Page 41 of Love Unlocked

As his adrenaline calms he realises he’s an idiot. She’s not coming. And he should have walked her up the stairs. He’d let go of her hand and stepped inside the lift without her. As the doors were closing her expression had been one of surprise. Maybe she didn’t get the joke? They’d been in synch and sympatico from the moment they’d met that morning, maybe he’d got it wrong right at the last moment.

He opens the door and listens. The lift is facing his apartment, the stairs loop behind it. He sighs with disappointment; he let her go. He wanted to be with her. Now he feels the hollowness of longing, different to heartbreak, different to rejection. Being with her this evening, as they’d walked and talked in the cold night for hours, had been the warmest he’d felt in six weeks. Maybe even more if he’s being honest. Is this the way it’s going to be for him from now on? An awkward single desperate man who keeps reading it wrong?

Then all of a sudden, he hears the echoey sound of a deep sigh, a sniff and a ‘Fuck.’

He grins. He hears her footsteps on the stairs, and then she appears. Coat, hat and scarf off, in her hand and dragging on the floor by her side. Her face is shiny with sweat.

‘Jesus Christ,’ she says, out of breath. ‘I need to do more cardio.’

He laughs, filled with absolute glee that she is here, like he’s won a prize and he gets to bring it home.

‘If we’re going to do this I need a shower,’ she says, taking one more step and stopping.

‘Please do,’ he says and she laughs. ‘Do you need help?’

‘Yes.’ She pretends to cry. ‘My legs won’t move.’

He comes down the remaining few steps to her and pulls her coat, hat and scarf from her hand. He chucks them into the apartment and they land on the couch. He bends over and grabs her right arm with his left and drapes it over his shoulder. With his head under her armpit, which is decidedly sweaty but not unclean-smelling, he wraps his arm around the back of her right knee. She’s laughing the entire time.

‘I was actually hoping for something a little more romantic,’ she giggles, as he squats down and positions her body on his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, and lifts her off her feet.

‘I thought romance was for losers.’ He carries her into the apartment, kicks the door closed, makes his way to the bedroom and tosses her on the bed. She falls down laughing, he stands over her.

‘You’re not a loser,’ she says sweetly, looking up at him.

He uses his knee to knock her foot to the side so that her legs part wider. Then he gently kneels on the bed, his body between her legs. Their lips are inches apart, he has the opportunity to study her close up, she’s a beauty. The connection they have when they look at each other, he feels it. His heart is hammering so hard, he wonders if she’ll feel it. Her fingers hook on the waistband of his trousers, then run up his side, over to his chest to his give-away heart. Her fingers touch his skin and his head goes woozy.

‘I thought you weren’t going to come,’ he says gently, fingers running up her neck, to her face and through her hair.

‘I stopped on the tenth floor. And went back down three flights of stairs,’ she admits, sounding as drowsy as he feels.

‘I’m glad you changed your mind.’

‘Me too,’ she whispers, their lips so close. ‘So technically I walked nineteen flights of stairs to get to you.’

He smiles and kisses her.

14

MELODY

At eleven p.m. Melody is curled into Al’s naked body in bed. She’s not tired, it’s too early to sleep and certainly too early to go home. She needs to make it until at least four thirty a.m. so that she can be home by five. She can sleep by herself from five a.m., that’s the golden rule. Nothing bad happens after five.

Spooning and cuddling feels wrong, too intimate even after the most intimate act, but they’ve both resorted to it, her thigh over his leg, her head against his chest. Her stomach gurgles against his torso.

‘So this feels weird,’ Al says suddenly, good-naturedly, and Melody bursts out laughing with relief.

She moves away from him, wrapping the bedding tight to her body, even though he’d had his lips on most parts of her body not too long ago.

‘Don’t get me wrong, the sex was incredible,’ he says.

‘Agree. Ten out of ten,’ she says, leaning against the headboard. ‘It was definitely worth nineteen flights of stairs.’

‘Those thighs were tight,’ he says, and she laughs again. ‘But the canoodling thing isn’t working, I’m not feeling it, Melody, and I don’t think your heart’s in it.’

‘It’s not.’

‘It’s too early for you to go home, and it’s too early to go to sleep,’ he surmises.