A Hundred Ways to Break Up (Let's Make This Thing Happen 2) (3 page)

Ronnie had a reputation as a wild, flamboyant partygoer, short-tempered and eccentric and prone to superstar tantrums, not as the charming sweetie he turned out to be. For all his well-worn anecdotes about the places he’d been and the name-dropped stars he’d been there with – John and Paul, Frank and the gang, Kylie and Meryl – Emily realized well into the evening that he’d gradually been leading her out into the open, digging for stories and sitting back as she spoke. He’d have made a great therapist, or interviewer, if he ever grew bored with being a multimillionaire recording star.

Before long, it was more like visiting an uncle you haven’t seen for months. They talked and they laughed, and occasionally Ray would join in with an anecdote of his own, but mostly he was content to just sit back and enjoy how Ronnie drew Emily out of herself.

Finally, it was dark outside, and Emily had long since passed the point of realizing she was in the hands of a master. She couldn’t remember talking so much in the longest time – not even on a night out with Marcia. Maybe it was the mojitos: she was sure it wasn’t just the special mint that gave this drink that something extra.

She sat back and smiled across at Ray. He looked so chilled – about as chilled as she felt. Earlier at L’Auberge, there had been a tension about him; the way she knew he could get when he was on public view. Seeing him like this was special, an insider’s thing.

Now, he raised his glass to Emily and Ronnie and said, “So... how about that threesome?”

It was as if the air had been sucked out of her lungs.

She stared at him, fighting not to let any expression pass across her face.

For his part, he just sat there, straight-faced, eyebrows slightly raised as if to prompt a response.

Then he snorted into his drink, unable any longer to contain his laughter.

She stared at him, still, now letting her jaw sag. Then Ronnie leaned forward and put a hand on her forearm.

“Darling,” he said, “for a moment there you had a face like a bulldog sucking lemons. You do know I’m homosexual, don’t you? Bent as a nine pound note.”

She turned her look on him. Of course she knew he was gay, but... Everyone knew Lionel Ronson was gay.

She looked at Ray again. He’d bitten back on the laughter.

He’d done exactly what she had to him earlier, she realized. Sucker-punched her right back. Shown her that he could say almost anything and
her
starting point was always to believe, no matter how ludicrous something might be, just as
his
starting point was always to believe. She had liked what that said about him, and so she must like what it said about her, too.

She narrowed her eyes, and saw a flash of uncertainty race across his features. Had he got it wrong?

“Bastard,” she said, and then burst out laughing. “You utter, utter
bastard
.”

“Remember, darlings: noise carries. Even in a 32-bedroom mansion.”

They left the room, hand in hand, giggling. Lionel Ronson remained in his seat by the window, suddenly transformed from the bubbly, charming host to a rather sad and lonely figure.

“You okay?” asked Ray, pulling the door closed behind them.

“Yes. Just...” She nodded towards the closed door. “Ronnie. He just seems...”

Ray nodded. “I know what you mean. He’s one of the sweetest people I know. He’s been like a father to me at times. But he never really opens up. There are always barriers.”

“Kiss me.”

He leaned down, and kissed her tenderly, slowly. Held her. She fitted so perfectly into his arms.

She pulled away, eventually. “You’re trying to impress me, aren’t you?” she said. “Dinner. All this. Ronnie.”

“Of course I’m trying to impress you, Emily. With everything I do. But all this? These are my friends. This is who I am. In thirty or forty years time I’ll be Ronnie, shut away in my mansion, not trusting anyone and not able to go out.”

Was that why he was showing her this? Not to impress but to confront, to tell her that this is what she’s dealing with?

“That’s some career plan.”

“It was never a plan,” he said. “It isn’t the deal you sign up to when the A and R man comes up to you after a gig in a shitty little pub and tells you he wants you to meet some people. It’s always part of the territory, though. But hey, I’m not complaining.”

He cracked that smile and she tucked herself briefly into his arms again. “Did he say there was a room for us?” she asked.

