The Chocolate Run (7 page)

‘Well, we . . .’ I began.

Greg dipped his head and kissed my neck.

I gasped as my body contracted with desire. ‘We shouldn’t really . . .’

He pushed down my dress and bra straps and kissed my shoulder.

‘Really, be doing this.’

He pushed away my hair from the other side, planted his juicy lips on that side of my neck. My body contracted again.

‘We should be talking . . .’

He pushed down the dress and bra straps of that side and planted his lips on that shoulder. ‘Talking about how, er, how, this will affect . . .’

Greg ran his tongue along my collarbone and my knees became mush.

‘Affect, erm, affect Matt and Jen’s relationship.’

Greg’s tongue stopped. He stopped. With a sigh he straightened up. ‘To be honest, Amber, I don’t care how this will affect Matt and Jen’s relationship. I don’t care about Matt and Jen’s relationship, full stop. I care about you.’

‘Really?’ I said.

Astonishment flashed across his face. ‘Yeah, course. Why do you sound so surprised?’

I managed to stop ‘Because you’re a tart’ leaving my mouth and shrugged instead.

‘In the past three years you’ve become my best girl friend. You’ve listened to me, given me advice, taken care of me through some difficult times, even though I’ve done hardly anything for you in return. So, yes, I care about you.

‘Friday night, I was planning on telling you how I felt, then leaving you to decide what to do next. But when I was sat there, I couldn’t think of what to say. I’ve talked to you for over three years but I was struggling to find the right words, so I kissed you instead. And that led to . . . you know. When I woke up the next morning and you were gone, I panicked. I thought I’d screwed it up with you.’

‘And that’s not the alcohol talking?’ I asked.
The alcohol and the desire to get your leg over tonight.

‘Yes, it’s a bit to do with being pissed, but it’s also to do with never having chased a woman for eleven months before. I usually give up after two months. Three months if she’s really special.’

‘You’ve been after me for eleven months? Yeah, right,’ I scoffed.

Greg leant back a little, rocking gently on the heels of his brown suede shoes, folded his arms across his chest, amusement danced in his eyes. ‘You know, from anyone else, I’d think they were being coy, from you, I know you’re being serious.’

‘Oi, gitface, that sounds like an insult.’

‘There are only so many “I’m bored, can I come over?” text messages you can send a girl before she either thinks you fancy her or you’re stalking her.’

‘I thought you were being friendly,’ I replied. ‘We are friends.’

‘OK. What about the millions of times I’ve turned up at work to take you to lunch? Or invited myself over for dinner? Didn’t you say on Friday that I practically live here?’

‘I just thought . . .’ My voice faded. All right, when you knew, it was obvious. If a friend had been telling me about his behaviour, I would’ve said, ‘He fancies you!’ but it’s different when it’s you. Different when it’s me and Greg.

‘I practically had to send you an email to tell you I was going to kiss you.’

‘I don’t think like that,’ I offered lamely.

‘I know, and that’s one of the many reasons why I like you.’ He moved closer. ‘Amber, just to let you know, I’m going to kiss you. Right . . . about . . . now.’

In the morning light, I was compelled to cover myself up. I felt . . . naked. I was naked. But this was different naked. Sex was
naked
naked. Morning after was emotionally naked, bare and exposed.

Greg knew me, but now he knew more of me. He knew how I moved during sex; he knew what noises I made when I came; how my face contorted. He knew a lot more of me, and I wasn’t sure I liked that.

‘I take it you’re not going to work, either,’ Greg said.

‘Either?’ I replied.

‘I booked today off, I knew it’d be a write-off day.’

‘That was clever.’ That meant he was staying. Possibly all day. It wasn’t that I wanted him to go, I simply wasn’t sure I wanted him to stay, either. ‘I’ll have to wait until ten to call in.’

‘And after that?’ Greg’s peering through the gloom under the duvet tainted everything with expectation.

‘After that, what?’

‘Do you want me to leave?’

‘Why, do you want to leave?’

‘I could lie here naked with you all day.’

I’ll take that as a no, then.

It was too close under the duvet: stale sweat and alcohol fumes made the air rancid and sickly. I pushed away the duvet to let fresher air in but immediately cringed away from the light. Greg spooned up against me, his body curved around mine like a second skin and plump, Jelly Baby lips planted a kiss on my shoulder. ‘Of course, I could intersperse those naked lying about moments with bouts of intense rogering,’ Greg added.

