Good Enough to Share (Good Enough, Book 1 - Christmas)

Kindle Edition

Copyright © Zara Stoneley
2012

Published by Zara Stoneley 2012

Edited by Annie Seaton

The moral right of Zara
Stoneley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All right reserved. With
the exception of quotes used in reviews, no part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission
of the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Discover more about
Zara Stoneley at

http://www.zarastoneley.com

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Shit
happens–isn’t that what you told me Sophie? Some things that you are certain
should be a part of your life never materialize. And things you never thought
in a million years you’d do just pop up, and before you know it you’ve nodded
your head and gone off down a road you never knew existed. Last year was shit
and sugar, the sweetest time I never thought I’d have, topped and tailed with
stuff I’d just rather forget, and it scares me. Why? Because whatever happens
this year can’t match up, can it?

So before you
know it twelve months has whizzed by and it’s the start of another bright, new,
shiny year full of promise, but the one thing I do know is life just isn’t ever
going to be quite the same again.

How the hell am I
going to write in this diary every damned day? Nibbling the end of the pen
isn’t exactly helping on the inspiration front at all. But diaries aren’t
really for boring everyday stuff are they? They’re for revelations, witty
repartee, for clever insights and ‘Confucius say’ type declarations of wisdom.
Not to record the price of fish and whether I’ve opted for the sensible shoes
or killer heels.

 It was a typical
Sophie thing to give it me as a parting present. She’d pressed it into my hands
on New Year’s Eve, just as we’d clambered into bed in a slightly tipsy way, and
she’d made me promise, before I’d even unwrapped the damn thing, that I would
follow the request inside. And now it is New Year’s Day, and she’s gone–and
like the good girl I am, I’m trying to keep my promise.

Bugger. Maybe
every day is pushing it, maybe I should just fill up the whole of January right
now with one rambling metaphorical outpouring from my jumbled up mind.

So here comes
January, my darling Sophie, and it’s got me wondering already. Somehow
everything that has happened over the last twelve months to us all wasn’t a
surprise to you, was it? It was as though you knew exactly where we were
heading. Did you plan it all? It makes me feel slightly less sad about how
things have worked out, slightly less sad about you going - if that was what
you had in your mind all along. But I’m still going to miss you like hell, even
if you can be a bit of a pain in the ass at times.

Yeah Sophie could
be a pain. Pushy, opinionated, so full of bubble and life that at times I just
wanted to sit on her, shut her up, make her stop and listen. Make her just
stop. But she couldn’t, never had. Not until now. Not until she’d finally given
herself permission to find some ‘me time’.

I thought I
knew you so well Sophie, but now I realize that you managed to shut me right
out with your jokes, your hugs and your giving. Yeah, you did a good job of
making sure you didn’t let any of us reach that hurt little part of you deep
inside. But I still love you, Soph. This year has taught me so much about
myself and I think it’s done something for you too. At least I hope so. I hope
that you find what you’re looking for out there, and that you’ll come back and
tell us it was all worthwhile.

Anyhow, this is
my diary and I’ll do my best to do what you wanted me to and fill the bloody
thing in. To write it all down so that this time next year we can swap and
it’ll be like we never missed a day. My diary, to you and to Charlie, from both
of us. Because without Dane there probably won’t be much to tell.

Holly x

I put a strong
line straight across under my name, a mix of frustration and hurt that leaves a
jagged scar on the page and then I smudge away the splash that isn’t allowed to
be a tear from the edge of the page and turned to stare out of the window.

It looks cold
outside, icy fresh like it’s supposed to be at this time of the year but seldom
is. I rest my elbows on the uneven windowsill and my breath mists up the glass
inviting me to trace a pattern, so I do.

I trace our
initials on the cold pane like some overgrown kid. H, D and then the C, the C
for Charlie that curled around the others, holding them together, and then I
add the S. The letter that links and tangles our lives until you can’t tell
where one begins and the other ends. The letters start to fade, condensation
dripping, bleeding them together and I press my forehead over them, close my
eyes to block out the frosted trees, the ice-edged leaves, to invite in the
people who make up my life.

 It surprises me,
but the image pricking at the back of my eyelids isn’t Charlie, it isn’t Dane,
it is James. Blond-haired, blue-eyed James, standing there as clear as day, all
neat and tidy. The most perfect man in the world, the man I’d stood next to in
the church of dreams, the man who had slipped that band of precious gold onto
my finger. A promise. Forever, until death do us part.

And, as I watch he
closes his eyes, throws his head back, his perfect lips parting as they always
do in that moment of suspense just before he comes. And I can’t stop myself
looking down, and all I can see is his cock, his slender, long cock in a firm
male hand, a hand that is pumping him with steady assured strokes. A hand that
isn’t his. A hand that just over twelve months ago shattered my complacent
little world into a zillion sharp splinters, and made me open up my mind and my
heart….

“Stuff Australia,
who needs surf and sand when you’ve got me? We are going to make this the best
Christmas ever. We’re going to share everything.”

“Everything?” I
raise an eyebrow and Sophie gives a dirty laugh.