§

He led her up those grand marble stairs and along a dark corridor. The only lighting came from small spotlights directed at heavy-framed paintings. Mostly pictures of birds, their gaudy feathers picked out in exquisite detail, some of them dead – the game birds and waterfowl – and others stretching wings to display their plumage. There were landscapes, too; possibly of the manicured grounds of Ronnie’s mansion. She should recognize the artists, she knew, but she was distracted.

They came to a door which Ray pushed open. Then he stepped back and waited for Emily to pass through first.

She stepped into a living room. More of those high-winged chairs, a leather chaise longue. Doors opening off this room – presumably there was a bedroom through one of them. Over by the window there was a grand piano, and it said a lot about the scale of this suite that the piano didn’t dominate the space. There were pianos throughout this mansion, she realized – so many that you stopped noticing them.

More paintings hung from the walls in ornate frames.

“Ronnie, you little...” Ray was shaking his head, then he nodded towards the nearest of the paintings and Emily looked more closely.

She’d been so distracted by her first impressions of the room as a whole that she hadn’t seen that the pictures were not paintings at all: someone had printed out old photos of the Angry Cans and taped them into the heavy frames, concealing the original paintings. Four young men in wraparound shades, leather jackets and tight jeans; they stood on top of a wall, hands tucked into jacket pockets, their postures surly, confrontational, the sky heavy and gray behind them. A softer shot of Ray, shades pushed back, dark eyes staring out of the picture, dreamily, lost; and blurred in the background the other three Cans, all against a white backdrop. The four on stage, Ray, Callum and Rake with their guitars slung low, Laney looking like he’d been caught in mid-air as he launched himself at his drums. And more: stage shots, pictures from the magazines, studio shots.

“I should never have told him,” said Ray, shaking his head. Then, prompted by her silence, he went on: “I told him you’d had Angry Cans pictures on your bedroom wall. I told him how old it made me feel.” He laughed. “I’m sorry. I’ll take them down.”

He reached for the nearest picture but Emily caught his wrist. “No, it’s fine,” she said. “It’s sweet. You clearly mean a lot to him.”

Ray shrugged. “He’s one of the good guys. You learn to value that.”

She moved further into the room and stopped before another picture. The four members of the Angry Cans in a huddle, arms around each other’s shoulders, skyscrapers and city lights behind them.

“Why did you guys split?” she asked.

“It was always going to happen,” he said. “It had the weight of inevitability about it. People get together, people split.”

He moved across to the piano and sat, then started picking out simple arpeggios, moving through three chords and then back to the start again. When he started to sing it was a repeated high note, sliding down as the chord changed. That gravel in his voice giving the notes an impassioned quality.

“Can’t stop thinking ’bout you as the day grows old,
Built my life around you, gave my heart and soul.
Can’t stop dreaming ’bout the things we did and said,
Grains of sand running through my hand, and through my weary head.”

Emily stood by the piano, watching the way Ray’s hands glided over the keys. Such a rare gift, to be able to just sit down at any instrument and make something beautiful like this. He’d played this song at the Roxette. One of the new ones, so she’d only heard it that one time, but it had stayed with her so that now she was with him, ahead of him, as he transitioned into the chorus:

“Now is the moment, now is forever,
We’re living it for all we’ve got.
If there are ninety-nine ways to get together,
There’s a hundred ways to break up.”

First time round she’d taken the song at face value, a song about the precarious nature of love, how you must treasure every moment because even the most secure of relationships was vulnerable, easily lost. Now, though, she realized it could equally be about any relationship, and in particular it could be about the Angry Cans: four young men who had grown up together, lived and played and worked together, fought and broke up.

She wondered at his choice of words earlier:
It had the weight of inevitability about it. People get together, people split
.

He had a way of putting things, presenting a negative that’s actually a positive, and then twisting it so that it’s negative again. So now he was sitting there and singing the most beautiful song about how important it was to treasure the moments you have because they might be
all
you have.

It totally encapsulated the mood that had been stealing over her repeatedly this evening. A mood she’d tried to deny and resist, whereas Ray embraced it: this is life – enjoy it, give yourself up to it. Life so precious, so vulnerable.