I said nothing. That wasn’t the kind of thing you said stuff to unless you were well versed in the ritual of the flirt, which I wasn’t.

‘Do you know the best cure for a hangover?’ he ventured after a few minutes of non-flirty silence.

‘Don’t tell me, I know this one . . . could it possibly be intense bouts of rogering?’

‘Correct!’ Greg said.

His hand idly stroked my stomach. Greg. My friend. His hand was stroking my stomach.
And, oh, oh, he’s caressing me. The stroke’s turning into a caress. He’s pressing closer to me. He wants to have sex.

‘Are you OK?’ Greg asked, obviously sensing my body tense. ‘Do you want me to stop?’

‘Why would I want you to stop?’ I asked innocently.

‘Sure?’

‘Mmm-hmm,’ I squeaked.

‘I’ll get a condom.’ He climbed out of bed, disappeared to his clothes, which were still in the kitchen.

If I told him that in the wooden ‘jewellery’ box on my bedside table were twelve condoms that I bought on Sunday, he’d think I’d expected this to happen again. And I hadn’t. Not really. I simply wanted to be prepared. Friday night I didn’t have any condoms and the ones we’d used were Greg’s.

What are you doing?
I asked myself sternly.
Why are you going to have sex with Greg?
Again.

I really and truly had never thought of him in that way. If I had, I wouldn’t have let him see me with sleep in my eye, dribble on my face or uncombed hair as I had done since the first time he’d stayed over at my place. I didn’t think of him that way until he kissed me. And even then, it wasn’t because it was him who’d kissed me but because it was a man who’d kissed me and I’d been so celibate for so long that at that point I’d probably have leapt on any man if he’d made a move. I wasn’t sure if I felt that way about Greg now. I could be so indifferent to his maleness one minute, then gagging to rip his clothes off and use his body the next.

Take last night for example. In my kitchen (
in my kitchen!
) he wasn’t only going to kiss me, as it turned out. He was also going to lift my dress, tug down my knickers, lift me up to rest on the edge of the worktop so I was the right height. And I was going to respond by undoing his belt and trousers, ferociously kissing him back. We’d done it in a scary, frantic manner that was reminiscent of Michael Douglas and Glenn Close in
Fatal Attraction
.

We’d stood there for a long time afterwards, holding each other, kissing, brushing hair out of each other’s eyes, giggling at how we’d been hardly talking not fifteen minutes earlier and then we were ravishing each other. After the smirking and giggling, we’d stripped off and done it again on the kitchen floor. Madness. Couldn’t work out how I felt completely. I wasn’t into this. I liked the physical bit, but didn’t like the waking up afterwards and finding I was lying next to Greg part. Why? Because I didn’t fancy him? I must do to sleep with him. Or was it because he’s good at it? This was complicated. Confusing. Chaotic. All the things I’d become expert at avoiding in my life.

I worked hard to confine my neurosis to my work, to my viewing habits, to my inner mind. I’d heard this line on a TV programme that said the secret to creating a good relationship was ‘all about hiding the crazy’. And, for the most part, I was good at that, skilled at hiding the crazy. Not letting on how neurotic and insecure and dramatic I could be. Now I was slap bang in the middle of a place called Neurosis Central that made Leeds City Centre seem like a ghost town. There were so many different threads of emotion running through me and I couldn’t find one to follow from start to finish. Couldn’t seem to decipher how I felt completely.

I slapped my hand against my forehead, trying to knock sense into it.
Stop this
.
Stop it now
.

Greg reappeared at that moment, paused in the doorway, staring at me. Not because I was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen, but because I was trying to bash my head in. I stopped, lowered my hand as unsuspiciously as possible. Smiled at him in an innocent manner. My eyes ran over the length of his body: pale gold skin, practically hairless chest, his slight paunch, a crop of dark hair that started just below his abdomen, the most amazing male member.
Look at him
. Should I turn him away because I want to be internally neurotic? Hell, not even I’m that sensible.

‘What do you think about Matt and Jen moving in together?’ Greg asked a couple of hours later. I’d been out on a milk and paper run earlier. He in turn had to go out on a breakfast run because he’d needed a bacon sandwich and all I could offer towards it was the tomato ketchup.

