First a message about events so far. Naomily lovers will hate the het sex and the betrayal of Naomi. But there is a point to al this and as you know, I do generally like a happy ending. But this, as I said at the beginning, was actually the second part of a trilogy. The first part was badly written, even for me, so I summarised it for two reasons. One, it stopped you having to endure it before getting to this part and two… it meant instead of completely rewriting the first section, I could get on with editing and posting this. (and by default, keep writing my new story Harley Dreams.
The last part of the 'trilogy' is entitled Long White Cloud and I WILL be reposting that, as it gives a proper ending to the whole story. So unfortunately, this is the angst section. Sorry about that, but hang on till the last episode to get some Naomily goodness?
This chapter is set 5 weeks after the last ended.
Naomi
92,93,94,95,96,97,98,99,100...
I sat up and held my knees in my hands. My stomach burned and my heart raced as I tried to slow my breathing. Morning exercise had never been my thing, but since Emily and I had settled into this extended and uneasy truce, I had deliberately given myself this masochistic fitness routine to try to avoid lying in bed every morning thinking sadly about the girl in the next bedroom. The one who still cried herself to sleep most nights. The one who looks at me with big remorseful eyes when I get dressed to go out with my friends at night for a drink. The girl who never goes out at night herself any more, who just gets up at 7, works an early shift at the local market, selling junk jewellery to spray tanned skanks, then comes back here, cooks me an evening meal before retreating to her bedroom to eat hers. Plays sad songs quietly until I come home from my nights out, sometimes drunk, sometimes sober. The girl who waits for me to collapse onto my...our... bed before turning off her iPod and light.
That girl.
The girl who reminds me every day what I have been missing, with her beautiful brown eyes and shy smile. The girl who's sins I can't seem to forgive, let alone forget, no matter how hard I try.
That girl.
We talk politely. we smile at each other and we make trite meaningless conversation over morning cornflakes and occasional evening meals. But although she's physically closer to me than she has been for months, emotionally we are galaxies apart. Not that I haven't tried to deepen our 'chats'. But she seems closed off, vacant... it scares the shit out of me. If its even possible, I feel worse than I did when she was moaning deliriously under some random bitch. Well... OK maybe not.
So we do our little dance. We talk, we non communicate. Then I go on with my day, and she goes on with hers. I get the feeling she's waiting for something. Fuck knows what. Maybe she thinks I'm like a dormant volcano, just waiting for the right moment to erupt. Maybe she would prefer that to this excruciating pas de deux. I dunno. But it creeps the fuck out of me. She's gone from sweet, loving Emily, through drunk and wasted 'fuck anyone with a fanny' Emily, into this...this empty shell. The person I fell in love with and thought I would grow old with is buried a mile down inside.
So tonight, I'm going to try to break this brittle charade into shattered fragments. This is no life for either of us. I waited until after dinner, eaten in awkward silence as always, broken only by banal requests for salt and pepper. She got up, then ducked her head like she was avoiding shrapnel and made for 'her' room.
"Emily" I said quickly, as she walked away from me.
"Yes?" She said quietly, without turning round, probably expecting a brief goodnight from me.
"When was the last time anyone washed your hair" I said in a low voice. Such a simple, anodyne question. But it was loaded like a 12 bore shotgun, and we both knew it. Back in the days when Emily and I were totally and completely smitten with each other. Before Jenna's brutal criminality, the emergence of 'Emily-slut' and long, awkward silences, washing her hair had had connotations we both got very excited about. I would run a bath, and fill the room with coloured candles and fragrance. She would come in, wearing just a thick towelling dressing gown. She would drop it onto the bathroom floor before stepping into the bath bubbles. I would strip naked too, and kneel by the bath, first palming expensive shampoo into her thick lustrous locks, massaging it in, before eventually cascading fresh, warm water over her head over and over again, rinsing it through. When it was clean, I would spend minutes running my fingers through her hair, making her coo with pleasure as I did. Some people might call it hair-washing, we knew it was really extended foreplay. I always ended up naked in the tub with her, spooning her back and soon enough my sly caresses would turn to wet kisses on her neck, just under her ear, and my busy fingers would end up between her legs. Some of the most mind-blowing sex we ever had was in that bath. Emily knew what my innocent question meant as well as I did, and it wasn't anything to do with personal hygiene.
She looked back at me with a mixture of shy hope and fear in her big beautiful eyes.
"Really?" She said eventually.
"I think so...I think it's time" I said " Ten minutes?"
