Just the Way You Are (22 page)

‘Oh yeah, I’m an expert, me.’

I could feel him smile as we kissed; it was a wonderful feeling. Being close to me was making him smile, what could be better than that?

Max set me down and began planting sweet little kisses along my bare collarbone. He caressed my hips and breasts with a tenderness I’d never experienced before. Most guys just pawed insistently with no consideration for the woman whatsoever. I’d even had a boyfriend who’d grabbed my breasts and yelled ‘honk, honk!’ Max was a different beast though; he knew what he was doing. He was sensuous but sensitive, striking the right balance between being sexual and tender.

‘So this is what I’ve been missing all these years,’ I said with a grin.

‘Pretty much. We’ve got plenty of catching up to do, you and me.’

Max unbuttoned my jeans and pulled them off, taking my underwear with them. He bit his lip again and raised his eyebrows at me. It was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.

‘Let’s start now, shall we?’

He got onto his knees and put his hands on my hips to steady my lower half. Within seconds, I could feel his tongue moving rhythmically in all the right places and waves of intense pleasure washed over me. My knees and thighs trembled; I had to grab hold of his hair to stop myself crying out. I’d never felt pleasure like this before. The only experience I’d ever had of this was when I was seventeen; my boyfriend at the time decided to go down on me and ended up doing a very bad job thanks to chronic lizard tongue.

Not Max though. He went back and forth, up and down then mixed it up by swirling his tongue in delicious concentric circles. I wanted this moment to be strung out forever; it was far too amazing to end. He moved his tongue away and began kissing my thighs then my hips, moving up my stomach then to my breasts then settled at my neck. As he slowly kissed it, his hands wandered everywhere as if they wanted to take every inch of me in. I felt two of his fingers slip inside me and arched my back with pleasure.

‘Good?’ he whispered as his lips made their way to mine.

All I could do was nod and moan. Max was all about me and it was wonderful. He kissed me slowly and softly then pulled his head back.

‘What are you doing?!’ I asked.

‘Relax,’ he whispered.

He took my hands in his and guided them down to his jeans. I unbuttoned them and hauled them off with a surprising urgency.

‘Bedroom?’

‘Bedroom.’

***

Max and I had sex four times before the sun rose over Manchester on a crisp December morning. It was the best sex I’d ever had, so amazing that I felt on the knife-edge of sanity, like I’d go mad if he stopped. It was animalistic, primal but sensual and beautiful. It wasn’t just straightforward stuffing body parts into one another; I felt like Max was giving me a part of his soul.

After doing it in the bed, we then moved to the bathroom, the kitchen and finally the living room. Once we were tired out, we fell asleep on the rug and used the multi-coloured throw as a duvet. Pale yellow light from the wintry sun spilled in through the living room window but we didn’t care. Light, colour and sound didn’t exist to us; we were far too wrapped up in each other.

I woke up with his arm draped lazily around my shoulder and my face stuck to his skin. Gently, I peeled myself away and grabbed the throw from the other couch to wrap around myself. There was a chill in the air and I decided some strong coffee was in order. I walked through the archway to the kitchen and saw all the canisters we’d knocked over the night before. It brought a smile to my face seeing all the sugar and teabags scattered everywhere. Luckily, we’d left the coffee canister alone. I scooped up some sugar from the worktop and floor and put it back in its proper place then did the same with the teabags. I put the kettle on to boil and prepared two cups. Max would probably complain it wasn’t like his fancy percolated stuff just to wind me up.

I craned my neck round the archway and watched him sleep. He was quietly snoring and drooling a bit but he looked adorable. As I looked at him, I felt a sense of completeness, like I was in the right place at the right time. Maybe it had always been meant to be me and Max but we just hadn’t realised it.

The kettle came to boil and I poured us two cups of steaming hot coffee. As I went to take Max’s through to him, something in the hall caught my eye. Something was poking out of his hoodie’s inside pocket. I put the cups on the counter and went to see what it was; it could be important after all and he might not realise he had it. I got closer and saw that it was an envelope. Probably something work-related like plans for a new menu or something.

