Page 82 of Darling
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It’s close to 4pm when the bedroom door opens and a ruffle-haired, yawning Christian emerges. He has a sheet wrapped around his waist. A cum-soaked sheet. It makes me feel a little feral, if I’m honest.
“Why did you let me sleep so long?” he asks in a rough voice.
“Figured you must have needed it.”
He practically collapses onto the couch. “But I wanted to spend the day with you.” I set down my brush and try not to melt as I turn to face him.
“There’s still like eight hours of it left, what did you want to do?” He hooks a hand under my arm and tugs me between his legs. Then he puts a hand to my cheek and runs his fingers through my hair.
“Touch you.” He leans in and kisses me on the mouth. “Kiss you.” I let out a thin breath as he buries his face in my neck. “Breathe you in,” he whispers, taking a deep breath.
I loop my hands up and around his neck, and he pulls me up and onto his lap, where we make out for a long time. Slow kisses that taste of sleep and warmth. His facial hair is rough against my face, longer than it was even this morning.
“Are you hungry?” I ask when we come up for air.
“A little.”
“Me too. I never ate lunch. I always forget when I’m working.”
He tuts disapprovingly.
“We could go out for dinner?” I say. “Or, I could go out to the store and grab something nice, cook for you.” He studies me amoment before brushing my hair back from my forehead.
“Why don’t we go to the store together, come home, and then we can cook something together?”
I get an image of us in the store, hand in hand, looking at which vegetables are bruised, selecting the best cut of meat or fish. Couple shit. It makes my stomach flutter.
“Yeah, ok. Sounds good.”
He doesn’t shave. He showered and dressed—jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt and a sort of sports jacket type of thing—but left his stubble right there on his face, and I’m getting more and more attached to it each minute that passes. It makes him look younger, more relaxed, like one of those hot youngish dads you’d see out at science parks and museums with their kids. It’s distracting. As is the way he keeps touching me as we stroll through Wegmans, aisle to aisle, looking for inspiration. We aren’t holding hands, but a few times he’s settled his hand on my lower back to steer me towards something that caught his eye, or settled both hands on my shoulders and leaned over me to look at something. He even presses a kiss to my head from this position over by the dried pasta. Has he lost his mind? In public? Yeah, sure, Sunday Times Stephen is just Stephen, but surely a photo of us together is still worth something to someone? It makes me think something happened in London to make him care less about this stuff? I wish he’d tell me so I can be as relaxed as he is. Instead, I’m a little edgy as we walk around being couple-y as fuck, but not enough to ask him to stop doing it.
“What about steak?” I suggest, pointing at a large slab of glistening red meat.
“I’m supposed to be cutting down on it.”
“Got it.” I nod. I don’t even know what I’m doing. I’m not a chef; I have about three meals I make myself on heavy rotation,and one of them is cereal. My veggie chilli for Theo and Am was a complete fluke, but I was at the toilet a lot that night afterwards, and I’m looking to keep that particular hole clear and clean if I can help it.
“I have an idea,” he says, lifting up a pack of little cubed pieces of what looks like ham. “Carbonara. I haven’t had that in a while.”
“That’s pasta, right?”
“Yep, though we need spaghetti.” We’d tossed some penne in the cart, so we turn and head back towards the dried goods aisle and switch it out for spaghetti. After loading the car—he’d paid for the groceries, whipping out a very shiny-looking AMEX card before I’d even opened my wallet—he opens the driver’s side for me, kissing me on the head gently as I get in.
I realise in the time it takes him to get around to the passenger side that this is what it would be like. If we were together, properly, a couple, it would be exactly like this. I mean, he’d be working a lot more and I’d likely spend a lot of time at home alone, but when he was off work we’d go to the store and plan meals together, we’d assign each other household tasks and leave each other little notes around the house like ‘remember light bulbs for the bathroom light’ by the front door and I want it so badly that it makes my chest ache.
He’s an outwardly straight member of the British government, and I’m, well, whatever I am, and the only way he and I get to be together is if he decides to leave his entire fucking life behind, and the chances of that happening are non-existent. So yeah, I’m never going to have this with him, so what is the actual fucking point in any of this? What am I doing?
You’re in love with him.
Oh, yeah. That.
“You okay?” he asks, waiting for me to turn on the engine.
“Sorry, trance. Yep, let’s go.”
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