One Plus One

  It was out before she knew what she was saying. "Yeah. Me, too."

  They sat. He was looking at her leg. She wondered if he was thinking what she was thinking.

  "Do you know something, Jess?"

  "What?"

  "You've stopped fidgeting."

  They looked up at each other. She wanted to look away, but she couldn't. Mr. Nicholls had just been a means of moving forward out of an impossible mess. Now all Jess could see were his big dark eyes, the backs of his strong hands, the way his torso shifted under his T-shirt.

  You need to get back on the horse.

  He looked away first.

  "Whoa! Look at the time. We should really get some sleep. You said we had to get up early." His voice was just a bit too loud.

  "Yup. Nearly eleven already. I think I calculated that we need to leave here by seven to make it there for midday. Does that sound right to you?"

  "Uh . . . sure."

  She swayed a little when she stood up, and reached for his arm, but he'd already moved away.

  They arranged an early breakfast, bade Mrs. Deakins a slightly-too-hearty good night, and made their way slowly up the stairs at the back of the pub. Jess was barely aware of what was said, for she was acutely conscious of him behind her. Of the way her hips moved when she walked. Is he watching me? Her mind swirled and dipped in unexpected directions. She wondered, briefly, what it would feel like if he were to lean forward and kiss her bare shoulder. She thought she might have made a small, involuntary sound at the thought of it.

  They stopped on the landing, and she turned to face him. It felt as if, three days in, she'd only just seen him.

  "Good night, then, Jessica Rae Thomas. With an a and an e."

  Her hand came to rest on the door handle, and her breath caught in her throat. It had been so long. Would it really be such a bad idea? She pushed down on the handle and leaned in. "I'll . . . see you in the morning."

  "I'd offer to make you coffee. But you're always up first."

  She didn't know what to say. It was possible she was just gazing at him.

  "Um . . . Jess?"

  "What?"

  "Thanks. For everything. The sickness stuff, the birthday surprise . . . In case I don't get a chance to say this tomorrow"--he gave her a lopsided smile--"as ex-wives go, you were definitely my favorite."

  She pushed at the door. She was going to say something, but she was distracted by the fact that the door didn't move. She turned and pushed down on the handle again. It gave, opened an inch, and no more.

  "What?"

  "I can't open the door," she said, putting both her hands on it. Nothing.

  Mr. Nicholls walked over and pushed. It gave the tiniest amount. "It's not locked," he said, working the handle. "There's something blocking it."

  She squatted down, trying to see, and Mr. Nicholls turned on the landing light. Through the two inches of door space, she could just make out Norman's bulk on the other side of the door. He was lying on the mattress, his huge back to Jess.

  "Norman," she hissed. "Move."

  Nothing.

  "Norman."

  "If I push, he'll have to wake up, right?" Mr. Nicholls began leaning on the door. He rested his full weight on it. Then he pushed. "Jesus Christ," he said.

  Jess shook her head. "You don't know my dog."

  He let go of the handle and the door shut with a gentle click. They stared at each other.

  "Well . . . ," he said finally. "There are two beds in here. It'll be fine."

  She grimaced. "Um. Norman is sleeping on the other single. I moved the mattress in there earlier."

  He looked at her wearily then. "Knock on the door?"

  "Tanzie is stressed. I can't run the risk of waking her. It's fine. I'll . . . I'll . . . just sleep on the chair."

  Jess headed down to the bathroom before he could contradict her. She washed and brushed her teeth, gazing at her alcohol-flushed skin in the plastic-framed mirror and trying to stop her thoughts chasing themselves in circles.

  When she arrived back at the room, Mr. Nicholls was holding up one of his dark gray T-shirts. "Here," he said, and threw it at her as he walked past to the bathroom. Jess changed into it, trying to ignore the vague eroticism of its scent, pulled the spare blanket and a pillow out of the wardrobe, and curled up in the chair, struggling to bring her knees up to a position that made it comfortable. It was going to be a long night.

