You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me (24 page)

Max raised his eyebrows. ‘I thought Treat Sunday was just about eating complex carbohydrates after six.’

‘It’s so much more than that,’ Neve sighed. ‘If you go into the living room, there’s a cupboard under the bookshelf next to my desk. Because you’re the guest, you get to pick.’

Neve waited until she could hear him rummaging before she started to gather her supplies. When she walked into the lounge, Max was on his knees and rifling through her DVD collection. ‘I think you have every romcom ever made. You even have silent films!’ he added, waving a copy of
My Best Girl
, made in 1927 and starring Mary Pickford, as proof.

‘It’s a classic,’ Neve said mildly, placing the laden tray she’d brought in on the coffee table.

‘I’m not watching anything with Meg Ryan in it.’ Max’s voice was muffled as he reached into the furthest corner of the cupboard and ran his finger along the spines. ‘OK, do you fancy Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in
Bringing Up Baby?
’

‘Always.’ Neve curled up on the sofa and held her breath as Max closed the tray on the DVD player and turned round. He stared at the contents of the tray and then at Neve, who shrugged her shoulders. ‘It’s Treat Sunday,’ she said, by way of explanation.

‘I think I love Treat Sunday,’ Max said, sitting down next to her. ‘Am I allowed to put my feet on the coffee table?’

‘Only if you take your shoes off first. Also, I have complete jurisdiction over the remote control and I don’t mind you talking during the film, but I don’t want any commentary about what I’m eating or how I’m eating it,’ Neve finished in her strictest voice.

Max poured himself a glass of wine from the bottle Neve had brought in but didn’t touch anything else on the tray. ‘
How
you’re going to eat it?’

‘That’s what I said,’ Neve clarified, handing Max a huge bag of Thai Spicy Bites and a Snickers bar. ‘That’s yours.’ Aziz in the convenience store had assured her they were very masculine snacks and, as an added bonus, she didn’t like either of them, so she wouldn’t be tempted to steal any.

‘Thanks, but I’ve got all this and you’ve only got a tube of Smarties and a bag of Hula Hoops,’ Max protested, as Neve tipped the Smarties into a tiny china bowl.

‘Did you not hear the part where I said that you weren’t allowed to comment on my snack choices?’ Neve tore open her bag of Hula Hoops and spilled them into a slightly larger china bowl.

Max didn’t say another word, though he polished off his Thai Spicy Bites and Snickers in fifteen minutes, whereas an hour into the film, Neve was still delicately picking her way through the contents of her china bowls.

She always started with the Hula Hoops, letting them sit saltily in her mouth; only when they were just about to lose their crunch did she start chewing. Then, when Neve was halfway through the potato portion of her treats, she moved on to the Smarties.

Those she ate according to colour. Brown, green, blue, purple, pink, red, yellow and the orange ones for last because they had their own unique flavour. She’d pop a Smartie into her mouth and suck long enough that she could bite off the candy shell but leave the chocolate centre intact. Then she’d suck on the chocolate until there was nothing left.

When she was halfway through the Smarties, in the gap between the purple and pink, Neve would stop snacking for ten minutes, just to prove that she could. She’d count the time off on her watch and when the ten minutes were up, she’d pop a pink Smartie into her mouth.

After the Smarties were finished, it was back to the Hula Hoops. The whole process took at least an hour, usually more. Either way, the credits were rolling as Neve finished crunching the last Hula Hoop, her eyes closed as she savoured the salty, potato-ey bliss that would have to last her a whole week.

When she opened her eyes it was to find Max staring at her as if she was a jigsaw piece that just wouldn’t fit. ‘You can’t say anything,’ she warned him. ‘That was the rule.’

‘I’m not going to say anything. Besides, there are no words.’ Neve was about to bristle and get all defensive when she saw the way Max was looking at her, even though she’d just taken an hour to eat a tube of Smarties and a bag of Hula Hoops and she was wearing her ‘just around the house’ jeans. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ she asked, because she’d done absolutely nothing to warrant the speculative gleam in Max’s eyes or the way his tongue kept moistening his bottom lip. ‘Shall I make coffee?’

