Miss Wrong and Mr Right (21 page)

‘Natalie vas just giving me painkillers for my bunion, ayayayy it throbs,’ said Gran suddenly affecting a limp.

‘Do you want help back down the stairs Anouska?’ asked Ryan.

‘No. Natalie my darlink, vill you help me back down?’ she said. I grabbed my stuff and helped her out and down the stairs.

‘I can’t believe you!’ I hissed when we were out of earshot.

‘My God did you see that body? I upgrade him to Sean Connery status.’

I went to protest, but she cut me off.

‘Natalie, ven you get to my age, and gravity plays its cruel game, you vill vish you took every slutty opportunity. Now go and have some fun my darlink…’
 

‘I am not… having this conversation with you, and… I am not…’

‘All I ask of you Natalie is that you are safe. Goodnight,’ said Gran patting my hand. She limped off to her room.

I went to the bathroom and took a shower. I pulled on a long t-shirt and looked at myself in the mirror.
 

‘It’s a bad idea isn’t it?’ I said to my reflection. I debated phoning Sharon, but I thought she would want to kill me for even sleeping in the same room as Ryan Harrison. I looked at myself in the mirror with my wet hair in a t-shirt.
 

‘Anyway, who are you kidding? He turned down Tuppence Halfpenny. Sex on a stick.’
 

When I went back upstairs, Ryan was in bed tapping away at his iPhone.

‘Hey, do your parents have WiFi?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said putting my clothes on the dresser with the condoms bundled in the middle.

‘Shoot, I can’t find it, can you show me?’ he said holding out his phone. I went over to his bed, pulling down the t-shirt which suddenly felt skimpy. I perched next to him and took his phone.

‘Here we go,’ I said scrolling through. ‘It’s LOVE27, password LOVE27.’

I handed him back his phone.

‘That’s a lot of love. Twenty-seven times?’

‘It’s the house number,’ I said. I went to get back up, but he put his hand on mine.

‘Thanks Natalie.’

‘It’s okay, they’ve got like a gigabyte a month, so use as much as…’

‘No. Thanks for all this, it’s been cool to be part of your family, even for a day. It’s made me feel normal again.’

We looked at each other. He leant forward and kissed me. It was soft and tender. He pulled away and grinned. I didn’t say we shouldn’t, or that it was a bad idea, I leant in and kissed him again, harder. He put his hand on my leg and it moved up to my thigh. I put my hand on his leg and then laughed.

‘Hey,’ he said pulling back, a little hurt. ‘What is it?’
 

‘It’s just the pyjamas. They’re my Dad’s, and it’s a bit weird,’ I said. He pulled up the covers, wiggled about underneath, then triumphantly pulled out the pyjama bottoms and dropped them on the floor.

‘There. I’m now naked, and you don’t have to call me Daddy,’ he said with a grin. I laughed. He took my face in his hands and kissed me again, pulling me against him.

‘You wanna get under the covers?’ he whispered. I climbed in with him and we kissed some more. He was such a great kisser. His body was warm and firm. I ran my fingers across his washboard belly and down.

‘What’s that?’ I said.

‘That would be my dick,’ he growled.

‘No. Not that…
that
!’

‘Oh…
That
is
a consequence of a drunken night out in LA…’

He had a pierced penis.
 

We stopped for a moment.

‘Does it turn you off?’ he asked.

‘No. It’s just a surprise,’ I said.

‘Do you want to see it?’

‘Okay…’

He pulled back the covers and his penis lay impressively erect against his stomach. The tip, resting against his belly button, had a silver ring. It wasn’t huge and it fitted snugly on the end. I was surprised how much it excited me.

‘Did it hurt?’ I asked.

‘Yes. Even after a bottle of Jack Daniels. Have you never seen one before?’

‘A penis? Yes. I’m more than ten years older than you, remember…’ I immediately wished I hadn’t said that.

‘I thought guys in Europe were more adventurous with piercings?’ said Ryan.

‘I’ve only seen one on a girl. Well, she didn’t have a… she had her… you-know-what pierced.’

His face lit up.

‘No nothing like that… It’s a long story, which I’m not going to tell you now…’ I said.

‘Yes, we need to get to know each other better, before we tell each other stories,’ he laughed. He slowly peeled off my t-shirt. I lay back and he moved on top of me, kissing me again. He felt so good, so warm. He stopped and fixed me with a mischievous grin.

