into her mouth. ‘She deserves such a nice life, G. She should be looking at retiring and sipping Mimosas in Spain or some such shit, but that will never happen. She just deserves the world, and I can’t give it to her.’
‘Jesus Christ, Dylan, I’m so sor—’
‘Don’t.’ Dylan interrupted softly. ‘Don’t be sorry.
I know that’s what people say, but it’s okay.
We do okay.’ She dragged in a full chest of air.
‘I was out on Canal Street when it happened and… Fuck, I hate this bit. She almost died, and I couldn’t get to her.
They tried to find me for hours, but I was absolutely twatted on Molly, dancing on a podium in Cruz... I can’t even fucking dance.’
Greta widened her eyes and scrunched her lips together. ‘That’s the power of Molly…or so I believe.’
‘It must’ve been some strong shit to make me think I could dance…
My mates used to call me Dyl the Dickhead.
When the big light came on in the club at four in the morning, there’d be me, stood in the DJ booth, arm actually around the DJ, chanting One more pill.
One more choon! I always took it too far…
Fucking idiot.’ Dylan let out a rueful laugh before exhaling sharply.
‘Honestly, thinking about that day makes me feel so ashamed of myself. Everything stopped after that.’ Dylan pointed to the date tattooed across her thigh.
‘I stopped partying and being such a knob, deferred Uni, worked some pretty shit jobs before I eventually started escorting. I was that ALDI check-out girl firing that tinned pineapple.’ Dylan let out a humourless laugh.
‘I looked good in the uniform, though.’ She shrugged.
‘Anyway, escorting helped massively. We have no mortgage, and Mum’s inheritance from my grandparents was great, but I don’t want that to dwindle completely.
We needed a proper income, and that was sort of my only option.
We weren’t managing. I needed to get more help and we were maxed-out NHS wise. ’
Dylan rolled onto her back, pushed her hands under her head, and inhaled deeply as Greta ran her hand over her belly. ‘What about your friends and family? Have they supported you?’
‘We have no family really, not close anyway. Dad fucked off when Mum was pregnant, hence us living with my grandparents, but they died, like old folks do, before Mum was injured. My Gran was ace… I called her Granny Sinj. She used to read me stories all the time and do daft voices for each and every character. Apparently, as soon as I learned the word more, she never got a minute's peace,’ Dylan chuckled. ‘I loved her to bits… Anyway, yeah, friends helped for a while…until they didn’t. My mates were all eighteen and as stupid as I was…well, maybe not quite as stupid. They all carried on, went to uni, and we lost touch. I was sort of left behind.’ She blew out a long breath.
‘So, nope, it’s just me, Margarita and Crew Mamacita, has been for years. ’
***
As the early hours crept in on them, Greta grew bolder and braver with every word and memory they shared.
She told Dylan about Muriel. About the heart defect no one saw coming.
A perfect, healthy forty-four-year-old, there one minute, gone the next.
The way Dylan listened with an avid, quiet empathy, made Greta fall a little more.
‘Twenty-five years together? That’s a lifetime,’ Dylan said as her own eyes began swimming with tears she wouldn't allow to fall.
Dylan held her as Greta’s chest cracked wide open, simply staying there when she needed her to while she laid her soul bare.
Greta could feel the absolute weight of Dylan's attention, totally transfixed by every word she said and movement she made. Whether Greta was twisting her hair over a shoulder, wrinkling her nose, or moving her hands restlessly as she spoke, Dylan’s eyes traced her every move.
Greta even caught the small, soft smile on Dylan’s face as she watched Greta’s index finger swirl around her thumb when she was deep in thought.
When Greta spoke about her parents, her voice thick with profound gratitude and adoration, Dylan's steady hold only tightened, absorbing every last word in the quiet space.
***
‘Shit, so he kicked you out? Your dad…just kicked you out?’ Dylan asked in disbelief.