Kept (14 page)

‘Rumi for a Chelsea Brew?’ she asks after listening to her
voicemail.

 
I nod. A Chelsea Brew
is my favourite cocktail and I know if we go to
Rumi
on the King’s Road, then there’s every chance we’ll end up at Crazy Larry’s
.
I could use a girly night of cheese,
sticky drinks and ridiculous Old Boy Pretenders before my big reunion with
Piers. It’ll reinforce I have the real deal with Old Boy Piers. I have the
dodgy sexual positions recollections to prove it.
 

‘Shall we then?’ She sticks out her arm.

I smile and grab it, but little do I know that a night in Larry’s
won’t be happening for me, let alone me making it to Rumi. Something completely
unexpected turns out to be on the cards…

‘Arielle,’ I hear as we’re about to hail a cab.
 

I turn around, stunned. I know that voice. And, true to the
voice, there he is. Noah Penrose.
Finally
.
Never before has my name sounded so sweet; never before has the timing of this
chance encounter seemed so dastardly.

He lifts a hand to me as I stand here, my breath rasping.
I’m in London for Piers, yet there’s Noah. I feel out-of-control already and
he’s metres away. I don’t want the distance between us to narrow.
 

Noah is the brother of Peter next door, the older Penrose
brother, but he’s more than just the boy next door. Noah is
him
, the one who rid me of my virginity,
in his parents’ back garden, in his old tree house to be precise. An experience
I was reminded painfully about for quite a while from my splintered bum cheeks.
Mortifying to explain to my closest friend back at school why she needed to
take the tweezers to my bum but her trauma was consoled with my new Chanel
lipstick, one pinched from Mum’s make-up bag.

‘Arielle.’ He shouts again, waving his hand, but my vision
is blurry.

All I can see are snapshots from the past. Him home from
university for his parents’ wedding anniversary celebrations, stood in his suit
looking like a man. Me, blushing, feeling like a child in comparison when he
gave me a wink and a hello. It didn’t stop with that one night when he found me
upset in their garden that night, hidden away.

In the pre-historic world before the widespread use of
mobile phones and the Internet, holidays were all we had and I was too smitten
to question what he was getting up to in term time, naïvely thinking he was
pining for me as much as I was for him. Really he was seeing Celine, also his
girl next door except she was a grown-up living with her housemates taking her
final uni exams whilst I was the girl next door living with her parents and
taking her GCSEs. He never explained why he dumped me, just went sailing off
into the Mediterranean sunset with her after their graduation. It was the same
summer I waited for my GCSE results in such a funk, and why I hate boats now.
The best and last time the two of us had together took place on the deck of his
family’s huge yacht. It wasn’t the only thing huge either, I recall.

I blink. It can’t be, it has to be the twisted contortions
of my mind playing tricks on me. Regardless, a rush of memories and sensations
flood in on me. This is the moment I’ve waited years for and now it’s possibly
here…

I blink again. Lydia is looking at me strangely, she’s
saying something, but she’s not making sense. Nothing makes sense because that
really is Noah Penrose stood about ten metres in front of me outside All Bar
One, smoking a cigarette.

Leicester Square is packed, full of tourists and the
deafening sound of screams from the Christmas funfair but I only see him. I’m
terrified,
especially
because he
looks even better than my last recollection; that thought causes a familiar
tingle to traitorously descend down my body. But he has to be married. Just has
to be.

Oh
. I’ve
never
had that thought before. To me
Noah and I are stuck in a time-warp, forever the age we were when he left –
sixteen and twenty-one respectively – which means he’s thirty-one now. Surely
no one
this
good-looking would still
be on the market? He’ll have been snapped up and settled down.

I should quickly decide how to play this. We’ve already been
staring at each other far too long. I should be cool and sophisticated because
the last time he saw me I was all snotty with red-raw eyes. But, should I even
go over? Should I just walk away with Lydia? If I walk away, would he catch me
up? I just don’t know. In previous fantasies I’ve always triumphantly swept
past a gutted Noah with gorgeous Piers in hand, causing Noah to spend the rest
of his days miserably contemplating the realisation that he lost me. But, Piers
is no longer in the equation. Piers kicked me out and even though I’m meeting
Piers in the morning,
that’s in the
morning
and this is
tonight...

