Eighty Days White (9 page)

With one hand he gently parted my lips, opening me up, now ceremonially unveiling my pinkness and he dipped his tongue deep inside. I shuddered, as he began to orchestrate the steady rise of my desire, every single touch, every lick, a calculated assault on my defences, teasing my nerve endings, reaching deep into my soul and releasing all of the inhibitions that I had built, tearing them down. And then his tongue flicked upwards and wrapped itself around my clit, generating further waves of pleasure shooting across every inch of my body. I felt light on my feet. Leonard’s other hand extended behind me and firmly cupped my arse cheeks, steadying me, holding me tight against him.

I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to the flow.

My cunt was on fire. My mind was captive in a circle of flames.

It was an exquisite form of torture, as every sinew in my body called out silently for some form of release.

I was certain that Leonard was aware of the turmoil he had created and the way he clouded my mind and controlled my body, but he affected to be unaware. I knew I was wetter than wet and wondered what I tasted like to him.

His tongue kept on teasing me, his hot lips wedded to my opening, caressing, playing, lingering with mischief as I imperceptibly widened the angle between my legs to encourage his steady advances.

His teeth.

Nipping my lips with care and attention, pulling, delicately biting into their fragile flesh, then delving deeper,
higher, seizing hold of the inflamed bud of my clit, licking it first and then nibbling carefully at its increasing hardness until finally I couldn’t bear the tension, the need, the razor-sharp anguish that veered between pain and transcendence and I breathlessly called out his name.

‘Fuck me, Leonard. Now!’

He drew back, got up from his knees and I pushed him backwards onto the bed and began undoing his trousers, a pull on the zip, then unthreading the crisp leather belt, eager to pull out his dark cock, to satisfy my own voracious appetite, to feel the pulse of his life beat inside of my mouth as he expanded to fill me and quickly move him down to my pussy which was now screaming out for him, like a beggar in desperate search of sustenance, to make me whole again.

But Leonard was never one to rush, and even as we fucked and thrashed, there was always the deliberateness, the patience, the slow and rehearsed way he savoured our moments together, never rushing, thrusting metronomically, slow, slow, quick, quick, slow, and the juggling with the successive variations in speed and intensity as he continued his clever manipulation of my aroused senses, all the time observing the steady progress of my orgasm with his eyes wide open and that curious half-glimpse of a smile. I knew the way he looked at me when we fucked wasn’t self-satisfaction, but just a thorough appreciation of the way we melded and responded to each other in the throes of passion.

He was so unlike others I had been with.

And even after we had finished making love and lay sprawled across the undone bed in a tangle of sheets and
limbs, still catching our breath and allowing the waves of lust to steadily ebb away, he was by no means in a hurry to cover himself up as others would have done, unashamed at the way his body was on display to my observant eyes, and almost proud of its random imperfections, a fold here, a crease, a thin scar across his shoulder.

I loved Leonard’s body. Though I wondered if maybe what he saw in me was youth. If I was not Lily to him, but simply a source of rejuvenation.

‘You’re wrong,’ he said quietly to me one morning when I mentioned this. It was in Barcelona, and it would be the last time I joined him in Europe. ‘It’s not a case of me wanting to leech on your youth. Far from it. It’s just that being with you makes me feel alive.’

I delighted in those lazy mornings in foreign cities and often nameless hotels, as we awakened and he allowed me to contemplate the spectacle of his body as we caressed intimately on the bed. His penis fascinated me, whether at rest or in full flight while we fucked, and he immodestly accepted my stringent gaze as I memorised its every fold and ridge and shade, and the way it jutted away from his body and lay against his thigh, almost like a creature with its own volition.

Leonard would joke with me that I was acting like a doctor as I examined him.

Or maybe I was trying to read between the lines of his body the life he had lived before me. All in all, it was a strange feeling.

Similarly, he confessed how much he loved watching me and how my nakedness pleased him. I could see it in his eyes
anyway, the way he stared at me when I moved around the room dressing and undressing under his gaze.

