Control (21 page)

At which, Gabe actually giggled. Like he understood exactly why I was doing it, and found the whole thing hilarious – especially Andy’s angry cursing. And when he came inside me, juddering all over and digging red marks into my hips, he said those words again.

But it’s OK, this time, it’s OK because I actually said – I do too. I said I do too! I am as giddy as all hell and standing on some sort of precipice when we saunter back into the bedroom, but it’s OK. Because I really don’t think the drop is all that high, from up here.

‘Did you enjoy that?’ Andy says, in this sneery sort of voice. But I can hear the frustration underneath it – it’s raw and broken up, and he seems to have come very close to rutting himself against the mattress. And there are weird red lines all over his wrists, as though he’s tried to do some pretty spectacular contortions in order to either a) get free or b) jerk himself off.

On all counts he’s definitely failed, however, because I can see his stiff prick from here. It looks as angry as he is.

‘Aw, what’s the matter, honey? Don’t like waiting for it? You know – Gabe
loves
waiting for it. You’re just coming up short, I’m afraid.’

Gabe smiles with the whole of his mouth – though said smile falters just a little bit, when Andy snaps back, ‘I can wait. I’ve waited, haven’t I? I could have done something to fuck myself and didn’t, so fuck you.’

‘Language, Andy. Really – you’re upsetting my guy.’

I was going to go with boyfriend, but really. I’m a grown woman. Wait until he’s my husband, and then we’ll talk about epithets.

‘Just – please, OK? I get it, you’re torturing me. It’s awesome, but please – he can fuck my arse, you can stick whatever you like up there, just get me off. All right? Please.’

I step towards him, and run a hand over one still hand-printed arse cheek. He actually whimpers, in response.

‘You beg so prettily, Andy, really. Almost as prettily as Gabe.’

‘I can be as pretty as you fucking want. I’ll dress up in girl’s clothes and a wig, if that’s your thing. Please, Maddie.’

I glance at Gabe, who oddly still looks … what? Concerned? I have the urge to reassure him, but seeing to Andy’s wellbeing would kind of shatter the whole illusion. I mean – he knows that it’s an illusion, right? Andy can say the word any time he likes, and do himself until the top of his head comes off. He can fuck me through a wall – if it’s OK with Gabe.

But then, maybe that’s it. Gabe knows that things are different, now. He knows that I don’t want Andy to fuck me through a wall – that I want him, and him only.

‘What do you think I should do to him?’ I ask Gabe, but he doesn’t answer. He just watches, as I lean over Andy and wrap my hand tight around his straining cock. Andy pants
yes, yes, oh Maddie I love you you crazy bitch
, but again Gabe doesn’t say anything when I ask him if I should show Andy mercy.

However, I do so anyway. I give one rough little tug, and that’s all it takes. He comes, copiously, all over my sheets – just like Gabe did.

W
HEN I WAKE UP
, both boys are gone. I let Andy stay over – as shaken up and handsy as he was – but I told Gabe that it was going to be the last time. And found it kind of disturbing, how non-excited Gabe seemed at that idea.

It has occurred to me that perhaps Gabe truly does enjoy the whole ménage dynamic, and didn’t want it to end. And yet when I come to in an empty bed, I feel somewhat uneasy about the whole thing. His troubled expressions play on a loop in my head, and as I tug on a robe and try to convince myself that he’ll just be out there, eating breakfast, I keep going over possible explanations.

Like maybe he’s realised he’s actually gay. Or possibly he can’t function outside of weird humiliation games. Or some other daft thing that’s thrown him, that I can’t possibly even imagine.

Maybe I shouldn’t have said
I do, too
. It just sounds stupid, now, in my head. And even more so when there’s just Andy out there, sitting on my couch, eating cereal.

At least he’s wearing pants, I suppose.

‘Christ – you slept like the dead,’ is the first thing he says, and for some reason that sounds even more ominous than all the irrational thoughts that are currently flooding my brain. I resist the urge to ask him where Gabe is.

I mean, it’s a Sunday – but Gabe could still be downstairs. Or in the shower I don’t hear.

‘I thought you’d be gone,’ I say, though it doesn’t come out as dismissive as I intend. I appreciate Andy a whole lot more for the hug he gave me last night, and the little
that was awesome
. I think I appreciate any guy who’s willing to bend in many different ways.

‘Why would I be gone, now that I’ve got you all to myself?’

To his credit, he doesn’t look happy about this fact. He looks more disturbed, than anything else. But that’s OK, because I think that means we now have matching expressions.

‘I was going to come and wake you, but he seemed pretty stressed out. Thought I should just let him go and then, you know. You can be the hero, running after the damsel in distress.’

I knew something was wrong, I knew it. I think I actually stamp my foot at him.

‘
Don’t
call him a damsel, you shit!’

Andy’s immediate contriteness is not a comfort. I want him to be an arsehole again, so that I can fucking punish him.

‘What did you say to him? No – don’t stand up. Don’t. What did you say to him, tell me now.’