  Some minutes later, Mr. Nicholls opened the door and turned off the overhead light. He was wearing a white T-shirt and a pair of dark blue boxers. She saw that his legs bore the long, visible muscles of someone who does no-excuses exercise. She knew immediately how they would feel against her own. The thought made her swallow.

  The little bed sagged audibly as he climbed in.

  "Are you comfortable like that?"

  "Totally fine!" she said too loudly. "You?"

  "If one of these springs impales me while I sleep, you have my permission to take the car the rest of the way."

  He gazed at her across the room for a moment longer, then turned out the bedside light.

  --

  The darkness was total. Outside, a faint breeze moaned through unseen gaps in the stone, trees rustled, and a car door slammed, its engine roaring a protest. In the next room, Norman whined in his sleep, the sound only partially muffled by the thin plasterboard wall. Jess could hear Mr. Nicholls breathing, and although she had spent the previous night only inches from him, she was acutely conscious of his presence in a way she hadn't been twenty-four hours earlier. She thought of the way he had made Nicky smile, of the way his fingers rested on a steering wheel.

  She thought about an expression she had heard Nicky use a few weeks ago: YOLO--You only live once, and remembered how she had told him she thought it was just an excuse idiots used for doing pretty much anything they felt like doing, no matter what the consequences.

  She thought about Liam, and how she knew in her gut that he was probably having sex with someone right this minute--that ginger barmaid from the Blue Parrot, maybe, or the Dutch girl who drove the flower van. She thought about a conversation she'd had with Chelsea when Chelsea had told her she should lie about her kids because no man would ever fall in love with a single mother of two, and how Jess had gotten angry with her because deep down she knew she was probably right.

  She thought about the fact that even if Mr. Nicholls didn't go to prison, she would probably never see him again after this trip.

  And then, before she could think too hard about anything else, Jess eased herself silently out of the chair, letting the blanket fall to the floor. It took only four steps to reach the bed, and she hesitated, her bare toes curled in the acrylic carpet, even then not quite sure what she was doing. You only live once. And then in the inky dark there was a faint movement and she saw Mr. Nicholls turn to face her as she lifted the cover and climbed in.

  Jess was chest to chest against him, her cool legs against his warm ones. There was nowhere else to go in this tiny bed, with the sag of the mattress pushing them closer together and its edge like a cliff drop just inches behind her. They were so close that she could breathe in the remnants of his aftershave, his toothpaste. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest, as her heart thumped erratically against his. She tilted her head a little, trying to read him. He put his right arm across the duvet, a surprisingly heavy weight, gathering her in closer to him. With his other, he took her hand and enclosed it slowly in his. It was dry and soft, and inches from her mouth. She wanted to lower her face to his knuckles and trace her lips along them. She wanted to reach her mouth up to his . . .

  You only live once.

  She lay there in the dark, paralyzed by her own longing.

  "Do you want to have sex with me?" she said into the darkness.

  There was a long silence.

  "Did you hear what--"

  "Yes," he said. "And . . . no." He spoke again before she could turn completely to stone. "I just think it would make th
ings too complicated."

  "It's not complicated. We're both young, lonely, a bit pissed. And after tonight we're never going to see each other again."

  "How so?"

  "You'll go back to London and lead your city life, and I'll be down on the coast leading mine. It doesn't have to be a big deal."

  He was silent for a minute. "Jess . . . I don't think so."

  "You don't fancy me." She prickled with embarrassment, remembering suddenly what he'd said about his ex. Lara was a model, for crissakes. She shifted away from him, and his hand tightened around hers.

  "You're beautiful." His voice was a murmur in her ear.

  She waited. His thumb brushed over her palm. "So . . . why won't you sleep with me?"

  He didn't say anything.

  "Look. Here's the thing. I haven't had sex in three years. I sort of need to get back on the horse, and I think it--you--would be great."

  "You want me to be a horse."

  "Not like that. I need a metaphorical horse."

  "And now we're back to the weird metaphors."