Emily nodded happily and went into her bedroom, closing the door.
Ten minutes, a few gallons of filtered warm water, just this side of uncomfortably hot...the way someone not a million miles from where I was kneeling liked it, and a sprinkle of that stupidly expensive bubble bath my mother bought me in Harrods last Christmas and I stood looking at myself in the smoky sepia mirror tiles over the bath. I took a deep breath as I heard the spare bedroom door click. She stood in the doorway quietly, like someone who was about to have a cruel trick played on her, but was prepared to go along with it anyway because she knew no other way of dealing with it. She had her white towelling robe on, just like always, and I swallowed hard as I looked at her, knowing she was naked underneath. but then so was I underneath my oversized tee. and she knew that too. it wasn't only the water that was overheated tonight.
I nodded towards the corner bath, mentally thanking the landlord for being imaginative enough to install one. Room for two, as it were. She stepped towards the bath and just as she got to it, shrugged the robe off her shoulders onto the carpeted floor. I tried hard not to, but my gasp was all too audible. Not that seeing Emily naked wasn't always a gasp inducing sight, but now mixed with her nudity was the sudden, shocking realisation that she had lost a shed load of weight recently. She had never been overweight, but the healthy Fitch appetite she had always had, ensuring her body was smooth and curvy in all the right places seemed to have deserted her. Now her hip bones were clearly visible under that creamy skin, and I could actually count her ribs. Fucking hell, she made Effy Stonem look plump. With a sudden rush of guilt, I understood that our situation...the loneliness and self doubt... was visibly wasting her away before my unseeing eyes. I swallowed the words that threatened to gush out, and looked away until she was immersed in the hot water and bubbles.
I began the ritual, spraying water over her head with the shower attachment as she hugged her knees. Then the shampoo, turning her hair pink and slick. I massaged her scalp. Knowing with the certainty of a lover how she enjoyed this pampering. I used my fingers to soap and rinse, taking my time, until her hair was clear of shampoo, and the water ran clear. There was a pause as I used my hands to drain the last of the warm water from her long hair and teased its long strands straight. This was it. The time that I always got in with her...could I do it this time. Could I forgive her long enough to build a tiny, fragile bridge between our two wounded souls?
I could, as it turned out. She looked steadily at our reflections in the sepia mirror tiled wall at the end of the bath as I stood and stripped off my tee. I saw her eyes widen as she took in the improved Campbell body. All those sit ups and press ups were having an effect and I knew I looked as good as I had ever done naked.
I slipped in behind her, trembling slightly at the sensation of her slick naked skin against me. My legs stretched out either side of her waist and I pressed my upper body against her back. This time Emily shuddered, and I knew it wasn't from the cooling water. I could feel my own nipples harden quickly at the contact and smoothness of her soft skin. She took a deep breath and whispered
"Is this what you really want, Naomi?"
"I think its what we both need Emily...will that do?" I said quietly. IN truth I was as unsure about all this as her.
So I began our familiar, intimate routine. I pulled her hair gently from the side of her neck, letting it lay on her other shoulder and kissed her skin softly. She let out a small, helpless moan. I nipped her skin between my teeth, then used my tongue to run a slow wavy line up her neck until it teased her under the right ear. She shivered and gripped my other hand, which was holding her waist tightly. Her breathing was faster, more ragged already.
Pulling my trapped hand away from her grip, I slid it up her body until I was palming her small breast. I squeezed gently and felt her body begin to tense against me. I found her nipple and circled it slowly with wet fingers, feeling it harden. She moaned again as I pulled at it slightly harder. I used my mouth to lick and suck at her neck and shoulders all the while my hand was working on her. I could feel her hips starting to move as her need for me to move my hand lower increased. But I wasn't in any hurry. It had been months since I touched her like this, and my mind was screaming at me to make it last.
Soon she was panting, writhing and starting to beg me to do more, quicker, harder. The way she always did at this point. For a few glorious moments, we were back, Naomi and Emily. I stopped teasing and slid my other hand down her stomach, feeling her thighs part wide as I searched for her there. She was hot and slick between her legs. My fingers entered her easily and I began to slide and circle the way I knew she liked it. But that was the problem. I knew exactly how to arouse, and satisfy her. But now, so did other women, a lot of other women. I didn't stop what I was doing. My fingers continued to tease and excite her. But the part of my brain which by this time was normally forgetting everything but the glory of Emily Fitch coming apart, was thinking "She cheated...she cheated...she cheated"
Her orgasm was wild and noisy. Obviously I wasn't the only one who had been abstaining lately. Her thrashing legs and pumping hips splashed gouts of water over the side of the bath, but I watched her come with strange detachment. The excitement I had felt, slipping into the bath with a naked Emily, was gone, replaced with the sick realisation that other women had watched her orgasm like this. Some of them within feet of where we were sitting. My desire vanished and with it my hope for this to mean something other than raw sex. When she had stopped crying out my name and squeezing my fingers with her cunt, I detached myself slowly and stood up, water cascading down my naked body.
