‘So the holiday’s off?’
He nodded, looking so crestfallen that I forgot he was technically out of bounds now, and touched his shoulder. It made me shiver with possibilities and remembered sensations, the way his solid body felt underneath that stripy shirt. I’d forgotten that he always really turned me on – until we actually got down to it, that is. With Phil, the idea was always better than the reality: anticipation was everything. It’s weird how my body used to dupe me into thinking it was going to be great. I must be a sexual optimist, if such a term exists.
‘And what are you doing here?’ I asked. ‘You know I’m not a fan of unannounced visitors – what if the house had been a mess?’
He half laughed, stretching out on the sofa the way he used to, having to bend his knees so his feet didn’t stick over the end. He was flattening all my cushions and I wanted to pull them out from under him and bang them together to fluff them up again.
‘Your house is never a mess, Shuv. I just wanted to talk to an old friend, that’s all. You don’t mind, do you?’
An old friend? I’m not a sodding old friend! His socks were worn thin on the soles and I thought, I’d have chucked that pair away long ago. I hadn’t noticed him take his shoes off, but when I looked over, there they were in the hall, just like old times. I wondered if the next time I turned around he’d be stark naked and I wouldn’t have noticed him undressing either.
‘It was nice to see you the other day outside Starbucks. I’m sorry if I was a bit short – Lynn and I were rowing then too, and I – well – seeing you just made me miss you more than ever.’
I must have looked at him with a particularly gormless expression on my face. He reached out and touched my cheek, and I felt a callous on his finger scrape against my skin. ‘I really miss you, Siobhan,’ he said.
Suddenly I just wanted him so badly that I thought I was going to cry, like craving chocolate when your blood sugar is at rock bottom, or that overwhelming desire for a glass of wine at the end of a long, hard day. I wanted the familiarity of his skin and his soft clumsy kisses, even his hairy chest. I wanted someone to bring me tea in the morning.
I practically dragged him up to the bedroom and ripped off his clothes, and then there was the shock of the cold bedclothes over and under our hot flesh…
…and nothing had changed. The cat hair still made him sneeze. He squashed me under his weight. He moaned and grunted and thrust, ripping at my hair and using his fingers in all the wrong places. I’d been really turned on for the first two minutes but then I just kept thinking, I want a real man. I wanted to be fucked by a man with a dick like a truncheon, not this skinny little excuse for a penis. I want to come three times in a night.
I’m sorry, but Phil is ridiculous in bed. I’d forgotten quite how ridiculous, but really, all that contrived ass-slapping and cringe-worthy fantasy-whispering. How can he think it’s a turn-on? And worse: now he’s started using all this yucky babytalk – ‘Does my ’ikkle Shuvvie want it bad from her big boy Phil?’ Ugh!! (And ‘big boy?’ I mean, hello? Who’s he trying to kid?) I was rolling my eyes when he came. The baby talk must be Lynn’s influence – he never used to do that.
All in all, the idea of Phil is still way better than the reality of Phil. He’s a lovely bloke, and we did care about each other, and he made me laugh and bought me tampons without blanching if I needed him to – but now I remember why I wasn’t heartbroken when he finished with me. Now I remember that I’d thought, oh well, might get a decent shag now, if anyone will still have me.
Nice as it was to think about getting tea brought to me in the morning, I suddenly couldn’t countenance the idea of Phil staying the night; this night, or any other. I’d get my own tea – no big deal. But before I could say ‘yes, well, thanks for that, Phil, but I really must be getting on with my life now,’ he’d jumped out of bed and headed for the bathroom to wash his willy in the sink, as he always did. (It’s such an unpleasant thought – really, the male anatomy is pretty revolting, once you take away the components of arousal. Perhaps I ought to become a lesbian instead, like Kathy.)
I pulled on my bathrobe and followed him to the bathroom, giving him a respectable couple of willy-washing minutes to himself first. When I got there, he’d wrapped a towel round his waist, and was enthusiastically brushing his teeth with the old green toothbrush he used to call his. He must have unearthed it from the back of the bathroom cabinet.
I leaned against the door frame and just said it straight out: ‘We’re not back on, so don’t get too comfortable.’ It came out a lot more harshly than I intended.
I wasn’t wearing my glasses so I couldn’t see the hurt in his eyes, reflected in the mirrored door of the cabinet, but I could hear it in his voice, indistinct through a mouthful of toothpaste: ‘But – I thought we… I need you, Shuv.’
With my blurry vision and his hairy back, he looked like a large doleful black bear standing by the basin. When he turned to face me, foaming at the mouth, I thought how his chest made me feel as if I’m suffocating, all that thick hair up my nose when we’re in bed. I’d forgotten about that, too.
‘No, you don’t,’ I said. ‘Don’t settle for something that’s less than what you want. You finished with me, remember? Don’t think that because you’ve been dumped, that makes things suddenly perfect with us.’
‘I haven’t been dumped,’ he said, turning back to the basin, brushing furiously again and then spitting violently. He always cleaned his teeth like someone trying to scrub barnacles off the bottom of a boat. I’d be surprised if there was any enamel at all left on them.
‘Oh. You dumped her, then, did you?’
He didn’t answer, although I saw in the mirror that he’d closed his eyes like a small child who thinks that if he can’t see you, you can’t see him either.
I had a brief pang, thinking of that fortnight in Portugal going to waste. I’m glad I had the writing class to think of, otherwise I might have been tempted to ask if I could take Lynn’s place. Perhaps I was being too hasty. There was a lot about Phil that was great, too; sweet and loving and patient. And his hairy body was lovely and warm on a cold night…
But no. I really don’t think it would work out between us. It was just one of those things – probably as much my fault as his.
‘Sorry,’ I conceded. ‘I’m being pissy. It doesn’t matter who dumped who. This is about you and me, not you and Lynn. We shouldn’t have slept together just now – it’s always a mistake to go back, I think. Let’s just call it one for old time’s sake, shall we?’
His shoulders slumped, and I felt really sorry for him. I went over and put my arms around him.
‘Oh Phil, it’s been lovely to see you, honestly, and I’m sorry that things haven’t worked out for you and Lynn. But I just don’t think it would be a good idea for us to try and pick up where we left off. I think you did the right thing, to break up with me.’
That was about as diplomatic as I could be, without recourse to the words ‘pencil’ and ‘dick’. It wasn’t his fault that he was bad in bed. And maybe he’d meet a girl who liked his little… foibles. I had loved him once. I didn’t wish him any harm, not really. It was just the sting of rejection that hurt – but now we’d had this liaison, actually, I felt better about it. For the first time I really started to believe that I could do better than Phil.
‘So I suppose you want me to leave, then,’ he said, drying his mouth on another of my towels.
I nodded, wincing at the rejection. ‘Sorry,’ I repeated. ‘I do care about you, Phil, but… ’
‘I understand,’ he said dolefully, and took himself back off to the bedroom to get dressed. I left him to it, and went to fold my washing off the drying rack I’d positioned by the radiator in the living room. Biggles was curled up asleep underneath it – he loved it under there, playing