Part Twenty Nine
As Connie drove away from her house, she glared at any passing motorist, taking out her exasperation on everything in sight. She was tired, stressed, hungry, and did not want to be driving round the streets of Holby because she'd just had the beginning's of a fight with Ric. But she didn't know what else to do. She wasn't used to the Ric that wanted to gamble, the Ric that was afraid of revealing his weaknesses to her, the Ric that didn't want her to know a fairly significant part of him. That was the trouble, she thought to herself, because she hadn't known Ric back when he'd been gambling regularly, and the only way she could learn how best to deal with him when he was like this, was to talk to someone who had known him in those days. Her thoughts strayed to Zubin, but he currently had more than enough troubles of his own. Then to Tricia, but she had only known Ric as a work colleague, not really as a friend. Then she hit on the answer, Diane. Diane might not want to talk to Connie, because she'd always held Connie a little responsible for Ric's going away in the first place, but anything was worth a try for his sake.
Pulling yet again into the hospital carpark, Connie walked back up to Keller and Darwin, hoping that Diane wouldn't yet have gone home for the day. She hadn't, she was sitting in Ric's old office, as acting consultant until they found Ric's replacement. When Connie knocked, it still felt odd to her to hear Diane's voice calling to her to come in instead of Ric's. "connie," Diane said, looking up in surprise. "What can I do for you?" "I, erm, I want to talk to you about Ric." Connie felt helpless, stupid, and thoroughly out of her depth. She didn't do seeking advice, especially not from her female colleagues. "You're the expert on Ric these days, Connie," Diane said matter-of-factly. "Not me." "Perhaps," Connie agreed ammicably. "But I still think you know him better than I do." "I thought you were in Ghana," Diane said, gesturing to the sofa where Connie slumped in dejected uncertainty. "I was, we were, until the call came from Zubin. So, I brought him back with me." "How is he?" Diane asked in concern. "Depressed, argumentative, doing everything he possibly can to hide how he really feels, you name it." "Has he started gambling again?" Diane asked knowingly. "No, not yet, but I know he wants to. Diane, I need to know what he was like before I came here, when he was gambling on a regular basis, so that I might be able to stop him doing it again." "The simple answer," Diane told her carefully. "Is that you can't. If Ric's determined to blow everything he's got on a roulette wheel, then there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop him. You might be able to be there afterwards, to stop him from doing anything really stupid, and you'll have far more staying power than I did if you can. I couldn't cope with Ric when he was like that, because even though I know that addictions can rule your entire existence, I don't think I could quite accept that Ric couldn't stop if he wanted to." "Just how bad did it really get last time?" Connie asked, feeling that she needed to know everything in orderr to be able to help him. "The night before he was due to marry Sam Kennedy, he put twenty grand that she'd given him to settle some of his debts, on a roulette wheel and lost." Connie's eyes widened. "I had to watch him do that," Diane continued. "Which meant that I also had to see the devastation he felt afterwards. One thing I will tell you, is not to leave anything resembling a credit card where he might find it, because he'll have absolutely no qualms in using it. On New Year's Eve a couple of years ago, I unthinkingly leant him my credit card, to buy some champagne for the staff on Darwin and Keller, and he immediately used it to gamble in an online cassino. When he eventually told me, he thought I was hurt by what he'd actually done, but it wasn't that. He hurt me by doing that, because he looked so ashamed of what he'd done, and I couldn't bear seeing Ric like that. The only think I can say is for you to try and give him an outlet, something that at the time, I wasn't able to do." "You mean sleep with him," connie said succinctly. "Well, you're better than most, or so I've heard," Diane said with a sly smirk, making Connie laugh. "I shall remember that, Diane, thank you," Connie said as she got to her feet, wondering if this highly unauthodox remedy might just work.
As Connie drove home, she wondered if Ric would be up for an evening of blissfully contented lovemaking. Taking his current mood and his still very raw feelings about Paris into account, Connie really wasn't sure, but she supposed that anything was worth a try. She had to get through to him, or else what was there left? He had helped her to survive more than she usually liked to admit at Christmas, but Ric was now making it very difficult for her to do the same for him. But wasn't that simply because she didn't know how to do the same? Because she hadn't ever known how to emotionally put someone back together. Physically and sexually she could manage, but not emotionally. That was an entirely new ball game for her and she didn't enjoy trying to feel her way in the dark with absolutely no guiding light whatsoever.
When she reached home, she let herself into the house, and laid her jacket over the chair in the hall. She could smell the wonderful aroma of simmering bolognese, and she found Ric in the lounge. He had put a CD on the stereo, the soft, languid tones of Katie Melua permeating the air. When she sat down on the sofa beside him, his arm went automatically around her. "I'm sorry," She said as she kissed him. "Me too," He replied, neither of them having to explain what they were apologising for. "Come on," He said after a while of simple closeness. "Let's eat." they were quiet as he served the bolognese as Connie was trying to formulate what she needed to say to him. "Ric," she said eventually, as she focussed her gaze on twirling a strand of spaghetti around her fork. "I just want you to talk to me, that's all." "And I need you to understand, that that's sometimes quite a difficult thing for me to do," He told her after swallowing a mouthful of the delicious concoction. "I know," She said quietly. "But I can't help you if you don't." "Connie, I'm not exactly used to anyone wanting to help me, as you put it." "Then it seems that this will be something of a learning curve for both of us." After another lengthy silence punctuated only by the music and the movement of cuttlery, he asked, "Where did you go?" "I, erm, I went to see Diane," connie told him carefully. "Diane?" Ric looked up in surprise. "Yes, she was a little shocked to say the least," Connie said with a smile. "But I wanted to find out some of the things that I suspect you wouldn't want to tell me yourself." "Oh, great," Ric said dryly. "Just how many of my dark and deadly secrets did she tell you?" "Enough, for now. Ric, I'm not angry that you wanted to gamble again, and that you probably still do, but that won't stop me from trying to prevent you from doing it." "Why aren't you?" He asked in quiet surprise. "Because I understand that for a very long time, it was the only way you had of dealing with things. I'm also not stupid enough to think that I will automatically succeed in stopping you from doing it again, just because I want to. You haven't gambled now for nearly eighteen months to my knowledge, which is an enormous achievement, but I also understand that this doesn't make the pull of it any less demanding. Manufactured oblivion is sometimes preferable to reality." When she said this, Ric was forced to remember that she had been in and out of drugs when she was sixteen, and that she probably knew a little more about all this than he often gave her credit for.