The level of discomfort on Andy’s face is also unwelcome. It doesn’t bode well, for all the rational, calming thoughts I’m trying to have, such as – he’ll just be a bit freaked out, like in the shower. He’ll have gone back to his apartment, and locked himself in some flagellation closet he’s got in there, somewhere, and I can just talk him down again.

As soon as I find out what exactly has been said, and what crazy ideas Gabe has jammed into that brain of his. Because God, I know that’s what he’s done. All the little things he’s been saying and saying – they’re trying to eat
my
brain, currently.

‘Look – I’ve got no idea what that guy’s going on about, most of the time! I didn’t mean to upset him, or anything, for Christ’s sake!’

Lord. Lord. Lord. Just don’t put your face in your hands, Madison, don’t put your face in your hands – because God knows you’ll never get it back out again.

‘I told him I had fun, he went all tense. That was it!’

‘You must have said something else, Andy – Jesus, all your pansy talk, I mean, what the fuck is wrong with you?’

Andy throws up his hands.

‘Come on, Maddie – you know I never meant it to fuck with him this much. But I swear – I never said anything like that to him. I said you were really fond of him, for fuck’s sake!’

I think my shoulders sag through the ground. Of course, I genuinely feel he meant well. I do. But
fond
? Like the way I feel about my elderly grandmother?

‘You seriously said that?’

‘I said you liked him more than me, too! But he didn’t seem to believe that. He didn’t believe it before, when we were talking, in the kitchen.’

It takes every effort in my body not to hurl myself at Andy and claw the answers out of him. Stopping myself requires thinking intensively about Gabe being there, in his apartment, just waiting for me to calm him down. That’s what’s going to happen. Everything is fine.

‘What. Exactly. Did you talk about. In the kitchen.’

Despite my best efforts, my voice comes out like a maniac’s. And I think Andy believes so too, judging by his terror-filled expression.

‘He said you liked me more, and he could prove it.’

Oh no. Oh no.

‘That I could do things his way, but he couldn’t do things my way.’

Oh my God, I’m too stupid to live. Why didn’t I just ask Gabe what they’d talked about? Though even as I’m thinking it, I’m guessing Gabe would have lied. He’s set me up in some sort of … I don’t even know. Some bizarre neurotic trap.

But I told him I loved him! I did!

Only no wait I didn’t. I said something stupid and cop out like
I do too
, and in the face of glaring me-loving-Andy evidence, that probably sounded like cracking icing sugar. Like something made of nothing.

‘And then we talked this morning and he said that I’d be better for you. That girls like guys more like me, you know – and I swear to God, Maddie, I tried to tell him. I mean, Jeez, even I can see you’re mad about him. It pisses me off, but hey – you win some, you lose some. I’m man enough to admit when I’ve lost.’

I don’t know why, but I break down crying when he says that last bit. Whatever anger I was storing up towards him gushes away and out of me, and then I’m just a mess. A mess that blubbers out
I love Gabe
, when I’ve never even properly said the words to him.

‘Oh. Oh,’ Andy says. ‘I’m sorry about all this, then, babe. Really am. I thought he kind of knew that he’d won, last night – swear to God. When you were out here fucking his brains out I wanted to deck him one.’

Is he trying to say stuff that makes me cry harder?

‘But this morning he was all … I dunno. And I told him he should let you make your own choices, but I think he felt you’d made it, you know?’

I don’t even flinch, when Andy gets up and steers me towards a chair. I even let him make me a cup of coffee, though I don’t drink it. People who’ve made total messes of things don’t deserve coffee.

‘You all right now?’ he asks, but I can’t answer that. Instead I just ask him if Gabe went back to his apartment – at which Andy doesn’t look as positive as I could have hoped. In fact, he looks downright grim.

‘Uh, I don’t think so.’

‘Please don’t tell me he’s flown to Brazil. I’m not an exotic billionaire – I can’t chase my pregnant mistress half way around the world.’

Andy laughs. Makes me wonder if he’s been reading some of my stock, lately.

‘No, no! I don’t think he’s taken the first flight out of here, or anything. He just said …’ Andy makes a sound best described as an awkward
eh
. ‘… that he was going away for a couple of days. And he kind of … handed his notice in.’

‘Save the best for last, huh, Andy?’

At least he looks like he’s swallowed something bitter, when he passes me a little white envelope – one of the ones I use, for the shop. I’d say
how dramatic
, but really it just seems woeful and sad. I’m probably going to start crying, again.

Of course I don’t open it expecting a fond farewell and some love hearts on the bottom. But even so it turns my stomach to see
Dear Ms Morris
at the top. He’s even put his address in there, and my address, and a
yours sincerely
at the bottom.

God, he’s such a fool.

‘Does it say where he’s decided to flit off to?’ Andy asks, and I just shake my head. I’m crying again, even though I know he’ll have to come back to his apartment at some point. He will, won’t he? And then I can just camp out on his doorstep and shake him until he knows he’s an idiot and say in a big outside voice, I love you, Gabe, I love you.

Even though I know it’s never that easy, in romance novels.

The first place I go is to his apartment. Of course it is. Though when I get there, I wish I hadn’t. When my guy follows his own insane reasoning, he follows it all the way and one hundred per cent. I’m starting to suspect that romance novels have poisoned his brain, because he’s only gone and given up his apartment.

