Addicted. Charlotte Stein
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you.’
‘Does the book have a vagina in it?’
‘Of course it does.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Well … maybe I don’t exactly call it that. I mean, it’s not a particularly sexy word.’
I realise a second too late that it’s the wrong thing to say. I’ve added a Y to the end of sex, and now my writing is no longer the biology textbook I know he was thinking about. He called me Professor, and talked about technical terms – but I’ve lost all that now.
‘Oh-ho-ho,’ he says, as my dignity disappears down the drain. ‘So I guess it’s not just a dry treatise on the benefits of having one?’
Is it weird that I like him using the word ‘treatise’? Because I totally do. I like how heavy and solid he seems, while all of this too-fast talk rattles out of his mouth. I can’t even keep up with most of it, despite the immense effort I’m putting in.
‘Having one of what?’
See? That’s real effort, there. I’m terrified of the answer, but I’m still asking the question.
‘A vagina. Were you really that mystified there, or are you actually not sure?’
‘Sure about what?’
Goddamn, he needs to finish his sentences.
‘About the benefits of having a vagina.’
‘Look – I know the benefits, OK?’
I totally don’t. Currently it feels like an angry animal that wants to eat him, between my legs. That can’t be a benefit, can it?
‘You sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because I can help you out in that area, if you were a little shaky on the many and varied advantages to having a yoohoo.’
He’s like a used-car salesman. Who sells lady bits.
‘I don’t need your help anywhere near my area, thanks.’
‘Ooh, baby, stop, that almost sounded like a proposition.’
‘What? It did not.’
‘You’re getting me so hot, I swear.’
Of course, I realise here that he’s teasing me. So it’s quite alarming to feel a kick somewhere lowdown, in that long-dormant area between my legs. He just fakes excitement, and apparently I go nuts. The angry beast rears its head, and starts searching for manflesh.
‘I didn’t … I didn’t even say anything, I –’
‘I’m just messing with you, Kitty-cat. When I said “area”, I meant the book. I meant I could help you with your book.’
Is he being serious now? It’s so hard to tell with those madly expressive eyebrows of his. And that mouth – it’s always twisted into the cheekiest little smirk. He’d never be able to deliver someone’s eulogy. Everyone would think he was amused by some guy’s tragic death.
‘I really don’t need help.’
Only I do, oh, God, I do, I know I do. I couldn’t say ‘vagina’ in front of someone so handsome, and now I’ve just shooed him away from my ‘area’. He didn’t even mean ‘area’ in that manner. He meant something else, and my nineteenth-century brain just got itself all into a tizz. I’m still in a tizz right at this moment. My heart is thumping and thumping, as though we just wrestled for the world heavyweight title.
In fact, it feels like we really did wrestle for the world heavyweight title. I’m all sweaty and prickly, and my face won’t go a normal colour no matter how hard I try.
And then it occurs to me, in a scary rush: is this what flirting is? No, God, no – it can’t be. This isn’t flirting. Flirting should feel light and breezy, like a Cary Grant film about fast-talking news reporters. I should be jauntily walking away now, while he shakes his head ruefully. That darned Kit!
Oh, how I wish I could be that darned Kit.
Instead of someone he gets to say this to:
‘I think you need help.’
‘Yeah? With what?’
I don’t know why I keep asking these questions. It just leaves me so open.
‘Sex.’
This is definitely flirting. I’ve no idea why it has to feel so nightmarish, however. He says one word, and bombs go off inside my body. I don’t even know how he does it. He just opens his mouth, and previously innocuous terms become so sinful. So alien and the opposite of everything they were before. Martin McAllister once said ‘sex’ to me, and I think I answered, ‘If we must.’
But when Dillon says it, the word just slides out of his mouth, ripe with the promise of a million things I’ve never known. Yes, I think. Do sex to me.
And then I’m just mortified over something I didn’t say all over again. This guy … this guy is never going to do sex to me. He’d probably sooner fuck a postbox, and here I am mooning over him like a teenager with a crush.
It’s awful. It makes me say things like this:
‘Because you’re such an expert in the field.’
Just to make certain he doesn’t cotton on. Sarcasm is bound to make it seem like I don’t fancy him, surely? Guys usually hate it when I say things like that to them.
So why doesn’t he hate it? He’s not normal.
‘I know more than you. I bet you’re not even sure how it starts out,’ he says, in a manner that’s just as warm and friendly as it was before. I think my sarcasm just bounces right off him – probably because of his immense chest.
‘I do so.’
‘Show me then.’
‘Show you what?’
‘Show me how you start things up.’
This is a trap, and I absolutely know it. But I also know that I no longer care.
‘Well, I’d probably … I’d probably … look deeply into … someone’s eyes.’
He chuffs and rolls his own, as though he really is my teacher, trying to give me a lesson. Could do better, that expression says, and then he corrects me.
‘That’s not how you get things going. Here – it’s like this. First, I slide a hand around your waist,’ he says, which sounds so innocent on its own. He could be teaching me a dance step, in a class full of cookies and kids and marshmallows … if it were not for the actual hand that he slides around my waist.
This isn’t just a tutorial. He’s going for a full-blown demonstration, with things like fingers on my hips, and ohhhh his touch is so warm and firm and good and fuck fuck fuck. Why didn’t I stop this when he first started talking? I’m like Admiral Ackbar, yelling ‘It’s a trap!’ two hours too late.
‘And then, while you’re busy staring at my hand like it sprouted out of my forehead, I just … leee-ee-eeaan down …’
Oh, my God, he’s actually leaning down. No, he’s really really leaning down – like the way people do when they’re going to kiss someone. And no matter how much I bend my back, I can’t quite get away from him. I’d have to be a championship limbo artist to evade his face and his mouth and are his eyes actually closing?
They are.
‘Dillon,’ I say, then again with more panic and less ability to breathe, ‘Dillon, Dillon, don’t lean down. Don’t, don’t – stop leaning, stop leaning, please for the love of God stop leaning in, are you leaning in, oh no!’
Yes.