Author's Notes: Had no idea until late this morning whether Chap. 2 had made it onto the website or was lost in cyber space, but apparently it now looks okay. I am sure that if anyone didn't get it they'll let me know and I'll re up-date. Parts of Chap.2 were written so that I could have a little wallow as I drew myself a mental picture of what he looks like in his jeans and without his shirt, it was obviously a bit of self-indulgence on my part, as are parts of Chap. 3.
Hope you enjoy it.
Moving On
"Wondered where you'd got to" He was leaning against the doorframe in the kitchen watching her at the sink.
"I thought I'd do the vegetables for dinner, you know, get things organised for your mum" She knew that it was a totally pathetic excuse and that he was now openly laughing at her again, she had this horrible suspicion that he knew exactly what effect he was having on her and was enjoying himself, as he picked up his 'T' shirt from where she'd folded it onto the back of the chair and put it on, she'd changed into her own clothes when she'd turned tail and come back into the kitchen.
"Maggie, it's not even one o'clock yet, it won't be dinnertime for hours"
She kept her back to him as she frantically scraped new potatoes and wished that he would stop laughing at her and go, that he would push off and go out and exercise his bloody leg or something, the same as he did every other day, because if he started asking her questions again she was definitely going to need some sort of magic trick to get out of answering this time, or a miracle, and where was Jesus with one of his miracles when you needed him?
Why couldn't he just leave her alone because suddenly she felt this huge temptation to tell him the truth, that she was tired of all the lies and the hiding and the pretending that she was okay all the time, she wanted to tell him that when she'd decided to dye her hair sort of auburn, she hadn't meant it to end up this bright sort of scarlet which he'd said in the hospital was horrible, and that she thought it was horrible too, she hated it, but that she'd dyed it for a reason. She'd meant for it to be part of her sort of disguise, that she wasn't even using her real name for the same reason and that she was deceiving him, deceiving everyone here all the time, but she couldn't say any of it. It was definitely time to move on.
-OG-
Trudging around Weston-Super-Mare was complete shite as far as Molly was concerned, she hadn't expected it to be lots of fun, but even so she hadn't expected it to be quite as horrible as it turned out to be. The weather was lovely, the sun was shining and was making the sea all sparkly and it was very warm, and the place was full of sunburnt, happy looking holidaymakers, with loads of kids running up and down the promenade eating ice creams, but it was totally the pits going up to sleazy, shady looking blokes on the sea front to ask them whether there was any chance of some cash-in-hand work. She'd lost count of the number of times her question was misinterpreted, but it was on a regular basis, and the most depressing thing about that was that she didn't get a single offer to get her kit off, which she supposed she should be grateful for. Eventually she gave up and went and sat in a grubby side street café and did some calculations of how much money exactly she'd managed to scrape together during her time with the James family together with what she'd had saved up and the remnants of her deployment money, and now that she'd checked in the local papers, how much she would actually need to be able to rent a bed sitter somewhere and for how long she would be able to fund it if she couldn't find a job.
She had managed to avoid having to answer any of his questions by simply making sure that she wasn't ever in the same place on her own with him, that she was constantly busy doing something, doing anything, and that as soon as he walked into a room, she walked out, but she couldn't keep that up for ever, sooner or later she wouldn't be able to avoid the truth getting out.
She got out her phone and made a couple of arrangements to view rooms which from the descriptions in the paper didn't sound too shitty and then asked the man behind the counter for directions. She tried hard to ignore his appalled expression as she gave him the addresses and went to see where she might potentially be living for a few months. She didn't hold out much hope that they would be up to the standard that she had got used to recently, being like Royal Crescent was probably asking a bit too much, but she was used to army accommodation, so she would be able to tolerate most things.
Both of the first two rooms that she looked at made her heart sink, they made her parent's maisonette in east Ham look like the height of luxury. The worst thing about both of them wasn't the nylon sheets or the thin curtains or the stained carpets or the decidedly dodgy streets they were located in, or even the damp 'seasidey' smell that reminded her of drains; it was the need to share bathrooms with other tenants, bathrooms which were totally horrible by anyone's standards. Even though the bed sitters themselves were just about bearable, the bathrooms were not, you would have to clean the bath before you got in it to have a bath, not after you got out, and you'd have to take a deep breath and hold your nose before you even went in to use the lavatory.
