Tattoos & Teacups (7 page)

I had no idea what post-concert etiquette was as far as going backstage to meet him was concerned and, as such, let the crowd surging for the exit carry me out onto the street. The night was still fairly warm, and by the time I’d extracted myself, he was there, waiting for me on the steps to the building.

“How did you get out here so fast?” I asked, placing my hand on his upper arm to get his attention.

It worked—he whirled around with a smile on his face and shrugged. “None of the kit is mine. I just had to grab my bag. Do you want to go for a drink?”

The words came out in a rush, and I realized that he was nervous. Nervous for my reaction.

“Chris,” I said. “You were wonderful.”

He ducked his head and blushed. “Thank you. Drink?”

I nodded, and he led us down the street, past where I could see fellow audience members drinking champagne in wine bars, to a smaller bar that almost reminded me of the hole-in-the-wall pubs that were abundant in Edinburgh.

“Let me get you one,” I said as he reached for his wallet.

“I’ll get the first round.”

I nodded and took a moment to look around.

The bar was narrow, probably only a few meters from one wall to the other, although it stretched back quite a way, with little tables and booths dotting the walls. The patrons drank whiskey in short tumblers or pints of dark ale and wore hats made of the same tweed fabric as the upholstery in the booths.

“I can’t believe I’ve never been here before,” I said softly as we waited for the barmaid to come down our end. “It’s great.”

“One of the horn section told me about it,” Chris said. “Nice, right?”

“Very,” I agreed.

We both ordered beers, and I heaped praise on him, much of which he neatly deflected. I was surprised. Chris had struck me as a man confident in himself and his achievements. Both bottles were drained at almost the same time, and I knew that if I was going to drive home, I shouldn’t drink a second.

“When will I see you again?” I blurted as I walked him back to his car.

“Soon, I hope,” he said softly. “I think you’re fascinating.”

I winced. “Is that a good thing?”

Chris bit back a smile and wet his lips as his cheeks strained not to break into a full-fledged grin. Then he reached out and cupped my cheek in his palm.

“Yes,” he said. Then he kissed me. I was too stunned to properly kiss him back, a point that made me furious once he’d pulled away.

He was two steps toward his bike when I regained my senses enough to grab him by his wrist.

“Chris, wait,” I said. “Should I call you?”

He nodded, that same amused expression dancing across his features.

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

“Okay. Good night, Rob.”

“Night,” I said vaguely.

He pulled his helmet from where it had been locked to the back of the bike and pulled it on, then kicked it into action and pulled into the traffic. After a moment I forced myself to move. I’d been standing on the spot, probably frowning and definitely staring after him.

It was creepy.

On the drive back to my flat, I debated with myself on whether or not the night counted as a date. I didn’t think it did. There had not been any flowers, for one, and I was a great believer in the significance of flowers being sent to someone I was dating. They were not just for women.

Then again, he had kissed me before we parted ways. A kiss, especially the sort of kisses that Chris was capable of dishing out, was not the sort of thing one took lightly. Warm breath and the flick of a hot tongue against the seam of my lips…. Yes, that was definitely a date-type kiss.

Maybe I was over-thinking things. Heaven knows it wouldn’t have been the first time.

On reflection of my previous sexual and romantic partners (this did not take very long), Chris was easily the most sexual of the lot. Yet we’d not made any further strides toward being intimate with each other, not since he’d stroked me to orgasm in my kitchen.

Opening the fridge and reaching for the cream still brought a hot flush of pleasure and embarrassment to my cheeks.

I resolved, as I passed over the cream and selected milk to go in my tea, to send flowers to him the next day.

There was a little florist that I passed on my way to work, and I headed there rather than to one of the larger commercial places. Despite their small size, the shop had a large and beautiful range, and it took me more than a few minutes to decide whether or not I wanted to send a message hidden in the blooms.