‘Not in the mood for coffee,’ Max said, pulling Neve closer before she even realised what was happening. ‘Come here, you.’

So there was kissing. Kissing without thinking, so all the doubting voices in Neve’s head were quiet and when Max undid each button on her tunic dress, she didn’t mind because he kissed each inch of skin that he uncovered.

Max’s shirt came off too and the T-shirt he wore underneath so Neve could gently rake her fingers through the fuzz of hair that disappeared below his waistband and though she toyed with the buckle of his belt because she liked the way that Max sucked in a breath every time she did it, her hands didn’t stray any further.

His hands did though. They stroked the curve of her denim-covered hips and when they were lying face to face on the sofa, Max lifted Neve’s leg so it was hitched over his and their bodies were fitted flush together. Neve didn’t know where the urge to grind and shimmy and press against Max came from but it felt so good in a maddening, frustrating way that she gave into it.

‘We need to stop now,’ Max suddenly whispered urgently in her ear. ‘Stop!’

Neve momentarily stopped kissing Max’s clenched jaw. He was hard against her belly. ‘Stop for just a minute or stop altogether?’ she asked. Her voice sounded thick and heavy, probably because her brain and her blood and her limbs felt thick and heavy too.

Max eased back two centimetres. ‘Unless you’re ready for at least third base, we have to stop ’cause I need to … y’know, let my blood flow in the direction of my head again.’

Neve didn’t really want to stop, but you could only kiss for so long with your top unbuttoned and with your kissing partner’s erection prodding against you before the kissing became something else. She smoothed back Max’s hair, and when he gritted his teeth, she made a mental note to Google
unrelieved erection + pain
.

She slid off the sofa, careful not to touch Max because every time she did, his nostrils flared. Max rolled over on to his back and now that the kissing had ended and the mood was shifting, standing there with her top unbuttoned and the waistband of her sagging jeans halfway down her hips seemed to matter quite a bit. Neve turned around and quickly buttoned herself up.

Max sat up very slowly as if he was getting over major surgery. ‘I need to take Keith for his last walk. Can I borrow your keys?’

Max hobbled to the hall. Keith, who was stiff from sleeping so long under Neve’s desk, hobbled after him. Neve fished her spare set of keys out of a kitchen drawer and dropped them in Max’s outstretched hand.

It was a watershed moment in their funny relationship but Neve had other things on her mind. ‘If I was up for having sex, which I’m not, but if I was, would you want to? With me?’

‘This isn’t just an involuntary reaction I get from eating too many Thai Spicy Bites,’ Max said grumpily, bending down to clip on Keith’s lead. ‘Of course I want to do more than kiss you, but you’re saving yourself for your one true love and I’m trying to prove I’m more than just a fucktoy.’

‘Don’t say that,’ Neve said reflexively, because she was never, ever going to
fuck
someone. ‘Making love’ sounded much nicer – poetic, even. ‘And I was just checking.’

‘I would say I was sorry for snapping, but as you’re partly responsible for my current agony, I’m not going to.’ Considering he was talking about his erection, it was sort of sweet that Max looked like a sulky little boy who’d just been bawled out for throwing stones. ‘I’ll see you in about fifteen minutes,’ he added, with slightly less petulance.

As soon as she heard the street door close, Neve sped into action. Although she was perfectly clean, she had the world’s quickest shower as she waited for the kettle to boil. She filled her hot-water bottle while swilling mouth-wash. She hauled her sleepwear on to her still damp body and quickly spritzed her bed with lavender room mist as she shoved the hot-water bottle under the covers. Then she went through the pile of books on her nightstand, ruthlessly weeding out anything that might look like a romance novel to the uneducated eye.

Neve spent the last five minutes willing her night cream to absorb quicker as she tried to arrange her hair into an artless ponytail. She heard a key turn in the lock just as she decided that she was satisfied with attempt number nine and gave herself a quick look in the bathroom mirror; her night cream had almost sunk in, giving her a dewy look, and strands of silky dark hair framed a face that would have looked much better if she wasn’t gnawing on her bottom lip.

