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Why am I spazzing out? I don’t understand. I didn’t spazz out with Greg or Kevin or all of the other utterly meaningless throwaway men that I absolutely despised.

‘I’ll be here tomorrow morning,’ he says, and he sounds a little sad, this time. So I squeeze his arm, and then wish I hadn’t.

‘Bye, Madison.’

I want to say don’t go. Don’t go. Instead, let’s go upstairs and make love, because good Lord I desperately want to. I want to feel you inside me and have you over me and tell you while you’re doing both that I think you might be everything I’ve ever wanted, or similar.

So why is it that once he’s gone, I pick up the phone and dial Andy’s number?

H
E DOESN’T RUB IT
in, like I thought he would. No “knew you’d come running to me, eventually” or “I guess that simpering nancy just wasn’t doing it for you, huh?” It’s good that he doesn’t go with either, because then I’d have to tell him that Gabe is doing it for me so much that I’m all confused inside.

Though I don’t mind so much, when he orders me to take my clothes off. Or when he shoves a rough hand between my legs, and tells me how soaking wet I am. Just dripping, he says, so messy.

And then he surprises me, with, ‘Did he get you like this?’

Now they’ve both asked if the other one turns me on more. Maybe I should call it a draw.

‘You like it, don’t you? When he does what you ask him to.’

He’s probably bugged the shop. Or maybe he’s that guy with an eyepatch who came into the store the other day. He had a terrible Australian accent – I knew he was a faker.

‘Maybe you even like it a little bit more than what I’ve got to offer.’

Or it could be that he’s just a mind reader. He knew about my Big Book of Horny Fantasies, after all.

‘And what do you have to offer?’ I ask, but he’s way ahead of me.

‘Turn around and bend over,’ he says.

It’s very cold in the kitchen, without all my clothes on. I was going to take him upstairs, to my apartment, but why break with tradition? And then, of course, there’s the fact that I didn’t want to. Why should he get to come up, when Gabe hasn’t?

‘So has he fucked you?’ he asks, as I obey him. Over the table, just like before. He spreads my legs wider, with rough but not unkind hands.

‘I don’t want to talk.’

‘You mean, you don’t want to talk about Gabriel. That’s his name, right? Is it that he wouldn’t fuck you? He didn’t seem to want to, back when we had that bit of fun.’

‘Please just fuck me, Andy,’ I say, but he isn’t listening. My sex gapes wide and wet, desperate to be filled – but he ignores it.

‘God, I bet he’d feel good in your cunt. Don’t you think? Could you not bring yourself to order him to fuck you?’ He pauses, his big hands on my arse cheeks. Squeezing, just ever so slightly. ‘Shame. I’d love to see that one – you on top of him, ordering him to fuck up into your sweet wet pussy. Making him stop just as he’s about to come. I could rub you off as you’re doing it, make you go around his prick until he’s begging for mercy.’

‘Sadist.’

He laughs, and slaps my arse just once, lightly. It makes me shiver. And then he damns me with something that feels even better than the smack, ‘I’m only saying what you want to hear, babe.’

A finger trails down, between the cheeks of my arse. It doesn’t take much for him to glide into my cunt, as easy as you please. I gasp and twist, and he chuckles.

‘I don’t mind saying all the dirty things you’d like to do to someone else, if it turns you on this bad.’

He has two fingers in me, now. They feel
fabulous
.

‘Oh, that’s it, babe. Buck back into my hand. You like that, huh? Are you thinking about him, while I do it?’

‘No.’

‘Liar,’ he says, and then he slaps my arse. Hard. ‘Have you done this to him? Spanked him? Man, I bet you look hot doing something like that. Him bent over, crying, while you –’

I turn my head and spit at him, ‘I think I know
someone
who wants to spank Gabriel Kauffman.’

But he just looks as laid-back and unfazed as ever. As though I suggested he likes bicycles or teapots.

‘There’s nothing like a good submissive, Maddie,’ he says, finally – as though gender isn’t even in the equation.
And
he called me Maddie. What the fuck is going on?

‘Now spread your legs wider, so I can fuck you. I’ve been dying for that gorgeous cunt for weeks, while you dicked around with your sweetheart.’

I do as I’m told. There’s the snap and twang of rubber, and then he’s easing into me, good and slow. I moan, with something like relief.

‘Feel good? Just need things straightforward sometimes, huh?’

I wish he’d stop talking.

‘You feel good to me, babe. So hot and tight – it’s like you haven’t been fucked in a month.’