That double-edged thing, the appreciation and the vulnerability, had been in his songs from the start, she realized. She’d just never quite understood.

She waited until the last notes of the piano had faded away, Ray still sitting there, his hands poised, his head drooping, as if the song had taken everything.

She moved around the piano and put a hand to each of his cheeks, cupping his face, tilting him up to meet her kisses. A succession of brief, delicate kisses. Across his mouth, his nose, his forehead, and then back down to his mouth, lingering now, pressing.

He turned on the piano stool to face her and his hands moved to her hips.

She parted her lips now and his tongue pressed home. That nervous thing of his, the first tentative probing and then the hunger and need stealing over him as he took control, driving deep into her mouth.

Instantly, her heart was pounding, her breath rapid, and that delicious, tense knot was forming deep in her belly.

Those hands... pulling at her skirt now, sliding it up her thighs, over her hips.

A moment’s rushing of thoughts: fear of being intimate with him (but he’d seen her naked already, kissed every inch of her curvy body), relief that she’d chosen to wear those sheer black hold-ups and the new black lace shorts she’d bought that morning. Then...

One hand now, moving away from her hip, stealing inwards.

Pressing. Thumb upright against her mound. Forefinger pressing against the fabric of her panties, hard knuckles against her softness, parting her through the thin cotton. A roll of the wrist, a rocking back and forth.

She pulled her head away from his kiss. Had to breathe. Had to let go that long, low groan.

She tugged at her blouse, fumbling with the buttons, freeing them, pulling the top free and discarding it on the floor. Reached back to unhook her bra and pull it clear. And all the time, that hand, pressing, rocking, separating.

Now that he was facing her, she could shuffle her feet sideways, forward, until she was straddling him, pressing down, settling in his lap.
On
his lap.

His hand fell away, came to settle on her thigh, sliding over the sheerness of her hold-ups, across the smooth skin to her hip and back down again.

She bore down, feeling the hardness of his jeans pressed against her. The thick fabric, doubled up over metal buttons at his fly. The hard bulge of his manhood beneath.

She pressed down harder, letting her legs relax so that her weight came down on him.

Hands to either side of his face again, she kissed him, an interplay of tongues as first she probed his mouth and then his tongue met hers, pressed back, entered her mouth.

What was it about having him like this? About the way he pressed, about the way their bodies fitted together so perfectly? She was right on the edge. Keep pressing like this and she would pass the point of no return, climaxing just from the pressure of his body against hers.

She shifted, and now the pressure wasn’t so direct, more on her inner thighs. She reached down and found the first button at his waist. Popped it open.

Now his mouth worked down her neck, his hands taking a firm hold of her ass, squeezing the flesh, pulling and parting, then easing their grip to cup her, stroke her, the touch suddenly gentle, like a feather.

She popped the second button and took a moment to slide her hand inside, her knuckles against flat belly, coarse hair. Pressing downwards until her fingertips encountered hardness and his whole body stiffened. Withdrawing again. Finding another button, popping it open.

A fourth, and now she could trace her fingertip over the base of his shaft, wrap fingers around it, and gently tease his manhood out into the open until it lay flat and hard against his t-shirt.

Now she turned her hand and pressed the palm against him, pressed herself back down against the back of her hand, use herself to grind that hand against him.

That was such an intensely horny thing!

Her hand separating them, a barrier. But that hand, slick with her juices soaking through her panties, and slick, too, with his.

He moved one of his hands up to her breasts now, cupped one, took the nipple between thumb and forefinger, squeezing and twisting.

She turned her hand, knuckles against his shaft, making him gasp. Pulled at her lace shorts, easing them aside so that now when she pressed down against him it was skin against skin, softness against hardness. She held herself there, waiting for his eyes to rise and meet hers. He’d been studying her, watching her pulling her shorts aside, watching his hand working at that nipple.

She remembered that moment of self-consciousness, but that seemed so long ago. Why feel like that when here he was, enjoying her, drinking her in with his eyes?