Thank you so much for the kind reviews of chapter 1. Your comments and feedback mean a lot, so please keep them coming…. onto chapter 2
Dylan is a cheating wanker
Dylan groans and pulls the duvet over his head. How the hell has he got himself into this fuck-up of a situation? He has just kissed goodbye to his girlfriend of three years, the girlfriend he has just made love to inadvertently making her late for work, the girlfriend who he has been cheating on with his ex, Marie Lane, for the last six months.
He loves Molly. Everybody loves Molly. She is kind, loyal, trusting and has a wicked, feisty sense of humour. She is also gorgeous, with the kind of raw beauty that turns heads and makes him swagger and puff out his chest when they're out together, knowing that she is his. She is perfectly pint sized, barely more than five-foot tall, which suits him just fine as he's not the tallest of men. She has beautiful long blonde hair, well she isn't a natural blonde, but she dyes her hair because he told her early in their relationship that he prefers blondes. She is also a born and bred Cockney and has what she would call "quite a gob on her" which adds to her natural, unaffected charm. Although she appears confident to most people, she is actually surprisingly lacking in confidence, the product of a difficult childhood growing up the eldest of six children in a chaotic, dysfunctional family in East Ham with a shit of an alcoholic father. He's ashamed to admit it, but he plays on this lack of confidence at times to suit his own needs.
Molly has been diligently supporting him, both emotionally and financially as he struggles with writing what he has taken to calling his "difficult" second book. Well, writing is stretching it. The truth is that he hasn't actually written anything since Marie came back on the scene. He feels pretty guilty that whilst Molly has been working ridiculously hard at the agency to pay their rent and bills, in a job he knows she has found increasingly tough since Geddings fucked off to New York, he has been shagging Marie and spending his book advance on fancy hotel rooms and expensive champagne.
Molly had been so excited when Geddings had asked her to move to New York. He knows that it would have been an amazing career move for her and she had been so full of plans for them both to move out there and experience life in the US for a few years. But, it was at the time that Marie had just returned from working in New York herself, their affair was just beginning and he was enjoying reacquainting himself with her. Although he knew it was going to make his life complicated, he wasn't sure how things were going to work out with Marie and he knew he wasn't ready to call time on him and Molly, so he'd begged her to not take the job and to stay in London with him. He knew it was a shitty and selfish thing to do, he could have as easily written his book in New York as London but he had another reason for doing it. He'd always been unreasonably jealous of Molly and Geddings' easy and close friendship and frankly persuading her to stay was too much of a good opportunity to put some distance between the two of them. She'd been desperately disappointed at the time, but ultimately, she had chosen him and stayed in London as he knew she would.
Now, he's bitterly regretting these decisions and completely unsure how to extract himself from the car-crash situation which is entirely of his own doing. Not only has he spent all his money trying to satisfy Marie and her high maintenance tastes, but he's remembered all too late why they broke up in the first place. She is suffocatingly controlling, extremely manipulative and prone to explosive temper tantrums if things don't go her own way. If anything, two and half years working at a top New York law firm has made her one thousand times worse than she was before. On the other hand, Marie is stunningly good looking, but unlike Molly, she knows it and uses it to get her own way time and time again. She is also filthy in bed which at first was a huge turn on, compared to the tender love making he has always enjoyed with Molly, but now her insatiable antics leave him mostly feeling used and abused after their frequent lunch-time sex sessions.
Shit, he looks at the clock and realises Marie will be here soon. He is honestly now terrified of her and has been trying to figure out a way to finish it with her without her going ballistic. He doesn't trust her to not tell Molly what has been going on and he definitely can't financially afford for that to happen. He also knows it will break Molly's heart and shatter her confidence to find out that he has been cheating on her all this time.
Right, he needs to focus on having a quick shower and changing the bedding because he knows that Marie will know, exactly what he was doing this morning with Molly if he doesn't. Fuck, he is such a cheating wanker. He can't believe that he has let this affair go so far that he is now reduced to having sordid sex with Marie in his and Molly's bed.
The doorbell rings and he answers the door to find Marie, dressed in a red knee length coat. As she steps into the house, before he has time to even close the front door, she undoes the belt to reveal she is completely naked underneath and drops the coat to the floor with a wicked smile. He panics, quickly pushing her inside and checking whether any of the neighbours have seen her enter the house. "Christ Marie, you're supposed to be incognito."
She clearly doesn't give a damn about who might have seen her, "Fuck incognito Dylan. Come here." Before he can resist she is pushing him against the wall, seducing him and despite his self-loathing and best intentions, he is powerless to resist. They eventually make it up to bedroom and she's straddling him, shrieking his name as she climaxes.
Molly misses the train
Dylan is in the shower when he hears Molly shouting his name. Fuck, what's she doing back this early? "Molls? Is that you?" Fuck, it can't be later than 4pm, he wasn't expecting her back for hours.
