‘You wanna just come home with me instead?’ he mumbled against my mouth.
‘Why, so you can save me from the dragons?’
‘Something like that.’
* * *
The Great Penis Drought ended exactly thirty-seven minutes ago.
‘Should we perhaps define this?’ I asked.
Marcus shifted his weight, rolling over to face me. His breath came in tiny puffs that tickled my cheeks. For a moment, I simply enjoyed looking at him, at the self-satisfied smile that barely registered, at the sleepy eyes, and the arms he folded across his chest. A lock of dark hair flopped down into his eyes. I pushed it back and waited.
‘Before I go home and we’re both still scratching our heads?’ I continued in the face of his silence.
There was no dictionary definition for what had just happened. All right, so maybe there was, and I’m sure the thesaurus would have something to say, too. Sex. Sex had just happened. Very sexy sex. I’d have jumped and run for the bathroom if it weren’t for the fact there was a distinct Haven’t Seen Use in a While pain tickling my hamstrings.
‘I suppose we probably should,’ he said, his voice barely a whisper.
‘What do you want to call it?’ I asked.
‘I’m not entirely sure,’ he said.
I tucked hair behind my ear and curled further into the pillow. ‘Do you want a relationship from this? Is that what this is?’
‘How about we don’t call it anything?’ He propped himself up on an elbow. ‘Just … I don’t know right now. Whatever.’
Whatever? What kind of word is that to use in a situation like this? I detested it. Even my woozy brain, which was plummeting to Sober Land (Icarus, remember?), knew that was bad news. It was the word of choice whenever Dean wanted to dismiss my excitement or devalue me in front of his friends. The worst part about it? It worked every single time.
A beloved author popped in to the library for a quick visit? Whatever.
Great day at work today! Whatever.
I’m moving out. Whatever.
Apparently, I’d just slept with Coastal Edition Dean and, as much physical joy as his naked body may have brought, none of it was worth going through that kind of humiliation again.
I was so, so angry at myself.
‘I’m going to have a shower.’ Marcus rolled out of bed and strolled across the bedroom, everything on display, as if being intimate with each other were something we did regularly and not just at the end of a drunken night. His body was every inch the footballer, taut muscles, definition, and legs for miles.
‘Okay,’ I whispered, pulling the duvet up around my chin.
‘You all right?’ The corner of his mouth drew up into a smirk. ‘You don’t want to join me?’
I shook my head and, trying to look coolly casual, picked a clump of mascara from my eyelashes. ‘No, thank you.’
I watched him disappear behind a glass-doored en suite. Shifting, I tried to reconcile his words with a body whose muscles I hadn’t used in far too long, and lady parts that were feeling the aftereffects of a decent seeing to. Finally.
I sat up and took in my surroundings, a room I’d been too preoccupied to look at earlier.
A low-lit bedside lamp gave the room some decent ambiance at least, hiding all the lumps and bumps, and anything else nobody wanted to see. A box of condoms, which had been torn at in desperation, was doing its best impression of an origami flower on the bedside table, and my clothes were strewn from one end of the room to the other, though I was sure my dress was still on the bannister somewhere.
Mixed feelings were something I’d experienced a lot lately, but this was taking the cake and using a blowtorch to light the candles. Earlier, I was oozing confidence and full of those loose-limbed, sated, post-orgasmic feelings. Now, I was panicked. I was a ‘whatever’ again, and reality was coming home to roost. My head was set to wash, and my stomach was on tumble-dry. This was the dumbest idea in the history of my ideas. I had to work with this man. I had to look him in the eye and act as if we hadn’t just had the most incredible toe-curling, back-arching, name-screaming, hair-pulling sex ever.
And he wanted to define it as ‘whatever’.
I was a complete goose.
With the safety of Marcus in the shower, I ran. I threw back the sheets, shimmied back into my underwear, slipped on my shoes, and raced down the stairs for my dress. My handbag and coat had been discarded by the front door and, just as the water upstairs stopped running, the front door closed with a gentle click and I disappeared into the night.
Part of me expected Marcus to come racing out his front door, six-pack on display and towel wrapped around his waist, that finely carved V-shape shown off perfectly. The other part hoped like hell I made it home before he realised what had happened.
Reality had other plans.
I’d barely rounded the corner before I was on my knees in someone’s gutter, depositing my dinner and adding a whiff of lemon meringue martini into the local storm-water system. I had to wait for my stomach to stop heaving before I could pick gravel from tender kneecaps and limp home. My walk of shame was complemented by shoes dangling from fingers, and a sweaty sour mess of hair.
None of this was going down in my list of life achievements I was proud of.
I was relieved when I arrived home to find the house empty. It gave me just enough time to shower myself back into human form, and a modicum of privacy to freak out on my own. As my head hit the pillow, I hoped to wake up the next morning and find everything had been some multidimensional Marvel universe style dream.
It didn’t. It wasn’t. This was not Doctor Strange and his mirror dimension. Or, maybe it could be if I made sure not to tell anyone of my late-night escapades. Hiding from daylight the next morning, I made a very snap decision that I was not telling a soul about my night. What strange magic had been there was not being put up for public consumption. I pulled on some comfortable clothes and shuffled out into the kitchen, and the new morning.
I switched on the kettle and searched for a mug through barely open eyes.
‘And a very good morning to you,’ Penny said through burbled laughter. She had a frying pan in one hand and a fat old spatula in the other. ‘Are you of the genus grease this morning, or the genus carbo-starchy-coma?’
‘Both. Both is good.’ I slipped onto a stool by the counter and held my head in my hands. Even though I’d showered and double washed myself last night, I could still smell lemon meringue. My stomach lurched.
‘Big fat fluffy pancakes?’ Penny presented me with a plate stacked high. ‘We have not particularly authentic maple syrup, lemon and sugar, or whipped butter.’
‘Butter,’ I groaned. Something rose in my throat at the idea of going anywhere near lemon. ‘And maple syrup. All of it.’
‘Alrighty then.’
A leaning tower of pancakes appeared before me, along with butter and syrup, which I poured until I had a small moat on my plate. I shuffled across to the dining table and hugged my coffee cup. I’d have closed my eyes again if it weren’t for the fact I got a frame-by-frame replay of my not so best moments from the last twenty-four hours.