The world had dealt him an almost intolerable blow at a very early age and this constant forward motion, and refusing to care too deeply about anyone, it was his coping strategy.
‘Lau …’ Jamie said, mumbling. He wasn’t awake anymore, he was drifting off, sleep-talking. ‘I want …’
‘What?’ she said.
‘I want to hold on to you.’
‘Sure,’ Laurie whispered.
Laurie wondered if he meant it literally, or as a statement of intent. She’d gently disengage right before she nodded off, she thought. Sleeping in someone else’s arms was one of those things that worked in movies and was uncomfortable as piss in reality.
Next thing she knew, she was waking up wound round him, the grey-yellow light of early winter morning creeping in under the blinds. It felt reassuring, and sort of oddly healing.
Laurie listened to Jamie’s heartbeat through his T-shirt and inhaled the faded scent of his aftershave, mentally reassembling where she was, what they’d done and said last night. She thought again about a traumatised nine-year-old boy, a vulnerability that reappeared now he was losing his father. Would Jamie push her away after this? Laurie had grown fond of him but she wasn’t naïve, he hadn’t wanted her involved, it was necessity. If the situation was reversed, she’d not want Jamie to see her like this.
He stirred and blinked and stared at her in a moment of dumb incomprehension.
‘… Morning.’
‘Morning.’
She pulled away and sat up, self-conscious, smoothing her hair and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
‘Did we …?’ he said, looking down at the bedclothes.
‘No, we did not, how dare you!’ Laurie said in an indignant, jokey half-whisper.
‘No, I didn’t mean that, of course not that. I meant …’ Jamie gestured at their proximity. ‘All night? I’ve never done that before. I usually hate it.’
‘Haha. Why am I not surprised? Do I get to say I taught you something new in bed?’ She was letting her mouth run on, in the uncertainty of what the tone between them was going to be today.
‘Yeurgh’ Jamie said, rubbing his neck, doing a little shudder as he heaved himself out of bed.
Oh, so that was it. Making it clear he regretted their intimacy.
‘Why are you such a prude with me? Where’s the wild sex man of myth and legend, strutting around swigging Wild Turkey, in his Jim Morrison snakeskin trousers?’
Jamie turned, frowning. ‘Why do you have to constantly characterise me like that? How would you feel if I was all “lol, Laurie with her one boyfriend”?’
Laurie opened her mouth, no justification came out. She felt slightly ashamed.
‘Sorry,’ Jamie said, ‘Sorry. That was morning me and you didn’t deserve that.’
He went for a shower and Laurie sat, hugging her knees. Jamie returned from the shower, dry clothes, wet hair, and said: ‘Laurie. I’m an unspeakable shit for snapping at you, after everything you’ve done for me. I hate myself right now. Please accept my grovelling apology?’
Laurie smiled up at him. ‘No, you were right.’ She paused. ‘The truth is, I’m terrified of The First One After Dan and it comes out as lairy bravado.’
She surprised herself by being this open. It suddenly felt better to share it than hide it. She’d seen Jamie naked, figuratively speaking, and she felt more able to expose herself.
‘Why? I mean, why are you terrified?’
Laurie was embarrassed to say, but the urge to purge herself of these thoughts was greater.
‘What if he thinks my body is off-putting, and the way I do sex is boring?’
Jamie laughed. ‘He won’t.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because the last man liked the deal so much he stuck around for nearly twenty years.’
‘Hah!’ Laurie said. ‘Thanks.’
‘I don’t want to disappoint you, but us men, we’re not that different. There’s not that much variety.’
She was intrigued Jamie would say this. It was very off brand. Wasn’t variety, not same-same, his whole raison d’etre?
‘That’s what my best friend tells me.’
‘Was she the hair-flicking girl in The Ivy?’
‘Yes! Hah. Emily’s not a hair-flicker, she’s great.’
‘That was a set-up, wasn’t it? No way did she run into us.’
Laurie made a face. ‘OK, yes, but not a safety check-in. She was being a voyeur as she thinks you’re hot. “Yeurgh”, as a man once said.’
‘Imagine how foolish you’re going to feel when you realise she was right all along.’
Laurie barked with laughter. ‘When’s that going to be?’
‘About an hour, if Mum gets the photo albums out. The nineties was a very strong decade for me.’ He shaped his wet hair into a boy band middle parting and pulled a dim face.
Laurie laughed like a drain. She remembered watching him holding Eve in the palm of his hand in Refuge; the lad knows how to turn it on alright.
‘Can I ask you an embarrassing question?’ he said, scuffing his hair back to normal with the heel of his hand.
‘Sure.’
Jamie hesitated, and Laurie gleaned it was genuinely embarrassing to him, not some ‘oh gee shucks this is awkward, can a penis be TOO big,’ gambit.
‘How do you know, when you’ve fallen for someone in a long-term, could marry, settle down forever sort of way? Please don’t say ‘you can’t imagine life without them’ or similar because I can’t imagine life without Hattie but I don’t want to marry her. Something that might give me real insight.’
‘Oh … er.’ This was a role reversal, Laurie feeling like the knowledgeable one. ‘Hmmm. It feels like a conversation that you never want to end, I suppose. A renewable energy source. You know how with some people you can’t get chatting off the ground? They’re hard work? Falling in love is the extreme opposite. Endless fascination. It’s effortless. A spark turns into a flame turns into a fire. That doesn’t go out. Unless you meet some leggy ginger whore specialising in Contentious Trusts and Probate.’ She smiled.
‘Endless fascination,’ Jamie said. ‘OK.’
‘Yeah. I mean, that makes it sound a bit like a one on one seminar with my brilliant old law tutor, Dr McGee. Obviously there’s the part where you would gladly lick them like an ice cream in any place they asked. I would not lick Dr McGee anywhere he asked.’
‘Funnily enough, I did,’ Jamie said. ‘Got a first though.’
‘Ahahahaa.’
‘Why are you wondering what love is like? Do you want to know what love is, like Foreigner?’ Laurie said.
‘I might have … met someone,’ Jamie said, meeting her eye, looking supremely ill at ease, eyes darting away again.
‘Wow,’ Laurie said, feeling an odd sharp heat flare inside her.
Ah, that text. The hasty phone flip. It made sense now. ‘After everything you said!’
‘Yeah.’ Jamie looked sheepish. ‘No one’s more surprised than me.’
‘Hey – but you’re going to wait until we’ve ended our pretending, right?’