‘You wanna see how it feels?’
 

We had the most thrilling sex. We didn’t quite use all the condoms Gran gave me – something I never thought I would say. It was getting light when we finally drifted off to sleep, my head resting on his shoulder.

‘So now we know each other better, you want to tell me about the chick with the piercing?’ he asked.

I told him about my relationship with Benjamin, and how I caught him in the middle of it with Laura.

‘He’s an idiot, I would never do that to you,’ said Ryan, and he fell asleep.
 

Guilt

I woke up a few hours later just before six am, with the sun streaming through the small windows of my attic room. Ryan was asleep, his head on my chest. He felt warm against me, and looked so peaceful sleeping. I traced the outline of his strong nose and long eyelashes. How did he manage to look so good first thing in the morning? His face wasn’t crumpled, his skin shone… His hair had dried naturally and looked fashionably tousled. I reached up, and found my hair had dried into a mass of wonky frizz. Quietly, I took my phone from the bedside table, held it out and took a picture of me and Ryan.

Then I heard what had woken me, it was my mother.

‘Coo-ee! Natalie!’ came her voice. I heard a creak as she started up the small wooden staircase. I quickly slipped out from under Ryan’s arm, and leapt into the bed on the other side of the room, pulling the covers over me just as the door opened.

‘Morning Natalie! Oh…’ she said, when she saw Ryan’s sleeping form in the other bed.

‘Morning, Mum. Gran couldn’t make the stairs, not with her bunion, so Ryan bunked down on the other bed,’ I said.

Mum surveyed the scene for a moment, and I felt this terrible guilt and embarrassment. I’m not sure why, I’m thirty-five for God’s sake! But Ryan is ten years younger than me, and I’d had sex with him in my mother’s house. I’d had an orgasm in my mother’s house. Well, two!
 

‘Is Ryan Jewish?’ she whispered with a grin.

‘I wouldn’t know, I haven’t seen!’ I blurted guiltily.

‘What?’ asked Mum. ‘Natalie, I’m making a fry-up. I wanted to know if Ryan eats bacon? Lots of these Hollywood types are Jewish. I wouldn’t want to offend him…’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said.
 

‘I’ll come back when he’s awake… The exercise on these stairs does me good.’

Ryan opened his eyes.

‘Morning Ryan,’ trilled Mum. ‘Do you want bacon?’
 

Ryan rubbed his eyes, confused as to where he was. He saw me in the other bed.

‘Are you going to make me come twice?’ shrilled Mum just as Ryan remembered what had happened.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘You don’t need to come back Mum… Do you want bacon for breakfast, Ryan?’ I asked.

‘Yes, I love bacon,’ he said. Mum was staring down at us like two friends. Much as she did with me and Sharon when she used to sleep over. I relaxed a little.

‘So bacon sarnies all round? You’ll need something in your tummies before you hit the road back to London,’ she said.

‘Wow, thanks Mrs Love,’ said Ryan.

‘Call me Annie, all Natalie’s friends do! Breakfast in twenty minutes,’ she said and went back downstairs closing the door.
 

We stared at each other for a minute, and then burst out laughing.

‘Morning,’ he grinned. ‘Do you have a chair?’

‘Yeah, there’s one by the dressing table,’ I said. Ryan got out of bed, still naked, and padded over to the dressing table. He carried the chair to the door and wedged it under the handle.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked. He came back over.

‘I figure we’ve got twenty minutes to kill,’ he said sliding into bed with me.

‘What if my mother comes?’ I said.

‘I guarantee you will before she does,’ he said leaning in to kiss me.

We had a really lovely breakfast, all sat down at the kitchen table, chatting and munching on a delicious pile of bacon sandwiches. Ryan sat next to me and kept pushing his leg against mine. Gran watched us with a knowing smile.

We left reluctantly just after seven-thirty, weighed down with several quiche lorraines and a pavlova. Mum and Dad came out to the car to wave us off.

‘Do you think we’ll be seeing you again, Ryan?’ asked Mum.

‘I’d love to visit again Mrs Love,’ said Ryan getting in the car. ‘But why don’t you come up to London when
Macbeth
opens. You could come to the premiere?’

Mum looked at Dad.

‘We could have a couple of days in London, couldn’t we Martin?’

