over me, that I’m she, and yet I’m not. I want to say to Kay the same thing: be good to him. He likes it when you spoon up against his back.
He likes it when you suck him long after he’s spent, and he likes taking baths together. He likes fingers in his mouth when he’s having sex, and blindfolds are his kink of choice.
Though, in truth, I don’t know if I want to say. I know so well that he likes all of those things, but maybe I won’t tell you, Kay. Find out your own things. Could be that they’re different. I certainly intend to find out what’s different about Sean, all on my own.
Already there’s something different. He doesn’t want to kiss me with a mouth full of his come. But he does want to spoon against my back, and bury his face in my hair, and so it is that I get to lie there and watch, as Kay finishes off my once-was-boyfriend.
It’s been a year and a day since I last saw Ryan. I know it has, because Sean tells me as we’re driving up to the campsite. Number three thousand and eighty-five on the list of things I’ve learned about Sean in a year: he’s very good at timekeeping. Ryan was always awful at remembering days – he’d throw me three birthday parties a year to make up for the one he forgot.
‘Is your mind somewhere else?’ he asks, as we come to the turn-off.
‘Not really,’ I reply, but I’m lying. It is. Currently my mind happens to be on why I still compare Sean to Ryan, even after all this time. It’s something I think about a lot lately.
‘Nervous about seeing your ex?’ he asks, and he does it in that faux-jovial way he has when he’s nervous or trying to be someone he’s not. He thinks people want humour, lightness, not his crazy intensity.
And maybe they do. Maybe they do. Some people do, some of the time.
‘No,’ I say, even though I can feel my heart fluttering against its cage.
I don’t know why it’s doing that. There weren’t any heartbroken arguments, no awkward goodbyes. We jiggled the puzzle around – all four of us, even Sean.
In the morning, Ryan had just said to me: You going with him, then?
And I had replied: Sure.
And then all of our things in swapped-around cars, Kay giggling: This is crazy! This is crazy! I love it!
What’s in all of that to make me nervous? I’ve always wondered if Sean felt odd about leaving Kay just like that, but even the thought of him secretly continuing to love her all this time doesn’t make me nervous. I don’t think he did, anyhow. He told me once that he had never felt the need to say it to her, and if you don’t say it …
Ryan used to say it all the time. It never lost its meaning, either, which I guess is pretty odd.
When I see him at our usual camping spot on the hill, I think about him saying: You really like Sean, huh? You like that whole weird repressed scientist schtick he’s got going on. Yeah, I can see it in your eyes. I can see it when you look at me.
And I had said: no, no. No, never when I look at you.
Just as we pulled into the campsite, where Sean and Kay were waiting.
* * *
He’s almost the same. Wearing the same clothes – goofy T-shirt, smart trousers, hair at odd angles, unshaven.
Kay’s not the same. She’s all creased up and pissed as hell, and the first words he says to me are: I cracked wise. And then he shrugs – yeah, that’s Ryan. He’ll say something and offend the shit out of someone and then shrug.
Only later, I think at her. Later, he’ll come to you with hot chocolate or a Kinder egg or something else suitably ridiculous, and tell you how much he didn’t mean it.
It’s just the way he is. It’s a defence mechanism, a shield for his tender insides. A test, to see if you honestly and really do love him and can put up with his craziness.
But she doesn’t stop being pissed all through putting up the tent and all through dinner, and he doesn’t bring her a present. Maybe that was just for me. Something completely different to how he acts with any other person, just for me.
I bet with other people he never said sorry.
* * *
I wake up in the middle of the night with Sean’s mouth pressed to the turn of my throat. I guess he’s come a long way since we started this whole thing, because that may just be his erection rutting against my thigh.
I smile at him through the darkness, and he looks at me all sweet and eager – so much more open now. Cheeky, even. A little more sure of himself, too. He even talks to me when we fuck, halting words that don’t quite reach sexy.
But they’re good just the same.
I let him tug my pyjama bottoms down, and climb over me. I’m already wet, of course, though he doesn’t seem surprised to find me so. Sometimes he is, as though he can’t imagine why I’ve been thinking about sex.
But I think he knows why I’ve been thinking about it now.
He gets on over me, even so. He slides into me, slow and easy. And I try to only watch him, I really do. I press my hands against his ass and work my hips up at his, chasing the syrupy pleasure until my tight nipples are fizzing with it and I’m so slippery that it trails down between my ass cheeks.
Though I know it’s not enough.
‘Talk to me,’ I say to him, but the words he manages are not enough either.
It’s a good thing, really, that Ryan’s there to provide them for him.
‘All this time,’ he says. ‘And you never told him how hard you like it?’
I glance across at him and he’s just lying there, head on his pillow, expression soft and innocent. He’s a little amused, I think, though not cruelly so.
‘Go on,’ he says to Sean. ‘Give it to her hard. Really fuck her – she loves getting fucked.’
I bite my lip and try to turn away from him. I try to pretend that Sean jolts hard against me because he wants to, and not because Ryan has put something in the suggestion box. But he has, and oh there’s plenty more where that came from.
‘You know what else she likes? When you gasp for her, nice and high. As though her pussy is the sweetest, hottest, wettest bliss you’ve ever felt around your cock. As though she caught you j-u-ust right, and now you’re thinking of every boring thing you can to hold off that almighty orgasm.’
I can’t stop looking at him. I don’t think Sean can stop himself, either.
‘And you’re the authority,’ he says, in his best man-of-science voice, but Ryan seems unfazed. He doesn’t even look away from me to meet what I’m sure is Sean’s accusatory stare.
‘No, not the authority. It’d take years and years to puzzle someone like Tia out. But I’ll give you one more free tip.’ He leans in close, so close that he almost puts Sean off his stride. ‘If you get