Nothing could have prepared me for the shock of what I found. On the front of the envelope was the loopy, slanting penmanship I knew as Mr Writer’s. It was graceful and elegant, unlike Max’s usual chicken scratch that was barely legible.

Oh. My. Christ.

There was nothing else for it; I had to open the envelope. That would surely prove that I was overreacting and that this was all just a giant coincidence blown out of proportion. I ripped open the envelope and what I found was nothing short of heart-breaking.

Dear Ava,

This may be the hardest letter I’ve ever had to write but unfortunately it has to be done. I’m giving up, Ava; giving up on the letters, giving up on everything. I know how much this will hurt you
–
believe me, it’s killing me to write this
–
but as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. I’m not doing this because I don’t love you any more. If anything, I’m doing it because I love you too much and have done for far too long.

I’m stopping the letters to set you free. This is your chance to go off and have a life with someone who isn’t scared to be with you, who’ll hold your hand in public and whisper sweet things in your ear. You’ve got no idea how much I’d love to be that man Ava, but I’m not and I never will be. There will always be a part of me plagued with doubt that I’m not enough for you. Even if it’s a tiny microscopic part, it’s still always going to be there, gnawing away at me and making me draw away from you when I should be giving you everything. I’m so so sorry I’ve put you through this Ava. I promised you a fairy tale to remember and yet again, I’ve bottled it at the last minute. I know it’ll take a while, but I hope you can forgive me in time. This is the last letter I’m going to write to you. From now on, I’m going to stay away and let you live the life you deserve with no more interference from me. Starting now, I’ll content myself with my role as your best friend and put the idea that we could be anything more. I’ll be Max Burrows instead of this fictional pen-and-paper hero that I could never really be. I’m so incredibly sorry. I love you so much, you beautiful, amazing, perfect girl.

Love always

Max

My first reaction was to hold my stomach like someone had punched me. This wasn’t happening, it was all a weird, trippy dream that I’d wake up from in no time. Max wasn’t Mr Writer; that much I was sure of. It was impossible. He was my
best friend
, not the person who’d been writing to me for six years. I’d discounted him six years ago because, despite having kissed twice, it just didn’t make sense for Max to be the one sending me the letters. He wasn’t the type, it wouldn’t enter his head to pull off such a grand gesture. If he’d liked me he’d have just told me.

Wouldn’t he?

Yet, in my hands I was holding unequivocal evidence to say I was wrong. Not only that, it was a letter saying he was giving up on me, just like every other man in my life had. That hurt more than anything.

Tears ran down my face and I wiped them away before picking up my coffee. I needed time to think, to get my head around the fact my secret admirer had been under my nose the whole time and was nothing like I’d imagined him. A part of the letter came back to me:
I’m giving up, Ava: giving up on the letters, giving up on everything.
The one person I’d always thought would find a way to be with me, no matter how hard things were, had decided I wasn’t worth fighting for any more. However, Max hadn’t. He’d written the letter but he hadn’t posted it. Why? One thing pushed through the morass of thoughts swirling in my brain: I needed answers now.

Max slowly stirred and opened his eyes, taking time to adjust to the light. His nose wrinkled when he noticed I wasn’t there but his eyes lit up when they fell onto me.

‘Morning.’ His just-awake voice was beautifully gruff and his face was exhausted and slightly squished but still stunning.

‘Morning,’ I managed to reply. A cavalcade of emotions worked their way through me as I looked at him. I wasn’t sure if I was angrier that he’d lied to me for so long or that he’d been about to throw it all away.

He sat up and frowned. ‘Are you OK?’

‘I will be when you explain this!’

Desperate not to cry, I stormed over to him and handed him the letter I’d just read. He briefly scanned it then screwed his eyes shut with dismay. This put paid to any chance that the letter might not be his. As if there was any doubt, I thought, he’d signed his name at the bottom!

‘Ava, I can explain –’

‘Go on then. Why don’t you tell me all about how you let me go on a wild goose chase for an admirer you knew I wouldn’t find? How about explaining why you wrote two letters saying totally contradictory things? Help me out here Max because I’m bloody confused.’

