Twenty Something by Iain Hollingshead Read Free Book Online Page A

feels weird, as she’s never kissed me on the cheek before. We’d kissed properly the first time we’d met. And that was over three years ago.
    But the peck on the cheek turns into a quick peck on the lips. She hugs me tight. I can feel her breasts against my chest. I cup my hands around her face and start to kiss her properly. She slides one of her slender legs in between mine.
Oh Jack
, she was moaning now, her curves pushed up against me, her crotch taut against my bulging trousers, her hands gripping fistfuls of my hair. She reaches for my belt. I groan too. In expectation.
    And then I’m inside her, and everything is pure white as we’re lost in a commotion of grunts and squeaks, flashing unconnected images and explosions of a million little particles.
    And the very worst thing was that, the moment we’d finished, I felt absolutely nothing. It was the most intense physical experience of my life; it was the least emotional. It wasn’t making love, it was shagging. It was animalistic. It was bloody good. But I’ve felt more emotional connection shaking a friend’s hand than I did in those brief moments of sweaty frotting. She had gone from being an unobtainable object of desire to an object of possession. And by repossessing her, I had nothing left in myself.
    I stayed the night — she begged me to — when all I really wanted was to leave and go home and wash the smell of her away. And as she lay there cradled in my arms in our favourite spoons position, I knew that I was cuddling the past and not the future. She made me breakfast the next day. I kissed her on the forehead. And when she said, ‘Goodbye’, I think she meant it. And when I said, ‘See you around’, I’m pretty sure I didn’t want to.
Friday 18th February
    I had to go into work via Marks and Spencer’s to buy a clean shirt. I didn’t want to look like the kind of dirty stopout who had spent the previous evening with his ex-girlfriend after acting on a lonely-loser text message.
    There was a card shop next to M&S so I popped in and had an idle browse through the reduced Valentine’s merchandise. I realised with a jolt that this was the first year that I hadn’t sent any cards at all since I was thirteen and sent one to myself at school (which doesn’t really count). I bought one I thought Leila might like.
    â€˜Saving up for next year?’ asked the smiley cashier.
    â€˜Er, no. Have just been a bit disorganised,’ I mumbled.
    â€˜Ah. In trouble with the lady, are we?’
    â€˜You could say that.’
    I tuck it into my jacket and get into a mercifully empty lift at work.
This time I’m not going to screw it up, this time I’m not going to screw it up
— I repeat my mantra to myself. Round one: Shredded flowers and a little love loch of awkwardness. Round two: Piss-poor coffee conversation. Round three: A clumsily botched email seduction on Valentine’s Day. Round four: Knockout.
    Leila’s away from her desk, so I pluck out the embarrassingly large red envelope, hide it under my copy of the
Financial Times
(with which it clashes hideously) and open up a document on my computer so that I can have several goes at writing and editing the perfect droll message. After ten minutes or so, I’ve got it pretty much sussed. I open the card to transcribe it and, bugger me if the little bastard doesn’t start playing a song. ‘I believe in miracles, since you came along, you sexy thing’, etc.
    I slam the card shut, but it’s already too late. Not only are half the office looking in my direction, but Leila has returned from her meeting and is looking over my shoulder sniggering. Buddy is looking over her shoulder in fits of hysterics. I justhave sufficient presence of mind to minimise the document on my screen before Buddy launches into prosecutor mode.
    â€˜Nice shirt, Jacko, boy. You’ve ironed it in such a strange way that