CHAPTER THREE
HOPE
After our shopping trip we get home and make up our new bed, put everything where we want and although the apartment isn’t full with stuff we still manage to make it look like a home. Our home, and we celebrate with a pizza and coke. The plans I have for our future dwindle away to nothing as we sit and watch a movie on Netflix and we both fall asleep. I am still a virgin, much to my own disgust. I want him, I want him to take my virginity and make me a woman. I am ripe for his picking and I know that it has to be coming, I want it to come, we are in our own place, in the middle of our own big adventure and I want him.
It would be perfect and I want him so much it is beginning to hurt all over. My heart aches, my core aches and it is suffocating as its grip tightens around my neck, suffocating me in the process. The only thing that will help is Mark but nothing seems to happen. We both go through the motions of everyday life and I long for him, in silent longing, but he can’t decipher my secret language. I can’t get through to him. I am able to watch and be close to him every day it just is not close enough.
Within that first week I manage to get a job at a local coffee shop just around the corner from the apartment and college. It is perfect, I can go to work straight after my lessons and it isn’t too far away from the apartment when I am done, it couldn’t have worked out much better. We both enrol in college but with all the courses Mark wants to do he won’t have time for anything else so we decide as a couple - a couple, I still can’t believe it, we are finally a normal couple. So as a couple we decide it is best he concentrates only on all his courses. I don’t mind, I feel proud to think that I will be working and helping us both through this time. The lack of sex is hard but I am able to see him every day, we are living our lives together and that is all that matters, that is what I keep trying to tell myself anyway. We both have classes each morning and by midday I walk through town to the coffee shop where I work until six when Mark meets me and we walk back to the apartment together. We make something simple for dinner together in our little kitchen.
Our kitchen.
Our kitchen. I still can’t believe it, I’m in a state of shock still expecting to wake up at any moment to find this has all been a dream and I’m back in New York.
Our kitchen. Our home. I feel like I am dreaming. If I am then I never want to wake up because it is perfect. Our apartment. I still can’t believe I can say that. That us living together is really happening. I pinch my arm just to make sure that I’m definitely awake and I am, there’s no doubt about it as my arm begins to ache where I pinch too hard. This is definitely real. My lips spread in a giant smile and I feel like I’m on cloud nine, we finally did it. We live together and I’m going to prove that I belong working for Bryant Industries. It’s all going to plan.
“Why are you smiling?” Mark asks as I’m sure my smile only grows.
“We live together.”
“We do.” He says with a funny smile that says do you really need me to say this.
“We’ve done it Mark. I was really worried that we wouldn’t. That something would happen but we are really here. Together.”
“We are, my love, and I couldn’t be happier.”
“Me neither.” He moves a piece of hair behind my ear that has come away from my pony tail, rubbing the strand between his fingers as he does it. I look deep in his eyes and all I’m aware of is how much I’m sure I love him. He’s everything to me and I’m so happy I have taken this step with him.
“You know what?” I ask him.
“What?”
“I’m so much more than happy. I’m.. I can’t even explain it.” We both laugh. I lean forward and when I’m close enough I look up into his eyes and just take him all in. He’s so handsome and all mine, I can’t believe how lucky I am and I can see the same message being retold to me through his beautiful eyes. He feels the same way and my heart melts. I take his hands in mine and then our noses brush along with each other’s as my lips start to dance with his. My whole body takes flight as Mark takes control of our kiss and I begin to move my hands up his arms and before I can control myself my fingers lace around the buttons of his shirt.
This could be it and I want it so much. I want to take this next step in our relationship. I want this so much it hurts. My fingers move through the material of his shirt, undoing the top button and then the next entirely of their own accord. The longing I have felt for so long is suddenly erupting from deep within my soul and I have no way to stop it. I want him so much. One of my hands grazes the naked skin that is on show and I can feel the softness and the beating of his heart as it bumps away much less than my own. I stop, both my hands linger over his chest while I slowly look up at him. He looks so serious and I can see the gentle corner of his lips point up in a small smile.
“Are you ok?” I have to ask. I don’t like the sudden look in his eyes but I try to brush it away.
“We should make dinner. I’m starving. Aren’t you hungry?” Food? Is he for real right now? I can’t believe he has just said that when we were so close. Tears start to pool in my eyes and I try to fight them away, I can’t let him know how this has hurt me. I thought that once we were here we could take the next step. I was hoping and praying on it. We’ve lasted a week already and I don’t know how much more waiting I can take.
“I’m hungry for something else.”
“Not now, Hope.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so, that’s why.” Suddenly the face, the body in front of me belongs to someone else. I don’t know this man who is currently standing in front of me, his whole body bleeds out his anger and frustration. He looks like the man I love but there is something in the way he’s standing, the way he is looking at me that says that this man is a stranger.
“Why don’t you want me?” I ask trying to fight the tears that want to fall and show how much he has really hurt me.
“I do want you.” He takes a huge breath in as he turns away and then looks at me again with a small smile on his face that attempts to melt away the stranger.
“I do. I want you more than anything.” His hands rest on both sides of my face as he steps towards me, filling my space so I’m only aware of him.
“I’m ready to take the next step.” I say, not being able to look him in the face while I do. I don’t know why. Why I can’t look at him while I say the one thing I want him to know more than anything? I want to have sex, it feels like the right step for our relationship, so why doesn’t he feel it too?
“Why can’t you look at me?”
“I can.” And I quickly gaze up at him before converting my eyes down again.
“No you can’t, not while you said those words and that’s why.” His finger takes a slow graze of the side of my face turning its path into a gentle warmth replacing the coldness that has taken the room hostage.
“I’ve never done this before.” I take a breath. “I’m a vir..v..virgin.”
“I know, and that’s why I can’t yet. I want to make it special for you and right now neither of us are ready.”
“Neither of us?”
“It will happen, I promise, and when it does it will be amazing. I promise.”
“OK.” And that seems to satisfy my curiosity if only for a little while before something more like dread creeps through my bones instead. Why do I have the feeling that he isn’t telling me everything, that there’s more to him not wanting me that way than I could ever realise?