I’d never felt so conflicted in my life. Not knowing how Max really felt for me was worse than any rejection I’d faced before. The fact he
might
love me seemed to hurt more than Dave or any of the others definitely not loving me.

‘OK, I know things don’t look great right now, but please just let me explain things to you. If you don’t like what I have to say, I’ll get lost,’ said Max.

Without answering him, I sat down on the sofa and waited to hear his speech. A little voice whispered
you can’t believe him now; not when he’s already lied so much.

‘Right, so I’m the one who’s been sending you the letters all this time; I gather you’ve worked that out?’

I nodded, fixing my gaze to the floor. That bombshell was taking a while to sink in.

‘Your name at the bottom was a bit of a giveaway!’ I let out a hollow laugh that seemed to jar with the atmosphere building in the room. This wasn’t a time for laughing, it was a time for answers.

‘OK, so how do you feel about that?’ he asked. ‘Did you ever think it was me or…?’ He trailed off and looked all round the room, before fixing me with a hopeful stare.

‘No, I never, ever thought it was you.’ My voice was small and meek and I sounded like I had a throat infection.

‘I see… OK, this might take a minute to explain then. I-I decided to write the letters after the second time we kissed. For the second time, I’d passed it off as a drunken mistake when it wasn’t. I wanted to kiss you Ava, I’d wanted to for years but I was just too shy to admit it. I didn’t think I was your type or that it might ruin our friendship. So, I decided to write to you instead; it took me another few years to actually work up the courage to write down how I felt about you. I only intended to do it a couple of times then tell you, but things got…complicated. I saw how happy the letters were making you and it gave me a connection to you I could never have hoped to have otherwise. Plus, I’d created this persona who was so much better than me. When I was writing to you, I could pretend I was the kind of guy who deserved you; the kind who didn’t drop out of uni after a year with no career plan, who was confident in his ability to make you happy and knew how to express his feelings for you. I could stop being me for a bit and at the time, that was exactly what I needed. It gave me a way to communicate with you, tell you how I felt and an escape route from being me.’

He looked up at me with pleading eyes to see if I was still listening. I wanted to say something, anything, but the words wouldn’t come.

Max continued. ‘I’ll always regret that day I was supposed to meet you but didn’t. I wanted to Ava, really I did, but when it came to the crunch I couldn’t. You were expecting to meet this amazing guy who’d been writing to you for the past couple of months and instead you were gonna get
me
. Quite a comedown right? So I left it, convinced myself I’d done the right thing and tried to forget how in love with you I was. I went for girls like Amira who didn’t demand that much from me: just banter and the occasional home-cooked meal, and for a while that was enough. It didn’t last long though because I couldn’t forget you. I knew I wanted something more than those girls, more than Amira and Gwen; I wanted
you
and I always have. Please believe me Ava, I never wanted to give up on you. That letter was written when everything was awkward between us; I-I thought I was doing you a favour by letting you go again, but I realised how wrong I was! I stuck that letter in my pocket and wrote the one telling you I wanted to meet you. Please Ava, I swear I was going to throw that other one away.’

I badly wanted to jump into his arms, forget what the final letter had said and create something beautiful with him but I couldn’t. So many things were holding me back; my faith in him and Mr Writer was shattered beyond repair. The words I’d just read would never really go away. I’d always know that it had at least crossed his mind to give up on me and that would make me wonder if he’d see it through one day.

‘What I don’t get is how you could write those amazing letters, make me feel special then bottle out of telling me it was you at the last minute. For ages afterwards, I thought Mr Writer had just stopped caring about me or thought I wasn’t worth writing to any more. You watched me go through all of that and you didn’t say anything. You could’ve stopped me feeling like I wasn’t enough for yet another person but you didn’t. Why? Was it embarrassment or self-preservation or something else?’

Huge wracking sobs burst out of me. I didn’t know it was possible to feel so sad and worthless. I hugged my knees to my chest and wept as hard as my quivering body would allow. Max tried to bring my face level with his but I wouldn’t let him. I couldn’t even bear to look at him. He put his hands on either side of my head and stared deep into my eyes.