I finally lift my hand in acknowledgment and sashay across.
He’s stomped out his cigarette so without saying one word to him, I reach in
his coat packet and light up a Marlboro, the brand he introduced me to. I take
a long meaningful drag through pouty, pursed lips; my eyes never leave his
once. Then, tilting my head to the right, I exhale the smoke into the night
sky. I then repeat the drag, but without exhaling.

Stepping forward, so we’re almost touching, I offer the
cigarette to his lips. I have no control of myself – it’s a gut reaction – and
I find this fascinating. He takes a drag silently, his lips catching on my
fingers. A thousand jolts whizz down my spine, but I remain calm even though my
insides tell a different story.

Simultaneously, we exhale. We lock eyes. He looks nervous. I
can tell he knows I can eat him alive.
Good
.

I drop the cigarette to the floor, extinguishing it with my
six-inch patent black
Manolo
and then, and only then,
do I lean in and kiss him on the cheek, aiming more for the corner of his
mouth. Kiss done, I stand back.

Our sexual tension is buzzing and there’s an evident
hostility mingled in with the tension. This could quite easily turn nasty; it
only makes it more thrilling.

‘Enjoy the rest of your evening, Noah,’ I drip at him,
oozing out all my sexiness in the words.

A man simpers to my left. I assume he must be one of Noah’s
friends who are all stood watching this exchange with rapture, like we’re
England versus Germany in the World Cup final in the crucial deciding penalty
moment.

‘You too, gents.’ I blow them a kiss.
  

Deliberately, I slowly turn around and strut over to where
Lydia is waiting. I make sure to wiggle my finest asset to its full alluring
glory. I’m on smutty auto pilot and I can’t help myself. This is not good. I
feel I’m slipping out of control – I want to be even wilder. I’ve barely
reached Lydia when Noah shouts my name again. This time his intonation suggests
so much more than before.

‘Looks like I’m going to be a while with
Noah
,’ I say, glowing from that familiar
in and out tingle.

‘You dog!’ She giggles. ‘That’s him? He’s gorgeous. I won’t
wait up!’ she cheekily adds.

I’m glad she’s not asked, “But what about Piers?” I know
that question aired out loud would stop me and snap me back to reality, but
seeing as she hasn’t I head back over to him desperately pushing away the voice
in my head. It’s like my body and mind are separated; my body is in control, yet
my mind is telling me not to, to walk away because I love Piers.
 

Before I can have any more thoughts, before he can open his
mouth to speak, I open it for him. With my tongue. Teasingly I break off the
kiss, a smile playing on my lips before this kiss can get any more interesting.
I need to say a few things to Noah Penrose first.

‘I thought this ship had sailed,’ I say pointedly, making a
reference to our last encounter.

He ruefully smiles. The years have improved him ten-fold.
Bugger. There goes my resistance well and truly.
 

‘I guess we
could
let it sail back into port, but I think it’ll need a good
servicing
, don’t you?’ I lustily add.

The man who simpered before spits out his mouthful of beer
at that one. I turn to him.

‘Oh, honey,’ I say in false tones of concern to the
sheepish-looking man, sounding extraordinarily like Samantha from
Sex and the City
. ‘No one likes a
spitter. You need to learn to swallow.’ I lick my lips lasciviously.

The man flees. No, I have no idea when I became such a
man-eater either. This is what I have turned into after one month living at my
parents, or maybe it’s the effect of Noah. I
will
end up turning tricks from my pent-up sexual tension if I stay
in the Forest much longer.

‘Arielle Lockley!’ He laughs filthily. ‘You dirty minx! What
have you become?’

‘Whatever you want me to have become,’ I growl, shivers
shooting up my spine.

His eyebrows soar. ‘Cab?’

‘Sure.’ I smile, pursing my lips together and ignoring my
doubtful thoughts. Better to embrace my tingles. ‘Cab, it is.’

He holds out his hand and I take it. Crap, what am I doing?

You have to feel sorry for cabbies. I’m on my back, my
legs wrapped around him, before the cabby can even ask us where we’re going to.
My lips are clamouring for Noah’s like he’s my sole provider of oxygen.

‘Wandsworth, mate,’ Noah rasps before diving back down
towards me.

I was freezing earlier but now I’m thankful I’m wearing a
skirt. I’m already tugging at Noah’s zip eager for some back-seat nookie. I’ve
never behaved so badly in a cab because Piers and I... Why is Piers creeping
into my head, especially at a time like this when Noah is so close at hand?
What am I thinking?

