The thing about having a detailed revenge plan is that you don’t usually think about what happens after you’ve got your revenge.

It was more than I’d hoped for. The gorgeous Hugo Turner, the boy all the girls wanted and all the boys wanted to be like, the Hugo Turner who’d bailed on me once before, had actually come crawling back, repentant... I had walked away from him. That time in the forest, when all the rules seemed not to apply anymore, I wanted to show him exactly what he was missing. Every kiss, every look was a tease: this is what you don’t get anymore. And feel this? This is how I’m never going to make you feel again… Aren’t you sorry now?

Except the plan wasn’t working out so well. Firstly, I’m not sure I ever really wanted to hurt him in the first place, and secondly, the things we did in that forest only seemed to make things more confusing for me. So now he was everywhere. In the break room at work I could think of nothing but his tongue. At the supermarket I couldn’t help but daydream about the way he had reached down and gently pressed my legs apart… It didn’t matter what I read or watched or listened to – it was all him, all Hugo. It was beginning to feel like I was blushing 24/7.

So when he began inviting me out to places and giving me little gifts, I couldn’t turn him down. When he asked me out for pizza the very next Sunday after our little Fox Trail adventure, I braced myself for a big hard sell. Hugo was a born-persuader, a natural charmer – of course he’d try his luck. But he didn’t. In fact, to my confusion, he didn’t even try to kiss me. The man who’d done delicious, almost unspeakable things to my body just a week before, the man who’d held me down and pressed his fat cock so deeply inside me I thought I’d go insane… gave me a polite hug as we parted ways.

And now he wanted to go to the movies. I had told him in no uncertain terms that marriage was off the cards. Hell, I wasn’t even going to be his girlfriend again. But he didn’t bat an eyelid, and he didn’t argue. And now we were sitting munching popcorn side by side in the dark, waiting for the film to start. That night I spent alone in the forest was like a period on the end of a long sentence that was my old life. It seemed that ever since I woke up that morning, miraculously still alive, things were different. Up was down, bad was good and romantic ghosts from the pasts were alive and well. And eating popcorn next to me like we were Middle School kids on a date.

We watched the trailers in silence. I thought of his dick. Our hands touched in the popcorn box. I thought I’d go crazy trying to get it to happen again. He dropped some on the floor and bent to pick it up. I thought of his dick again. I bet he was just doing a teasing slow burn kind of thing, making sure I really wanted it before he made his move. Yes, that was probably it. What an asshole, honestly. Well, I’d show him.

“Hey, just so you know, I need to go straight home after this, if that’s okay,” I said sweetly.

“Cool.”

“I mean… we can’t… go home together or anything. If that’s what you were hoping for.” I said. His smile didn’t budge.

“Yeah of course, I wasn’t planning on it. Unless you wanted me to?”

“No!” I said, a little too loudly. “I mean, I can’t. Like I said.”

“Sure. I totally understand.”

I frowned at him.

“Look, what’s going on here?”

He turned to look at me.

“We’re… watching a movie? Hey, we can duck out now if you’re not keen on it anymore,” he said. My frown deepened.

“No, it’s just… Is this really all you had planned for tonight?” I asked him. It really would be a hell of a lot more convenient for him to be hitting on me right now. Some Casanova he was.

“Yeah. Movie and some popcorn,” he said cheerfully. I wanted to smack his face. And then fuck him. But first smack him.

“Sure,” I said and settled back into my seat. “It’s just that… I don’t know. This never would have been something you’d have enjoyed in the past, that’s all.”

“No? Huh. I wonder why.”

“Are you serious right now?”

He turned to face me, popcorn in hand.

“Look, Becky, I’m having a good time. Actually, whatever we do tonight, I’m happy. Because we’re doing it together.”

“Whatever we do? Really? What if I pitch a big fit right now, right here in the cinema?”

He laughed.

“A big fit, huh? Yeah sure, okay. If you want. I’m a big boy, I can handle it,” he said with a cheeky smile. Fuck, I loved the way his eyes crinkled up when he smiled like that.

“Oh yeah? What if I want to make a scene or like, break things?”

“Then I’ll break them with you.”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“I get it. You’re just sucking up to me for some reason. I don’t know why yet, but you’re being super sweet and nice because—”

“Do you want me to stop?”

His gaze got tangled in mine. Of course not. I was desperately horny and missing his touch like never before …but it would be way worse to not see him at all. I said nothing, he gave me a knowing little smile and we both turned to watch the movie. And I thought of his cock again.

I had no idea what the stupid movie was about. All I could think about was whether to reach my hand over and let it rest on his knee for a moment. Then I began to wonder if he was wondering the same thing about me. And then I wondered if he knew how much I was thinking about all this, and if he was waiting for me to touch him. If he expected it…

How could he be proposing one minute and then acting like my friend the next? It was outrageous. And I was the outrageous one around here, not him. I didn’t know if I wanted him to ask me again. I didn’t know if I even gave a crap about marriage anymore. I didn’t know what I wanted at all, in fact, except for him to turn towards me right now and just kiss me already. Sure, I wasn’t decided yet if I had forgiven him. But was he really going to be so rude as to never even try and kiss me again? The nerve.