An old lady even comes out and tells me, when she gets tired of me banging on the door and trying to peer through the peephole. He’s gone, she tells me – moved out yesterday. As though I’m actually trapped in some awful horror movie in which Gabe never existed and he was really the ghost of a nineteenth-century priest trapped on earth by his need for sex.

I ask the old lady from a horror novel how he could have possibly moved out in, like, hours, but she tells me no. He’s been moving out for the better part of two weeks. Not only that, but his landlord tells me he left no forwarding address.

And, I have to say, I hate Gabriel Kauffman in that moment. I hate me for not spelling things out for him, but I hate him for not asking, not telling, not being clearer. All the little cryptic hints he gave me – the frowns and the little
did she think Andy was your boyfriends
and all that bullshit.

And now disappearing like this!

Gah, I could just kill him. I’m going to kill him, when I find him. And I know where to start, too, so he needn’t think he can hide from me. Unless he’s hiding from me because he’s started seeing someone else – probably a man – in which he case he can go on hiding for ever.

Though I know that’s not true. I know, even though it makes it worse, somehow. I can hate him, when I just think of him as a cheating liar. But he didn’t really lie at all, and now I’m standing on the pavement outside what used to be his parents’ toy museum, trying to glean something of him from what is now a very upmarket jewellers.

It’s in a prime location, too. Suddenly I’m starting to see his lack of previous job experience with different eyes – because if he sold this place he’ll have made a pretty packet from it, no matter how rundown it was. There’s that car park near the Minster not far from it, and the centre of town only ten seconds away.

But all I can really think about is – I wish I’d talked to him about it, more. I wish I’d asked him what it was like, back when it had toys in the window and
Kauffman’s Clockworks
over the door.

Because that’s what it was called. It was a museum, but they sold things, too – little clockwork toys and wooden puppets, colourful things that delight children of all ages. And I know because I googled Kauffman, York, and all of this is what came up. They weren’t totally bonkers once, I guess.

And I hope they were kind enough to leave a forwarding address, with the man behind the counter of Naughton’s The Jewellers.

I’m still not sure what my plan is, as the taxi pulls up outside The Grove. That’s the name of his old home, his family’s home – The Grove! As though he truly did grow up trapped in some sort of bizarre fairytale like The Twits, and I really am going to find out soon that he was never real.

Maybe I should just put on an old wedding dress now, and sit inside his old house and rot with the rest of it, waiting for him to visit. That’s a perfectly sane plan, isn’t it?

None of this feels sane, when I’m standing by the frankly massive and completely decrepit gate, outside his house. And it
is
still his house. He didn’t sell it, like the toy museum – and I know because Mr Naughton was very kind, and told me that Gabe still visits, occasionally.

Is it OK if I feel unbearably sad, about that? I can just see him wandering around all the display cases, lingering over things shiny and new, lost in a world of faceless puppets and dolls that move.

Also: I’m really starting to creep myself out, now. And though the just-starting-to-push-into-summer-sunshine is pouring down, and the overgrown garden beyond looks lost in a haze of heat and green, it does nothing to ease that sense of creepiness.

I wonder if I’ll go in there, and never come back out again. I’ll probably end up lost, in the nineteenth century. But I push open the gate – which wails, ominously – and start up the gravelly, overgrown drive, anyway.

I think of Gabe’s comment about Grey Gardens again, as I go. Maybe his parents aren’t dead and I’m going to find them somewhere, dressed in their swimming costumes and carrying racoons.

However when I get up close, I can see the house is empty. The windows are boarded up, and most of it has been taken over by creeping plants of all kinds – in fact, I think I can see a tree, starting to poke out of the boards over one of the upper windows.

But it’s a massive and beautiful old thing. A real country house, grey-bricked and squat and sprawling, surrounded by so much grassy overgrown British countryside it’s unreal. And when I peer through the cracks in the boards, I can just about make out a kitchen with an Aga and all of that nonsense.

His childhood would have really been idyllic, if his parents weren’t insane. There’s even a huge old apple tree in what might be the back garden – it’s hard to tell, amidst all the vast grounds – and it has the remains of a rope swing, attached.

Bees drone lazily, through the overgrown grass and the ten feet tall dandelions. The grove of trees that lies at the bottom of an almost not there path whisper when the breeze hits them, and everything is still and summery and lovely, even with this film of dust all over everything.

I follow the path down because I can’t not, and there’s a little stream that dwindles off into nowhere. The water glistens beneath the shards of light that make it through the canopy of leaves, and I think of all the children that could have had wild Enid Blyton adventures here if their parents just. Weren’t. Crazy.

But they were and this is it, and oh my heart just aches for him. I hope you were happy with me, my Gabe, even if it was only for a little while. I hope I made you happy.

However, when I turn and he’s just standing there, and he asks me in this really surprised sort of voice why I’m crying, I just want to kill him all over again. I’m relieved to see him and he looks so good and not full of despair, but I just want to kill kill kill him for making me all ridiculous and dramatic like this.