Baby, I love your way

If it hadn’t been raining that day I would never have caught the bus and consequently never met up with Ben again.

***

We first met five years earlier in the summer of 1978. It was the night of my best friend’s twenty-first birthday party. We all had similar celebrations throughout our final year at university. Mostly they took place in one of the small airless clubs dotted around the city’s quayside area.

Emma though had parents with a country house, complete with swimming pool and a lighted paved patio. There we slow danced to the strains of, Baby I Love Your Way, from the sweet voiced singer on the sound system.

Later, in Ben’s tiny garret bedsit, he pulled off my dress.

“Christ, where did you get tits that size?”

My spread fingers explored his smooth chest and broad shoulders. In my haste his jeans and shorts came down together. His proud cock pressed into me as naked bodies entwined we kissed hungrily in the moonlit room.

I pushed him back onto the bed, guiding his thick cock through the tangled thatch between my legs. As I rode him furiously my deep moans and final long cries of pleasure rang out across the rooftops of the sleeping city.

***

Now, here he was. Sitting next to me on a bus on a rainy April afternoon.

“Victoria. Wow, this is a surprise. It must be…”

“Five years this summer.” I interrupted, laughing unnecessarily.

“Right, it was a great summer, just before I went to America. You remember how I was offered that dream job?”

I remembered very clearly. I was happy for him and a part of me even believed we would stay in touch. Just like we always planned to do.

“Well, the dream turned into a bit of a nightmare towards the end. I didn’t want to completely sell my soul to the company so I came back home. I start a new job next week.”

He phoned me the next day and the day after. Always when my husband was away. We talked about his new job: like my husband be was a civil engineer , though unlike Carl he seemed genuinely interested in my fledgling career as a personal development counsellor. It was strange the things we had in common. A liking for sushi restaurants, plans to visit Egypt and a secret desire to experience skydiving, were just some that we discovered in those early weeks.

One afternoon he phoned when I had just got out of the shower. As I listened to his voice my hand moved to my crotch. Then with the bedroom extension pressed to my ear and three fingers skewered deep in my slippery sex, I bucked and squirmed on the bed until my insides erupted and the juices flowed like lava.

In bed that night, naked and sweating in the darkness, I begged Carl to take me harder and more roughly. My scarlet nails bit into his back as he lost control. But as we climaxed together it was Ben’s black shock of hair and intense blue eyes that I imagined hanging over me.

A few weeks later he told me about his new flat.

“I can’t wait to have my own front door again.”

“When’s the big day?” My voice was steady, even if the hand holding the phone told a different story.

“Pick up the keys this Friday. Give me the weekend to get straight then come and be my first visitor.”

All that weekend my thoughts kept returning to Monday. Several times I resolved to phone and cancel.

Yet in spite of all my doubts, Monday found me alone with Ben for the first time in five years. At first I followed him around murmuring pleasantries as be proudly gave me the grand tour of his new home. Yet before long his enthusiasm won me round, making me think that this could indeed be the beginning of an awfully big adventure.

Later, we sat close on his new sofa, enjoying a glass of red wine. When he kissed me, it was tentatively to begin with, as though finding his way across terrain that absence had made unfamiliar.

***

I received lots of cards this morning. It’s odd how a birthday can often make you think of the past. Just a quiet one this year, I suppose. Dinner at the new sushi restaurant in town and a bottle of good claret. Then maybe later, we can lie back on the sofa stream that old Peter Frampton album and Ben and I can party like it was still 1983.