You Got It Wrong - Part Thirty Six

Chapter Thirty Six

The Slate was an amazing pub, with an equally amazing menu. Not that either of them could quantify that as there wasn’t a table free for them to eat. They stood at the bar instead and had a bottle of beer, watching amazingly delicious food appearing from the kitchen and delivered to the various full tables.

                “I had no idea I’d need to book. I’m not very organised.”

She laughed, “we’ll know for next time, hey?”

Grinning he took her hand and lifted it to his lips, “as long as there is a next time I can live with that.” When she gave a coy smile he rolled his eyes in exasperation, “what shall we do? Try another place?”

She shrugged, “we could get a take away, at yours?”

He waggled an eyebrow, “is this you getting your wicked way with me?”

She chuckled, “in YOUR dreams.”            

                “Nina Willoughby, you have NO idea just where you figure in my dreams.”

There was no way that they could stay in the pub and carry on mundane conversations when sexual tension crackled between them like electricity. As Theo led her out into the now dark night by the hand, she was glad of the lack of light to hide her flushed cheeks. When she was around him she didn’t know herself, she was never so sexually confident, so extroverted, but with him, she KNEW what she wanted and was desperate to get it. And tonight that was him, on her, over her, around her.

As they reached the junction at the end of the road he slowed waiting for the traffic to stop, and turned to her with a smile. Before she could speak, he’d swept his lips down to cover hers. She melted into his kiss and for a moment forgot that they were in the street. Until someone shouted, “get a room!”

Theo lifted his head, “no need for that. You sure about this?”

She nodded, “yup.”

Taking his hand again, she jogged across the road with him and was relieved to see the doorway to his apartment block in the distance. They had barely made it through the front door, and he was on her like a ravenous animal. Dragging the dress from her neck, his lips fastened onto the soft flesh beneath her ear as she slid her hands under his sweater, moving her hands gratefully over the warm skin of his body. His moan in response was swallowed by her lips and she loved feeling how desperate he was for her too. The hard unyielding door was pressed into her spine, but in front of her, Theo was equally as unforgiving, his erection pressed into her, his chest firm against her breasts.

                “Jeez Nina,” she knew he wanted to day more, but he couldn’t keep his lips off her skin long enough. Her kicking off her shoes, she started on the waist band of his trousers.

                “As expensive as this hall floor was, it is not comfortable,” scooping her into his arms he marched in to the bedroom, theatrically tossing her down to the mattress.

It was hunger that dragged them both from bed. Nina showered whilst Theo ordered food from the nearby Thai restaurant, and when she emerged, dressed in a shirt that she’d found on the back of the bathroom door, Theo looked up and smiled, his eyes widening as he took in her attire.

He was in the open plan kitchen wrestling with a bottle of champagne wearing just a pair of jeans, “suddenly I’m all fingers and thumbs.”

Eventually he popped the cork and filled two glasses. Nina accepted her glass then moved to the patio doors that led to the balcony, the lights of Westminster and the London Eye on the horizon.

                “I bet you never get tired of this view.”

He moved behind her and sipped his champagne, “you’re right. You ever thought about coming back to London?”

She shrugged, “I hated what it stood for, and for so long that I couldn’t ever see myself back here.”

                “And now?”

Again she shrugged, “let’s just say I’m seeing it in a better light.”

                “So why Brighton?”

Lowering herself into a seat she toyed with the stem of her glass for a moment, “my mother died when I was a baby, she contracted cervical cancer when she was pregnant and never told my dad, the hormones and stuff meant it grew really quick. She was told to abort me, to concentrate on beating it, but she’d have had to have a hysterectomy, chemotherapy...if she got rid of me she’d never have another child. I suppose that was her decision to have me for the seven months she had. Her mother, my Mémé, my grandmother moved to Brighton, she felt it was in the middle of her family and her daughter. When my mother died, she’d settled in Brighton. I live in her house now, and it’s the place I remember with the greatest memories from when I was a kid.” She sipped her drink for a moment, then glancing up saw his eyes were on her, he was listening, waiting.

                “When I fell out with my family,” she still couldn’t admit to finding Imelda having sex with her boyfriend, it was still raw, still painful. “Well, I went to see her; she encouraged me to go travelling, to see the world. It was her who called me to say my father had died. The irony was that she outlived him, though in all honesty she died a year later at seventy three, he was seventy.” She shrugged her eyebrows for a moment, “scandalous age gap. My mother was the trophy wife, and he was a sugar daddy.”

                “But they were happy?”

She thought about that for a moment, “I think so. I don’t remember...obviously, and they were only together two years before I came along. But in his letter...part of it said that he found me hard to deal with because I reminded him of my mother...and she was the love of his life. Those were his words. She unfortunately can’t tell me.  Mémé didn’t like him, hated the age...but she said my mother, Beatrice, she was besotted by him. He never hit her; he always treated her well...who knows.”

It was Theo’s turn to be quiet, contemplative. “So this step mother was a shock to the system?”

She nodded, “can you imagine me? Just hitting puberty and this Russian model enters the house. But it was just a few moments later that she practically told me to piss off, ‘I’m not here to look after you, I’m not your mother’.” She gave an ironic laugh, “what a bitch. I left when I found her in bed with my then boyfriend.”

                “What?” Theo’s mouth had dropped open.