  "Look, a woman you say you find beautiful is offering you no-strings sex. I don't understand the problem."

  "There's no such thing as no-strings sex."

  "What?"

  "Someone always wants something."

  "I don't want anything from you."

  She felt him shrug. "Not now, maybe."

  "Wow." She turned onto her side. "She really got to you, didn't she?"

  "I just . . ."

  Jess slid her foot along his leg. "You think I'm trying to lure you in? You think this is me trying to entrap you with my womanly wiles? My womanly wiles, a nylon bedspread, and pie and chips?" She interlinked her fingers with his, let her voice drop to a whisper. She felt unleashed, reckless. She thought she might actually faint with how much she wanted him then. "I don't want a relationship, Ed. With you or anyone. There's no room in my life for the whole one-plus-one thing." She tilted her face so that her mouth was inches from his. "I'd have thought that would be obvious."

  He moved his hips an awkward fraction away from hers. "You are . . . incredibly persuasive."

  "And you are . . ." She hooked her leg around him, pulling him closer. His hardness made her briefly giddy.

  He swallowed.

  Her lips were millimeters from his now. All the nerves of her body had somehow concentrated themselves in her skin. Or maybe his skin--she could no longer tell.

  "It's the last night. At worst we can exchange a glance over the vacuum cleaner and I'll just remember this as a nice night with a nice guy who actually was a nice guy." She let her lips graze his chin. It carried the faint trace of stubble. She wanted to bite it. "You, of course, will remember it as the greatest sex you ever had."

  "And that's it." His voice was thick, distracted.

  Jess moved closer. "That's it," she murmured.

  "You'd have made a great negotiator."

  "Do you ever stop talking?" She moved forward until her lips met his. She almost jolted. She felt the pressure of his mouth on hers as he ceded to her, the sweetness of him. And she no longer cared about anything. She wanted him. She burned with it.

  And then he pulled back. She felt, rather than saw, Ed Nicholls gazing at her. His eyes were black in the darkness, unfathomable. He moved his hand and as it brushed lightly against her stomach she gave a faint, involuntary shiver.

  "Fuck," he said quietly. "Fucking fuck." And then, with a groan, he said, "You will actually thank me for this tomorrow."

  And he gently disentangled himself from her, climbed out of bed, walked over to the chair, sat down, and, with a great sigh, hauled the blanket over himself and turned away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Ed

  Ed Nicholls had thought that spending eight hours in a damp car park was the worst possible way to spend a night. Then he'd concluded that the worst way to spend a night was hoicking your guts up in a stationary RV somewhere near Derby. He was wrong on both counts. The worst way to spend a night, it turned out, was in a tiny room a few feet from a slightly drunk, good-looking woman who wanted to have sex with you and whom you had, like an idiot, rebuffed.

  Jess fell asleep, or pretended to: it was impossible to tell. Ed sat in the world's most uncomfortable chair, staring out of the narrow gap in the curtains at the black moonlit sky, his right leg going to sleep, and his left foot freezing cold where it wouldn't fit under the blanket. He tried not to think about the fact that if he hadn't leaped out of that bed, he could be there, curled around her right now, his lips pressed against her skin, those lithe legs tangled with his . . .

  No.

  Either (a) the sex would have been terrible, they would have been mortified afterward, and the five hours spent traveling to the Olympiad would have been excruciating. Or (b) the sex would have been fine, they would have woken up embarrassed, and the journey would still have been excruciating. Worse, they could have ended up with (c): the sex would have been off the scale (he slightly suspected this one was correct--he kept getting a hard-on just thinking about her mouth), they would develop feelings for each other based purely on sexual chemistry, and (d) would then have to adjust to the fact that they had nothing in common and were just completely unsuited in every other way, or (e) they would find they were not entirely unsuited, but then he would be sent to prison. And none of these considered that Jess had actual kids, kids who needed stability in their lives and not someone such as he: he liked children as a concept, in the same way that he liked the Indian subcontinent--that is, it was nice to know it existed, but he had no knowledge about it and had never felt any real desire to spend time there.