In Amsterdam, our hotel-room window looked out on the Singel Canal, cobbled pathways buffeted by the thin rain and a parade of bikes parked by the edge of the water and trees fluttering in the breeze, and Leonard fed me raspberries and chocolate in bed as if I was an indolent Roman vestal spread across the bed and there for the spoiling, and later for the taking as he then unceremoniously stuffed my pussy with the final square of dark chocolate and waited until it melted before sucking the ensuing paste out of me with relish. Laughing my head off, I soon ended up kissing him and tasting myself alongside the strong, fragrant flavour of the cocoa as our lips met.

It was also in Amsterdam that he slipped a flower in my ebony black hair to celebrate spring and asked me to wear a flowing white skirt that floated all the way down to my feet and my Doc Martens boots and begged me to wander outside, arm in arm with him, pantiless.

‘Do it for me,’ he asked. And I indulged him.

In a small jeweller’s shop close to the Dam, he bought me a fine gold ankle chain which he locked in place with a miniature key which he then put swiftly into his pocket. Had I been collared? I immediately wondered, thinking suddenly of Liana. No, it wasn’t like that between us. But then what did he mean by it?

‘So you always think of me,’ he said. ‘When I’m gone. After Leonard … It almost sounds like an existential play, doesn’t it?’

I began to panic and to protest, but Leonard was firm.

‘This can’t last, Lily. I’m not a fool. It mustn’t last.
Anyway, it’s inevitable, you will tire of me, meet someone younger, who will prove less boring and with whom you won’t have qualms about being seen in public with. You’ll see.’

I opened my mouth to disagree, but Leonard put his fingers to my lips and wouldn’t allow me to say another word.

‘It’s not up for negotiation,’ he concluded, a cloud of sadness now enveloping us. ‘Don’t kid yourself. It’s how it will be, how it should have been.’

His fingers moved away from my mouth and he kissed me on my forehead.

Two weeks later we were in Barcelona. He was travelling back from the Middle East. The lobby of the hotel we stayed at was all straight lines and mirrors and as we checked in together, having arranged to meet up at the airport and taken a cab into the city together, the uniformed staff on duty at reception gave us a knowing look. We were dressed in entirely different styles, Leonard in his usual dark-blue business suit and me in a frayed leather jacket, leggings and knee-high boots. Most of the guys on duty were probably only a few years older than me and I thought I could read disapproval in their eyes. Perhaps Leonard sensed it too. He could have tried to come up with a throwaway excuse, maybe pretend I was his daughter, but as he signed us in, he insolently confirmed that indeed we were together and would have no need of two separate beds when one of the clerks suggested it. For my part, I was blushing all the way down to my roots, but I was beginning to understand the perils of our situation. Until then, my
feelings for Leonard had obscured the reality we were wading through as we blithely pretended to be a couple.

A couple who had little in common. Neither friends nor even musical tastes.

Walking down the Ramblas from Plaza Catalunya, I was overcome by fear and the prospect of happiness receding and, in the throes of panic, I told Leonard I loved him and that nothing else mattered. We made a detour by the large covered food market to gaze in wonder at the colours of the fruit, and the exotic spreads of fish and meat scattered across the dripping marble counters.

Later, on our way back to the hotel on Condal, we passed the caged birds on display in the pet market and I felt like crying. It was irrational, but it was like a blanket of fog falling on us and cutting us off from the city as we stepped along silently, both prey to moody thoughts and premonitions of darker tomorrows.

That night we fucked like savages, almost ripping each other apart, rage over-spilling as our bodies made contact like prize fighters in a ring. I scratched him. He bruised me. And neither of us felt it necessary to apologise. Words had become useless.

The following day we had the morning free before our late-afternoon return flight to London and so we visited Parc Güell. The endless flight of stairs leading to its gates saw us both breathless. But the view from the top was unforgettable, and with the city unfolding below us in the sun we held hands in public for the first time and sat on a stone bench and kissed as a posse of bespectacled nuns guided a group of young children past our embrace and looked at us both sideways and disapprovingly.

After those too-brief few days in Barcelona, a crazy collage of passion and self-doubt and moments of awkwardness and silences that lasted too long and too many words spoken or left unspoken, we parted for our longest absence so far. Nearly a whole month.

