Curve Ball (8 page)

Because a second after he’s done with the sex and the seemingly sincere and oh so tender kiss at the end … The second he’s stroked my hair and started to say something I’m sure I’m going to treasure for ever … He hears a sound from up on deck, and does exactly what he did the last time.

He throws on all his clothes like a stripper in reverse, and darts for the exit.

Chapter Six

He doesn’t talk to me for the whole of the next day, so I know the way this is going to go. I think things almost went that way after the surprise oral sex, which makes it a little easier to take. I’d nearly gotten used to the idea. Now I just have to push myself the whole way. Pack up the evidence of my fling with Steven in a box marked
that was
awesome, thank you
, and then go on with my life.

I can do that. I’m accustomed to doing that. Marvellous things I really want almost never come my way, and if they do they’re usually only doled out in half measures. If I want a promotion, I get a small end of year bonus, instead. If I’m expecting a surprise birthday party, I’ll come home to find the dog has pooped on the carpet.

Everything kind of works out in the end, in my tiny life of almost pleasures.

So it surprises me a little, how bitter I feel when he sidles up to me on the deck. Of course he waits until Jason and Kimberley are in the town centre, watching the fireworks decorating the night sky – probably so they won’t witness the scene he thinks I’m going to make. After all, there’s no point in secretly fucking someone if you have to discard her in public. Then everyone will know you did this terrible, disgusting, shameful thing.

God, why is it surprising me that I’m so bitter?

I should be more than bitter. I should kill him with the laser eyes that I don’t have.

‘Hey,’ he says, as though everything is cool. Like he just went for a jog on top of me the other day, and now we can vaguely hate each other again.

We can’t even get back the friendship we once had, as I’d been hoping. Now it’s all smashed to smithereens because he’s an arse and I’m an idiot who really wanted some sex. Lord, why did I want sex so badly with him? And brain, don’t you dare answer “because he’s hot and you love him and also he’s fantastic at it” either.

It just makes you sound like a 16-year-old girl.

As I still am, inside.

‘Everything OK?’

Ugh.

‘Sure.’

Why am I saying sure? I should noogie him.

‘Good, because if it wasn’t I probably couldn’t do this.’

In all fairness to him, the above piece of speech is some warning. The word “this” implies something is coming, so I should be prepared. And yet, somehow, I’m completely not. It’s really the last thing I expect him to do, despite the past week and all of its really obvious clues. I mean, he’s kissed between my legs.

Why is it a shock when he kisses me on the lips?

He doesn’t do it like it’s going to shock me. He just leans in as though it’s the most natural thing in the world, and presses his mouth to mine. His arm goes around my shoulders; his hand goes into my hair. It’s the real thing, even if I spend the next 30 seconds trying to tell myself otherwise.

Maybe he fell, I think, but if he did then why aren’t I helping him up?

He’s probably skinned his knees on my lip. I should definitely do something, but what? I can’t do anything while he’s still attached to me in this gentle, heated sort of way. I have to wait until he’s finished, but even after that happens I’m finding it hard to know what the best course of action might be. Now he’s looking at me in this confusing, unfamiliar manner. And touching my face.

And he’s saying things.

‘You look so beautiful, tonight.’

I’m wearing a poncho, and I plucked one eyebrow more than the other eyebrow.

I think he might have gone insane.

‘Steven …,’ I start, because I’m going to have to say something to him about this whole insanity thing. He needs to hear it from a friend, before they cart him away. ‘Here’s the thing …’

‘Oh God, there’s not a thing, is there?’

He looks genuinely disgusted by this idea. He even winces, like he tastes something bad.

‘Well …’

‘Is the thing that you’re still in love with your ex?’

‘
What?
No!’

‘Is it that you’ve realised I’m not boyfriend material, and you want to let me down gently?’

‘Oh my … That’s even more bizarre than your first question, just –’

‘It’s the sex, isn’t it? You hated the way I did the sex. I did it weird. Was it the noises I made? I know I make a lot of noises, but I swear I can tone them down for the next time.’

‘The
next
time? Steven – please, stop guessing. You’re hurting my brain.’

