Chapter 5
1351 Words
CHAPTER FIVE
Saturday night came, and Justin had prepared well. He put on a new shirt and his best Hugo Boss suit. He made reservations at the ultra-trendy SkyView restaurant. He picked her up in a taxi, which went down extremely well. Trudy hated walking in heels.
As they rode through the streets of London Trudy studied him surreptitiously. She had to admit he scrubbed up nicely.
‘Maybe I will shag him,’ she thought as they were dropped right by the door.
‘You can’t shag him just because he saved you from getting a blister on your heel,’ she realized, and uncertainty reclaimed its place in her decision-making process.
In the bar, they settled into plush window seats. Ambient music wafted over them, soft lighting added to the romance.
‘She’s gotta love this,’ Justin concluded.
‘It’s nice to get somewhere new,’ she thought.
The building tension was broken when the waiter came and took their order. Once he left, tension returned; Justin felt obliged to say something to break the spell.
“Have you been here before?” he asked.
Trudy shook her head. “Have you?”
“Once or twice,” he admitted.
“I’ve been up there, though,” she said and pointed through the window.
Across the river, the Shard soared into the night, high above all the other skyscrapers.
“Oh.” There was a pause. “Why?” he asked.
“My little girl wanted to go.”
“Oh,” he said as they watched red and blue laser lights dance across the Shard’s glass panels. London stretched out for miles beneath it. The view from their vantage point was undeniably romantic.
Trudy waited for him to say something.
‘She’s got a little girl,’ he thought. Justin stole a glance at her.
She looked incredible.
‘Who cares,’ he decided.
“You’ve got a little girl?”
“Yes, Megan, she’s four.”
“Oh, that’s nice, I love kids.”
He smiled to show he didn’t mean anything weird by it.
‘He won’t want to talk about children.’ Trudy stopped herself from extolling Megan’s virtues.
He could feel butterflies floating around his stomach. A beautiful girl, a Saturday night and the city lights, He wouldn’t have it any other way. This was what it was all about.
Add the anticipation, the build-up, the will we-won’t we, into the mix, and you had the perfect recipe.
‘The beginning is always the best bit about falling in love,’ Justin thought.
He saw a different side of her reflected in the window. In her white cotton shawl over an elegant light blue dress, she truly was stunning from any angle.
“You look amazing,” he told her.
She smiled at him,
“Thanks.”
Their drinks arrived.
Trudy sipped her wine as he took a long slug of lager.
‘At least he said amazing not nice,’ she thought. She wasn’t going to put out if he was boring.
‘Don’t be boring.’
Suddenly he swivelled around, and his eyes fixed on her. She was the centre of his attention. and it made her feel special.
“Do you believe in love at first sight?” he asked.
‘Nothing boring about that for an opening gambit.’ Should she be pleased?
“I dunno,” she considered the question. “Yeah I suppose so,” she decided.
“Me too,” he shot back. They beamed at each other.
Trudy turned to the view.
‘That was a nice thing to say,’ she told herself. ‘He’s nice.’
But there was a nagging voice at the back of her mind.
‘What? Are you mad? What sort of a question is that to someone you barely know?’
For the briefest of moments, Trudy wondered if this was a huge mistake. But the view was nice, the wine was chilled, the babysitter had been paid.
Lucy’s words sounded in her head: ‘Give him a chance this time.’
She vowed to wait and see how things played out, for Lucy’s sake if nothing else.
A couple of hours later, Trudy was glad she’d persevered. After a few drinks, once he’d controlled his nerves, he turned out to be fun, attentive. He had stories that involved him getting into minor scrapes that, rather than leaving him bitter, had provided some amusing anecdotes. She had to admit he was good company; she wasn’t to know the anecdotes were stolen from other people, normal people with interesting lives.
Justin knew how to seduce a girl, and Trudy was ripe for seduction.
He topped up her glass, he feigned interest in her stories, and he was on his best behaviour. It was the best date Trudy had been on for a long, long time.
They shared a taxi, which took Trudy home first.
“Do you want to come in?” she asked as it pulled into her street.
“Well, if you’re sure. That would be great.”
Trudy was planning to take him into the front room and relax on the sofa, but the room was a mess. She couldn’t take him in there. She had asked her son to tidy up when his little sister went to bed. Possibly he’d been distracted; certainly, he’d forgotten to do so.
So they stayed in the kitchen, perched on stools on opposite sides of the breakfast bar, and the romantic factor dropped as the coffee levels in their mugs did the same.
With every creak of the house, Trudy thought her daughter would wake up. She couldn’t relax.
Justin drained his drink as he realised the moment had passed.
“I best be off then,” he announced, sliding back his stool and rising to his feet.
Trudy smiled.
“Thanks for a lovely evening. I really enjoyed it.”
“Me too.” He paused, wondering if she was going to come to him.
She stayed in her seat, so he zipped up his jacket.
“I’ll call you,” he said and headed down the passageway.
He heard the sound of a stool scraping across tiles, and he slowed down.
Trudy caught up with him.
“So I’ll call you,” he repeated.
“Ok,” she said and leant across him to open the door.
Justin reached out and slid his hand behind the small of her back. He gently pushed, and she allowed herself to fall into a kiss.
But she knew the glass door meant they would be silhouetted for anyone who happened to be passing. However unlikely that may be late at night, she didn’t feel comfortable, so she broke away and fumbled for the lock.
“Night,” she said, casting her eyes bashfully downwards.
He pecked her on the cheek as he squeezed past her.
“Night, angel,” he said, and he left.
Trudy closed the door and smiled all the way to the bathroom.
Justin did a little hoppity skip as he turned the corner and began searching for a black cab.
‘That was great. She’s an absolute diamond.’ In his mind the evening had gone extremely well.
‘I’m in love,’ he hastily decided.
The following Saturday he booked dinner and a show at Volupte, the hottest cabaret in town. Trudy wore a chiffon pearl-coloured dress that clung tightly to her curves, they laughed out loud at the compere, were thrilled by the dance acts, drank too much cheap wine, and couldn’t keep their hands off each other in the taxi.
There was no time for coffee. A few minutes after getting in the front door, they were rolling round on the sofa interfering with each other’s clothing. Very quickly, Justin was topless, and Trudy was down to her lacy underwear. The breathing was becoming faster, more frantic.
Then Megan awoke and started crying.
She stopped, so he stopped.
“You better go,” she said, pulling her dress on over her head.
The way she wiggled into it drove him crazy.
‘What?’ he wanted to scream. ‘Stop now?’
But how could he? Megan’s crying was growing in volume, clearly a signal that the party was over.
It was time to leave, and there was nothing that could be done about it.
“You can let yourself out, can’t you?” She was already halfway up the stairs.
“Sure.”
He did no little dances on the way home that night. If anything, he felt a bit frustrated.
‘You’ll be ok,’ he consoled himself.
The weekend after that, Trudy arranged for her mother to have the children for the whole night.
She wasn’t totally convinced there was a future with Justin; she didn’t really know him well enough. But she liked him enough to get laid, she knew that much. Besides, it had been a while, she was horny, and Christmas was just around the corner. She didn’t want to be alone again this year.
If Trudy ignored the nagging doubt in the back of her mind, it was fairly easy for her to pretend that things were looking up.
- Writer