‘Bloody Wandsworth,’ I hear the cabby mutter over the low
drone of Kiss.

‘I’ll pay you double, mate,’ Noah pipes up, breaking his
lips away from mine. I want to grab his face back. ‘Especially if you ignore
what’s going on back here.’

The cabby turns up the radio in response. I don’t care if we
have an audience. I’m a bit of a voyeur, I must admit. Maybe I shouldn’t have
been too amazed by my parents’ sexploits then. It’s obviously genetic.

‘Now, where were we?’ Noah nuzzles my neck, but I can’t help
myself, and I burst into a fit of giggles.

It’s like being sixteen all over again seeing Noah, but with
the urges of a fully-fledged sexual women that I didn’t have back then.
Fighting them, I sit up and zip up his fly, pull down my skirt and remove
myself from his tangled limbs. I move to the jump seat so I can look at him.

He’s
gorgeous
.
Truly scrumptious. He’d always been cute, but now he’s a man. It’s so unfair
how men only seem to get better with age. After we’d first hooked up my tummy
flipped every time I saw him until the day he ended it, then it convulsed with
horror from the sheer trauma of it all, but now my flippy tummy is back. It
seems like each passing year we’ve spent apart has increased my want for him
tenfold because I realise I really want him like I’ve never wanted
anyone
else before. I want to live,
breathe and be with Noah Penrose – to show him how much I desire him which is
funny because since he cruelly dumped me, I haven’t thought him to be worth
much.
   

In a way it surprises me that his hair is dark chocolate
brown with eyes to match, just like before. Surely if everything has changed
between us he should have changed? Changed to reflect his cruelty? His face is
the same though, except for a fresh shaving cut between his lips and cheek. I
lean across and run my finger gently over it, remembering how I once ran my
fingers over every inch of his body. I want to know whether his birthmark still
looks kind of like Italy if you squint at it and whether we still fit together
like we used to. With a smile, I run my finger over his cut again. My finger
lingers by his mouth.

He grabs my wrist in response, pulling me back to him, but
he doesn’t let go. Instead he raises my wrist up to his nose and smells my
perfume, causing my skin to erupt into goose pimples. I’m squirming long before
he turns my wrist around to kiss the back of my hand.

A tiny voice in my head whispers that Piers used to do that,
too, that Piers is the one. Noah knew me as a teenager, but he doesn’t know me
now.

I ignore the voice. Don’t think about Piers. Think of Noah.
Live in the moment; the past is the part, remember. It needs to be left alone.

‘What was that for?’ I mutter as he rests my arm on his
solid thigh. I need him to talk, to overpower that rational voice.

He looks at me, but he doesn’t say anything at first.
Instead his stare sweeps over my face. It’s like I’ve never been looked at
before until this moment which, again, causes the little voice to re-emerge and
spoil the moment by muttering that I’m having delusions.
 

“Stop pretending like you’re the heroine in a Mills and Boon
novel,” it scolds me. “This is
Noah
Penrose
. Are you
stupid
?”

I think perhaps I am.

‘I want to see if it’s really you,’ he murmurs.

‘And is it me?’ I answer lightly, even though my heart is
beating heavily.

Definitely stupid.

‘It’s strange,’ he finally says, after what feels like forever,
or at least enough time for me to think rational thoughts and wonder if I could
successfully jump out of the cab at the next set of traffic lights or whether
that just happens in films and books.

‘I have no idea why I came out of the bar, but I knew I had
to and there you were, looking so beautiful that I couldn’t speak. I felt like
such an idiot for not telling you how I really felt about you all those years
ago. I’ve been so tormented by all this, Arielle.’

Wait. Hold up. Who talks like that? Does he think it’s
romantic
what he’s said? That we’re some
love-struck, ill-fated Romeo and Juliet of the 21
^st
century? Please.
He
left
me
for Celine. He never regretted his actions; he didn’t give a
shit about me. He dismissed me as a child which is why I acted like I did, to
prove I’m not the child he accused me of being. I had to prove that I’m mature
and sexy, that I too can be as blasé about sex as he once was.

He doesn’t know what torment is. Part of me had wanted to
run in the opposite direction and curl up in a tiny ball when I heard his voice
because, even now, the sound of his voice stings me from the last words he ever
said to me ten years ago. It stings like they were only said yesterday, those
angry words of his etched with venom, venom that burnt my heart and made me
question whether I’d ever be able to love someone else ever again.