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Jack nods quietly and he’s smiling now. Huguette continues, ‘He framed that sketch. Then hung it up in his restaurant!’ she shouts gleefully. ‘He would tell everyone it was a famous painting.’ She is practically shaking with mirth as she wipes tears of laughter from her eyes. ‘He was a good man, wasn’t he, Jack? We had such nice times together back then, our two families.’
‘I cringe every time I think about that painting hanging in the restaurant, all of the health and safety violations it was probably breaking,’ Jack says, covering his eyes. ‘But yeah, summers at the cottage were some of the best ever.’
Huguette pours our tea and we eat fresh scones with strawberry jam. Huguette recounts story after story with such fondness and neither one of us wants her to stop but eventually it’s time to go and we give each other big hugs before leaving.
As we walk back to the cottage Jack asks me, ‘Would you mind if we had a quiet night in, just the two of us? I’ll bring something back for us to eat and maybe we could just sit together and watch a movie?’
I nod in agreement. After all the traveling back and forth between Keswick and Ambleside, a night in sounds perfect. As much as I had enjoyed the food at the restaurants, I want to cherish what little time I have left with Jack on our countryside escape.
I had suspected that Jack was feeling rather drained after our afternoon at the B&B, reliving a lot of memories he hadn’t thought about in a long time. I know Huguette hadn’t meant to hurt Jack. In fact, I’m certain it was the opposite—from her point of view, speaking about those we’ve loved and lost is a tribute, a way to continually celebrate how special and meaningful they were and are. I am quite certain that isn’t something Jack is used to dealing with. He’d already admitted as much to me, that he did whatever he couldto not have todeal his emotions, preferring to situate himself in the present, rather than dredge up painful memories of the past.
And yet I wonder if there is something else niggling at him...
I wonder if he’s feeling a bit of what I’m feeling—that this lovely little getaway is coming to an end and neither one of us knows what the future holds. We had come here knowing we could be ourselves, that no one would recognise us. It’s a freedom we don’t enjoy back home in Castle Eden or at the university.
All I want is to stay wrapped in Jack’s arms all evening long, even if it means pretending that this is the most perfect moment in time and it’s never going to end. I would rather have truth and honesty for a moment rather than a lifetime of pretence.
And that’s exactly what we do that evening.
Jack goes out and returns with a takeaway, but despite the calm, he still looks distracted and agitated. We eat the food while it’s still warm and we watch a movie, just as he’d asked, the two of us snuggled together under a heavy blanket on the sofa.
But then he turns off the television and says, ‘Come,’ taking me by the hand and leading me up the stairs.
He takes me into the wet room that adjoins the master bedroom. It’s unlike any shower I’d ever seen before. It’s slate grey and huge, taking up the whole of the far wall. A glass screen runs from floor to ceiling, suspended only by two rods that connect the glass to the far wall. It isn’t enclosed but opens at each end, so that you can enter the shower from either direction. Lights are fitted into the ceiling above lending an atmospheric glow and the tiled flooring feels cool underneath my toes.
Jack turns on the shower and a deluge of water cascades from the huge rectangular, chrome shower head. He lets the shower warm up as he slowly and methodically peels off my layers of clothing, and then his own.
Everything about this feels so different. Jack is quiet and meticulous, disciplined even. We don’t speak. The warm water steams up the glass shower enclosure and it feels intimate in a way we’ve not experienced before. He doesn’t attack my mouth like I think he will. He doesn’t kiss me at all. Instead, he washes me. Standing underneath the waterfall, Jack starts with my hair, soaking it first and then massaging shampoo into my scalp. He takes his time, rubbing my scalp in firm, gentle circles and then repeating the whole process with the conditioner.
Next, he turns towards my body. He lathers up the soap on a sponge and carefully swipes it across my skin, soaping my body, again, taking his time. Taking care to be gentle. I’d never had anyone wash me before—I’d never felt this intimate with anyone. It feels strange at first to let someone, to let Jack, wash me in this way, but I close my eyes and enjoy the closeness of it because I feel like this is something he needs to do—heneedsto take care of me.