He hears her joking response, "No, it's yer bit of stuff. Monday…. shag day, remember?
Now in a blind panic because he can't remember what state the bedroom is in after Marie's visit he quickly finishes his shower and rushes into the bedroom just as she enters.
She looks slightly surprised at the dishevelled state of the bed, "Have you just got up, you lazy git?
He follows her eyes towards the bed. In an attempt to hide the evidence of all the pillows pushed up against the wall and the two obvious indents in the mattress, he jumps athletically onto the bed, and starts stuttering a garbled story "No, uh….? Well, I, uh… I didn't sleep that well last night. And then, you know when you left…. I kind of…. I went into a really… a really, really deep, deep, deep, sleep. In fact, I think I might be coming down with something….."
He knows this explanation sounds like complete bullshit and that he needs to change the track of the conversation quickly, "Anyway, enough about me, what are you doing home at this time of the….." His voice trails off as he actually looks at her properly for the first time since she entered the room. He realises she looks pale and as though she has been crying. She also has a large dressing on her forehead.
He gets up and takes her in his arms, and guides her to the edge of the bed, "Oh shit, what happened to you, Molls?"
She looks thoroughly miserable, but as usual attempts to use some humour to hide her feelings, "Well, it depends… which story do you want first?"
He's confused, and merely shrugs encouraging her to continue, bringing her in close for a cuddle, whilst surreptitiously surveying the rest of the room for further evidence of Marie's visit. Fuck, he notices that there is a champagne bottle and two glasses on the dressing table.
She relaxes into his arms, sniffing back more tears, "Well, I got mugged…missed a train…and got sacked, only not in that order. Though it wasn't an actual muggin', it was only an attempted muggin' accordin' to the police because they didn't actually get my 'andbag. I got mugged because I missed the train. The bastards sacked me for takin' those bottles of vodka for me party."
He knows he needs to get her out of the bedroom before she notices the champagne bottle and glasses. He stands up and starts manoeuvring her towards the bathroom, "Whoa, slow down Molls, relax… you're in shock, darling, ok? How about I run you a nice bath and then I'm going to take you out to the pub and get you alarmingly out of your head on vodka and coke, and then when you've sung all your favourite Elton John songs at the top of your voice and got us slung out of the pub, we'll go and have a curry, which you can then puke all over the pristine doorstep of Major Beck next door, and I'll help you."
As he runs the bath, she starts to take her clothes off. She smiles weakly at him and sounds immensely grateful as she says, "I love you Dylan Smith. I just can't help thinking if I 'ad caught that train, it would never 'ave happened. I'd 'ave been home ages ago."
He lets out an involuntary shudder at that thought and says a secret thank you to Lady Luck who was obviously smiling down on him this afternoon. This was too close a call, he is resolved to finish the affair with Marie as soon as possible.
Molly catches the train
Dylan is about to come when he hears Molly shouting his name from just outside the bedroom door. "F-f-f-fuck. Marie, stop."
Molly walks into the bedroom and stops dead in her tracks. She has a look of complete and utter disappointment on her face. She's taking her time, carefully considering the scene in front of her. She shakes her head in total disbelief before finally speaking, "You really shouldn't stop like that Dylan. Set a woman back three days doin' a thing like that. Who is she?"
He looks at her in utter horror at the coolness of her words, and splutters, "She is Marie."
Molly nods, taking in this new information, "Well, I've 'ad a dreadful day. I got sacked. So did you, it would seem….. cuppa tea?"
He's seriously unnerved at how this conversation is going, barely managing to squeak out a lame "That'd be nice".
The next thing he knows Molly has grabbed an empty champagne bottle from the dresser and is throwing it at him and Marie, although he somehow manages to deflect it using the duvet as a shield. Molly's earlier calm and composure appears to have evaporated, she is now screaming, "You bastard! You bastard! You useless, shaggin' bastard! I come home and catch you up to yer nuts in Lady-shaggin'-Godiva! I am workin' all hours to support you while you are supposedly writin' your soddin' "difficult" second book."
She picks up two cut-glass champagne glasses and hurls one of them at the bedroom wall. "How long, huh? Do you love her? Nah, don't tell me. I'm not interested." She throws the second champagne glass and pauses, "Actually, do tell me. I am interested. I'm only askin' because I need to know exactly how big a mug I am."
Before he can say anything further Molly has fled the room. He hears her running down the stairs and out of the house, slamming the front door behind her.
He is shaking and in complete shock at what has just happened. He looks at Marie, who doesn't seem at all perturbed by events and is in-fact sat smirking like the proverbial cat who got the cream. The realisation that he has well and truly fucked-up the best thing in his miserable life hits him like a tonne of bricks.