When they'd finished the washing up, Ric turned Connie to face him, looking deep into those endless, violet eyes, and seeing nothing but kindness and compassion. "I don't know what I've done to deserve you," He said, gently kissing her. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't want to be," She told him, wanting to show him just how much he meant to her. They moved by general consensus into the lounge, and lay on the sofa in each other's arms, bathed both by the heat of the fire and the softness of the music. "Diane did give me one little pearl of wisdom," She told Ric between kisses, the smirk on her face giving him slight cause for concern. "She told me to try and keep you occupied, and that this oughtn't to be too difficult for me, because as she'd heard, I was better than most at that particular activity." Ric laughed, trying to picture Diane actually putting this into her own words. "Yes, I thought you would find that somewhat amusing," She said with a smile. "I'll have to thank her next time I see her," Ric said with a smirk of his own. "Don't you dare," Connie said with a mock frown of warning. "Or she will be aware that I have put her advice into practice, something I can't possibly allow." "She probably is anyway, if she knows that you brought me back from Ghana." "You nearly married her, didn't you" "Yes, a very long time ago," He replied a little guardedly. "When she was still in medical school and only twenty-one. God, that almost makes me as bad as Zubin, though it didn't feel like that at the time." "What happened?" Connie asked kindly, wanting to know more about Ric's earlier life. "Dominic Friar happened," ric said darkly. "And put Diane off being involved with anyone for quite a long time."
They lay just listening to the music for a while, softly kissing, and hands beginning to wander over each other's body. Their movements were slow, langorous and gentle, with the gradual removing of clothes being the only pattern to their caresses. Eventually moving to the hearth rug in front of the blazing fire, they lay with the firelight playing over their naked bodies, casting Connie's tanned, honey-coloured skin into a rich rosy glow. "You're beautiful," He told her, his long, nimble fingers playing over her breasts. "I do aim to please," She said mockingly, though secretly loving every complement he gave her, because she knew they came straight from the heart.
Her hands were all over him now, no inch of his body denied her. When she slid cat-like down his torso, and began nibbling on his right inner thigh, he mocked her in his turn. "I thought you'd already eaten." Laughing huskily, she replied, "It never seems to stop you trying to consume my entire insides at one meal." As she delicately sucked at each testicle in turn, he made a sound deep in his throat that was half a pur and half a growl. "Do you have any idea how good that feels?" He asked her, not entirely expecting an anser, because not even Connie Beauchamp could talk with her mouthful. "That's why I do it," She said, dropping light, butterfly kisses up his entire length. When she eventually took the head gently but firmly between her pouting lips, he knew he was in heaven. He'd needed this, he realised in an instant, this temporary reprieve from everything he was currently feeling. She was giving him that respite, making him feel good in spite of his persistently feeling bad all day. Wanting to maximise her pleasure as well as his own, he said, "Turn round," And when she realised what he was suggesting, she did so with allacrity. As she continued skilfully falating him, she felt the delicious sensation of his tongue on her most sensitive flesh. God, she hadn't done this for years, not for longer than she cared to remember, and certainly not down here on the rug in front of the fire. She groaned in delight as she felt his mouth moving on her, and he was exhilarated from being surrounded by the heady scent of her arousal. He could drown in the taste of her, and it would be a wonderful way to die. But he didn't want to die, not yet anyway. Not at least until they'd reached their ultimate climax. When he knew that he wouldn't last all that much longer under her ministrations, he encouraged her to turn back towards him, and moving over her, he slid inside her. "I haven't done that in a long time," Connie said a little breathlessly, her excitement building just as much as his. "No, me neither," He said as he kissed her. "But I believe it's just one of those things that you never quite forget." "I wish you'd let me take you all the way like that more often," She said, loving the taste of herself on his lips. "But you don't like it." "No, I know I don't, but I can put up with it as long as there's a glass of something nearby to knock back afterwards. Besides, I know that you do like it, which is all that matters" "Whereas you taste as delicious as the richest, headiest Bordeau imaginable." "Do I now," She said with a smirk. "Well, that's nice." They clung to each other as they moved in that age old way, two lovers joined as one, as nature had originally intended, rising to a climax that left them both sated and breathing hard. "I love you," He said as they lay afterwards, limbs entwined and with her head on his shoulder. Connie wanted to respond, to say that she also felt the same, but not yet. She couldn't do it when she still couldn't be a hundred percent sure. It would happen, she was sure of that, and hopefully soon, but it wouldn't be fair to him to say it if she couldn't entirely mean it. "I am, in love with you," She said a little hesitantly, her voice deeper with fully satisfied lust. "Does that count?" "Of course it does," He said with a smile, gently kissing her. "Any feeling that you have for me in that respect, I count as a bonus. I'm very lucky to have what I do have from you, Connie, and I will do my best not to squander it." They both knew that he was referring to his need to gamble, and the hurt and frustration that would probably put her through, but the most important thing to both of them was that she was here, and come what may, she would still do what she could to help him.