Chapter 12

So, here we are. It's Wednesday. It's 6pm and I'm pacing around the living room. I'm not nervous. Nope, not me. Emily didn't text or call me that night, or the night after. Amazingly enough I managed not to freak out over it. I knew she'd be busy with the mysterious hippy Panda, and she had a new phone to figure out, so I just calmed down and waited for her to call. Go me. That's not to say that I didn't want to talk to her. Trust me, I did. I wanted to talk to her, touch her, stroke her skin, hold her, kiss her, do rude unmentionable things with her. Do you want me to go on? No? Good. Made myself blush again. Bugger. Basically, being in her general vicinity was fine with me, although within a 6 inch perimeter would be perfect. I wanted a repeat performance of the other night. Beautifully gentle kisses, sensuous and passionate, and all without her trying to remove my tonsils with her tongue.

I've killed the time between days by checking out the webpage on the business card she'd given me.

"Fitch Family Gym, Family Gym of the Year 2009" followed by the tag line, "the family that trains together, stays together". The website was "undergoing reconstruction" and had very little information, but there were a few photos up, including a really cheesy one of her dad in a Fitch Fitness t-shirt. Jesus, it was not natural to have teeth that white surely? He had a crazy smile.

And there was the mysteriously kooky Panda, or Pandora Moon as her picture stated. Yup, she looked mental. Just my professional opinion of course. Still, if Emily liked her she couldn't be that bad eh? Her picture showed an innocent looking, freckly blonde with her hair in bunches. She was wearing an assortment of clothes. It looked like she was wearing clothes picked up at random off the bedroom floor with her eyes shut. Basically, the girl looked like a jumble sale.

And lastly, there was the object of my affections. When I'd seen her profile photo I'd found myself smiling and gently tracing the beautiful smile she had in her photo on the screen with my fingertips, as if it would bring us closer. Her smile was a less manic version of her fathers. And unlike Pandora, she had matching clothes on. Yup, I was biased.

For 2 days, when I was pissed off with the world, I'd look at that picture and smile. God, I felt like a shit lying to her. Still, as Tony said when I'd told him how well everything had gone, if we became secure and a solid relationship, I'd be able to sit her down and tell her the truth. I even managed to tolerate his laughing when I tried to tell him that we were both shy.

His reply when I got a bit bolshy was:

"Well, I reckon your bodies are two steps ahead of you, because they don't seem to be shy with each other mate. You're like two positively attracted thingy's you know. You just gravitate towards each other, regardless of whatever you think you're doing."

She'd called me yesterday, apologising again and again, bless her. Apparently her sister had had yet another row with her "stupid Neanderthal wanker of a husband" and she'd had to help her move home AND she couldn't work out the phone Pandora had given her. I was really proud of myself. I just waited for her to finally run out of breath and asked,

"So, we're still going out then tomorrow yeah? If you need to postpone bause of your sister, I'd understand"

She practically cried at me down the phone, stammered yet another apology and fitted a "yes please although I'd understand if you didn't want to see me, I've been shit".

Like I wasn't going to see her. My lips would never forgive me.

Unfortunately for me, our call was cut short as she had to go see a client and the nasty little midget boss caught me on my mobile in the hospital and started screaming at me again.

For fucks sake, what was wrong with that woman? She seriously needed to have a shag or something to relive her tension.

I dealt with her and then bumped into Jimmy, which was rightly handy. I gave him the disks he wanted, he was rather pleased which was good. Hopefully, he'd start to see that I wasn't one of "the good guys" and he'd start to take me into his confidence a little more. Got to be honest, I was hoping alcohol would make him open up, it usually did with idiots. One sniff of the barmaids apron and they start confessing to you like you're a priest. All we needed was a name, anything that could give us cause to go on a raid.

Pretty amazing really, made progress with my job, didn't get too paranoid over Emily not calling and managed to get some paperwork sorted too. Pretty productive few days really. Then again, I'm a woman. I can fucking multi task.

Emily sent me a text last night too.

"Hey Naoms, I am so sorry about the past couple of days. I'll explain more when I see you. The wonders of being a sister. Can't wait for it to just be me and you tomorrow night. I've missed our texts and calls. E XX"

Of course I replied in kind.

So, it's 6pm on Wednesday and I'm pacing around the living room all set to go in the jeans to show off my arse and t-shirt for the breasts (Effy's idea remember) and of course, clean matching underwear in case I got lucky. (Thanks Tony, you wanker.)

I've already rung Effy 5 times in the past hour. I think I'd pissed her off a wee bit cause she put me on to Freddie on the last call. Fair do's he was actually quite useful in helping me calm down. He told me all about his latest venture he had with his skateboarding company. He wanted to set up a new skate park for the kids to go to, to help reduce anti social behaviour and did I think it was good thing. Surprisingly, he didn't bore the shit out of me and we were actually pleasant to each other. Bouncing ideas around about how he could work it. He even ended the conversation by telling me to just be myself as technically, this was a second date and due to the lip locks we'd already shared she must like me a little.

Bloody Effy. She was so bloody mysterious at times, like Tony said. She was just 'all knowing'. Talking to Freddie had actually done the trick. Maybe I'd tell Tony to go easy on him if he kept up his recent improvement.

I paced a little more and ended up managing to pass the next 20 minutes without going nuts and headed for my car and my date.

I pulled up outside the address Emily had given me and looked up. Nice place. They were modern clean looking apartments. I gave her a quick ring to let her know I was there. As the phone was ringing I saw a head pop out of an upstairs window and a hand wave at me. Ems. I realised she meant she'd be right down and turned my phone off.

Waiting for her by the entrance, I'd decided to be a little suave and escort her to the hunk of shit masquerading as my car. The door opened and I was struck dumb. Fuck me she was gorgeous.

I'd told her where we going and that is was quite casual, but she wore a pair of jeans that looked painted on her slim hips and a shirt that had the top 2 button seductively undone, leaving me with a little glimpse of hidden treasure.

She waved a hand in front of my eyes, clicking her fingers and laughing.

"Hello? Earth to Naoms. You there hun?"

I managed to get my mouth working and somehow croaked out a 'yes' and followed it with a 'wow, you look beautiful'.

A gentle smile broke across her face and she looked down at the floor. I lifted her chin up and stroked her cheeks before following my hands with my lips and planting gentle kisses over her face.

'What's the matter Ems? No one ever told you you're beautiful before?' I joked slightly.

She stared me in the eye and sighed. 'Well, honestly? No.' I blinked a little in confusion before she continued. 'Everyone always paid more attention to Kay than me.' I blinked a little more and bit my lip for a minute.

'Well, their loss my gain. You are beautiful' I punctuated each word with a kiss and brought her in for a hug.

I felt rather than heard her release a sighed 'I've missed you' into my shoulder and smiled to myself. I wasn't doing to bad at this stuff after all, and maybe Tony was right. Our bodies seemed to be two steps ahead of us. This was just so right. Fuck I hope I didn't bugger it up somehow.