He puts his hand into the hollow of my lower back, and shoves into me, hard. Then again. And again. Soon he’s got a good strong rhythm going, and it’s hitting all the right places, and he’s grunting roughly, which I don’t mind at all.

But I don’t think it’s going to be enough.

‘Want me to rub your clit?’ he asks, and in answer I squeeze my eyes tight shut, so that I can think of nothing but his cock drilling into me. And the thumb he’s now slid between my cheeks, so that he can press it hard and dirty to my arsehole.

The table is shaking. It feels good, it does.

Though not good enough.

‘Oh baby,’ he says. ‘Oh Madison, God – I’m gonna come soon, sweetheart. I’m gonna –’

Which is where I cut him off, in a rushed and ill-thought out blurt, ‘Would you fuck him?’

The pounding I’m getting slows, then stills. After a moment he laughs.

‘You want me to talk a little man-on-man until you get off, is that it?’

I press my face into the table. He hasn’t quite got the point, but that’s OK. He doesn’t need to know that just picturing Gabe’s face sends a bolt of pleasure all the way through me.

‘No.’

‘I wouldn’t mind seeing the look on his face. Or yours.’

‘So you would. You’d fuck a man.’

Gabe, face down, over this table. And maybe it’s a man. Maybe it’s not. Who cares?

‘Are you asking me if I’m bisexual, Maddie?’

‘No – yes. I don’t know.’

‘Make up your mind, hon. I’m going to come pretty soon and then you’ll kick my arse out of here.’

He’s right. How did he get to be so right? Why does it now feel so much better, when he rocks slow and steady in and out of me? Gabe – Jesus. What have I done?

‘Are you?’

‘I don’t think so. I don’t want to fuck him. But man, I do love watching people do what they’re told.’

Me too
, I think, and I see Gabe spread out before me, hands tied above his head. Gabe bent over me, fucking me the way Andy is while I tell him – I don’t beg him – to do it harder. Do it harder, babe, yes. Give it to me, God give it to me I want you. I want you. Just you.

‘Oh that’s it babe, that’s it – come for me!’ Andy says, as his cock swells in my pussy. He calls out my name, but I don’t call his in response. Of course I don’t.

I call out Gabe’s, and then want to die.

I pretend to be ill. It’s tough doing it, but my dignity makes me. I just don’t think it could stand him seeing my puffy eyes and all the tears that keep leaking out of me. Especially when they’re tears of evil, evil guilt and other things I’ve never felt before.

I don’t want to feel guilt over fucking Andy. Me and Gabe – we’re not boyfriend and girlfriend.

So why do I feel like shit? Thanks a lot, latent conscience.

I leave a key over the door for him, and then wait in the kitchen like a cowardly fucking coward, for the sound of it in the lock. When I’m sure it’s him – that’s when I run back upstairs and make a burrow in my bedcovers and try to fool myself into thinking that I’m actually sick. I’m so sick I might have to stay in bed for ever. I’m so sick that I might have to leave the country for special medical treatment.

Hopefully from Dr Freud. Yeah, Madison, apparently you have ze intimacy issues. Probably ’cause you want to doink your Father, yez.

I have absolutely no idea why fake Freud ends the word yes with a Z.

At lunchtime, I think he comes up to my apartment door. I stand in the living room, duvet wrapped around me, certain I can hear him breathing through the wood. He has very intense breathing – it’s easily recognisable.

Also he says my name, so that’s a bit of a clue.

‘I brought you some soup,’ he says, and I hate him I
hate
him. What in God’s name would Freud with a Z have to say about Gabe? He’s nothing
like
my father. I know for a fact that he doesn’t want to slipper my arse for reading dirty books.

Though maybe
his arse
got slippered for reading dirty books.

My God, are we ever fucked up. He doesn’t even give in, after the dinnertime silence! He comes back at five, and tells me that he’s really worried. He’s so worried about me. He wants to come in, and make me dinner. He thinks I should eat – but Gabe, I really don’t think I can. It’s so hard to eat when you’re shaking all over like some pathetic idiot.

‘Madison,’ he says, after so long a silence I’m sure he’s gone. ‘I know you’re there. And probably not really sick, either.’

Sometimes I think Gabe is the naive one in this … thing. Then I realise I’m an idiot.

‘Whatever you’re thinking – whatever’s wrong … you don’t have to worry. I mean – I’m hardly likely to push you into anything you don’t want to be pushed into.’

Or maybe he
is
the idiot. Doesn’t he get it? That’s the entire fucking problem! He doesn’t push, but I’m goddamned going, anyway. I’m going worse than if he’d shoved me with a fucking steamroller.

