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Great Writing - Home > Extended > Three accounts of events - part 6
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Extended Work
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| Three accounts of events - part 6 | |
| By teddy | ||||||
| 28 January 2007 | ||||||
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I don’t really know why I keep going with this story. I just probably find it hard to let the characters from the ‘Confessions’ go since they've become part of my life:-) Any opinions? Thanks. It’d been almost two weeks - thirteen days more precisely, I know because I counted every single one of them, involuntary of course - since I last saw Paul. That was the night he caught me in bed with George, literally speaking because we were lying in bed cuddled up to each other. It wasn’t exactly as if we were having some kind of fraudulent affair behind someone’s back since George is my boyfriend, but Paul didn’t like it. So I assumed that was the reason why he stopped coming to see me. ‘Well, at least he must've got the message by now,’ I thought, not that it made me feel any better of course. He suddenly reappeared on Thursday night, brightening up the room with a big smile. I didn’t ask where he’d been, neither did he tried to explain, so we left it like that. He kissed me and asked how I was, then he sat down next to me and gave me an expensively wrapped squared package. ‘This is for you,’ he smiled. I looked at it, another box of chocolates I thought, and already began to worry what I was going to do with it and the other thousand piled up underneath the bed. It felt a bit too heavy though, so I unwrapped it slowly only to find out that there weren’t any chocolates, it was a backgammon set. I glided my fingers over the high finish wooden surface and the sharp smell of lacquer didn’t tickle my nostrils alone. ‘Could you pass me my drink?’ I would ask, sitting crossed-legs on the floor. Paul is lying on his side with his head up, resting in his hand. A backgammon board separates the space between us. Paul moves and turns around to pick up the glass of wine from the marble hearth of the fireplace. It only takes him few seconds to do it, but that gives me enough time to quickly sweep my fingers over the dices and flip one of them over. ‘What are you doing?’ he stops my hand when I try to move the chips. ‘You didn’t have a four and a six.’ ‘Yes, I did.’ I would fiercely protest, putting on an offended face. ‘Don’t lie, I know you didn’t. It was a four and a three,’ he wouldn’t let go. ‘Perhaps you should consult an optician, Paul, I think you might need glasses.’ I push my cheek even further. ‘You sly little thing,’ he laughs scandalized, but also amused, by my craftiness. ‘Don’t worry, I’m keeping an eye on you from now on.’ I take a sip of wine to camouflage the victorious smile my mouth can’t help flourishing into. He takes the glass of my hands when I ask him to put it back few minutes later, and when he turns back to me, he doesn’t even bother to check the dices anymore. He leans over the board and grabs my legs by the ankles, dragging me towards him. ‘My turn now,’ he would smirk, ‘it’s revenge time.’ ‘Fancy a game?’ he asked me on Thursday night. ‘Yeah, why not?’ I agreed. I wasn’t feeling tired anymore. ‘Great,’ he said enthusiastically, opening the box and starting to arrange the chips on the board. ‘Let’s see if you’ve improved your skills,’ he glanced at me smiling, ‘at backgammon I mean, not at how fast you can turn the dices without someone noticing.’ So he remembered too. ‘Well, I always got away with it,’ I laughed. ‘Only because I let you.’ We started playing, but half way through the game my mood suddenly changed: there were too many memories awakening and I didn’t know how to deal with them, and that made me feel quite miserable. ‘I don’t want to play anymore,’ I told him. ‘What’s wrong sweetheart?’ he looked at me concerned. ‘Nothing, just don’t feel like it anymore.’ ‘Ok,’ he took my hands into his. ‘Do you want to talk?’ I wasn’t quite sure what we could possibly talk about to cheer me up, but at the time it sounded like a good idea. I was wrong though. We started with Vicky and he told me how sorry he was for not being there when we needed him. Then he said he never blamed me for what happened, it was mostly his fault because he never knew how to tell me how much I meant to him. ‘I was scared,’ he said, ‘I wasn’t sure if you felt the same way about me, you have to believe me. But I loved you, Adi, and I love you now just as much.’ If that was supposed to make me feel any better, well, it didn’t. I only realised once again what a selfish brainless cow I can be sometime and how I always end up hurting people around me. Even with Vicky, how could I possibly deny her up until now the basic right to know her father? What sort of mother was I? I rolled on one side and curled up, burying my face into the pillow my arms were desperately clutching onto. By the time Paul’s arm wrapped around me, I was already sobbing out loud. ‘What’s the matter sweetheart?’ his hand ruffled the thin strands of hair covering my ear. ‘Talk to me.’ He removed the pillow from my arms and gently forced me to turn towards him. He took my head into his hands and let his thumbs stroke away the tears bunching in the corners of my eyes before rolling down. Then he kissed me; first on the forehead, then on each eye. His lips lowered down until they touched mine, very lightly at first. I swear I tried to resist them but I couldn’t. Not many could I think. Paul’s kiss is like…like eating watermelon, fresh and juicy: once you dip your lips into the luscious red flesh then that’s it, it just oozes its way into your mouth and your thoughts start wandering around sunny summer picnics. And I, for one, absolutely adore watermelon. And picnics as well. Paul’s hands moved down and he put his arms around me, pulling me very close to him. I couldn’t remember the last time we were so close to each other, but it felt so familiarly good. Like returning home after a long journey abroad. An enjoyable one, but still only a journey. However, I knew that wasn’t my home anymore, so I tried to pull away. He didn’t let me, his arms clung around me tighter. ‘Don’t push me away, Adi,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘All I want to do is to hold you, please, just let me hold you.’ So I let him. When I tried to move again some time later, it must’ve been hours, I had to struggle to drag myself from underneath Paul’s leg bent over my behind and his arm stretched across my back. I could hear steps outside, on the corridor, and I looked at the clock on the bedside table. ‘Paul.’ I called him softly, touching his face. ‘Mmmm,’ he mumbled without opening his eyes. ‘It’s half past five in the morning. You have to get up.’ I couldn’t believe we fell asleep just like that. Anyone could’ve come in. And I wasn’t exactly keen on someone finding me sleeping next to a man who wasn’t the one officially known as paying the hospital bill, in other words my other half. And what would George have said if he knew? Paul rolled on his back and rested a hand on his forehead. ‘We must’ve fallen asleep,’ he said. Yeah, I figured that one out myself, Paul, thank you very much, I thought. But now you need to go before someone finds you here. If someone comes in, it would be quite hard to explain your presence in my room at five o’clock in the morning since the visiting hours don’t start until later. He got up and went to the bathroom. ‘Can I use your toothbrush?’ I heard him shouting. ‘Yes, of course you can.’ I said. I wouldn’t usually agree with that sort of intimacy, l mean like toothbrush sharing, but with Paul it doesn’t sound out of place. And it wasn’t the first time either; it wasn’t only once when half asleep I would pick up and use his, by mistake of course, in the en-suite bathroom we shared in his house in Chelsea. ‘But keep it down, will you?’ I mumbled, worrying that someone might hear him. ‘I’m afraid I won’t be able to see you tonight,’ he said when back in the room. ’I have few meetings in the afternoon and then we have to take some clients out for dinner tonight. But I’ll come to see you tomorrow morning if that’s ok.’ ‘I’m going home tomorrow,’ I said. He sat down on the bed, looking at me puzzled. ‘And why didn’t you tell me until now?’ ‘You weren’t here,’ I shrugged. ‘How about last night? You could’ve told me then.’ He didn’t sound happy. ‘I forgot,’ I found a pathetic excuse. ‘Adi,’ he suddenly grabbed my hands, I was standing near the bed, and forced me to sit down next to him, ‘what can I do to make you change your mind?’ ‘What, to stay in hospital longer?’ I joked. ‘No, to come home with me.’ He wasn’t smiling. ‘I’m sorry, Paul, I thought we talked about this already. It’s impossible.’ ‘No, it’s not. It doesn’t need to be like this,’ he disputed my decision again. ‘Can’t you see we are meant to be together? Why are you doing this to us? I can’t understand.’ I looked the other way to hide the tears trying to escape down my face. Am I turning into a weeping machine? ‘Cos it looks like I cry a lot these days. ‘Look at me, Adi,’ he put a hand on my face, turning it towards him. ‘Tell me why.’ ‘You can’t understand,’ I cried. ‘I can’t do this to him. I could never forgive myself if I hurt him, why can’t you see that?’ ‘So you prefer to hurt me instead, don’t you? You did it once before, I should be used to it by now, shouldn’t I?’ he said bitterly. I threw myself face down on the bed. ‘Please go now,’ I said to him. ‘Adi,’ he put a hand on my back, ‘don’t do this, I’m begging you.’ ‘Just go and leave me alone,’ I shouted at him. I didn’t really know what else to do. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t really see any other way out of all that mess. He left and for the next half an hour I sobbed and sobbed until the pillow underneath my head got completely soaked.
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