Straight Talking by Jane Green

The kisses and cuddles he gave me the night before were only for the night before. When he leaves he might give me a kiss on the lips, but he won’t open my mouth with his tongue, or lick the inside of my lips whispering, “I want to make love to you.”
    He’ll say something like, “I’ll give you a call,” and he may or may not add “sometime.” I’ll get up and go to work, and I’ll be too busy to think about him, but when I get home, later that night when I’m cleaning up his debris from the night before, I will think about him.
    And I’ll think about the way he kissed me, the way he held me, the way he murmured my name as he entered me, and the more I think about it the more I’ll want to see him again.
    And my telephone will turn into a silent black monster, sitting menacingly in the corner of my living room, accusing me of not being good enough, not being pretty enough, not being thin enough, because he doesn’t call.
    If I’m very lucky he might phone again in a couple of weeks, when he’s bored, or horny, and if we do make love again it won’t be making love, it will be fucking, and I’ll want him more. And more. And more. I’ll savor every sign of encouragement the bastard unwittingly gives me, and eventually, when he stops phoning and he’s found someone else, someone who he wants to be with, to take out for dinner, to spend days with, I’ll cry for a few hours, or maybe a couple of days, and then I’ll be fine.
    This is why I don’t want to respond to Andrew. Because I deserve better than a cheap fuck. Because I deserve to be the one they want to take out for breakfast. But I can’t bloody help myself, can I? Could
you
?

8
    Jesus, do you know how long it’s been since I last had a fuck?

9
    Sometimes you can tell when people have had happy childhoods, people like Andrew, and sometimes you get it completely wrong. I know for a fact people assume I have always been successful, popular, one of those people born with a silver spoon in their mouths.
    But let me tell you how wrong they are. How wrong you might be. This painted veneer hides a hell of a lot of pain. You think it will get better as you grow older. You think you’ll be able to sweep it under your Habitat rugs, but every time you have a relationship, those problems come back, and screw you up all over again.
    “When we’re adults we spend our lives trying to re-create our childhood homes, hmm? For some that means happiness, security, warmth. For others, like you, it means unhappiness, infidelity, insecurity, hmm?” I was lying back in what I’ve come to call my shrink’s couch, although it’s not a couch, it’s a chair, and if you push the arms forward the back shoots backward and this shelf thing appears under your legs.
    This was sometime last year, and Louise was looking at me very intently as she said this, as she tried to explain why I attracted men who couldn’t commit, or weren’t faithful, or didn’t want me enough.
    “There was no consistency in your childhood,” she said, “and no trust.”
    “You’re right,” I nodded. “I don’t actually think I know how to trust,” I said slowly, thinking about each word as it came out of my mouth. “I don’t think I’ve ever trusted anyone in my life.” Louise was nodding as I said this, gently encouraging me to dig a bit deeper and find the answers myself.
    I never thought of myself as being unhappy as a child, you see. I remember there being a lot of love at home, with few arguments. I remember telling Louise that and her seeming surprised. I think she expected there to be alcoholism, arguments, at the very least a few broken plates.
    But that isn’t my memory, honestly, although after I’d been seeing Louise for a while, I started to realize that the insignificant things were the things that mattered. It’s a bit like receiving compliments as an adult. If you’re anything like me, you can receive ten compliments and one insult. You immediately forget the