Unbelievably, we watched the rest of the movie in silence, no part of his gorgeous body anywhere near mine. When we stood to leave the cinema, I walked up in front of him, doing my utmost to give him a generous view of my frankly epic rear end as I did so. Ordinarily, that would have done the trick. But when I turned around he was looking elsewhere, oblivious. We walked to the front of the movie house and I stood before him, wondering if I’d at least get a goodnight kiss.

“Hugo, are you… are you okay? You’re not angry with me?” I asked, unable to contain it anymore. He smiled and took my hand.

“Angry? No way. I’m so glad you could come out tonight.”

“But what about… what happened at the cabin? Do you think we need to talk about it or…?”

He pulled me aside and looked into my eyes.

“Sure. What’s on your mind?” he said and turned his attention so sharply on me I felt like I could wither under it. This wasn’t like Hugo. He never used to talk, not about feelings, not about any damn thing. It was like he was a brand new person… a suspiciously wonderful person.

“Well… it’s not me… it’s just… forget it,” I said and slid my hands from his.

He walked beside me.

“Anything you want to talk about, I’m here,” he said, not lifting his eyes from the ground. I had no idea who this man was and what he had done with the old Hugo. But I began to kind of like it.

“My new job’s really hard,” I said after we’d walked for a while.

“Oh yeah? Isn’t it just what you wanted? The next rung on the ladder?”

I smiled and shrugged. “It is that. I guess there’s just further to fall now, you know? I earn more than I ever have before and yet somehow I’m always stressing about money. How the hell does that work?” I laughed. My hand was just inches from his. But there was something there stopping us. It might as well have been five thousand year between us, not just five.

“You once told me to just kill you if you ever became super obsessed with money, do you remember?”

I looked at him.

“What? I don’t remember ever saying that…”

“You don’t? We were at that fun fair in St. Albans, come on you’ve gotta remember that. You dared me to put my cotton candy in my beer and drink it. You seriously don’t remember that?”

I wanted to just sink into that warm, endless smile of his. I laughed.

“Wait, I think I do remember,” I said, and it was like finding a dollar in an old jacket that you forgot you’d left there. “You were wearing that stupid hat and you—”

“Hang on. Stupid? No, you’re wrong there. It was brilliant, that hat. Total genius.”

I laughed as the memories clicked into place. “Yeah, I remember now. You had on that stupid hat – I mean that genius hat – and we decided to go through the tunnel of love behind that awful couple…”

I could see the cogs turning behind his eyes as he remembered the day. The couple had been fighting loudly about money and we, smug in our sparkly new romance, felt pretty proud of ourselves and swore we’d never be like that. We both made eye contact at the same time as we both remembered, all at once, what happened next inside the tunnel of love. Shit.

I quickly looked away, face burning.

Once the memory had been kicked into action, I couldn’t stop it. All the images from that day came flooding back. We had giggled and whispered behind the couple as they argued, then Hugo leaned over and sweetly pressed his tongue to mine, and we took turns taking the other’s breath away. It was early on in our relationship, back in those days where we could fuck three times before breakfast and be ready for more before noon. Back when I thought that breaking up was just something that less awesome couples did because they had no idea what love was, unlike us.

“We were so arrogant back then,” I said, without thinking. He reached out and took my hand in his. It had been pitch black in the tunnel but I could now remember those few moments as the brightest of the day. He had leant over to my side, rocking the fiberglass swan we were riding and making the water lap beneath us, and with warm, sweet breath he had whispered into my ear. He thought I was unlike any woman he’d ever met before. And when we got home later, he was going to rip my clothes off, put me on my knees and make me swallow every last inch of him…

“Hey, I’ve got an idea!” he said and his face lit up. I followed his eyes to a small shop across the road.

“Let’s get some cotton candy right now,” he said and before I could stop him he bounded across the road, pulling me behind him. We both tumbled into a little sweet shop that had an old-fashioned cotton candy machine right in the window, almost like fate had predestined it.

“Awesome!” he said and leaned over to look at it.

“Come on, it’s just for kids,” I said, but he insisted.

“No way, it’s a sign. You have to have some. Don’t make me dare you. If I remember correctly you’re chemically incapable of turning down a good dare” he said with a twinkle in his eye. I couldn’t help but smile. He was right of course.

“Okay, fine!” I said laughing, and he went to order. “The first one who can eat that whole thing is the winner,” I said and gave him a goofy wink. He nodded and the shop assistant pulled two giant bags of pink cotton candy off the wall. We ran out the shop giggling like naughty little kids. We soon found a park and sat down together on the bench, giddy for no good reason.

“Okay, are you ready?” I said, poised to gobble up the cotton candy. “I’m a pro at this, so you have been warned…”

He laughed.

“Wow, you still say that? Man, you always used to say that. I’m a pro at this….”

I blushed. He was right. Again.

“Well, I used to say a lot of things,” I said and we locked eyes. I used to say his name, every day. I used to say things to him I hadn’t said in years.

“Oh god yes.”

“Harder.”

“Fuck…”

“Just kiss me.”

I also used to say, “I love you.”