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“Aren’t you going to have one?”
“Nah, I’m in training,” I said, and I wanted to watch her uninterrupted. “No bad stuff for me until the triathlon.”
“When is it?”
“Four weeks tomorrow, not a hell of a lot of time to get into shape,” I said.
She looked me up and down, a slow gaze. My cock was hard once again.
“You look fit to me,” she said and stuffed the last of her ice cream cone in her mouth.
We had found a shady spot on a bench, half way along the pier. I could have danced on the spot at her comment. First, she thought I was handsome, and now she thinks I’m fit. When I looked back at her, she had to hand clamped to her mouth.
“I’m sorry, I speak before I think, I’m completely inappropriate to say you look fit. It won’t happen again,” Adaline said and stuffed half a doughnut in her mouth. She had to bend the edge to get it all in. She looked like a chipmunk trying to chew. I couldn’t help but laugh, which caused her to laugh, then splutter and then cough. She hurried to the railing on the pier, hung on while she chewed desperately on the doughnut. I rubbed her back while she recovered.
“Are you feeling better?”
“Yeah,” she said giving me a sideways glance. “I have zero dignity or class. Good job I’m not going to that ball. That was a lot of sugar in a short space of time.”
“Why aren’t you going to the ball? You have class and sophistication, so that can’t be the reason you’re not going.”
“I don’t like crowds or speaking to people,” she said and dumped the remaining doughnut in the bin. She strolled away to walk off the pier, I jogged to catch her up. I wanted to know why she wasn’t going. Her reason was enough for me, but I sensed there was more to it.
“I don’t like crowds either, I never know what to say to people, small talk doesn’t come naturally,” I said as we made our way through the crowded pavements to the Pavilion Gardens.
She was quiet while we waited at the traffic lights to cross. She drummed her fingers against her thigh as she waited. I wasn’t sure if she heard me or didn’t want to talk about it. I stood as close as I could when I spoke, bowing my head to her ear, but I wasn’t facing her. Scottie had been cryptic when he advised me how to talk to Adaline but wouldn’t elaborate on why I needed to. He was right, she only answered when I was talking into her ear or facing her. I touched her arm to get her attention. When she looked up, I pointed to the green man.
“I was miles away, sorry. You know how to talk to me, why can’t you do the same with strangers?”
“I get tongue-tied, I don’t know what to say. I’m curious and will ask whatever pops into my head, like the day I asked your age. It seemed an appropriate question to ask but impolite. I have no idea how to talk to women, they tend to scare the shit out of me.”
Adaline had encouraged me to sit on the grass on the grounds outside the Pavilion while we talked. She said she found it easier to concentrate on what I was saying. Another clue that pointed to why Scottie was right.
“I’m a woman, and you can talk to me,” she said and lay down on her back.
“I’m aware that you are a woman,” I said and looked at her breasts. Cursing, I looked up at the sky and thought of custard. “You’re different. For a start you say what you mean, there is no ambiguous language with you.”
She turned her head from basking in the sunshine to look straight at me. She looked straight through me, her eyes searching my face, for what, I don’t know.
“I don’t know how to play games, I can’t be sarcastic nor do I understand sarcasm. I’ll take people at their word, I hate that I can’t read between the lines or detect that people are taking advantage of me. It’s just easier that I don’t speak to people I don’t know. It’s stressful trying to work out what they mean.”
She was sincere in what she said, she hated talking to people as much as I did but for different reasons. There was still something she wasn’t telling me. She spoke to perfect strangers every day for her job. It made little sense.
“I think I’m destined to be a loner for the rest of my life. I’ll get a dog and talk to him. He can come for runs with me.” I said and lay down next to Adaline. My bicep touched her arm, and our fingers brushed together. She turned to on her side to face me.
“I’ll be an eccentric old woman with a dozen cats, barking obscenities at passersby,” she said, then chuckled. “We can be recluses living together.”
I smiled at that thought of us living together, I thought of it in a husband and wife viewpoint. I wonder if that passed through her complicated mind.
“As neighbours, of course,” she added and then flopped back down onto the grass.
Damn, why did she have to clarify her point and burst my bubble of fantasy? She was close enough to kiss, to hold, to whisper sweet nothings into her ear. I lacked any courage to make a move, and it was killing me.
Callum
Scottie and I had spent the last two weeks making my new flat habitable. I’d shown him how to paint, fix cupboard doors, fit wall to wall carpets, and replace the frame for the front door. Scottie was the most sarcastic person I had ever met, he was far too smart to be a carpenter, but it was what he wanted to learn. He soaked up the information I taught him, and I didn’t need to tell him anything twice. All I had ever seen him do was eat mars bars, drink a full-fat coke, and smoke twenty cigarettes a day. His lithe body was strong. He was fitter than he looked. What I enjoyed most about working with Scottie was that he didn’t ask questions.
I’d built my bed, one evening, two weeks ago while I waited for Adaline to come home to cook her dinner.
