Junction X by Erastes Page A

suspected he’d do and what I’d probably have done in his circumstances. I asked him if he wanted me to come over to his house, but he told me that he had arranged client meetings in pubs and clubs the length and breadth of the commuter line. I couldn’t help but smile. Claire’s departure might have knocked the bottom out of Phil’s world, but if he was really working the way he said he was, the firm would benefit from his family tragedy.
    On Friday, he surprised me by being on the train, and as soon as the doors slammed and the whistle sounded, he slid next to me and kissed me. I was too startled to do much more than let him. Phil instigating a kiss was unheard of. He pushed me back onto the cushions. My hat tumbled to the floor and he had my cock out of my trousers before I could think straight. It didn’t take him long to get me off. It never did.
    To show my appreciation, I put my paper on the floor, knelt on it fastidiously and gave him the best blowjob I was capable of. We said nothing about it, but he ruffled my hair afterwards before asking my opinion on the chances of sugar cane going down that winter.
    I wanted to talk to him about these feelings I had for Alec, but of course I didn’t. I was confused enough as it was, and I worried what his reaction would be. I longed just to say ‘Do you…? Should I? How can I?’ But of course I didn’t. I didn’t even have the words to ask him how he was managing on his own. I pushed my cowardice away and invited him for a round at the weekend.
    “Can’t,” he said, “I’m booked solid, but I can do Monday evening.”
    “Probably better,” I replied. “It’ll remove the temptation to get drunk.”
    “It won’t remove mine,” he muttered from behind his paper. “I’ll ring Bryant and Rydell and see if they can make a foursome.”
    The train slid into the next stop and I retreated behind my Times , but I didn’t concentrate on the news. I was imagining what it might be like to be alone with Alec in an empty train compartment, wondering how it would feel if instead of the solid adult-ness of Phil, my hands could wrap around Alec’s slender frame. I was so engrossed in my imagination that I forgot that my hat had rolled under the seat and was almost to the barrier at Waterloo when I realised and had to hare back to fetch it.
    It was like that throughout the rest of the day. My thoughts spent more and more time in a fantasy of what—if things had been different in a way that even I couldn’t imagine—it would be like if my episodes were with Alec, and not with Phil.
    It was the sweetest torture, and Sunday week seemed a lifetime away.

 
    Chapter 9
     
    We were about half a mile down the road when I wondered about the wisdom of bringing the twins, for all of their convenience as a smoke screen. First, there had been a fight about who would sit in the front seat, but I quashed that almost immediately. Not only did I want Alec where I could see him and could almost feel the heat from him, but also I couldn’t subject him to the vicissitudes of my over-excited offspring. They continued their feud in the back of the car until I stopped before we reached the roundabout and they shut up instantly. They knew I was quite capable of taking the car home, although I wouldn’t have done, even if they’d been throwing things. But they did not know that.
    Alec was dressed rather formally, in a shirt and tie and his school blazer—a decision, I’m sure, made by his mother. While I would have preferred to see him in those rather-too-tight jeans for my own pleasure, I was happy that he was smart enough to take to a restaurant—which I planned to do.
    As I curved the car around the roundabout, I was terribly aware of the fact, in a way I never had been even when Valerie and I were courting, that the car had a bench seat. I wondered how stupid I had been to not push up the armrest between Alec and me. Had that armrest not been there, I could easily have taken a