  And all this was without the added factor that he was obviously crap at relationships, had only just come out of the two most disastrous examples anyone could imagine, and the odds of his getting it right with someone else on the basis of a lengthy car journey that had begun because he couldn't think of how to get out of it were lower than a very low thing indeed.

  And the whole horse conversation had been, frankly, weird.

  And these points could be supplemented by the wilder possibilities that he had completely failed to consider. What if Jess was a psycho, and all that stuff about not wanting a relationship was just a way to reel him in? She didn't seem that sort of girl, sure.

  But neither had Deanna.

  Ed sat pondering this and other tangled things, and wishing he could talk a single one of them through with Ronan, until the sky turned orange then neon blue and his leg became completely dead and his hangover, which had formerly manifested itself as a vague tightness at his temples, turned into an emphatic, skull-crushing headache. Ed tried not to look at Jess as the outline of her face and body under the duvet became clear in the encroaching light.

  And he tried not to feel wistful for a time when having sex with a woman you liked had just been about having sex with a woman you liked and hadn't involved a series of equations so complex and unlikely that probably only Tanzie could have got anywhere near understanding them.

  --

  "Come on. We're running late." Jess shepherded Nicky--a pale, T-shirt-clad zombie--toward the car.

  "I didn't get any breakfast."

  "That's because you wouldn't get up when I told you. We'll get you something on the way. Tanze. Tanzie? Has the dog been to the loo?"

  The morning sky was the color of lead and seemed to have descended to a point around their ears. A faint drizzle promised heavier rain. Ed sat in the driver's seat as Jess ran around, organizing, scolding, promising, in a fury of activity. She had been like this since he'd woken, groggily, from what seemed like twenty minutes' sleep. He didn't think she had met his eye once. Tanzie climbed silently into the backseat.

  "You okay?" He yawned and looked at the little girl in the rearview mirror.

  She nodded silently.

  "Nerves?"

  She didn't say anything.

  "Been sick?"

  She nodded.

  "It's all
the rage on this trip. You'll be great. Really."

  She gave him the look he would have given any adult if they had said the same, then turned to stare out of the window, her face round and pale. Ed wondered how late she had stayed up studying.

  "Right." Jess shoved Norman into the backseat. He brought with him an almost overwhelming scent of wet dog. She checked that Tanzie had done up her belt, climbed into the passenger seat, and finally turned to Ed. Her expression was unreadable. "Let's go."

  --

  Ed's car no longer looked like his car. In just three days its immaculate cream interior had acquired new scents and stains, a fine sprinkling of dog hair, jumpers and shoes that now lived on seats or wedged underneath them. The floor crunched underfoot with dropped sweet wrappers and crisps. The radio stations were no longer on settings he understood.

  But something had happened while he was driving along at forty m.p.h. The faint sense that he should actually have been somewhere else had begun to fade, almost without his being aware of it. He found himself glancing at the people they passed, buying food, driving their cars, walking their children to and from school in worlds completely different from his own, knowing nothing of his own little drama several hundred miles south. It made it all seem reduced in size, a model village of problems rather than something that loomed over him.

  Despite the pointed silence from the woman beside him, Nicky's sleeping face in the rearview mirror ("Teenagers don't really do Before Eleven O'clock," Tanzie explained), and the occasional foul eruptions of the dog, it slowly dawned on him as they crept closer to their destination that he was feeling a complete lack of the relief he had expected to feel at the prospect of having his car, his life, back to himself. What he felt was more complex. Ed fiddled with the speakers, so that the music was loudest in the rear seats and temporarily silent in the front.

  "You okay?"

  Jess didn't look round. "I'm fine."

  Ed glanced behind him, making sure nobody was listening. "About last night," he began.

  "Forget it."

  He wanted to tell her that he regretted it. He wanted to tell her that his body had actually hurt with the effort of not climbing back into that sagging single bed. But what would have been the point? Like she'd said the previous evening, they were two people who had no reason to see each other ever again.