Marian Keyes - Watermelon (25 page)

People from other tables were starting to glance interestedly at us, but Adam didn't notice and I didn't really think it would be terribly sensible to point this out, at least not while he was in his present mood.

"Don't you see how insulting it is?" he flung at me.

"No," I said, almost afraid to look at him.

"Well, it is!"

I didn't know what to say. I just sat there looking at him, his blue eyes boring into mine.

I suddenly became aware of just how close I was to him.

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Our faces were inches apart.

I could see the individual hairs of his stubble, the lightly tanned skin stretched tightly over his beautiful cheekbones, the evenness of his white teeth, the sexiness of his mouth...

He suddenly went very still.

All the anger and violence seemed to lift from him.

We sat there like statues, his hands on my shoulders. We stared at each other.

I was so aware of him, his strength, his vulnerability. There was tension between us, vibrating slightly in the stillness.

Then he pulled away from me. Exhausted and utterly, utterly weary, he sat with his arms hanging limply by his side.

"Adam," I ventured tentatively.

He didn't even look up at me.

He sat there with his head bent.

Giving me a view of his beautiful dark hair.

"Adam," I said again, and gingerly touched his arm.

He stiffened slightly but he didn't pull away.

"It's not you, it's me," I said awkwardly.

There was a pause.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

Well, at least I thought that's what he'd said. It was kind of hard to hear him because his voice was all muffled because he was practically resting his head on his chest and talking into his sweater.

"It's my problem," I said. I found it very hard to say.

He said something else.

"Er, sorry Adam, but I didn't quite catch that," I told him apologetically.

He lifted his head and looked up at me.

He looked bad-tempered but beautiful.

"I said, what's your problem?" he repeated, rather nastily.

Another thrill of fear ran through me.

I had to make this all right.

But it was very hard to talk to him when he was being so intimidating.

"It's because I'm insecure and suspicious," I said.

He said nothing, just sat there looking moodily at me.

"You haven't done anything wrong," I continued falteringly.

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He gave a grim little nod at that.

Of course, he might just have been readjusting his head's position on his neck.

But it was enough to encourage me to continue.

"I thought you'd left here because you didn't want to speak to me," I told him.

"I see," he said without any noticeable emotion.

I felt like giving him a little smack.

React, for God's sake!

Tell me I'm being ridiculous, tell me that you'd always want to see me.

He didn't.

Maybe he didn't appreciate being manipulated into complimenting me.

Fair enough.

Maybe it was time I stopped manipulating him.

Or anyone else, for that matter.

But sometimes it was as instinctive as breathing.

Not that I was proud of it or anything, mind.

I tried to explain to him.

"I thought that you wouldn't want to speak to me after I'd been so un- reasonable on the phone on Sunday night."

"You were unreasonable," he agreed.

"But I'm frightened," I said sadly.

"Of what?" he asked, not sounding quite as fierce.

"Of, of, of...everything really," I said. And to my horror my eyes filled up with tears.

I didn't do it on purpose, I swear I didn't.

I was as shocked by my unexpected ocular moistness as he was.

"Sorry," I sniffed. "I'm not doing this so that you'll be nice to me."

"Good," he said. "Because it won't work."

The heartless fucker, I thought briefly, but then banished the unworthy thought from my mind.

"I only respond to crying women if they're under the age of two," he continued, half smiling, as he touched Kate's face.

"Oh," I said. I made a valiant attempt at a laugh, even though I was still crying.

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"So what are you so frightened of that you have to be mean to me?" he asked. This time he almost sounded gentle.

"Oh, the usual," I said, trying to pull myself together.

"Like what?" he persisted.

"Caring for people and then losing them, making a fool of myself, being hurt, scaring people away, being too forward, being too aloof..." I rattled off. "Do you want me to go on? I could do this for hours."

"No, that's all right," he said. "But we're all scared of those things."

"Are we?" I asked, surprised.

"Of course," he assured me. "Why do you think you're so special? You haven't got a monopoly on feeling like that, you know. And anyway, how am I making you feel frightened?"

"Because I thought you were playing me off against Helen," I said.

"But I told you I wasn't," he said in exasperation. "And I told you that I could understand why you felt like that, even though I didn't like it."

"Anyway, why are you so touchy about it?" I asked him.

"Well, I just am," he said. He looked sad and thoughtful. I knew that he wasn't just thinking about me and Helen.

What had happened to him?

