“I certainly do,” he said, holding my hands at my sides and trailing a line of kisses downwards from my mouth. Just as he reached my abdomen, my stomach rumbled and he laughed. “Okay, I give up,” he said, planting one final kiss on my tummy. “Does anyone deliver to here?” As he sat up, I did the same and tried to untangle the bird’s nest my hair had become.
“Yeah, I’ve got a pizza flyer here somewhere.” I put my dressing gown on and passed him the flyer. “Pick what you want and I’ll ring it through in a minute.” I escaped to the bathroom and didn’t need to look in the mirror to know I needed more than a quick freshen-up.
“It’ll be here in twenty minutes. I’m going to have a shower,” I said after ringing the pizza company. “Fancy joining me?” Jake didn’t need telling twice to follow me into the bathroom. After undoing my dressing gown, he slipped his hands around my waist and pulled me to him, clearly excited at the prospect of our first shower together. As his mouth descended to one of my breasts, I clung to the edge of the sink to stop myself falling.
“Let’s get in the shower. We haven’t got long,” I managed to say as the waves started to break in my blood.
“I don’t think I’ve got long, either,” Jake responded with a wink before opening the shower cubicle and turning on the water.
As I followed him in, I realised that all of those writers who include hot shower sex scenes had lied. A three-foot box which included two glass walls, a huge metal tap and water did not great sex make. After a couple of attempts to find a position that worked, we laughed and gave up.
“Will you take an I.O.U.?” Jake asked before kissing me on the end of my nose. “I don’t want to break something – and I don’t mean the shower!” He switched the water off, stepped out and picked up a towel. Leaning back in, he wrapped the towel around me and dried me off, caressing and stroking every inch of me, making me crave more of him. The door buzzer stopped things going any further and he raced to put on jeans and collect the pizza from downstairs, giving me a chance to put on some underwear and my dressing gown.
Once the pizza was finished, we undressed and climbed back into bed. I snuggled up to him, content in his arms.
“I’ve been thinking, about the future.” I tried really hard not to show the slight panic that his statement generated. After all, it was this same bed, in this same room, that had been the setting for our last fateful discussion about the future.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want to make plans that don’t involve you, but I also don’t want you to think I’m sat at home, expecting you to come home at the end of your degree and pick up where we left off.” I started to interrupt, to disagree, but he silenced me with a kiss. “Look, I can already see it with Flynn. His life is changing, going in a different direction to mine. And that’s okay. He’s got Cass, and hers is changing in the same way as his.” My stomach clenched, filled with the dread that he was going to end things between us once and for all, convinced our paths were diverging.
“So the way I see it, I’ve got to change my path so that it’s running alongside yours. Bill has been great, promising me more responsibility, but I want more. I want to be more. I’ve looked into it and there’s a garden design course I’m interested in. It’ll take longer, but I can do it part-time and still keep up with my work for Bill. If I can stick it out at home until you’re finished here, we can then decide on our future together. Grace and Josh will both be at uni or working by then so we can do whatever we want, wherever we want. I’m going to follow my heart. Follow you, wherever you want to take us: home, here, the other side of the world.” I was blown away by how much he’d thought about this and how committed he was to making our future a shared one.
He took my face in his hands. “These last few weeks have taught me so much, Myrtle. I can’t plan for a future with you in it; you are my future. I’m not living my life for you; I’m living my life because of you.” Tears rendering me unable to show him my response in words, I kissed him.
My love.
My life.
After spending most of Saturday in bed, we needed a break from the confines of my room. Keen to dress up for Jake for the first time in ages, I’d spent much more than yesterday’s allotted half hour getting ready; Jake hadn’t complained about the show and had struggled to keep his hands to himself. He had treated me to a blisteringly-hot kiss before we left the room, and promised me he would spend as much time getting me unready at the end of the night as I’d spent preparing for it
We started with a late meal at a casual Mexican restaurant. Sitting side by side in a booth, I struggled to stop myself touching him, a part of me still not quite believing he was there. With me. We both stuck to just one drink; enough to give a slight buzz, not enough to risk ruining the night.
“Where shall we go now?” I asked Jake whilst he paid the bill, even though he knew less about Brighton than I did. “I don’t want to go to Seventh Heaven without Mickey, and I don’t fancy the club on campus.”
“I don’t know. Can you recommend somewhere?” he asked the waiter.