Fallout by Sadie Jones Page B

up – shocking her.
    ‘Here,’ he said and held out his hand.
    Leigh glanced back at Paul.
    ‘He’s asleep,’ he said. ‘It’s all right.’
    He had none of the movement he normally did, no nerves, just quiet and focused, knowing what he wanted. She got up. She’d have followed him anywhere. He took her hand and they went around the corner, just out of sight, the only place to go, where the wall went to the front door. He put his hands onto her shoulders, her collarbones, and pressed her back, gently, against the wall, and he kissed her. His hands moved up her neck, until he held her face between both of them, the fingers pressing into her neck, and the cold hard wall behind her back. They kissed. Revealed and encircled. Her arms were around him, across his back, pulling him into her as they kissed. Breathless.
    He was still in his coat, she had taken hers off hours before and had a dress underneath, short over her jeans, with thin corduroy and tiny buttons that didn’t open. She wanted him to try to open them so that she could tell him they didn’t open and he could find some other way into her.
    ‘I’m not really a virgin,’ she said.
    This gave him pause; he backed off a little – his face coming into focus – and frowned at her.
    ‘Are you?’ he said.
    ‘No, I said I’m not.’
    ‘Why would you say you’re not?’
    ‘Because I said I was before.’
    ‘Did you?’
    ‘Yes, when I was laughing. It was a figure of speech.’
    ‘It was a – being a virgin was a figure of speech?’
    ‘I think I said “virginal”, not virgin.’
    He laughed – a great sort of guffaw, suddenly and very loud.
    ‘ Shh! ’
    They both looked around the corner – Paul was sleeping peacefully.
    Luke kissed her again, sweet, but then stopped, putting his mouth to her ear.
    ‘What’s the difference?’ he whispered, very close, keeping quiet for her. ‘What’s the difference between virgin and virginal when virgin is a figure of speech?’
    She smiled but thought she might cry. The talking and then kissing – the reality of him, too close, too human, too honest for her to bear. She didn’t know why it should hurt so much, being so perfect.
    ‘Just – I feel as if I’m untouched, but I’m not. I’ve had boyfriends – I just – you’re . . . I feel untouched,’ she said again.
    Luke saw that she had tears in her eyes. It was awful. He took both her hands and held them up between their faces, double fists, like a promise. Blinkered, they were safe in the tiny space of their hands, their eyes the biggest thing in the world, so close up. And there, in the very briefest of moments, there was love.
    Then he stepped back from her, and shook his head, and laughed.
    ‘Don’t chat up the stage management,’ he said, and left.
     
    Leigh lay next to Paul in her clothes, slept hardly at all and waking first, watched him for a while. The early-morning light showed his paleness and the silver gleam of his hair, which was brown in the shadows. He needed to shave. The stubble was sandy; not so much a shadow as a burnishing, a softening of his jaw.
    The night before was at her back like a dream or fever. She felt Luke wrenched from her; his painful absence. He had not liked her enough to stay. She refused to countenance humiliation but it had its way with her anyway. Don’t chat up the stage management . His mouth and hands on her face and neck. She had been assaulted by her reaction to him – had plainly imagined something quite different to his experience. Foolish. Trusting. She settled against the pillow, against the wall. Set her jaw. Shut her eyes, was grateful Paul was sleeping and could not see her. It would take time and careful sense to push Luke from her mind. He is one of those men, she thought, to fix him in her controllable universe, just one of those men – that cause pain and don’t think. Her father had been one. Charisma and blind hunger; she had never known what her mother meant by it but now she