4.
Eddie
It’s a week later when I finally work up the nerve to go around to Lucy’s house. I still can’t believe she asked me to sleep with her, and questions have been bugging me all week to the point where I’ve been losing sleep over it.
Alex has been no bloody help at all. He really is a thorn in my side sometimes. I thought about asking someone else, like Mills, who will probably know what’s going on. But I don’t know Mills that well and it’s a really personal thing for Lucy to ask. And what if it got back to Lucy that I was asking around about her? I’d hate for her to think I was talking about her behind her back. So instead I am going straight to the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
She answers the door after the second ring and flushes pink when she sees me. She is in more of a state of disarray than usual, probably because I didn’t tell her I was coming over. I didn’t want to tell her in case I chickened out. It could happen. It’s happened before. But this time I made it here and seem to have caught her completely off-guard in the process.
She’s wearing a thin, light low-cut t-shirt that hugs her in a way nothing I’ve seen her in has ever hugged her before, and a pair of pyjama shorts that show off her legs. Jesus H. Christ what legs! They seem to go on for miles. Her hair, which is normally piled on the back of her head in a messy tangle of hair and ribbon, flows over her shoulders as far as her midriff in a beautiful ebony waterfall. My dick physically hardens at the thought of wrapping my hand in her tresses and pulling her close. She never shows this much flesh, ever. Man is it tempting.
Her eyes are wide, her lips moist and invitingly parted as she stares at me for a moment. “Eddie. I didn’t know you were coming over?”
She looks worried as though maybe we’d made plans and she’d forgotten. I smile. “Sorry for the unannounced visit, I was hoping I could bribe you into talking to me.” I hold up the pizza box that she clearly hadn’t noticed until that moment and she laughs.
“Pepperoni?”
“What else?” I grin and she laughs again.
“You’d better come in then.”
I follow her down the corridor and into her front room, watching the waves at the bottom of her hair as they brush the top of her arse as she walks. How have I not noticed this woman before? It seems crazy to me. I mean, look at that arse. It is bloody perfect!
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with your hair down before,” I say, by way of conversation.
We reach the sitting room and she turns to look at me, dubious. “Oh?”
“I like it. It suits you.”
A faint blush briefly colours her cheeks. “Oh, well. It gets in the way so much, I don’t often have it down.”
She hasn’t taken my compliment, so I push it further than I normally would with her. “You look lovely.”
“In my pyjamas?” A bemused look crosses her face.
“Yes, in your pyjamas.” I watch her for a moment and, not willing to back down, I repeat myself. “You look lovely, Luce.”
“Thank you,” she murmurs, curling her legs underneath her as she sits in the corner of the sofa. She looks decidedly uncomfortable and nervous all of a sudden. I don’t know why. She does look lovely. I can’t be the first person to tell her that. But then it has taken me seven years to notice. “If I’d known you were coming over I would have put some actual clothes on.”
I laugh and she seems happy to have broken the tension. For a moment, there was definitely tension. I try not to think too hard about what kind of tension, but with my dick throbbing in my jeans it’s difficult not to.
“Where shall I put this?” I ask, holding up the pizza box.
She waves her arm almost regally towards the coffee table. “It can join the others.”
In the middle of the small wooden table, covering most of its surface, is an open pizza box and two thirds of a large pepperoni pizza. Small packets of BBQ sauce and cheese and chive dip are scattered around and in a smaller box is what looks like potato wedges and chicken wings. There is easily enough food here for two people even without my, now measly looking, contribution and I suddenly worry that maybe I’m interrupting something. Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea.
Lucy must see the amazed expression on my face because she says, “I may have been a little hungry when I was ordering earlier…”
“A little? Christ, is this just for you?” I laugh and make space for my box on the floor next to the table. “Perhaps we should finish the one you started before cracking into mine?”
She grins, “Sounds like a plan, Batman,” and helps herself to a slice. I follow suit and before long we are laughing and joking, her curled up at one end of the sofa, with me relaxing at the other. It’s comfortable, the way that hanging out with Lucy always is. Well, except for last week.
We’ve finished the first pizza, made a healthy start on the second and decimated the wedges and wings by the time I pluck up the courage to say anything. Lucy is holding a pot of dip, and scraping out the sauce with a crust. The concentration on her face is adorable and I wonder, not for the first time this evening, why I’ve not seen it before. She is beautiful; tall, almost Amazonian in stature, and well toned from her running and swimming. Her skin looks so soft I’ve had to hold myself back from stroking it on more than one occasion in the last hour. She has pulled her hair back up into a bun, but it still looks wild and oh, so tempting.