‘Yes, I’m sure we could get Micky and Dave to feed the animals,’ agreed Dad.

‘Really, you’d come to London, to see the play?’ I asked. They both nodded and I was a little overwhelmed.

‘I’ll book you tickets,’ I said. ‘Love you.’

‘We love you too,’ said Mum, giving me a kiss as I got in the car. She went to Gran who was looking pensive in the back seat. ‘And where are you off to next Mum? Wherever the wind takes you I presume?’ Gran mumbled something neutral and gave her and my Dad a hug.

As we hit the motorway, Gran fell asleep in the back of the car.

‘There is so much I could show you in London when we get back,’ I said excitedly. ‘I go and watch plays all the time, you could come with me one night?’

‘Yeah, and then I could take you back to my hotel and you can…’
 

‘Enough of that joke,’ I said. He grinned and kissed me. ‘So, what about your sponsor, I thought you weren’t meant to have a relationship?’ I added.

‘Wow, are we in a relationship?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t mean that…’
 

I went to backtrack but Gran coughed and woke up.
 

‘Darlink, could ve stop at the petrol station, I need to use the bathroom,’ she said.
 

‘Sure Gran, there’s one in a couple of miles.’
 

When we got out of the car, Ryan said he was going to go to the petrol station shop. He gave me a big kiss in front of Gran and left with a dazzling smile.

 
When we were in the toilets, Gran quizzed me on what had happened. I told her as much as I felt comfortable about, even though she was what you might term a ‘cool’ Gran.

‘Oh Natalie,’ she said clasping her hands together. ‘This could be the start of something beautiful.’

‘We’re not in a relationship,’ I said. ‘It was just…’

‘Natalie. I see the love light in that boy’s eyes. I think he has fallen for you, and you for him!’

‘But he’s at my theatre, and… he’s in recovery…’

‘You are both grown adults and single. You must follow your heart,’ she said.
 

I was just trying to get my head around this, when we came back to the car. Ryan was standing by the open passenger door having a heated conversation on his phone. He looked up when we came back. The love light had gone from his eyes. He was furious. I noticed he’d bought a newspaper and a coffee.

‘I pay Terri twenty percent to keep this shit out of the papers…’ he was saying, ‘Well maybe YOU should do your job better. Yeah I’m gonna have words with her. She’s just here. Gotta go.’

He hung up and turned on me.

‘What was this weekend all about?’ he demanded, his eyes blazing.

‘What?’ I said.

‘I let people in and they just want a piece of me…’

‘Ryan, what’s going on?’ I said. He threw the newspaper across the car roof. I took it and looked at Gran who was equally confused.

‘Page four,’ he said. I opened the
Mail on Sunday
to see a big double page headline screaming out:

RYAN’S ALCOHOL SHAME!!!

 
It detailed how Ryan Harrison, star of popular teen drama
Manhattan Beach
,
was an alcoholic. It revealed his stints in rehab, and how, despite assurances to producers of the show, he had started drinking again.

 
Below was a sequence of grainy, but still legible pictures of us taken yesterday by the pond at the farm; Ryan staggering and being held up by me, and then a hideous photo of him throwing up in the pond. The article went on to say that he was on his final warning with
Manhattan Beach
producers and he was almost certain to be fired. It talked of him as another Hollywood car crash coming to London to appear in a play. The article even cast doubt on his ability to take on a stage role such as Macbeth
,
and even his ability to act.
 

‘Oh Ryan, I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘I bet you are!’

‘You think I did this?’

‘How the hell else did they find me? You said it was in the middle of nowhere!’ he added to Gran.

‘It
is
in the middle of nowhere,’ insisted Gran. ‘My God, I lived in Sowerton for twenty years! One bus a day to the nearest town,’ she said looking nervously between us.

‘So it was you, old woman, how much did they offer you?’

‘Hey!’ I said.
 

‘You said she just showed up in London, with all her suitcases. These people pay big time for shit like this!’ said Ryan.

‘Enough!’ I shouted. ‘Say what you like to me, but you will leave my grandmother ALONE. Do you hear me?’

‘Ok, well how do you explain this?’ he said indicating the paper with tears forming in his eyes.

‘It must have been someone at the christening. Look, an “unknown guest” is quoted as seeing you “worse for wear”,’ I said.

‘I never liked your mother’s trifle,’ said Gran.