Nina nodded, “yup, I came home from school an hour early as a teacher was sick, I heard a noise when I walked into the house, and there wasn’t supposed to be anyone there...so I rushed towards the noise. Not the most sensible thing for an unarmed woman to do, but I was just eighteen, I had no grasp of reality.

                “And there they were, Josh Samuels...the love of my life, the boy I’d been dating for six months NOT five minutes I hasten to add, was lying on the bed, naked Imelda writhing over him, her fake tits bouncing in time with her thrusts. Josh had his hands all over her, a look of...” Nina sighed. “I didn’t care about him, not really, and he was never remorseful or understanding of what he’d done. But neither was she. I told my Dad, what I’d seen. And he came at me with a diatribe of what a vindictive cow I was. So I left.”

He shook his head, “so your father learned the hard way. That you were right.”

She nodded, “that’s what his letter said, he’d always known, suspected that Imelda was like that, but he was too old and too jaded to attack it head on, instead he buried his head in the sand.”

                “And lost you along the way too, double loss.”

Nina hated that tears prickled at her eyes, unable to speak for a moment, she nodded a reply.

Theo reached out, placed a hand on her arm, wanting her to know that he was there, that he understood, but also knowing that she had revisited a place she hadn’t been for a long time.

They drank in silence for a moment, then Theo spoke, “I first learned the identity of my father when I was about twelve. My mother loves me, but she is always searching for the next thrill, the next party and the next man. When I met Henry Gershwin, I realised they were peas in a pod really. Though he has taken irresponsible and party to the nth degree. Daniel was born to the only woman he cared about, but she died when he was still in school. Step in Mansell. When I came on the scene all teenage angst and feisty, hating the world at sixteen, seeking the dad I’d spend my life fantasising about, it was Mansell who gave me time, he and Daniel made me feel a part of things, part of a family. You know? My mother was relieved, she buggered off to Australia for a while, with one man, and then later the Cayman Islands. Her life is a map of the men she’s chased.”

                “Do you see much of her?”

His eyes had dropped at some point during the last comment, and he lifted them at that question, smiling at her. “She came to my wedding...I’ve had a few exotic holidays visiting her. Me and Daniel went out to the Caribbean eighteen months ago. She comes to Britain periodically, to shop. And I will humour her then, meet her for lunch...but we don’t have a devoted relationship.”

It was her turn to lay a supportive hand on him, “so we’re kind of two peas in a pod ourselves.” The comment was greeted with a hmph, then she chuckled, “I can see why you’re SO devoted a Dad.”

That made him smile, “the irony that I married a self obsessed woman with less maternal instinct than my own mother.”

It was Nina’s turn to smile, “they say that we subconsciously look to right wronged relationships...I mean me...why do you think I volunteer at Oakdale? Being company for the elderly who have no one else. Just a pity that it doesn’t even begin to assuage my own guilt.”

                “Look at us...both sitting here accepting out weaknesses...”

Nina turned to look at Theo, “that’s what people do...share things. Reckon this is a first for both of us.”

He nodded, “it is.”

He refilled her glass, and they both drank in silence...silence other than the stereo playing some Otis Redding, the smooth voice seemed to penetrate the moment.

                “So how’s Melody coping? Living here?”

Theo smiled at Nina, but had no intention of really getting into the details of that situation. He had solicitors pushing him to share his daughter, but the memory of his ex wife comatose at death’s door whilst his daughter played beside her haunted his every dream. He couldn’t share that, not because he wanted to protect Sadie, and not because he wanted to keep the elements of his life separate. No, he couldn’t actually voice the words. He couldn’t actually acknowledge what could have happened that day. Instead he carried on with a fake smile.

                “Yeah, she loves the place, but I am all princessed out.  I mean EVERYTHING is pink, I am seeing and learning about characters that no man should really know well!”

Nina chuckled, “of course you should! It’s brilliant I love it.”

                “There’s nothing nicer than sitting down to watch a Barbie movie or her ultimate fave Frozen for the fourteenth time in one day, I swear.”

Nina stood, stretching her legs then walked to the window again, staring out, “they are memories you’ll always have.” Turning she smiled at him, “maybe memories we never had, either of us.”

Theo leaned back and watched her, she had a natural elegance as she moved, reminding him of a cat. She was a devilishly sexy woman, but really had no idea of the effects she had on him, both physically and emotionally. She turned him inside out, making him challenge everything that he knew in every aspect of his life. Standing he stalked towards her, needing to kiss her, feel her again.

As his lips found hers, his hands pulled her against his body, he sighed, this felt so right. His fingers slid down over her hips to cup her buttocks through the cotton of his shirt and he was rewarded with her sigh against his lips. As the kiss increased in its intensity the doorbell behind them rang.

                “Damn...too long talking, it’s eaten into our kissing time.”

Nina laughed, “yup, we did a hell of a lot of kissing earlier. That must be the food...and I am STARVING!”

As he laughed she turned to him, “I’ll get the door, you get the plates...and some more champagne?”

Nina fought to keep the skip out of her stride as she made for the door and the repeatedly ringing bell. Pulling open the door she offered, “you have perfect timing!”

But there wasn’t a delivery man with bags of hot food on the doorstep; instead her eyes encountered one of the most beautiful women she’d ever encountered. Almost six foot, slim, blonde, pretty beyond belief. Nina’s mouth dropped open in shock just as the woman barged past her shouting, “who the hell are you? And what the fuck are you doing in my husband’s house?”