I woke the morning after my flight back to London and rolled onto my belly, stretching for my phone as I always did to check my messages. Leonard usually replied after midnight, and I always left his last message until first thing in the morning. It had become a habit, and then a superstition. If I woke in the middle of the night knowing that a missive from Leonard was likely waiting for me, I left it until dawn broke and my alarm went off, fearing that the absence of his name in my inbox would darken my day.

That morning, my mailbox was indeed empty, bereft. Along with my heart. He’d been doing a lot of travelling lately. Maybe he was simply stuck at another airport somewhere out of range. Or perhaps he had mistakenly left his charger in his checked luggage.

But I knew that Leonard was a creature of habit, and he hadn’t emailed me for a reason.

I resolved not to send him anything until he first communicated with me. That was the way that we did things. And I would not go clutching after him like some lovesick school girl.

Instead, I tried to distract myself by resurrecting my old life and routine. Lily before Leonard.

I began by contacting my friends, but Liana’s number just dialled out over and over, and a week went by and she still hadn’t returned my calls. My
worry for her, combined with my fear that I had lost Leonard for good, turned into a hard knot within my stomach that threatened to overtake the rest of my life, so that I was gloomy at the music shop and pensive at the fetish club, even though both my employers were pleased to have me available for more shifts.

Neither Jonno nor She enquired after my state of mind, probably presuming that the reason for my suddenly frequent appearances was the same as the reason for my initial disappearance. Man trouble.

A couple of weeks after I got back, I called Neil, just for the comfort of an old friend’s voice.

‘Lily!’ he cried into the phone, after barely two rings.

He sounded jauntier than I had heard him before.

‘You’re in a good mood,’ I said.

‘I got the job!’ he shouted enthusiastically. ‘As an accounts manager.’

I vaguely remembered that he had interviewed at the PR firm where he was interning and struggled to bring the details to mind. A pang of guilt sharply assaulted my mind. I had been so wrapped up in myself I hadn’t been paying any attention to the lives of my friends.

‘Wow, good for you,’ I said. Neil was the first person among my peer group who had actually found what we deemed to be a proper job since graduating. The rest of us were just floating around, working in summer jobs that had somehow carried on whilst wondering what to do next.

‘So what will you be doing?’ I asked, forcing cheerfulness. Maybe speaking to him was just the ticket to distract me from my troubles.

‘Account management. In the planning department,’ he explained. ‘It’s not a senior position, but I’ll be working
on some campaigns and stuff. Next step the company car maybe … I’m on my way, Lily. Isn’t it great?’

‘Oh,’ I replied. Somehow I had presumed that he’d end up in accounts. Checking off invoices or running payroll.

‘How are you doing, honey? It’s been ages.’

‘I’m good,’ I lied. ‘We should hang out again. You doing anything tonight?’

‘Can’t tonight. Work thing. And tomorrow. Next week?’

‘Sure,’ I said, and with a loose promise to see each other soon, we hung up the call.

I was pleased for him, but our conversation had left me feeling even lonelier. The old Neil that I knew seemed to have been replaced by a newer version that I was out of touch with and unused to.

Where had I gone wrong? I wished for the old days, for the ease of university life and the structure of exams to study for and lectures to go to and the burden of real life in the outside world always looming, but in some faraway future that would surely take forever to actually knock on our doors.

Even an Alice Cooper record on repeat failed to shake the blues out of me.

With a sinking heart, I refreshed the button on my browser again and checked my inbox.

Still nothing.

Leonard had gone silent. And I felt, with all the inflexible certainty of youth, that an important page of my life had been turned.

For weeks I wandered aimless through a thick fog of guilt, still wondering whether I had done the right thing. Or ruminating on the possibility that it had not been my decision alone and that, somehow, Leonard had talked me into it.

It was as if during the eighty days that our relationship had lasted – and I knew this was the exact number of days every time I looked up in the morning at the wall calendar taped above my small writing desk in my bedroom – he had gradually been sowing the seeds of doubt, feeding me one crumb at a time the manifold reasons we could not last. Until the day the cup overflowed and we were obliged to break things off. The more I reflected on it, the more it seemed that way.