This is it. It’s now or never. I have to say something. “Lucy?”
“Hmm?” She glances up at me, her big brown eyes moving to meet mine.
“About what you asked me last week…” No going back now.
I see her body tense as the colour drains from her face. “Drop it, Eddie. Don’t worry about it. I thought we agreed to forget it and move on.”
“I know you said forget it, but it’s been bugging me all week...”
“Please, don’t-“
“… I just want to know why you want to have sex with me.”
Silence hangs between us and she’s no longer meeting my gaze, staring instead at the pizza crust in her hand. Eventually she shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have asked you. I’m sorry.” Her voice is so soft I almost don’t hear her, but the pain that’s so evident in her words cuts me deeply.
I keep my voice gentle when I say, “But why did you ask me? I thought we were friends.”
“We are friends,” she says fiercely, her head snapping up. “You’re one of my best friends, Eddie. That’s why I bloody asked you. Who else was I going to ask to help me-“ She cuts herself off with a hand over her mouth.
“Help you what?” When she doesn’t answer I scoot closer to her on the sofa so that our knees are almost touching. “Help you what, Luce?”
Her hand moves to her neck, covering her throat in a subconsciously protective gesture as she says, “Help me lose my virginity.”
My first instinct is to laugh, and I’m about to until I see the look in her eyes. She isn’t joking. She isn’t fucking joking. “Your virginity? I don’t understand.” My mind is reeling. What the hell is she talking about? “You’re a virgin?”
She nods.
“Why?”
I regret the question almost immediately. Lucy snorts, her demeanor instantly changing from wary and defensive to hurt and aggressive. Her voice is dripping with sarcasm, “Don’t you know that virginity is so in right now? All the cool kids are doing it so I thought why not me.”
“But you’ve had boyfriends.”
“Boyfriend. Singular.” She corrects me bitterly, adding, “And he was an arsehole.”
I think back to what Alex was saying about Carl or Miles or whatever the fuckwit’s name was. I never met the guy, but I was sure that she’d had boyfriends since then. Forcing myself I try to remember the nights out we had been on together. “But when we’ve been on nights out you’ve always hooked up with people.”
She pats me on the knee, her tone almost one of gallows humour. “No, Eddie. On nights out, you’ve always hooked up with people.”
“But-“
“Are we really having this argument?” She sighs. “Can you just trust me to know whether I’ve had sex before? Believe me, I think I’d remember.”
I open my mouth and then shut it again, scared that anything I say will only make it worse. The silence drags on once more and I desperately wrack my brain for something to say, but it’s too busy spinning. How can she be a virgin? It makes absolutely no sense. I mean, just look at her. Sure, if you’d asked me before I wouldn’t have recognised it, but she is damn sexy. And she wants me to have sex with her. How can I say no to that? My dick throbs at the idea of being inside her.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask you again. I know you don’t want to.”
What? Of course I want to. I’m about to open my mouth to tell her so, but she doesn’t give me the opportunity.
“I shouldn’t have asked you anyway. It was a stupid idea, and I’m actually glad you said no.”
I’m pretty sure I didn’t say no. But she thinks I did and she’s glad about it? She’s glad she didn’t have sex with me? What the fuck? I would have rocked her world and she’s “glad” she missed out on it?
She must see the look on my face because she smiles softly and rests her hand on my arm. “Look, Eddie. We’re friends. You’re one of my best friends and I don’t want that to change. I’ve seen how quickly you go through women.” I’m about to protest, but she holds up her hand to stop me. “No judgment. You’re just doing your thing and I know they know what they’re getting themselves into. I’ve heard you tell them on more than one occasion. ‘No strings’, right?”
I nod, “They always know,” to begin with, anyway. Whether or not they remember is another story.
“Because you’re a good guy with a moral compass that seems to actually work. But I’ve also heard the way you talk and joke about them afterwards. I know it’s not derisive. But I’ve seen you dodging calls and ignoring texts from women who are probably only looking for a little validation. I wouldn’t want to become one of those women to you. You’re too important to me.”
I want to tell her that she wouldn’t become “one of those women”, that she means too much to me and I wouldn’t let that happen. But I can’t lie to her. I am not looking for a relationship and the last thing I want is for her to get the wrong idea. If she was up for ‘no strings’ that would be one thing. But she’s a virgin and one of my best friends. That’s a recipe for disaster if ever there was one.
“I’m sorry, Lucy.”
She plasters on a fake smile. “Don’t apologise. Like I said, I shouldn’t have asked you in the first place. And it doesn’t matter now, anyway. I have a plan.”