It would probably be a good plan to at least check out some of the other places advertising in the local paper, but she was now far too disheartened and knew that she would have to be absolutely desperate to live in any of them, and that she needed to have a drastic re-think about what to do and where to go next.
Going home to Bath on the train felt like just that, going home, which was a feeling she needed to get rid of as soon as possible, Bath wasn't her home, Royal Crescent wasn't her home, they weren't her family, and they most likely wouldn't want anything more to do with her if they knew about her, knew about the lies she'd told and the ones she kept on telling and about what had gone on.
-OG-
He was sitting on the bottom of the stairs chatting on his phone when she let herself in. As soon as he caught sight of her his face broke into the same lazy grin that he'd had the other morning in the garden as he beckoned her over and patted the stair, inviting her to come and sit next to him. She knew she shouldn't, that it would be asking for all sorts of trouble as she went and did it anyway and fought the urge to put her head on his shoulder and let him wipe away the memories of those depressing bed-sitters and the shudderingly awful bathrooms.
He immediately put his arm round her shoulders which increased her feelings of being churned up and full of indecision, she wanted so much to lean into him and at the same time she wanted to run away as fast as she could and to put as much distance between them as possible. He finished his call and turned to face her, a soft smile playing around his mouth as he caught his bottom lip between his teeth and put his hand up and tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear and Molly shook herself, then shook his arm off her shoulders and got up, ready to march off up the stairs, away from the terrible temptation that was sitting there right in front of her, smiling at her.
"Give me a hand up" he put his hand up towards her as he struggled to get on his feet without putting too much weight on his injured leg, then tightened his grip on her wrist as she helped him up, pulling her in towards him, his face wreathed in a smile as if he was laughing at her the whole time, so she took a deep breath and looked up at him. He hadn't shaved, so he had pronounced stubble and she could smell the fresh soapiness of his skin and the slightly lemony tang of his shampoo even though she was trying very hard not to.
"Have you stopped avoiding me yet?"
"I'm not avoiding you, why would I do that?"
"I don't know, you tell me"
Then he kissed her, just leaned forward and gave her a short, soft and very gentle kiss so that she pulled away sharply and stared up at him, lost for words. He didn't say anything, didn't apologise, didn't ask her if it was okay, ask her if he could, he just immediately leaned in and kissed her again and this time she didn't pull away or make any attempt to stop him, just reached up and put her hands in the curls at the back of his neck and pulled his head down towards her as the soft and gentle kisses quickly became something more as her body responded to him. She tried to tell herself that this was absolutely mental, that it was totally nuts, and that she should put a stop to it straight away, at least before it got way out of hand, but she didn't because she didn't want to, instead she stood up on tiptoe to make it easier to reach him as she kissed him back.
His limp was barely noticeable so that she'd almost forgotten about his injuries as they climbed the stairs until he leaned back against his bedroom door, pushing it shut with his back and taking the support boot off, then nudged her gently backwards until the backs of her legs were against his bed and she had no choice but to lay down, while all the time he kept on kissing her so that neither of them had said a word since he'd asked her why she was avoiding him. He let his warm weight settle on top of her, then propped himself up on one elbow and looked at her with heavy dark eyes as she struggled to retain some sort of control over what she was doing. She gave up when he started to slide her 'T' shirt over her head laughing as he said he'd been wanting to do that ever since she'd been wearing his shirt in the garden, and that she had driven him mad sitting there only wearing his shirt and her knickers. He removed her bra, laughing again as he said that she was completely overdressed so that she ended up helping him remove the rest of her clothes, and then heard him whisper that she was beautiful as she lay naked with her stuff in a heap on the floor. She slid her hands up inside his shirt, then tugged it off over his head and ran her hands over the muscles she'd been admiring when they were in the garden, the muscles that she'd thought about over and over again in the last few days, then moved her small hands down and started to fumble as she tried to undo the buckle of the leather belt that was holding up his jeans so that he pushed her hands away and undid it himself.
-OG-
"You going to tell me what's going on, gorgeous?" He'd stroked her hair back from her face then lifted a strand and pretended to look at it closely and laughed before punctuating every word with a light kiss on her face, lifting his head and smiling into her eyes as he stroked her lips with his thumb, lips which were still red and swollen from being so thoroughly kissed "I think we've already established that you're not a natural redhead"
"Shut up" she giggled, knowing that she probably had some very soppy and satisfied expression on her face, it had been such a long time, if ever, since she'd felt anything like the way she did at that moment "There's nothing to tell" she lied.
