Phoenix

I shouldn’t be here. I don’t know why I am.

I don’t know why I’m shaking their hands and smiling so politely and using my real name.

Abigail can’t stop staring at me. Her eyes are big, blatant, the alcohol stealing any coyness. Though she might be a little more self-conscious if she could see the love bites darkening on her neck.

I’m glad everyone else can. I feel like a caveman with her at my side, my arm wrapped so possessively around her waist.

This is ridiculous. Crazy. Idiotic and most definitely fucking insane.

But I can’t stop.

I can’t bring myself to play this down as nothing and say my goodbyes.

“Where did you guys meet?” Lauren – I think – asks. She looks between us and I look down at Abigail.

I love how my black swan flounders.

“I, uh, met Leo at, ummm…”

The sound of my name from her mouth makes me thoroughly uncomfortable, but weirdly excited at the same time.

She looks up at me, but I give her no help whatsoever.

And then she surprises me, which seems to be a running theme for this evening.

“We met online,” she says. “On this like… introductions website…”

A circle of raised eyebrows give way to whoops and chatter. I’d usually hate this shit.

“Online?!” one of the other girls asks. She looks me up and down, and I think she’s had more than her bandwidth of tequila already. “Wow, you’ll have to give me the web address.”

The Lauren girl points between us, one to the other. “So, is this a thing? Are you guys dating?”

“No,” she says, straight off the cuff.

Her reaction makes me want to wrestle her to the floor in front of all of them and fuck her tight little asshole with an audience.

Her eyes meet mine and widen. “No, I mean, um…” she starts. I hold her stare. “I mean, I dunno… it’s early days…”

Better.

Lauren laughs aloud. “Abigail Summers. You’ve been caught behind the bins with your knickers down. Proverbially if not literally. Have you even seen the state of your neck? I don’t think the days are that early somehow, you little minx.”

Oh the beautiful fucking horror on Abigail’s face. It makes my dick harden all over again.

Her hand jumps to her throat, as though she has a hope in hell’s chance of hiding them. It makes me smirk.

I love that I’ve marked her. I love that she’ll be conscious of those for days.

She isn’t the desperate lost soul I met online. She sparkles. Shines. She’s lively and full of life.

Stunning.

Being at her side makes me feel all kinds of fucked up. My truck is calling, and so is familiar turf, but my feet stay rooted to the ground and my arm stays firm around her.

“Are you coming to the summer barbeque?” the guy asks, and it takes me a beat to remember I have to play ignorant.

“The what?”

It’s Abigail who steps in to answer. “It’s nothing really, just some work barbeque for charity.”

I wonder if she’s trying to head me off attending, if so it’ll be so much more of a thrill to turn up unannounced.

She is trying to head me off, I see it in her eyes. In the way she sweeps the conversation around to her blonde neighbour and how she picked out her nail colour.

Even as she’s angling the topic away from social engagements her fingers come to rest against the small of my back. I like having them there.

I like it a lot less when her fingertips sweep upwards.

Slowly.

Steadily.

My scars itch.

Even as I want more, they itch and prickle under my clothes.

And unfortunately that’s just about the moment I know this show has to come to an end.

“I’d better run,” I announce. “It was nice meeting everyone.”

I pull my arm back from her, hating the way she moves with me on instinct. Hating the way I have to force my body from hers.

She’s confused. I see it in her eyes.

“Well, I, um…” she begins, as everyone watches on. “I’ll be seeing you.”

“You will,” I say.

And then I leave.

Quickly enough that I don’t change my mind.

 

* * *

 

Abigail

 

For all the glitz and sparkle and optimism of having Leo at my side with his arm around my waist, there’s a part of me that realises the futility of this crazy pairing.

People just don’t meet like we did and manage to make an actual relationship out of it.

Even the thought is crazy.

Beyond crazy.

It should be a relief to dismiss it as an unfortunate case of social precedents forced upon us, but it isn’t.

Knowing his name should have meant little more than confirmation of the fact he’s not a total psycho, but it means everything.

I can’t stop thinking of him. Speaking his name in my mind. Hissing out his name as I come at night with my fingers inside me. Saying his name out loud as I stare in the mirror and touch the love bites on my neck.

The grilling I got from my friends was worth every second of awkwardness.

Having him at my side felt nicer than it ever should have.

And now he’s gone.

No sign of him over the weekend. No ominous presence waiting in the darkness for me to venture outside. I know that, because I find myself outside a lot. Walking. Waiting. Lingering and hoping.

The next working week gets off to a perfectly regular start without any sign of him jumping out at me.

The guys ask if he’s going to be joining us for the next night out at Diva’s and it feels pretty disappointing to have to say it’s unlikely. He doesn’t join us. Not that week and not the next, either. His marks have all but gone from my neck and it feels like I’ve lost him.

Leo.

My pussy aches for him. I ache for him.

So I keep myself busy. I call people from back in Hampshire and keep on top of social media. I spend evenings at Sarah’s place, or she at mine. I take walks for the hell of it and enjoy them.

I try not to be agitated at the radio silence. I try not to worry about the passing time and whether he’s grown tired of me already.

In the main I do a good job of it, but by the time the second weekend comes and goes without hide nor hair of him I’m reaching the end of my tether.

I didn’t want to use the phone number he called me from that evening in Diva’s. I didn’t want to have to ground this thing in something so ordinary as a telephone conversation.

I fear he’s not going to leave me any choice, so midway through my next working week without him, I dig my phone from my handbag and try his number.

It rings and rings. My heart drops when I know he’s not about to answer, but still I wait around for his voicemail.

It’s generic. An automated voice reading out the number I dialled and asking me to record a message.

I record a simple one, as calmly as I can manage to pull off.

“Hey, it’s me. I’m just… waiting…” I take a breath. “I hope you show up soon.”

He doesn’t. Not that night and not the night after, nor even the weekend after that.

I call again and it rings back through to the same voicemail.

This time I don’t leave one.

I check online and reactivate my deleted profile. His is greyed out and unavailable.

I search for Leos in Malvern with tattoos and unsurprisingly find nothing at all worth anything.

Part of me worries something has happened to him. Part of me worries about the fact that something could happen to him and I’d never even know it.

Part of me wants to know where the hell he is and what’s taking up so much of his time that he can’t at least send me a message back in return.

A see you soon, or even a thanks but no thanks.

Anything would be better than being ignored.

I’m in deep with someone who I’ve never even kissed properly, even though I’ve taken his dick in all the way.

I feel invisible again, just like I did with Stephen in the aftermath of the great explosion. Questioning whether any of this ever meant anything at all.

Whether he was just a guy out for a good time and now he’s done.

I don’t want to believe it.

I don’t want to believe my monster is gone.

But by the end of the next weekend I do.