My instinct was to go bright and varied and unusual; birds of paradise or tiger lilies, maybe. But on contemplation they seemed too brash and not romantic enough. I’d passed over the roses on my first sweep of the store, but a closer look revealed a selection of dark pink flowers, still in their buds. They weren’t red, or baby pink, not too obvious and slightly unusual, and the meaning was clear.

I signed my name on the card but nothing more and drew Chris’s card from my wallet, still with his
C.J.F. (1)
written on the back of it, to give his address for the delivery.

His response, when it came later that afternoon, was everything I’d been hoping for.

No one has ever sent me flowers before. They’re beautiful. Thank you.

It gave me the confidence to keep a semi-regular conversation going between us over the following few days, nothing too intense or serious but enough that we got used to a light banter back and forth. It was just text messages, no actual conversations, but his good night message every night made me smile. Slowly but surely, he was creeping into my life.

T
HERE
could be little doubt that I was fairly terrified about meeting Chris’s friends. If it wasn’t bad enough that I was so much older than all of them, I couldn’t help but feel that they were so much cooler than me. They were in a rock and roll band, for goodness’ sakes. Chris made it easier on me by taking me to the house one night after I’d finished work and cooking me dinner. The others were out when I arrived and clearly had their own evening routines, which continued despite my presence.

I met Danny first: a tall, olive-skinned, lanky man with bright eyes and an easy demeanor. He said hi, grabbed an apple from a bowl on the counter, and disappeared. A few minutes later, music started on one of the upper floors.

Alexis, or Lex, as she introduced herself, and John were next. They seemed at first to be an odd pair to me. She was small with vibrantly red hair and creamy pale skin, and bright blue eyes that she lined heavily with makeup. He was clearly the more laidback of the pair, wearing flip-flops and khaki shorts and a fleece sweatshirt. His thick, light brown hair was a mass of curls, and he wore a scruffy beard. I liked him on sight.

“He’s only a few years younger than you,” Chris said after they, too, had moved on. “John. He’s going to be twenty-nine next week. Are you coming to his birthday?”

“When is it?” I asked.

“Next Friday night.”

I nodded. “Sure.”

The party was being held at the house, and I had no idea how the little group had amassed such a large quantity of friends and acquaintances in such a short amount of time. I arrived with whiskey as a gift and beer to drink and wimped out, calling Chris when I arrived instead of going to the door. Even though it was only 9:00 p.m., the party seemed well underway.

When I saw him appear on the porch, I climbed out of the car, surprised and oddly pleased when he took off from the porch with a jump and a run to launch himself into my arms. I caught him, laughing, and kissed him deeply.

“I missed you,” he said when we broke apart. It had only been a few days since we last saw each other.

“Come on inside,” I said. “You’ll freeze out here without a coat.”

Again, Chris surprised me by holding on to my hand as we navigated the party, introducing me to people he knew from the symphony or fans and groupies that they’d already picked up during their short time in the area.

John and Lex were in the kitchen. He seemed pleased with the whiskey and made room in the fridge for the beer.

“I’m hiding this,” he said, holding up the whiskey. “Otherwise it’ll get destroyed tonight.”

“Good plan,” Lex told him, and he kissed her lightly on the top of the head before heading back to their room.

The entire evening had the feel of one of the dorm parties that I rarely took part in during my own college career. Most of the guests were of the right age, and even if we were spared drinking games and beer bongs, that was made up for with all of the horrendously drunk, skimpily dressed young ladies in attendance.

One couldn’t help but admire the way Chris easily and confidently deflected the attentions of those girls, and in such a way that they didn’t even know that they’d been brushed aside as easily as an irritating yet beautiful moth. Even as I struck up conversations with his friends, his eyes kept meeting mine across the room, little flickers to make sure he knew where I was.

His protectiveness was just endearing enough not to be annoying.

I’d just finished giving John instructions on how to get to the steakhouse that served some of the best beef and barbecue in the whole state when Chris sidled up to me and slipped his hand in mine. I looked down at him with a smile, amused enough to give him a little kiss on the lips when his pout demanded it.