What kind of grief was he carrying?

I had to get to the bottom of this.

But first I had to sort out our current difficulties.

I plowed valiantly on.

"And after I spoke to you on Sunday night, I felt that I had seemed hys- terical and like I was overreacting and like I had scared you away and that you wouldn't call me anymore," I blurted out, and then watched him carefully from under my lashes to see how he reacted to this.

"Well..." he said slowly.

Oh, speed it up to God's sake, I thought frantically. My nerves can't stand it.

"I wasn't going to call you," he continued.

"Oh," I said.

So I had been right.

Ten for ten on my instincts.

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Minus several billion for my sense of well-being. I felt as if I'd been kicked in the stomach by a horse.

Actually that's not true, because I'd never been kicked in the stomach by a horse. Do you think that I'd be sitting here now talking to you if I'd been the lucky recipient of a kick in the stomach by a horse? The answer has got to be no.

But I felt the way I felt when I was about ten and I fell off a wall and landed belly-flop on my stomach on a lawn that had been baked hard by the summer sun and was as hard as concrete. There was that horrible feeling of shock and nausea as all the breath in my body was abruptly forced out.

That was the way I felt now.

"Not because I didn't want to call you," he continued, unaware of how much pain I was in. "But because I thought it would be best for you."

"How do you mean?" I squeaked, feeling infinitely better.

"Because you've been through too much lately. I didn't want to upset you in any way or add to your troubles."

The angel!

"You weren't upsetting me," I told him.

"But I obviously was," he said.

"But you weren't doing it on purpose," I protested.

"I know," he said. "Which is why I lost my temper earlier--sorry about that, by the way--but just being in contact with you seemed to cause you to be annoyed or upset or whatever."

Relief washed over me in waves.

"I'm sorry I was difficult," I told him. "But..."

And here I took a deep breath.

I was taking a bit of a risk.

Putting my feelings on the line.

"I'd rather see you than not see you," I finally managed to tell him.

"Really?" he said, sounding hopeful and excited and boyish.

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

"Do you trust me?"

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"Oh, Adam," I said, half laughing, half crying. "I said I wanted to see you. No one mentioned anything about trust."

"Okay," he said, laughing also (no sign of any tears). "But will you trust me when I say that I want to see you and not Helen?"

"Yes," I said solemnly. "I will."

"And if the cashier has a fight with someone over his change and has a fit and runs off so that I have to wait hours to pay for my coffee, you won't think that I've made a break out the back way?"

"No," I agreed. "I won't."

"So we're friends?" he asked oh-so-appealingly.

"Yes." I nodded in agreement. "We're friends."

Although my brain was saying to me, "Excuse me, excuse me, friends, did you say friends? I don't think mere friends behave in the way you want to with Adam. Laura is your friend and you don't rip the clothes off her back anytime you see her and correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that precisely what you want to do with Adam?"

"Shut up," I muttered at it.

"Sorry?" said Adam, looking at me in alarm, obviously thinking, "Oh God no, here she goes again."

"Nothing." I smiled at him. "Nothing at all."

"Well," he said. "Seeing as we've sorted out all this misunderstanding, when can I see you?"

"Oh, I don't really know," I said, going all shy and girlie on him.

"Are you doing anything on Sunday night?" he asked.

"I don't think so," I said, pretending to consider. Although my social diary stretched ahead of me as empty and as formless as the Gobi Desert.

"Well, can I cook you dinner?" he asked.

"Yes, that would be lovely," I said.

"Good," he said. "Jenny and Andy have gone away for the weekend so we'll have the place to ourselves."

"Oh," I said.

I was a woman of the world.

I knew very well that to go to a man's house, a man's house where all the other residents were absent, and submit to having a dinner cooked for oneself meant that it was more

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than pork chops and Black Forest g�teau that was being offered.

Great, I thought.

I couldn't believe my luck.

"Right, Adam, that sounds lovely."

And so we agreed on a time for Sunday night. He walked Kate and me to the car and home we drove.

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The preparations for Sunday.

Ingredients:

One neglected, rejected, dejected twenty-nine-year-old woman, who had recently given birth

A generous helping of guilt

A pinch of anticipation

A packet of insecurity about the shape of her body

A sprig of excitement (wild, if possible)

A spoonful of condensed deep despair

A minor stretch marks panic

Two black lace-topped stockings

One interesting pair of black underwear

One black bra, of the miraculous rather than just the plain wondrous variety

One bottle of red wine

One dress

One pair of shoes

Decoration:

Whore-red lipstick

Several layers of dark mascara

Directions:

Put the stockings, panties, and bra to one side, for use later.