She knew then.
I saw her eyes, so recently filled with passion and need, in the reflection of those pretty mirror tiles, change to fear and realisation. I stood there naked, looking down at her. I don't even know what my expression looked like. But she knew. She knew what was going through my mind, and I think I killed something inside her that night.
I ran then, from the bathroom, from Emily, from my own weakness and pain. I dried myself alone in my bedroom, trying not to think at all. I failed. I heard her emptying the bath, her hopeless, broken sobs filling my ears and my mind with unwanted thoughts and regrets. I had to get out of there. I dressed quickly in a skirt and hoodie top, and without even looking at her as she stood in the doorway, crying silently, I let myself out. It was almost 10.30pm, but I needed a drink, and I needed something to fill my head with something other than Emily's face and tears.
I found both at The Kings Head, just along the street. Although it was technically nearly closing time, I also knew that the landlords daughter Jade had a bit of a thing for me. We had flirted briefly and non committally over the past few weeks, when I had been drowning my sorrows more than usual. She was shorter than me, with a slim body and big, usually well on show tits. Her hair was jet black and down to her shoulders. Her eyes matched her name exactly. They were a striking icy green colour.
A few whispered words across the bar, another half an hour nursing vodka after double vodka, and the inevitable struggle to get the last drunk out of the door, and we were finally alone. She looked at the empty glasses, the crisp packets and soggy beer mats, and then at me.
"Upstairs?" she said, flicking her dark hair away from her cheek and using those laser eyes to ask a million questions.
"I need something" I said, blatantly checking her out.
"Just as well my Dad is at the Victuallers Ball then" she smirked, watching my eyes caress those spectacular tits as pervily as any of her male customers. I needed her hands on me, her mouth on me. I needed to forget Emily and just...be for a night...
XXX
Next morning I stumbled out of the side door, blinking at the harsh daylight. Jade had been a useful distraction. She didn't ask anything from me. We weren't lovers...not in the Emily and me sense... we shagged, or should I say she shagged me. I couldn't bring myself to reciprocate after she had expertly tongued me to a satisfying orgasm. Not so soon after doing that to Emily. She shrugged and asked if I minded if she took care of herself, seeing as how I had "over excited her". How could I say no?. I watched her bring herself off with the sort of detachment I had watched Emily come not more than 3 hours before. She was very pretty, very sensual and at any other time I would probably have dived right in. But I couldn't. I used her, pure and simple. And I felt like shit about it.
When I got back to the flat, I half expected Emily to be gone for good. I was slightly surprised to see her bed made and her clothes still in the wardrobe. I showered quickly and got dressed for work, Emily had already left for the market presumably.
I ghost walked through the day, finding little reasons not to leave when 5pm came, but eventually I had to go. Stepping through the apartment door, I could smell Chilli. My favourite...and I nearly left again. Walking into the kitchen, I saw Emily at the stove, stirring the mince and staring out of the window.
"Hi" I said, dropping my handbag onto the table and looking round the room as if I expected there to be something different about my home. But nothing was. She never mentioned my frantic escape into the night, and I didn't confess what had happened after it. It just stayed between us, festering like some newly dead corpse...waiting for someone to dispose of it. I guess we both knew it would have to be dealt with eventually, but for the time being, we were obviously both happy to let it lay there undisturbed.
Another week went by. I didn't wash Emily's hair again, and she continued to sleep in the spare room.
Then it was Friday, and normally I went out with a couple of girls from work, Emma and Sophie, to a local pub, then a club after. Emma was bi, but with a boyfriend at the moment, Sophie was straight, but good company and we had fun usually. They knew I was gay, and had been through a messy break up, so we stuck to safer subjects, and that was fine by me. I was getting ready to go, just improving the normal shit job I do with eye liner, when Emily stuck her head around the door. That in itself was a surprise, she normally avoided me when she knew I was going out.
"Can I ask you a favour" she said quietly
"Sure" I said, squinting at myself in the mirror, whilst trying to see her at the same time.