“Everything.”
Charlie grins in a way that turns him from geek to mischief-maker, his dirty
blond hair making him look like some wayward angel. “We’re going to have a
really laid-back, do what we want kind of Christmas. Deal?” He tops up my glass
with white wine before I have a chance to object. “What about you, Soph, are
you going to join the debauchery?”

Sophie rolled her
eyes. “I’ll have another glass of wine, yes.” She held out her glass for a top
up. “Christmas Day I think I’ll be stuffing the turkey for my little sis.”

“You can count me
in, Charlie.” I planted a kiss on his day old stubble. “But without the
debauchery.” There were a lot of worse ways to spend Christmas, like on my own.
My folks had made their plan for the festive season while I was still happily
delusional about married life, and so I hadn’t been part of them. Instead I’d
dropped them off at the airport in the early hours and driven back home, with
the knackered heater in the car blowing out cold air, wondering just what kind
of Christmas this was going to be.

And Charlie? Well,
Charlie always skated round the issue of his family and, from what Sophie had
told me, I gathered he did Christmas with friends or not at all. He’d never
really explained why, just twittered on about freedom of choice and ideals and
some other meaningless crap which wasn’t him at all. But for once he’d been a
closed shop. No comment.

I could have
gate-crashed my parents trip to the Australian sunshine, but I didn’t want to.
Too many questions and too many sympathetic looks, a drunken geek fest with
Charlie sounded a far better idea.

We’d met at
University and clicked instantly; you know how you can like someone before they
even open their mouth? It was that. He was clever, he was a bit of a hunk, he
was funny and he was laid-back almost to the point of horizontal. Charlie was
one of those people who just made life taste good.

When we graduated
I moved down South to take up my dream job and we drifted apart slightly, and
then the drift became more of a rift when I met my dream man. James.

Charlie visited
once or twice but it had been awkward, he and James had been chalk and cheese,
they just hadn’t liked each other at all. And when he’d come to the wedding it
felt like he was saying goodbye, a brief awkward standoff. Then the guy I
called my best friend had gone off to shag the chief bridesmaid, muttering
something about never trusting a man who looked like he spent more time in the
bathroom than you did, and in a blink of an eye he’d become my ex-best friend.

I forgave him. I
put it down to jealousy at first, but I’d been so high up in the clouds that I
must have been suffering from oxygen shortage, or some kind of hormonal
disorder that affected my brain. And it wasn’t until those cotton wool clouds
got blown abruptly right out of the sky that I discovered he was right. And
being the friend he was, he just picked me up and dusted me off without once
actually saying it. And he forgave me. And it had just seemed logical that when
I decided I needed a new life, a new job, everything, it was up here, in
Cheshire, with Charlie and Sophie.

“Don’t let the
wine get warm, Holly berry, drink to it.”

“Well, it’s a deal
as long as the pair of you don’t make me wear anything as ridiculous as this
ever again.” I was more holly leaf than holly berry right now and it was all
Sophie’s fault. Sophie, the girl who could charm the birds right out of the
trees.

I flipped up the
hem of my green tunic and she laughed. A full bodied, warm your soul type of
laugh that made every red-blooded male in the bar turn and glance our way.

How on earth I’d
let her persuade me to dress up as one of Santa’s little helpers I do not know.
Even the words ‘good cause’ don’t usually sway it with me if it involves
dressing up and looking an idiot, though in this case undressing was a better
description.

Charlie gave the
bottom an experimental tug of his own, his fingers fluttering briefly against
my barely covered buttocks and I gave him the thump he deserved. I suppose it
could have been worse, I could have been a reindeer.

When I’d first met
him he’d come across as fairly reserved, and then he’d introduced me to his old
mate Sophie and I saw a whole new side of him. Sophie was an indestructible
force of nature, but a nice one. It made it far, far harder to say no to
anything she suggested. Which I was discovering was dangerous.

“If you’re going
to start thumping me, I’m off.”

“You were going
anyway.”

“I was. Don’t wait
up, I could be late.”

“As in tomorrow
morning?” Since I’d taken up Charlie’s offer of a room we’d settled into the
comfortable routine of an old married couple. Well, hopefully not the old bit,
but very routine. Takeaway pizzas, old films, comfortable pajamas and a
goodnight kiss before we went our separate ways to bed. Some nights I’d be out
with Sophie, sometimes the three of us would hit the town, and sometimes, just
sometimes, Charlie would do a disappearing act.

He grinned and
drained his glass. I’d never seen him with a girlfriend, or a boyfriend come to
that, his stay-out-late vice just seemed to be the occasional poker game.
Unless he just wasn’t telling.

“Later.” He
ruffled my hair, blew a kiss at Soph and managed to flip up my tunic again all
in one easy movement, and headed for the door before I could retaliate.

I’d never really
looked at Charlie before, you know, properly looked - because he was more like
a geeky big brother. The annoying idiot who always stole the game controller
from you, the guy who laughed at your high heels and told you the tart look was
hot this season. The guy who was always there to cuddle up to and offer wise
words when you’d had a shit day. But for some reason I was looking now, well
staring, at his trim bum that his expensive chinos were hugging like a second
skin. And I felt tempted, very tempted.