I can tell by his eyes that he’s deeply amused by all of this, but he at least has the decency to fold his hands one over the other, and appear in general like someone who’s taking everything seriously. He even gets the corners of his mouth to turn down.

And he says this:

‘Guessing totally stopped.’

‘Good.’

‘Unless you want to hear the one about you being an alien who needs to return to her home planet.’

‘I don’t.’

‘You sure?’

‘Positive.’

‘It has aliens in it. You like aliens, right?’

‘I do, but that’s beside the point – Steven, you just said, like, a million things that make no sense whatsoever. We can’t talk about aliens, right now.’

It’s true. We can’t. Talking about aliens is almost impossible, when your heart is trying to beat out of your chest and your best friend just kissed you and there are goddamn fireworks bursting over your head like a giant sign:
This is a Romantic Moment.

The sign is wrong, however. People like me don’t have romantic moments, and even if they did, I doubt they’d contain snippets of conversation like the following:

‘Right, but it’s awesome when they come out of the ceiling, huh? I mean, you can admit that much. When she’s all like “oh my God the bleepy thing says they’re in the room” and then suddenly
blargh rargh
!’

I don’t know what’s worst about all of this: that he makes angry alien hand gestures when he says
blargh
and
rargh
, that he does Sigourney Weaver’s voice when he talks about the bleepy thing, or that I really want to join in and have a fun conversation with my best friend about the movie
Aliens
.

Like we used to.

In fact, he’s the person who introduced me to my deep love of that film. Or more: he told me it was about happy space pirates, and then let me hide behind him for two and a half hours while the whole horrifying plot played out.

He laughed a lot, at my trembling terror.

He’s laughing now, as I look at him like I want to kill him.

‘What?’ he asks, through an amusement so deep and total I can’t actually be angry at it. I don’t know how to be angry at Steven. He’s too happy go lucky, too fun, too everything I want to be all of the time.

I don’t want to work in a bank.

I don’t want to live this life.

I want to be awesome.

‘What is it, baby? Why do you always look like you hate me, now?’

I can’t stop the words that then come out of my mouth. They’ve been building for the better part of ten years, and he’s just popped the force-field around them. Now they’re big, and angry, and on the loose.

They make me raise my voice. They make me throw up my hands.

‘Because I do! Of course I do. You make me feel all of these feelings, and then you just fucking cut out on me, every single time. And that was OK, when it was just cookies and movie marathons, Steven, but it’s not OK when you fancy screwing me.’

‘Hold on a second – when have I ever cut out on you?’

I count all the occasions off on my fingers, one by one.

‘At my graduation ceremony, when you saw a duck that looked like a monkey, when I made you that pie and you ran out and ate 12 pizzas, after the – ’

‘OK, well, maybe I was a massive jerk all of those times – but when have I ever cut out on you after sex? Because honestly, I think I would have remembered that.’

I want to squeezes his head until it explodes. So much so that I get pretty close to his temples, with two claw-like hands. Only my need to continue with this conversation from hell stops me from getting all the way there – though my hands remain fixed in rigid, angry shapes.

‘It happened
the day before yesterday
, you dolt,’ I say, and discover to my dismay that my mouth is rigid and angry too. My words come out like toothpaste, squeezed from a dried-up old tube that’s almost done.

‘Huh?’

‘Oh my God, you can’t be this dense. You were right there with me when you flung on all your clothes,’ I say, but I can tell he isn’t getting it. So I elaborate. ‘You know – before anyone could catch you do something as awful and embarrassing as sex with a fat chick.’

The answering expression on his face is priceless, absolutely priceless. I think his eyebrows take off over the top of his head. His eyes get so big they could double for the moon – and then he explodes. He explodes into incredulity the size of the South of France.

‘You think
that’s
why I rushed out of there?’

I’m kind of
hoping
that’s why, now, though I suspect I may have been wrong on a few of my calculations. In fact, I’m getting this really sinking feeling that I may be a total idiot, in about a billion different ways.

‘Who exactly did you want to catch me, Judy? Your brother? Did you want your brother to come down and see you orgasming all over my cock? Because I tell you what, I sure don’t want my best friend anywhere near me while I’m
making love to his sister
.’

