I just about managed to wake Alex up when we arrived back at her hotel. ‘Can you please take me up to my room?’ she whispered. ‘I don’t want to fall over and make a scene.’ Given how much I’d already done, that didn’t seem much more of an imposition, so I led her up a flight of stairs and along a corridor until we arrived outside a door.
‘You’re sure this is yours?’ I said, and she nodded before sliding a card she’d pulled out of the inside of her mobile case into the slot. Thankfully, it turned green and opened.
She sighed and walked in, immediately kicking her shoes off and pretty much flinging herself onto the double bed. ‘Praise God for that,’ she said. ‘And thank you so much for getting me back safely.’
‘You’re welcome,’ I said. ‘Drink some water.’ And I turned to go.
‘No, really. Thank you.’ She turned on her side to look at me. ‘It’s not many men that would walk a woman up to her room and leave without trying it on. You’re a gentleman, I can tell.’
‘Alex,’ I said tightly. ‘Please, can we stop the “stranger and damsel in distress” act, please? I know that’s what you said you wished that’s what had happened, but—’
‘What’s your name?’ she spoke over me. ‘Actually, don’t tell me. I’d rather not know.’
‘Alex,’ I said warningly. ‘Seriously?’
‘I’m leaving tomorrow, and I won’t ever see you again.’ She got up slowly and started peeling off her dress.
I couldn’t not look. The now familiar sick loathing and excitement began. It was like watching porn. I didn’t particularly want to, but it was there, and once it had started…
She didn’t break eye contact, just reached behind her back and unhooked her bra, bent down and climbed out of her knickers, and waited.
* * *
Someone knocked on the door just after we’d finished. I sat up in alarm, but Alex put a hand on my chest.
‘Ignore it. They’ll go away.’
But whoever it was, didn’t – and knocked louder. Alex swore, and got to her feet, dragging the top sheet round her and leaving me with nothing on. I couldn’t see round the corner, but heard a whispered voice and Alex say: ‘I’m fine, honestly. Yeah, in the morning. OK. Night.’ Then the door closed, and she returned. ‘All sorted. I need a wee.’ She yawned, stepped out of the sheet and walked casually into the bathroom.
I took the opportunity to message Ruby that I was safe, and still at my mate’s. When Alex came back out, I went in, before coming back into the room and reaching for my clothes. The now typical comedown had already begun, and I was not feeling good about what we’d done.
‘You don’t have to go.’ Alex watched me. ‘It’s so late. Just stay and sleep for a bit.’
I shook my head.
‘We’ve never done that,’ she said, ‘just lie next to each other in bed. Please? Just this once?’
‘I can’t, Alex.’ I pulled on my boxers.
‘You don’t want to?’
I exhaled, feeling stressed and she held up a hand.
‘OK, OK – I’m sorry. Could you just do me a favour though? Wait ten minutes until the others have all gone back to their rooms and don’t see you coming out of here?’
‘You’re unbelievable. Were you even that pissed earlier, or was that part of the game too?’ I lay back on the bed suddenly, hands on my head. ‘Alex, I can’t do this any more. It’s fucking me up.’
She reached out and started tracing my tattoo sadly with a finger. ‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You keep saying that and then you start doing this sort of thing.’ I gestured at her stroking me. ‘It’s gone beyond sex now, I feel like I’m in some sort of weird non-relationship with you.’
‘I know,’ she said unhappily. ‘It really does have to stop. I meant it – this really is it.’
I sighed again, got off the bed and climbed in next to her. The air con was freezing my bollocks off. ‘I was so flattered when you turned up at the house that Monday. I couldn’t believe my luck. But this isn’t good for either of us, any more. Please.’ I was basically begging her, for the first time, to leave me alone. It can’t have been easy for her to hear. No one wants to be dumped.
She put a brave face on it. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Anything else that happened back at home after this would just feel like a cheap version anyway.’
‘Yes, it would,’ I agreed. ‘I’m glad you feel that way.’
She smiled at me and deliberately pulled the sheet down slightly. ‘We’re still here now though?’ She shrugged. ‘Go out on a high one last time? Ibiza 2017?’
That really was the last time. We haven’t had, nor ever will have, sex again.
I passed out afterwards though, exhausted, but also partly because we’d turned the aggressive air con off and the room quickly became sleepy and stuffy. I woke up to see sunlight coming through the curtains as my phone pinged with a text message.
Where are you??!! And don’t give me the “at your mates” shit. Are you still with the girl Bea saw you getting off with last night? Get your arse back here pronto. Dad thinks it’s funny. Mum going mental.
Girl? She must have only seen Alex from the back then.
On my way.
I should have just gone back after the first time. That was always our problem, we never knew when to stop.
Alex groaned, turned over and looked at me blearily. ‘Oh God. This wasn’t part of the plan.’
‘I know. I’m going now.’
There was a knock at the door, and Alex’s eyes widened.
‘Shit. Stay there.’ She got up and grabbed a towel from the bathroom, then quickly kicked our clothes under the bed. Especially, I noticed, mine.
I listened to her open the door, then heard a woman’s voice say loudly: ‘You got rid of him then?’
I don’t know what Alex said or did in response, but the door shut again and she came back in, looking really uncomfortable.
The crazy thing is, it was THAT comment which finally tipped me over the edge. I’d thought what we did was just between me and Alex. That no one else in the world knew. It didn’t make it right, but it felt somehow special and secret. We had a connection. I fell for her stupid ‘fate is pushing us together’ story. But some stranger whose face I didn’t even see had summed up the entire thing perfectly. Alex had no respect for me whatsoever. It made me feel dirty.
Used.
And ashamed.
It made me feel like shit.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Alex said. ‘My friend, she…’
I forced myself to smile. I was determined not to let her see how it had hurt me. ‘It’s OK.’
I dressed quietly and then I left. I didn’t touch her. I didn’t say goodbye.
I didn’t owe her anything.
12
Jonathan Day
We flew home on Sunday; Dad still teasing me and calling me a chip off the old block, Bea all puffy-eyed, and Lindsey’s lips pursed crossly like a cat’s bum. Mum didn’t hold back and gave me a comprehensive recap of effective alcohol and diabetes management, followed by a lecture on sleeping around, which boiled down to a bunch of Loose Women soundbites.
‘I did not bring you up to disrespect women, Jonathan. I don’t care that men can do that sort of thing without any feelings involved. A woman isn’t the same. There’s always an emotional cost when she has sex with a man that is not to be abused – and you’re not to take advantage of looking the way you do. That’s before we think of Cherry, who is a lovely girl and doesn’t deserve to be treated like this.’ She glared at me.
I said nothing as I swallowed that completely unfair assessment of me, and gross generalisation about men AND women. She couldn’t have been more wrong if she’d tried, and I felt angry that she’d tarred me with such a shitty brush. Mum, of all people. She knew I wasn’t like that. It really hurt. I wanted her to see how wide of the mark she was, but I didn’t know where to start and the more she went off on one about women’s rights, I began to wonder if perhaps what I’d done with Alex had made me into the kind of man she was talking about after all, and it WAS my fault. I could have said no. Yes, Alex and I had done a lot of stuff I now wasn’t comfortable with, but I wasn’t sure if I could honestly say it had happened every single time because I didn’t feel like I had a way out. Part of me had wanted it too, hadn’t I?
But mostly, I couldn’t stop thinking about what her friend had said.
You got rid of him then?