Page 80 of These Old Lies
Ned’s room was markedly nicer than the dormitory hotel where Charlie was staying. Whereas Charlie’s shared dorm had six narrow beds and chipped plaster, this room was all dark woods, soft carpets and cut glass. The large four-poster bed barely took up half the room, leaving the rest of the luxurious space empty except for two overstuffed chairs by the window.
“Might as well come in,” Charlie called over his shoulder without letting himself think, “there’s more than enough space for the both of us.”
Ned smiled at Charlie’s feeble joke, but his eyes were still all fierce focus. “What do you need?”
Charlie had always envied Ned’s clarity of understanding his own desires. Even now, after Charlie had chosen to take the key and accept what this room offered, he didn’t know what he wanted.
Charlie could ask anything of Ned, though. The thrilling power and the responsibility of it anchored him.
Ned opened the windows, and the stuffy summer heat began to dissipate from the room. The windows were large and opened like doors onto wrought-iron balconies. Cool evening air drifted into the room and, with it, the tune of a popular cafe song from a band playing in the Grand Place.
A flash of need coursed through Charlie, and for the first time in a very long time, he didn’t automatically push it away. Charlie extended his hand to Ned. “Dance with me?”
There was no hesitation from Ned as Charlie grasped his hand, soft and elegant. Charlie arranged them in a standard dancing frame, trying not to be too distracted by the closeness of Ned’s body.
Charlie took a step forward and Ned promptly stepped on Charlie’s toe. “Bugger.” His voice came out as a hoarse whisper. “Need to remember to do everything backwards.”
Ned still assumed Charlie would lead when they danced, even though Ned was the authority figure in pretty much every way that mattered to society: taller, older, richer, better educated. Yet he never took any role between them as presumed.
“Relax.” Charlie tried to give Ned a reassuring smile. God knew that Charlie’s body was vibrating with tension, scared to let himself have this moment, of how good it might feel.
They started with the foxtrot. It wasn’t Charlie’s favourite, but it was a dance he remembered Ned being comfortable with. They fell into the rhythm of the dance more easily than Charlie had anticipated, gliding around the furniture that Charlie hadn’t bothered to move.
Outside the song was finishing up, but Charlie didn’t want to stop. Before the band had even taken up their next piece, Charlie asked, “Have you ever danced the rumba?”
Ned furrowed his brow. “I don’t think so? I might have seen it at one of Sophie’s parties.”
“It’s a good time.” Charlie listened to the beats of the new song being played outside, trying to determine how to adapt the slow-quick-quick-slow steps of the rumba to it. “The key is in the sway of the hips. You step with the ball of your foot, so that one knee is always bent. The hips naturally follow.”
Ned’s frown transformed into a broad smile as Charlie stepped forward, angling his hips, and Ned’s body followed in kind. That was the joy of leading, bringing out the movement in your partner.
They both relaxed into the languid pace of the steps, the sway of their hips, close but never quite touching. Charlie knew it was cheeky to have picked this particular dance. The foxtrot was all about staying in your own space, each dancer maintaining their own form. The rumba was seductive. It hinted with a wink and the shift of a hip of what these movements could also lead to, without ever crossing the line into overt sex.
Charlie felt the muscles shifting under Ned’s back as he stepped forward and Ned stepped back. Charlie had learned Ned’s body before he got to know his mind. Knew how his cock felt before he had known how Ned drank his tea. Heard the sound of Ned moaning in pleasure before the sound of his laugh. Now, Ned’s heart set the beat for Charlie’s.
A tension flowed out of Charlie. How had Ned phrased it all those years ago? There was a mask that Charlie wore. One that he had worn every day for eight years and never once let slip, no matter how much it itched, no matter how tight and oppressive it got.
He missed Ned. His posh bastard. The love of his life.
He missed Ned’s dry sense of humour, the kind where you only realised the joke a few minutes later. The way he walked into a room and commanded the attention of everyone in it. How he could make Charlie feel like the king of the world with a coy glance. All his complexities and contradictions. The best warrior Charlie had ever known who was also the hottest thing on two legs in a silk robe. The poshest man possible while being one of the least pretentious. Even all the ways Ned was raw and damaged, and how he understood the ways Charlie was broken too. The way he had once ripped open Charlie’s world and yet had unshakeable faith in Charlie to keep up.
But Ned wasn’t Charlie’s lover anymore, and never would be again. Yet for this precious moment, Charlie pretended they were. When they had lived as they had wanted—disagreeing about art, going to underground nightclubs and reading by the river with the taste of strawberries in their mouths.
The music began to fade, and their dancing became slower and closer. They no longer followed the steps of any particular dance, but simply pressed together and swayed.
Charlie soaked up the chance to take in all of Ned’s little details. The new crow’s feet in the corners of his eyes, the flecks of colours in his irises, those long eyelashes that moved quickly whenever Ned was thinking. The dark, sharp stubble that was beginning to show.
Ned bit his lower lip. Charlie’s tongue licked his own lips, suddenly painfully dry. This was another dance, its steps ones Charlie hadn’t done in a long time, but as familiar as ever.
This was what taking the hotel key had been building to. What giving himself a night with Ned would mean. Except now that Charlie was on the edge of kissing Ned, of perhaps fucking, he found he couldn’t do it.
Charlie might be a largely inadequate husband, but he wouldn’t betray Betty.
Before Charlie needed to push Ned away, the taller man stepped out of his embrace. “My apologies, I hadn’t meant to get so carried away. I offered you protection to be yourself and…”
If Charlie thought he ached before, it was nothing to how he felt now,having lost the warmth and comfort of Ned’s arms. Ned took a deep, shaky breath before continuing, “You deserve better from me.”
Of course Ned would see it as all his fault. See Charlie’s mistakes as his own. He had always made Charlie out to be a much better man than he was. “I had no business taking that key.”