Page 50 of When We Are Old

“I can’t imagine you being like that.”

He laughed, bending low and brushing his lips across my cheek. “Well, I need you right now.”

“In what way?” My voice tightened, with expectation and longing.

“All the ways known to man.”

“Hmm, in that case…”

Reality

Ronnie

“I don’t actually know where she is.” I glanced at the endlessly ticking clock on the kitchen wall. “It’s late, she should be home by now.”

Matthew’s lips pressed into the hollow above my collarbone, and then pushed another kiss a centimetre above it, followed by another. “Please don’t talk about your mother now.”

I arched my neck giving him full access to my skin. My back pressed into the work surface and I held in a groaned gasp as Matthew caught my thigh in a large hand and hiked it up, his fingers kneading the sensitive skin of my… what is that muscle?

“She could walk in at any moment.”

“Shh.” His lips silenced mine with a demanding and searing kiss.

“Hannah’s upstairs.”

“Upstairs.” He kissed along my cheek and then blew into my ear. I shivered at his words. “We are here.”

“Matthew.” I pushed a hand against his chest. “We can’t.”

Oh my, did I want to. His free hand drifted a delicate brush across my breast, his thumb rubbing a slight circular motion around my nipple. I whimpered a strangled mewling sound. “See.” His lips curved against mine. “I can be very convincing.”

I didn’t need convincing. He could whirl me around and push me over my mother's kitchen table and I’d happily take it… but then what if she walked in… what if Hannah came down…?

His kissing stopped my protest. Every slip and slide of his lips and tongue took away all my logical thought. I became the kiss, pressed against my mother’s cabinets.

I gasped into his mouth; little messages of desire wrapped into breaths of hot air. He let go of my leg and tugged at the edge of my thin jumper. “I’ve thought about this, so many times.” He held my gaze. “So many times you’d walk inside, and I’d imagine coming in with you. What it would feel like to do this here.”

Another kiss.

My legs wobbled together, my thighs hot under denim.

That band I hated wove around my chest. Closing my eyes, I fought it with everything I had. He shifted back, his gaze almost pressing on me. I could sense it despite my lack of sight.

“What are you thinking?” Cool air rushed against me as he moved away. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

I despised the way the words I wanted to say lodged themselves in my throat. He waited, while I found the will to open my eyes.

“Can I show you what I always dreamed off?” My heart raced but I melted at the expression on his face. His patience for me knew no bounds.

“Always.”

He stood still, not touching me while I quickly reconnected myself to my teenage self who used to walk in the door every night, disappointment running bitter and virile through her blood stream.

I met her, shook her hand and then I showed her the door.

I didn’t need to remember the tang of disappointment. Instead, I could take my fantasies and morph them into a reality that existed right now in the moment.

“It went like this.” My words shook, so stupid but blatantly obvious. I reached for his hand and then with my free one I lifted a finger to my lips and smiled. I towed him to the front door, opened it and then closed it, the fresh air of the night sky brushing over us with a delicate kiss.