She hurried out into the hall to greet the wanderers. Max looked as if he was in much better spirits; he was smiling for one thing, the smile getting wider as he caught sight of Neve.

‘You look so sweet,’ he said in what sounded suspiciously like the male version of her Keith-inspired coo.

‘No, I don’t,’ Neve protested. Sweet was not what she’d been aiming for. She tugged at the lace-edged cuffs of her long-sleeved thermal vest, then reached down to pat Keith. ‘Where’s Keith going to sleep? With us?’

‘In the hall. He’s not allowed to sleep in the bedroom. He’ll spend all night trying to get on the bed.’

‘But what’s wrong with that?’ Neve had been looking forward to Keith sleeping at the bottom of the bed, preferably on her feet because they got very cold at night.

Max shook his head. ‘I’ve spent a long time establishing some boundaries with him. Don’t undo all my good work.’

She watched Max settle Keith down in his dog bed with a ragged blanket over him and a threadbare soft toy tucked between his front paws. Then there was the water bowl and a plug-in nightlight because Keith didn’t like the dark, and Neve began to wonder just where Keith’s boundaries were.

‘I’m going to bed,’ she said, when it became obvious that Max intended to stay with Keith until he was asleep.

Neve had spent five minutes with a hand mirror to judge her best angle when she was lying down and another ten minutes reading before Max put in an appearance.

‘So you sleep on the right-hand side,’ he remarked, as if it was a question that had been bugging him for ages. ‘I sleep on the left, so that works.’

Usually she slept in the dead centre of the bed but that seemed like a very spinsterish thing to admit, so Neve put down her book and fluffed the pillows next to her so they’d be at optimum plumpness for Max. You could fault her for a lot of things, she thought, but she was a very considerate hostess.

Max sat down on the edge of the bed and bounced experimentally. ‘Firm mattress,’ he remarked. ‘I do like a bed without much give to it.’

Neve could actually feel her blood pressure start to rise. Sleeping with Max on her candy-striped bedlinen had seemed like a good idea in theory, but the actual reality of Max in her bedroom again felt threatening and thrilling all at the same time. It didn’t help that he was talking in a low, suggestive voice and had a smirky little smile on his face like he couldn’t help but go into seductive mode when he was in a room with a bed in it.

Max was unlacing his Doc Marten boots and Neve quickly picked up her book again. This was all such new territory for her, but she tried to affect an ease that she didn’t really feel.

‘What are you reading?’ Max pulled off his socks and wiggled his long toes. He had nice feet for a man; at least they weren’t too hairy.

Neve lifted up her copy of
Rebecca
by Daphne du Maurier so Max could read the title, then gestured at the carefully edited pile of books on her bedside table. ‘You’re welcome to borrow one.’

Shirt half-unbuttoned, Max reached across the bed, inadvertently pinning Neve to the mattress, as he glanced through the pile. ‘Oh, I’ve always wanted to read this,’ he said, as Neve tried to look over his shoulder.

‘How have you never read
The Catcher in the Rye?
’ she wanted to shriek but settled for a simple, ‘I think you’ll really like that.’

Neve wished Max would finish getting undressed and get into bed so they could negotiate the next step of their relationship, but instead he was looking doubtfully at her copy of
Mansfield Park
. Which was just wrong because …

‘If you haven’t read any Jane Austen, don’t start with that one,’ she said with great force. ‘Fanny Price doesn’t work as well as a modern heroine as Elizabeth Bennet does.’

Max put down the book quickly, as if it was coated in something toxic. ‘Well, maybe I’ll try
Catcher in the Rye
and work my way up to Jane Austen.’ He shifted back so Neve no longer had a dead weight on her legs, and smacked the book against his palm. ‘I promise I won’t crease the spine.’

‘Of course,
Catcher in the Rye
is Salinger’s most well-known novel, but personally I much prefer his stories about the Glass family,’ Neve heard herself say in the prissiest voice she’d ever managed, as if her mouth was stuffed full of plums. ‘I think
Franny and Zooey
has the edge over
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters
, but it’s very hard to evaluate Salinger’s oeuvre as a whole, when it mostly consists of novellas and short stories.’