Dolphin-san: So here's another chapter I thought of today. I just had to wait for to resend my password (because in the time I spent NOT updating, I have, of course, forgotten it), so hopefully shouldn't take to long to update again.

So, what's happened the morning after with Kai and Ray?

Chapter 39

It took a while for Ray to orientate himself. His watch said seven o'clock, but was that morning or evening? He had absolutely no idea how long he had been asleep.

Help arrived, moments later, in the form of Max. Carrying a tray.

Ray peered at it, searching for clues.

'Hi. Is that . . . ?'

'Breakfast,' said Max.

Ah.

'Only tea and toast. I didn't know if you'd feel up to much.'

Ray didn't know either. It was far too soon to tell.

'You've been asleep for fifteen hours,' Max went on, plonking the tray down.

Good Lord, really? Testing his head, Ray discovered that it hardly hurt at all. How amazing, he appeared to have slept right through his headache.

Excellent news!

Feeling more cheerful already, he hauled himself into a sitting position and took a noisy slurp of tea. Gorgeous, made just the way he liked it, two and a half sugars and tongue-numbingly strong . . .

Hang on a sec.

'Why are you looking at me like that?'

'It's Florence.' Max's valiant attempts at keeping a straight face weren't going well. 'She'd, um, like a word.'

'Florence is up already?' Ray was astounded. This was unheard of.

'She made me come and wake you up.'

'Why?' Ray peered suspiciously over the rim of his Bart Simpson mug. Something was going on here and he couldn't for the life of him imagine what it might be. 'Why?' he persisted. 'Is Florence ill?'

Florence couldn't really be ill, he knew that. Otherwise, why would Max be smirking?

'I think she's just dying . . .' said Max.

What?

'. . . of curiosity.' Another pause, then the words came tumbling out. 'She wants to know all the gory details about you and Kai.'

'Me and Kai? For heaven's sake, what kind of gory details?'

'Well, who made the first move.' Max's shoulders were shaking. 'How many times you . . . er, did it. Oh, and she especially wants to know if he's fantastic in bed.'

Ray dropped his toast. Up until that moment his brain had been merciful, sparing him the horror of having to remember events he would have so much preferred to forget.

Now it all came flooding back in a hideous, toe-curling, spine-tingling technicolour whoosh.

'Oh God, oh God, oh noooo!' The tray on Ray's lap toppled sideways as he threw himself back against the pillows and dragged the duvet over his head.

Max caught the tray with milliseconds to spare. He tugged the duvet away from Ray's burning face.

'You don't have to be embarrassed. Kai's great, we are really like him.'

'Ooohhh!'

'Ray, come on, you and Kai got it together and that's wonderful news. You don't have to be embarrassed, just because you had sex with him!'

Heavens, Max marvelled, listen to me. I sound just like Florence.

'I didn't have sex with him,' whispered Ray. To add insult to injury, his hangover was belatedly kicking in. But the spasms of pain attacking his temples were negligible in comparison with the agony of total humiliation. When you were about to be mauled by a pack of lions, you don't worry too much about being bitten by an ant.

Max was looking disappointed.

'You didn't? Damn, we thought you had.' He frowned. 'So why are you upset?'

Ray closed his eyes. He didn't need twenty questions, he needed oblivion. Having sex with Kai Hiwatari wouldn't have been embarrassing at all – well, maybe a bit, but he could have handled that.

Equally, being offered the opportunity of a night of wild sex with Kai Hiwatari and graciously turning him down would have been fine. No reason to be embarrassed there.

Except I didn't do either of those things, thought Ray, did I? Oh no, not me, I had to pick the third card, didn't I? I threw myself at him and forced him to kiss me and then I begged – actually begged – him to have sex with me . . . and he turned me down.

Awfully kind of you to offer, old thing, but no thanks, rather not.

Ray shuddered. His skin crawled with humiliation.

Oh God, what have I done?

Total, total nightmare.

Why am I such a prat?

There was nothing else to do but come clean. Florence, true to form, thought it was all uproariously funny.

'Never mind, darling, better luck next time.'

Next time, oh yes, Ray thought miserably. I can hardly wait.

'At least you got a snog out of it,' Florence continued, her eyes alight with mischief. 'You can tell us how that went, surely! Good, bad, indifferent . . .?'

'Average,' lied Ray, wondering what he'd done to deserve such torture.

'Hmm. From the way Bruce described it, that's a bit like describing Torvill and Dean as average ice-skaters.'

'Actually, I've got a bit of a headache.'

Florence went off into peals of laughter.

'Poor darling, is that what Kai said to you last night?

Max, feeling sorry for Ray, said, 'Shall I bring you a couple of aspirins?'

'Make it a couple of hundred,' Ray groaned. Oh dear, was it possible to feel worse than this?

The phone rang just as Ray was crawling out of the house.

'For you,' crowed Florence, behind him.

'Who is it?'

'No idea. Sounds like Jeremy Paxman.' Florence had recently taken to watching Newsnight at every opportunity; she thought Jeremy Paxman was the bee's knees. 'Ask him if he wears pants or boxer shorts.' She wagged the receiver hopefully at Ray. 'It's so hard to fantasise when you don't know.'

Ray snatched the phone from her, not in the mood for Florence's surreal ramblings.

'Ray Kon? Glad I managed to catch you,' barked Jeremy Paxman, sounding as brisk and disdainful as he did when he was grilling some hapless politician. 'Short notice, I know, but we'd like you to appear on the show tonight, and not that it's relevant, but for the record perhaps you could tell whoever asked that ludicrous question that the answer is neither. Beneath my desk I am at one with the elements, unhampered, free as a bird –'

Ray hung up.