‘Are you alright?’ I ask him tenderly as he rinses the soap suds off me. ‘Is everything okay?’ I cup his face in my hands, the steady stream of water pouring down over our bare bodies and I trail my thumb across his cheekbones.
His eyes are intense when he finally speaks. ‘I don’t know where we go from here.’ His voice breaks me—it takes my heart into its grasp and squeezes and squeezes until I think it will shatter. ‘Leyna...’ he groans, like a man in pain. ‘I can’t... I can’t lose you.’
I pull him to me and cradle him, even though I’m so much smaller than he is. I know he needs the warmth, the connection. The strength of someone else. I think about how he’d probably had so much heaped on his shoulders, with the restaurants, with his family, and with his career at the university as well. It was so much for one person. ‘You are one man. You cannot be everywhere and doing everything all the time. Put it all out of your head for tonight. For tonight it’s just us.’
‘And then?’ he swallows. ‘And what of tomorrow? And the next day? And then next week, when I see you walking around the department and all I’ll want to do is hold you in my arms?’
‘We’ll figure it out, Jack.’ I say the words not knowing the answer myself. A part of me thinks, who cares if everyone knows? So what? What’s the worst that could happen? But I keep all those thoughts to myself for now. I don’t want to overburden him because he already looks overwhelmed. Jack needs me to be his rock tonight and I want to be there for him.
‘My turn,’ I say, grabbing the soap and sponge and repeating the whole process for him, toying with his hard, muscular edges, my hands lingering a bit longer than they need to as I study his shape and his contours.
I can’t hold off any longer—I don’t want to. I draw him down and, standing on tiptoe, I press my lips against his own. His strong arms reach behind me and pull me in towards him, our bodies pressed as close as can be except for the steady stream water.
Jack turns off the shower and we spend a gentle moment kissing and basking in the warm steam, still stood behind the foggy glass panel. With each kiss he takes me farther, deeper into the chasm where only we exist, where things like the university and nosy co-workers and unwritten rules about what is appropriate and what isn’t don’t have the oxygen to breathe—don’t exist.
We step out from behind the glass and Jack grabs a towel he’d placed on the heated chrome towel rail and proceeds to dry me. I try to do it myself, but he won’t let me. He won’t let me do anything. It’s like this is part of his coping mechanism—by caring for me, taking care of me, he can make the sweetness of this moment last even longer. I let him do what he needs to do and the tenderness of each movement, the softness with which he touches my skin, shatters my heart yet again into a million little pieces.
He takes my hand and leads me to the bedroom. We stretch out on the bed and he props himself up on one arm, leaning over me. ‘I know you said to put it out of my mind, but I can’t stop thinking about where all of this goes. I don’t know what we’re going to do.’
I grasp his face firmly. ‘We’ll figure it out, alright? Alright?’ I say it over and over until he finally nods in understanding.
He starts kissing my neck and by then the time for talking is clearly over. Any doubts we may have had are replaced with a hunger both of us are eager to assuage.
He rolls and presses the sensitive peaks of my nipples until they are puckered and tight and I gasp when I feel his hot, wet mouth close in. But I am not in the mood for something long and drawn out. Jack has moved lower. He strokes me, fingers sliding up and down my slick opening and it feels so good but tonight, I just want to be one with him, I want him to bury himself deep inside of me.
As though he can read my thoughts, or perhaps he is feeling just as impatient and agonised as I feel, he quickly slips on a condom and slides into me, letting me adjust to his thickness. And that’s when he starts to thrust, plunging himself into me over and over, sinking himself so deep that I’m trembling and moaning. He strums my clit in perfect timing with each drive of his cock and I’m so close to coming. He turns me on so much that it takes me no time with this man, like he knows exactly what to do to send me over the edge.