Take the woman.

Add the guilt, anticipation, insecurity, excitement, despair and panic.

Mix thoroughly.

Leave to stew for a couple of days.

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In a medium-size bathroom, prepare the woman by shaving her legs, coloring her hair and painting her toenails.

About an hour before commencing, baste generously in expensive body lotion, turning frequently.

Add the stockings, the pair of interesting black undies and the miraculous black bra. Have a couple of practice runs at looking seductive by letting her hair fall over her face and looking up through her eyelashes.

Check that she can still gasp and arch her back and say sentences like, "Oh baby, that was wonderful" and "Oh God, don't stop" while keeping a straight face.

Commandeer a sister, preferably Anna, to look after the aforementioned child.

Add a generous helping of whore-red lipstick, several layers of black mascara, a short purple (it is, after all, the color of passion) dress, sexy black shoes with suede ankle straps and one bottle of red wine.

Always take care not to start swigging from the bottle of red before ar- riving at your destination.

As an optional extra, condoms in the purse are always a nice touch.

If it's not possible to procure them--for example, they may be out of season--you will have to make do with large amounts of self-restraint. Not always ideal, but it does work.

Serve on a bed with a good-looking man.

I followed the instructions to the letter. I was lucky enough to be able to procure condoms--courtesy of Laura--what a woman!

I was feeling pretty good.

I didn't even get upset when I discovered that thanks to my hair color (it's hair enhancer, darling; we don't need to color our hair, we just enhance its natural lights), all right then, thanks to my hair enhancer, my ears and my hair were now color-coordinated.

But I suppose if I had to have colored ears, I could have done a lot worse than a rich, glossy, shiny chestnut color. None of your Ebony Shadow or Plum Sugar for my ears. No sir!

At about seven-thirty on Sunday evening, I was prepared. About to go forth to sin, I kissed Kate good-night.

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As I was furtively making for the front door, my coat buttoned up prac- tically to the eyebrows in case Mum should spot me looking so floozylike, the phone rang.

"Claire, it's for you," shouted Helen.

Oh God!

But it was only Laura.

Calling to wish me luck and wanting to know if I had practiced putting on a condom with my teeth, as per her instructions.

"No, I didn't!" I told her.

I was dying to get off the phone and out of the house because I was ter- rified of being caught.

"Why not?" she demanded. "You can't just expect him to be happy with boring old sex. You have to be a bit inventive."

"But you only gave me two!" I said, all alarm. "I didn't want to waste them. And anyway, what was I supposed to practice on?"

"Well, let's just hope that you perform adequately with the first one. Or else you won't get a chance to use the second one," she said darkly.

"Oh stop it, Laura, I'm nervous enough!"

"Good." She laughed. "It's much better when you're nervous."

I promised to call her the next day and tell her all the gory details.

"Or, if I get in early enough tonight, I'll ring you and tell you everything," I promised eagerly.

"If you get in early enough tonight to tell me everything, there won't be anything to tell,'" she told me.

"Oh," I said.

She had a point.

"Look, I'm going," I said in annoyance, and I hung up on her while she was in the middle of explaining some sort of complicated sexual activity that she said she had seen done in a show in Bangkok. Whatever it was it could only be done by a woman who was a damn sight more supple than me. I did know how to have sex, you know. I had given birth to a child. How did she think this actually came about?

While we're on the subject of sexual shenanigans I've got a confession to make.

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Wait for it.

Here it comes.

I enjoy the missionary position.

There! I've said it.

I'm made to feel so ashamed of myself for feeling that way.

As if I'm terribly boring and repressed.

But I'm not. Honestly.

I'm not saying that it's the only position that I like.

But, really, I have no objection to it whatsoever.

Naturally, of course, this isn't the time to discuss favorite sexual positions.

But I'll just tell you very quickly that I think cunnilingus is the most boring thing God ever created. I'd rather spend a day filing than endure a five-minute stint of it.

And when they're finished with their few minutes of slurping they act like you should be so grateful for it. Beaming up at you like they deserve a medal. And then act like they're entitled to a year's supply of no-questions- asked blow jobs.

Of course, some women swear by it, but...sorry, sorry.

I finally left and drove over to his house.

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