Thomas

 

I’d packed up my regular suitcase before the night started. An empty case had been waiting ready in the wardrobe for my new selection of Grace Foster’s pussy-scented toys.

I’d tossed them in with less of a sense of victory than I’d been hoping for. I felt ragged, uncharacteristically disjointed as I switched the hotel room lights off and took the rear stairs down to my car.

It had barely been seven twenty a.m. by the time I’d done loading up and headed back through to reception. There was no sign of life, which was a tiny blessing in the madness at least.

Leaving a business card was a signature move of mine, always bailing long before the couple could ever see me leaving. I had no time for clipped goodbyes or frosty handshakes. No time to see the reined-in lust staring out from the woman whose body I’d ravaged all night long. Only this time it felt different. I felt different. I doubt I’d have been able to keep my smirk at full force if I’d wanted to, which was another gross revelation I’d rather not have been faced with.

I had limits. My control had limits. And she’d pushed them.

Pretty Grace Foster had pushed them.

I didn’t even know where I was headed as I sped away on dead country roads. I didn’t bother with satnav, caring for nothing more than putting distance between this sorry place and my tattered hopes of what it would mean to claim the pussy I’d been denied back when it mattered.

I was halfway back across Wales when I pulled into a shitty little service station in the middle of nowhere.

I grabbed a coffee, black and cheap. It almost burned my lips off when I took a swig, my fingers shaking as I hissed out a curse and tossed the Styrofoam cup of rancid crap in the outdoor bin.

My phone was still flashing with the alarm I hadn’t properly silenced when I pulled it from my pocket. I dismissed it with a swipe of my thumb before Polly’s messages pinged up.

Please say you didn’t.

You did, didn’t you?

It won’t solve anything.

Tom, please say you haven’t done this.

Did you tell them?? Please at least say you told them who you really are.

You have to tell them, Tom. Put this stuff to bed once and for all. Maybe he’ll be nice when he knows?

I guess you’re still with them. I hope she was worth it.

Congratulations. I hope it feels every bit as good as you hoped.

I could barely focus on her messages, my temples thumping as I scrolled.

The last one was from ten minutes earlier.

I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry, Tom. You’re on your own.

I blurted out a laugh but it sounded like death. On my own. Like I hadn’t been on my own for a fucking lifetime already.

I was back in my car when I fully contemplated a response, my fingers still shaking like a fucking weakling’s as I dithered over the letters.

Tell me something new, my words said, but they were a lie. It was new. Polly being like this was new, because in spite of the way I’d kept her at a country’s distance for the past few years and at arm’s length for the years leading up to it, she’d always been there.

A quiet part of me hoped she always would be. That maybe the Fosters really would be the ones who proved me wrong and opened the doorway just a sliver on my belief in a love that really meant something.

But no. They hadn’t proved me wrong. Not about that. Not about the fact that two people’s love couldn’t be undone in one single sorry evening.

Not even about the fact that two people could really, truly know each other after a lifetime in each other’s arms.

Her jerk of a husband hadn’t even touched the sides of his beautiful wife’s potential, as oblivious to her deep, dark fantasies as he was to my existence, even though I’d rocked up bold as brass onto his doorstep and smirked right over at him.

Polly would never be my forever. Her messages were just a sorry confirmation of what I’d long known.

I tossed the handset onto the passenger seat without sending my response over to her. There was no point.

I couldn’t do this anymore, even if she’d been willing. I couldn’t cling onto a friendly face in the ether in the hope that one day I’d have her at my side all over again. Those days were gone, finished. They’d been numbered right from the start, since she’d sent me the barely disguised Valentine’s Day card on my fifteenth birthday and prompted me to uncover the truth about who’d really sent it.

I knew who’d sent it. The writing was hers but slightly more squiggly, the envelope sealed with the heart-patterned tape she’d carried in her pencil case since the first year of high school.

I hadn’t been good enough for her back then, even if she hadn’t realised it. I wasn’t good enough to have a girl in my arms. Too weak and weaselly to have someone else’s fingers on my pale nerd body.

And when I was good enough? Finally?

I didn’t believe in I love you by that point. Didn’t believe in the strength of the line of hearts she’d drawn under the question mark on that Valentine’s card. Didn’t believe in anything but money, pride, and my ability to destroy people before they ever came close to destroying me.

My relationship with Polly had had numbered days from way back when, and now the countdown was over.

But Brett and Grace’s countdown had only just begun.

I grabbed my handset back up to click on my calendar app. I set the date for two months’ time, then remembered the horror on her pretty face when the alarm sounded out and I’d pulled away.

One month.

I set the date for one month.

My predictions up until now had never been more than a week out, not even the ones I’d set early enough that I’d been barely back at my desk before the woman’s call came through on my mobile.

Grace Foster would call me in one month’s time, or near enough as dammit.

And I’d be waiting.

Breaking her apart all over again was all I had left to look forward to. Destroying Brett Foster’s marriage was the only victory left to claim in my damnation.

I unfriended Polly on social media before I called up satnav and keyed in my London address.

I didn’t even let myself feel the pain as her profile picture disappeared from my messenger list. I slapped the sad boy inside me before he could cry his tears, forcing him down in the depths so deep that I swore I’d never hear from him again.

And then I thought about Grace Foster’s needy pink cunt all the way back to the city.