"Could I... tag along tonight...just for a couple of drinks?" she said, and all my hard work getting a parallel line failed miserably as I jerked my hand in surprise. I rubbed the wayward black stripe off my skin absently.
"What, out with me?" I said stupidly.
I saw her shoulders sag as she saw my expression in the mirror, and it stabbed me like a stiletto. Why not, I thought...
"OK" I said simply "I'm leaving in 15?"
Her mouth opened in surprise and then she smiled happily at me.
"T...Thanks" she stuttered "I won't be a pain...I'll just have a couple of ciders, and then let you go on to a club...I won't be in the way I promise..I'll..."
I stopped her aimless rambling with a hard look.
"Emily" I said flatly "...I said yes, OK? You need to get ready, huh?...I've got a cab booked for 8"
She disappeared, still with that small, happy smile on her face.
"Shit" I said as soon as she had gone into her own bedroom. Me plus Emily plus my nosy friends was gonna be awkward, to say the least...
XXX
Two hours later, it didn't seem a bad idea at all. Sophie probed a bit, but settled for the 'flatmate' lie. Emma was harder to convince, especially as Emily was being so pathetically grateful to be out with me. Emma shot me a look that said "I fucking know you two have history, Campbell" But I blanked her, and eventually she gave up. So it wasn't even Emily's fault that it went belly up. Several shots and a line of some anonymous powder that Sophie's ex had given her as a parting gift before fucking off with a Ryanair stewardess, went a long way to reducing my inhibitions, and common sense to a gibbering wreck.
So after a couple more drinks (Emily stayed on the cider, as promised, and refused point blank to inhale any chemicals) I blearily agreed to her going with us to 'Volcano' the new club down by the docks. Bad move..
As soon as we got there, I knew it was a big fucking mistake. The place was crawling with spray tans and blinding smiles. It was a wags paradise. Exactly the sort of place I avoid like the plague. Fake smiles, fake tits and fake friendship. I could live a thousand years and never go in again. The look on Emily's face as we got there should have made me turn round and leave on the spot, but by that time Emma and Sophie were already past the doormen and swagging their first drinks from a couple of chancers.
Emily and I found a small unoccupied booth at the other side of the heaving mosh pit, and sat in not exactly comfortable silence (not that you could hear much with the banging techno beat filling the place). After a few minutes, a 'waitress' spotted us and came over. Sophie and Emma were still giggling and making cow eyes at the two likely lads, so I knew it would be down to me to get the drinks in. Bitches...I thought.
"Two straight double vodka's" I said, not even looking up as the girl, who was dressed in a totally fucking ridiculous cowboy outfit comprising a sequinned waistcoat and a skirt smaller than my belt, complete with Stetson and white boots, stood there.
I could actually feel the tension in the air as the girl stood there grinning at us. Well, not us.
At Emily.
"Emily?" she shouted over the bass "I thought you had emigrated, babe""
I looked over at Emily, who was blushing furiously, even in the half light of the booth, and looking everywhere but back at the girl.
"Don't tell me you don't remember me hun..." the waitress said snidely "Optio's Bar...after hours drinks...you and me, shagging for a fucking hour in the toilets...God, the things you do with that tongue...fucking drove me crazy. Please say this isn't your girlfriend?"
She finally looked down at me as Emily stayed silent, Her face all plastic smile and over white teeth
""Emily and me are old friends...aren't we babe" she finished, turning away to get our drinks.
I sat in stunned silence for a few seconds...my hazy, alcoholic brain trying to deal with what I'd just heard.
"Naomi" Emily said, trying to grip my sleeve as I sat there, head down, playing with the hem of my skirt like a fucking village idiot. "I'm so sorry..."
I jumped up and stared at her as if she was the lowest fucking form of life on the planet. My contempt and hatred must have scared her, because she shrank back. Fuck's sake, did she think I'd actually hit her?
"Fuck sorry...and fuck you Emily" I hissed "This is what it's going to be like now, isn't it? Every time we go out, another random pops up with stories about your 'talented tongue" I can't stand it..I can't..." I finished, my voice going as the first sob of what would no doubt be a whole night of crying bubbled up in my throat.
She looked at me with eyes brimming with tears. Not saying anything, just looking at me hopelessly and gripping the table as if she would drown without it.
"I can't do this any more Emily" I said brutally "This is so fucking over"
I span on my heel and walked quickly from the club, seeing but not noticing the curious stares around me. Once again I was running. But this time no quick fix between the legs of a barmaid would sort me.