“Come with me,” Chris said, tugging at my hand.

“See you again,” I said to John. He nodded, lips pressed together in amusement as if he knew exactly what Chris was up to. In all likelihood, he did.

I followed him through to the hallway, where it was slightly quieter. Chris stopped short and turned to face me.

“We need to have sex,” he said, a slightly desperate look on his face.

“We will,” I said. “I thought we agreed to take it slow, though?”

“Rob.” Chris spoke my name reverently and stepped forward to take my face in his hands. “Rob, you’re amazing. You’re possibly the most amazing man I have ever met, and certainly the most amazing man I have ever dated. You are sweet and kind and loving and funny and so adorable, and the sex could be absolutely fucking terrible.”

“You’re really worried about this, aren’t you?” I said, amused.

He dropped his head forward to rest against mine. “Yes.”

“Come on, then,” I said, taking his hand once more and lacing my fingers with his.

“Come on what?”

“Come on home with me.” Something about this man infused me with confidence.

His eyes widened comically. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” I said lightly, more than a little amused. “I like sex, Chris. I’m pretty sure I’m going to like sex with you. And now,” I leaned in and lightly bit the end of his nose, “I have something to prove.”

His response was to rock his hips forward so his pelvis bumped into mine, emphasizing the hardness he was concealing in his jeans and the need he had for me. I took his hand and led him through the house, stopping by the closet at the front door to find my coat.

“Do you need to bring anything with you?” I asked before we left.

“You’ve got condoms? And lube?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m set,” he said.

Because I could, I kissed him hard. This was no teasing little brush of lips on lips but a promise of what he could expect from me.

I wasn’t too surprised when he groped me for most of the journey as I drove across town to my flat. I managed to swat his hand away every time he went to undo my fly, but this wasn’t a sufficient deterrent for him to stop rubbing my groin through my jeans.

Chris was clearly a little buzzed, but I didn’t want that; too much alcohol left me with a numbness rather than energy, and for this I wanted to have all my mental faculties firmly in place.

The last time Chris had been in my home, he’d been in my bedroom, but only because it was the only way to access the single bathroom in the flat. I guessed he hadn’t lingered because when I showed him through again, he took his time wandering around, looking at the little bits and pieces that transformed the place from somewhere where I laid my head at night to my home of the past four years.

Still, I wasn’t really one for collecting things, “dust collectors” as my mother called them. As far as personal items went, I had books; stacks of books on nearly every possible surface. The most precious thing in my room was the one Chris homed in on, almost as if he knew or understood its value.

He was incredibly careful with the small frame that held a picture of me and my daughter, taken a few days after she was born. There were photographs taken in the hospital, but I’d never liked them. There was a clinical, depressed, slightly desperate edge to them all. We were only nineteen. Our parents were furious with us. I was overwhelmed.

When we were allowed to take her home, things only got worse. Chloe was a colicky, fussy baby almost from the get-go. We got precious little sleep. Daylight hours were spent washing and feeding and changing and bathing and, for me, working my ass off. Lu resented me. Chloe, I was convinced, knew I wasn’t cut out to be a father.

Then, it fell into place.

I was exhausted after finishing an eight-hour shift and got home to a screaming baby and a frazzled Luisa. She shoved the child in my arms and announced she was taking a bath and there was nothing I could do except learn how to deal with my daughter.

It took a good hour, maybe more until she settled and I curled up in an armchair with her in my arms, damned if I was going to put her down in case she started screaming again. I must have fallen asleep like that because months later when we were getting the rolls of film from those first few weeks of her life developed, there was the picture.

Me, fast asleep in a dark brown leather armchair; Chloe, her face peaceful but wide awake, staring up at me. Lu had framed it and given it to me as a Christmas gift, and I cherished it as evidence that I was not a terrible father after all.

“Does she look like you?” Chris asked as he set the frame back in its place on my dresser.

“Chloe? No. Not at all. She takes after her mother.”