‘I’m pleased, of course,’ I said, turning a page in the paper and a channel on the telly. ‘It’s what they want. Marriage won’t be far behind.’

‘You think?’ Greg replied.

The slight squeak in his voice stopped me flipping pages of the paper and made me concentrate on him. He was a human island in a sea of newspapers on my floor. ‘Why do you say that?’

Greg pushed his hand through his hair. ‘I’ve known Matt since forever, and the only thing he’s committed to for longer than three years is getting taller and even that stopped when he hit nineteen.’

‘You reckon Matt’s commitmentphobic?’

Greg nodded.

‘Hello there, Mr Pot, I really hope you’re not calling Mr Kettle black.’

‘I know I give the impression of being – ’ow you say? – a Casanova [no, actually, he gave me the impression of being a whore, but that’s between you, me and the garden post], but,’ he went serious, ‘I’ve had a long-term relationship. One that lasted nearly six years.’

NEWSFLASH! How come that had slipped through the net of things I knew about him? He was meant to be my best friend and now he was telling me this. That was like Jen suddenly telling me she’d been married before she came to college. Had to question him about it at some point.

‘Matt’s not had a settled relationship anywhere near that long.’

‘Maybe Jen’s The One.’ I thought about what I’d just said then laughed gaily. ‘What am I saying? Of course she’s The One. Because if he hurts her,
I’ll be separating him and those kneecaps of his
.’

Greg laughed. Realised I wasn’t joking and stopped. ‘The whole thing seems so sudden. She hardly knows the man.’

‘Three years is sudden? What’s really going on, Greg?’

‘Nothing, I guess. I suppose I’m having trouble adjusting to the idea of Matt not being there. I’ve lived with him nigh on twelve years.’

‘It’ll be reet,’ I said.

It must be hard for him, giving up his relationship with Matt. It was easier for me – Jen and I had stopped living together when she finished college. Her course was four years, so I’d temped and lived with her until she graduated. Then she’d moved in with a boyfriend for what turned out to be six months and, in that time, I moved back to London for nine months and lived with my parents. By the time I came back to Leeds Jen had bought her flat in Allerton, and a few months later I found my flat in Horsforth. With all of this, I had none of the separation anxiety Greg was going through. It was probably a good thing for me – I’d see more of Jen because she wouldn’t be spending time she could spend with me, with him. She’d have Matt at home. The same went for Greg and Matt. I explained that to him.

‘I suppose,’ he conceded. ‘And anyway, I might’ve met someone myself.’

You just couldn’t leave it, could you?
I thought.
You had to go and spoil it by bringing up the sex thing, didn’t you?
I focused on the paper in front of me. The harder I concentrated, the faster the newsprint crawled across the sheet, desperate not to be read.

‘Have I?’ Greg asked.

‘Have you what?’ I started playing with the soft, rubbery buttons on the remote control. At least they weren’t dancing in front of my eyes.

He snatched the remote out of my hand and flicked off the TV, then grabbed the newspaper from in front of me and slung it aside. When he’d finished ridding me of distractions, he sat cross-legged in front of me. ‘Have I met someone? As in someone I could start dating and then, hopefully, at some point call my girlfriend?’

I went to speak but he added, ‘And don’t you dare say, “I don’t know, have you?”’

I closed my mouth.

‘Amber, I know you’ve got half the men in Leeds after you b—’

‘Are you taking the piss?’ I cut in.

Greg frowned. ‘About what?’ he asked, mystified.

He was serious. He genuinely thought I was pursued by scores of men. Or he was the best actor on earth (and as we all discovered last night, that wasn’t the case).

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Carry on.’

‘We’re going to have to be grown-up about this. We’re going to have to decide if this is going somewhere now because we’re not casual acquaintances, we see each other all the time with Matt and Jen. We need to sort it out. What’s going on with us?’

Well I didn’t bloody know, did I?

I’d made the decision to be single and celibate eighteen months ago and had stuck to my decision so far. Did I really need this man, this Greg, to keep dragging me away from the path of righteousness? To keep luring me into bed (or kitchen floor) with the kind of sex I’d only imagined was possible? To keep weaving threads of confusion through my emotions?

‘I see,’ he was saying to my elongated silence. ‘And, in the words of the
Fast Show
, I’ll get my coat. Save you any further embarrassment.’