‘Or maybe you really are sick and I’m just reading too much into things. In which case, I have something for that, too. Chicken soup, and …’ I hear him rummaging. ‘… some plain noodles, orange juice, cough drops, throat lozenges – I’ve covered all my bases.’

I have to open the door for throat lozenges. I can just picture him wandering around Sainsbury’s, ticking off a list of potentially helpful things for sick people.

‘Whoa. So sick that you need a duvet forcefield.’

‘When did you get such a smart mouth?’

‘When I realised you didn’t mind,’ he replies, and somehow that’s even worse than all the other stuff.

‘Just … come in.’

He peers around the corner, into the room beyond.

‘Are you sure? I don’t have to –’

‘Just come in, Gabe, come in now, quickly, before I go insane.’

He does so, but barely gets beyond the doorway.

‘You’re apartment’s really nice,’ he says, even though it isn’t. It’s a mess.

‘You’re not really thinking that, Gabe, OK. I know you’re not, because apparently I now know you well enough to make that assessment.’

His little curl of a smile almost hits rueful, and he shakes his head.

‘I don’t know you at all. This is an absolute disaster.’ He marvels, at my piles of paperwork and the three plates on the coffee table that I haven’t washed. ‘You keep the shop so
immaculate
.’

‘That’s work. This is … I don’t have to do anything, here.’

‘You know, I could just … run the hoover around in here, maybe –’

‘Sit down, Gabe. Sit down on my filthy couch.’

He eyes said couch with something like trepidation. It’s really not that dirty, however. It just has an old cardigan and maybe a pair of pants strewn over it. He asks me how I have any clothes left with none of this laundry done, but somehow I just end up blurting out, ‘When I was a girl, all my clothes had to be ordered in my wardrobe from light, to dark.’

Which doesn’t seem like a good idea. Especially not when he then says, ‘You don’t think I want to make you order your clothes from light to dark, do you?’

In all earnestness. He glances around, with those assessing eyes.

‘I mean – if you
wanted
it doing, I could do it for you …’

I sit down opposite him, on my dirty coffee table, when he takes a seat on my couch.

‘Like you did for your parents?’

He flicks his gaze back to me, expression somewhere close to bemused.

‘Why? Are you going to forget to take your tablets and then lock me in the attic?’

This talk is not going the way I wanted it to. My palms are sweating.

‘How Virginia Andrews of you.’

‘Have you ever seen that documentary –
Grey Gardens
?’

Lord have mercy. I wish I hadn’t.

‘They had a toy museum, once – my parents, I mean. It was an amazing thing … just so meticulous and beautiful. But then they –’ He pauses, and his gaze sinks down, down into some bizarre past. ‘I guess they never really wanted me. I always felt as though I was some alien, who had landed in their life.’

When he looks back up at me, he doesn’t seem sad, however. I don’t know why, because he really did when he first started working for me. He seemed like the saddest man alive.

‘But I’m not saying this so you’ll feel sorry for me, Maddie. I know what you’re probably going to say – and that’s OK. At least you seem pretty torn up over it.’

For some reason, him giving me this speech – probably the only one of its kind that I’ve ever felt was threaded with sincerity so sweet it hurts – makes me crumble like year-old cake. Maybe it’s the fact that I know without a shadow of a doubt that he’s not trying to twist my arm, that I blub like a girl.

I also realise something pretty profound: I wasn’t even
going
to break up with him. Though he’s probably going to break up with me, after I tell him this. We had something to break, too!

‘Are you – are you
crying
?’ He sounds so incredulous that I have to check my face, to see if I really am. ‘I thought you had been, but God it’s so weird to see. Why are you upset, Maddie – please don’t cry. It really wasn’t all that
Flowers In The Attic
and even if it was I’m so much better, now. Really – I feel so much stronger and happier and I can’t tell you how much you –’

‘Please don’t say anything else. Just don’t say anything else.’

‘Has it freaked you out? It usually freaks people out. Though I promise, I never slept with my sister.’

Now I’m a crying,
laughing
snotball. He hands me an immaculately clean and folded handkerchief.

‘I don’t even have a sister – though not that I would have committed incest, had I had one. I mean, I had this cousin who said some pretty dirty things to me, but that doesn’t seem quite as perverted.’

I laugh again, only this time, right in the middle of drying myself and giggling, he leans forward and rubs my arm. And then the side of my face – I have a strand of hair stuck wetly to my cheek, and he brushes it away. Though his hand doesn’t leave my cheek, once he’s finished the job. And I think it’s obvious that I don’t want it to go anywhere, too.