"Are you going to come and visit me at Headley?"
"I can't, I can't drive"
"You could get a lift with mum, I expect she'll visit and she'd probably enjoy the company, I know I would" She didn't answer so he tightened his arm round her as she lay with her head tucked under his chin, her body curled into his side, and then angled his head away so that he could look at her face "Are you still going to be here when I get back, Maggie?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
"I don't know, perhaps because you've been looking for a job and somewhere to live in Weston and before you start don't bother to deny it, because I'm pretty sure it's not my dad or my mum who looked on-line, so that leaves just one person ….. and that's you. I presume that's where you were today, so did you have any luck?"
"It was just an idea, I mean I can't stop here forever now that your parents don't need me help anymore, and no, as it happens everything I saw today was complete shite, so yes I'll be here when you get back, that is, unless your mum and dad throw me out before then, they're most likely gonna want to do that if they find out about this" She tried to smile at him as she lied because she didn't have a clue what to say, not only had she'd royally screwed up by leaving a browsing history on his dad's laptop, and that was because she'd totally forgotten about erasing the evidence, but she couldn't possibly visit him at Headley Court, it had been her last posting before everything had gone to shit, so there was bound to still be people there who knew her. On top of that she'd just enjoyed the most incredible sex with him and he didn't know who she was, what her real name was, he believed that she was Maggie.
"Of course they're not going to throw you out, especially not because of this; I wouldn't let them for a start"
-OG-
"Bye, take care and do as the teacher tells you" She laughed and tried to joke as she gave him a decorous kiss on the cheek, there was, in Molly's opinion, far too big an audience for anything else. Sam, Rebecca, his dad and his mum who was acting as his chauffeur and driving him up there, but in return he gave her one of his most wicked grins then cupped her face, and kissed her soundly on the lips, totally ignoring the sharp intake of breath from the spectators, followed by a prolonged tight hug. Molly was horribly aware that he'd most likely done it to give an unmistakeable message to his ex-wife, to thoroughly piss her off, but he had managed to put on a show for his mum and dad at the same time.
"Stop it, you're being a knob" She whispered as quietly as she could in the ear farthest away from the group of people who were watching them with expressions of utter astonishment on their faces.
"Yeah, I know, sorry" he whispered back and snorted a laugh down his nose, then released his hold slightly and continued at a more normal volume "I'll be good, I promise, come up and see me, you know, if you can"
"Yeah, okay, but you know I get car sick" she lied. In a lot of ways she wished he'd just go before he said or did anything else she was going to find very difficult to explain to his parents. Even though she wanted him to go, she knew she was going to miss him dreadfully, and not only because they'd slept together the night before. She had ended up spending the whole night with him, he had laughed and asked whether his mum was in the habit of tucking her in at night when she'd said she better go in case his mum noticed that she wasn't in her own bed. Molly had insisted that they should really talk about this, whatever this was, before they advertised any of it to anyone else, even his parents. He'd just laughed and said it was whatever she wanted it to be and added that his mum wouldn't come in and find them together because she hadn't tucked him in at night since he was eight and that had been before he went off to boarding school.
In the cold light of day they hadn't made any progress in talking to each other about what had happened between them. They'd had very little sleep and had, in fact, only just dropped off when the dawn chorus started so that they'd woken up late and she'd had a massive scramble to get up and out of his bed before the rest of the household was up and about and before his mum bought him in a cup of coffee. As soon as she'd got back to her own room she'd looked in the mirror and tried to wipe away her panda eyes as well as doing her best to ignore the ache in her thighs while she'd slapped loads of moisturiser onto her face and wished that having sex with someone with stubble didn't have to mean that you looked as though you'd been gone over with a brillo pad, because she'd lost at least five layers of skin. A few hours of sea breezes and a lot of sex hadn't done much for her hair either, it was a complete tangle of curls which would need at least a litre of conditioner before she'd be able to even get a brush through it.
Despite all that and the fact that she looked tired and heavy eyed as though she hadn't had enough sleep, which she hadn't, she thought that anyone looking at her would be able to see how incredibly happy she looked. The trouble was that it wouldn't take a lot for her to get very upset, not only because he was going away and she didn't want him to, but because she wanted to stay with him, she wanted this to mean something and it couldn't.