Moments later, the phone rang again.

'You weren't supposed to do that,' a more familiar voice complained good-naturedly. 'I was only trying to brighten your day.'

'I don't want to speak to you, I don't, I really don't . . .'

'Not bad though, was it?' Kai sounded pleased with himself. 'Did I fool you, just for a few seconds?'

'No.' He had, of course. Right up to the moment when he had begun to describe his below-desk preferences in such vivid detail. Thanks to the deadly accurate machine-gun delivery, Ray had actually believed that Jeremy Paxman was calling to invite a hopeless trainee hairdresser from Notting Hill on to his show.

That's how stupid I am, thought Ray.

Spending the rest of his life in a tin shack on the outer Hebrides was becoming an increasingly attractive idea.

He looked at his watch.

'I have to go. I'm late for work.'

For some reason, this didn't appear to bother Kai.

'Dear me, late for work, that would never do.'

'What do you want?' Ray gritted through his teeth. 'An apology, is that it?'

'Don't be daft.' Kai sounded amused. 'Although you could thank me, if you like. For doing the gentlemanly thing.'

Hot waves of shame swept through him. He stood there, mortified and unable to speak.

Sadist.

'And don't think it was easy,' Kai went on, 'because it wasn't. I was tempted, I admit. Turning down offers like that don't come naturally to red-blooded males –'

'Okay, okay,' Ray blurted out. 'Thank you thank you thank you for not sleeping with me, I'm so grateful to you!'

'Calm down, no need to yell.' Now he sounded offended. 'I was being responsible. You were upset about Hiro, plus you'd had a fair bit to drink. People do daft things when they're pissed –'

Tell me about it, Ray thought despairingly. Except – damn – he already was.

'- and I didn't want you waking up this morning, flinching at the sight of me and thinking Oh God, no.' Kai paused. 'That's the worst-case scenario, of course. It could have been quite different. You might have been delighted it happened, not embarrassed at all. You might have thought, That was fabulous, why didn't we do it months ago?'

There was an odd note in his voice. Ray couldn't work it out at all, and he didn't want to try. His brain kept conjuring up hideous images of him flinging himself at Kai in his car, smothering him with kisses, fumbling with his shirt buttons, yelling 'I want to have sex with you!'

And the pictures kept appearing, over and over again like a video stuck on endless Replay.

'Look, I do have to go to work.' He tried huffing his fringe out of his eyes but perspiration had plastered it to his clammy forehead. 'But you're right, it would have been disastrous, the biggest mistake of my life. God, just the thought makes me shudder. I must have been out of my tree.'

'Okay.' Kai sounded taken aback, as if he hadn't been expecting such a brutal put-down. 'Well, that's that out of the way. All forgotten. How About dinner tonight, to celebrate the fact that we didn't sleep together and we're still friends?'

'No thanks.' Ray couldn't face it, he was too ashamed. It was all right for Kai, he wasn't the one who'd been begging for sex. And Ray didn't believe for one moment that it would be All Forgotten. From now on, their every conversation would be a minefield, because he knew Kai wouldn't be able to resist teasing him, making the occasional sly remark here, the odd dig there, reminding him – God, as if he needed reminding – what an all-time prize pillock he'd made of himself.

'Go on,' Kai urged.

'I really don't want to.

'What about the video? I was going to bring it over. Don't you want to see it?'

'I'm going to work now.' Ray had had enough. 'And I don't want to see you or your video.' As his patience snapped, his voice rose hysterically. 'I just want to be left in peace.'

Feigning cheerfulness for the clients at the salon was something you had to do whether you liked it or not. As far as Ray was concerned, it was a long and trying day. The only time he had cheered up was when he handed the parcel Max had given him over to Takao and watched him open it.

'That's your shirt.' Ray gazed at it in astonishment. It was definitely the shirt Takao had been wearing yesterday, now laundered and ironed and folded as neatly as a sweater in a Benetton shop.

'Max insisted.' Takao ran a finger over the front where the wine stain had been. 'After James got trigger happy with the claret.'

Mystified, Ray stared at him. Takao was six foot two and broad shouldered.

'So if you left your shirt at our house, what did you wear home?'

'The only thing that fitted me.' The corners of Takao's mouth twitched as he recalled the reaction of his neighbours when they had seen him in the sweatshirt Max had bought from Mothercare.

In that moment, Ray knew.

'The yellow sweatshirt,' he exclaimed, 'with pink writing on it.'

'Maybe,' said Takao.'

Ray clapped his hands with delight; he could just picture it. Takao Kinomiya, emerging from his black Lotus in a pastel-shaded sweatshirt bearing the slogan I'm Not Fat, I'm Pregnant.

The house overlooking Hampstead Heath was a dream. It was perfect in every way, from the matching pair of monkey puzzle trees in the front garden to the Tuscan-style marbled kitchen the size of a tennis court, done out in irresistible shades of copper and blue.

The estate agent kept saying what a fabulous property it was, and Takao could only nod in agreement. He was unable to fault it.

'There's a great deal of interest, as you'd expect,' the agent told him as they left. 'I'm sure you'd like to put in an offer.'

I could be making the biggest mistake of my life here, thought Takao. I must be mad.

Aloud, he said, 'No thanks.'

Dolphin-san: Oh, what is Takao up to? Why didn't he take the great house with the view of the Heath? Well, you'll just have to wait and find out (don't worry, I'll be updating within the next week).

Ja Ne.