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Oh
no
.

‘Do you have
any
idea what your brother would do to me if he knew I’d been violating you all holiday?’

He pauses, but only for a second. I can tell he’s really on a roll, now. He’s using violent hand gestures, frantic nods … I’m never going to live this down. I mean, I knew this was a possibility. I even imagined it happening myself.

I just didn’t apply it to Steven’s Houdini routine.

Because I am an enormous idiot.

‘And that’s what he’d call it too – violating,’ Steven continues, and I know he’s right. He’s right on all of this, horrifyingly. ‘I’m not even sure if he lets himself believe you have a vagina. The other day, he asked if I thought a
girdle
would be a good birthday present for you. Of
course
I flee at the first sign of him noticing my angry manly feelings towards you.’

I have absolutely no idea how to answer these charges. So after he’s composed himself a little – or at least controlled his crazy breathing – I go with the first thing that comes to hand.

‘You have angry manly feelings towards me?’

I sound too quiet, and disbelieving, and I know it. But there’s nothing I can do about it. My heart is taking up so much space in my body my vocal chords are struggling just to get words out. They’ve been squeezed down to nothing.

‘Seriously, it’s like you’re talking another language. What sort of feelings did you think I was having, when I put my penis inside you?’

‘Pitying ones?’

It’s the wrong thing to say. He actually punches a person who isn’t there.

‘
Pitying
ones? What the fuck are you talking about?’

I think I might stay calmer, if he wasn’t kicking at nothing and making huge circles with his hands in the air. The circles make me feel like an even bigger idiot than I already do, and I just
have
to counter them with something of my own.

So I jab in the general direction of his chest.

And maybe say some words I will later regret.

‘Hey, man – this misunderstanding isn’t all my fault, you know. You’re the one who talked trash about some poor fat girl you fucked,’ I tell him, in a big satisfying rush of pent-up anger. Now he’s going to get the full force of my disapproval, instead of some polite bullshit handshaking. ‘Ha. Yeah. You thought I’d forgotten about that, didn’t you? Well, I haven’t, and I hold it up as undisputable proof that you don’t really like me at all. This is all just some weird game you’re playing.’

Let’s see how you deal with that, I think, but after a second I’m sorry I have.

His answering expression is very un-Steven-like. It’s old, almost, and kind of weary, and I’m not quite sure how to deal with it.

‘Judy, I didn’t realise I
was
talking trash about “some poor fat girl”. All that stuff I mentioned … I like that stuff, other than the part where she turned out to be a total maniac and I had to run away from her. But then, the reason I was willing to put up with her various other flaws is because I
like
curvy girls. I
really
like curvy girls.’ He pauses, right before the kicker. Then he delivers it, with all the punch he can muster. ‘Probably because of you.’

I think the world just tilted on its axis. Everything is sliding sideways, including me. All I can see is fireworks, and I’m not even looking up. I’m just rolling with the earth as it slowly turns upside down and inside out.

‘Are you OK? Do you … Do you need to sit down? It’s kind of hot out here … I’ll get a fan. Or do you want a cold drink? Maybe a cold drink will –’

‘Stop talking about cold drinks.’

‘OK.’

‘I want to talk about this.’

‘Are you sure? Because I think it’s really disturbing you.’

Honestly, they should call him the amazing Steven Stark. How on earth did he guess a thing like that, when I’m barely able to hang on to planet earth?

‘It is, but I still want to know: what do you mean by
probably because of you
?’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’

‘If it were obvious, Steven, I wouldn’t be crouching a little bit because my knees no longer want to hold me up.’

He nods, with something like sudden understanding.

‘Oh, that’s what you’re doing. I thought you needed the bathroom.’

‘Shut
up
.’

He tries to smother his resultant laughter behind one hand, and fails. Which seems more like an intentional thing on his part, seeing as how massive his hands are. Surely if he wants to keep his laughter down, he could manage it?

Or at the very least, he could manage to not blow my mind.

‘OK, OK,’ he says, in such a simple way. We could be talking about him giving me a ride to the cinema, if it were not for his follow-up comments: ‘It’s just … You know. You drive me crazy. You’ve always driven me crazy.’