My back was killing me. It was almost as if I’d be picked up and literally thrown onto concrete but I guess, that’s the pain you go through I guess when you make love on a deck. Wait, was I just terribly cliché and say ’make love’? Oh for the love of god. ‘Morning,’ I heard Alba’s raspy voice waking me out of my painful, yet peaceful slumber as she knelt down beside me in a baggy t-shirt, setting a cup of steaming hot tea down beside me. Sitting up a little, placing my weight behind me on my hands I smiled dopily as she pulled the blanket over me a little. I realized with the cool morning breeze that’d we’d stayed out all night on the deck, holding each other, kissing each other-making love’. ‘How long have you been up for?’ I asked as she sat down Indian style beside me as I sipped at the steaming hot cup of tea. She smiled a little and messed with her hair as she replied. ‘Since you snored really loudly in my ear,’ she chuckled, causing a tint of sepia to grace my cheeks. ‘No, don’t worry Taylor, I won’t tell the teenies,’ she further added, as I gently swatted her arm in hopeless defence. A silence fell as I sipped my tea and her smile became shy and reserved as he realization that this whole thing was totally new to us suddenly kicked in.
’Well I’m guessing by the fact you’ve not dragged me down the deck steps by my hair that you don’t have a problem with what happened last night,’ I quipped, not wishing to get into an intense conversation so early in the morning. ‘I’ve learnt from my past mistakes Taylor, if I didn’t want that to happen, I would have told you- I wouldn’t have let myself get involved if I didn’t think I should,’ she assured, her hand rubbing my shoulder gently as I caught the flecks of sincerity in her eyes. ‘What about you?’ she replied, her hand falling away as I held the cup steady on my thigh. ‘I defiantly don’t regret it, I just don’t understand what happens now,’ I laughed looking ahead as I felt the morning chill cloak my bear upper body. ‘I think were both thinking that Taylor, I mean after what happened with Beau and Hyde… I…I’m not saying I regret it but I mean I don’t know if we should see each other like this again or…god it’s so confusing,’ she threw her head in her hands, rubbing her temples before shrugging her shoulders and sighing out loud as I set my cup down on the deck and pulled her into my arms, letting her fall against my chest comfortably. ‘It’s nothing like it was last time Alba, there’s no comparison-I’m confused and scared at what could happen but then again, it’s everything that we make it and everything we don’t,’
Since when did Taylor become the voice of all things sensei cal? I sat looking at him, his fingers running absent mindadly round the rim of the half empty mug of tea separating us as I bit my lip to stop myself from blurting out the first thing that came into my head. I felt good about myself, I felt different, I felt more enlightened to the situation, more in tune to Taylor as an actual human being, sitting opposite me with the after-sex glow radiating off him like a metallic object in sunlight. I brought my hand to his cheek, turning his head to look at me before lightly kissing his lips, pulling away a little with a half smile, just to let him know that, even though we couldn’t put our finger on it- we were defiantly in a good place right now. ‘My back is killing me, I’m turning into such an old man,’ he groaned, lying back down on the deck, pulling the blanket over him to keep him warm. He picked up his tea and rested it on his stomach, letting it rise and fall gently with every breath he took. ‘Perhaps that’s a sign to stop with the cigarettes and coffee? Does you no favours bub,’ I teased, prodding his shoulder playfully as I pulled myself up to standing, looking down on him with a perfect birds eye view. He pulled a sarcastic looking face as I chuckled, turning to go into the house, only stopping when I felt his hand lightly grab my ankle. ‘Not a good idea unless your insurance pays well,’ I quipped, turning round to look at him un impressed with my hands on my hips, reminiscent to a pose my mother always seemed to have in the kitchen on Christmas day.
‘Does this have to stop?’ His tone was light and questioning, his eyes waiting for a dignified response, one that would probably set him off on the trails of thought once again. Bending down I looked him straight in the eyes as I felt his hand fumbling for mine to give it a little squeeze. It was right then I realized that we’d never have each other, but always have an air of confusion- but maybe that was what we needed. You can never feel 100% secure, 100% safe, 100% doesn’t exist in the world of today, there’s always an obstacle that will make you get to 99.9% and then that last 00.1% will always be out of reach. There’s no such thing as being perfect, in a relationship, in your job in your whole entire life, no one before us or even in this world today that is purely perfect, (lord knows I thought me and Hyde were perfect) and it’s true that our imperfections make us stronger people and are truly the character building qualities within us. Faults don’t have to be a bad thing. Taylor was almost certainly my fault. The thorn in my side -he was my thorn, it stung a lot but it was a sting that left a trail of many intriguing things, some of which I was only starting to see in his baby blues. Just as I was about to open my mouth, the front door rattled loudly, the thundering knocking of the person on the other side gate crashing my thoughts, but not to the point of causing me to forget. ‘It’s never going to stop Taylor,’ I replied with conviction as I managed to squeeze his hand back as my way of underlining that last night would always remain prominent as the day that Alba Montrose found her 99.9% of safety.
I only managed to steal a quick pouting kiss as she rose up to go and answer the door, giggling as I groaned at having to move, the pain in my back shooting straight down my leg when I got up to stand, pulling the blanket around me tightly. ‘Shut up moaning you big woos!’ she chuckled back as I walked slowly into the living room, out of the line of sight from whoever would be standing at the front door. I’m sure it would cause quite a news story if the mail man peered through to see Taylor Hanson naked, covered only by a woollen blanket, in pain on a wooden deck with the tousled hair of one night of, erotic sensuality displayed for all to see. I was just about to sit down on the sofa, swaddled in the blanket when Alba ran back into the living room with the most disturbed look on her face. ‘You have to hide, quickly!’ she hissed, ushering me out of the chair I’d only just settled in and grabbing our pile of discarded clothes from just outside the sliding doors. ‘What’s the problem, is it Steve?’ The thought had occurred to me he was stopping by to see how she was on his way to work as she thrust the bundle of clothes in my arm and ushered me down the basement steps, ready to shut the door behind me. ‘I wish it was,’ she stammered, her hands shaking as she picked up my shirt and threw it at me mentally. Just as I was about to drop all the clothes (and if I wasn’t careful, my blanket) and question her bizarre attitude twist I heard the banging of the front door again
’ALBA! ARE YOU UP? I KNOW IT’S EARLY BUT I’VE COME FOR MY STUFF!’
’Please Taylor just go down there and hide, I have to answer the door,’ she panicked as I nodded numbly as she shut the door behind me, leaving me in semi darkness as I plodded down the stairs throwing the clothes down in a heap at the bottom of the stairs as soon as I got there. The perfect moment was right there, I’d asked my question she’d given me the answer I was so desperate to hear since I’d turned her to look at me last night in the kitchen-and then Hyde turns up and reminds me that if it wasn’t for his fling with my girlfriend, this opportunity (If it was indeed an opportunity) would never have arose. I sat huddled on the bottom step as I hear the front door open and muffled voices waft through the thin basement door, mostly his of course. I looked over to the pile of clothes and picked up her white trousers, so pristine and pure as I ran my fingers over the soft cotton fabric. It felt like her skin and the delicacy of them reminded me of the fragile person she truly was and I found myself smiling. How could I have not made her my everything?
The sheer fear of Hyde spotting Taylor here was numbing my every limb. Questions would arise such as:what the hell is he doing here?’and not forgetting the all important’Got somebody to take my place already?’ line. It was only just acceptable to me and Taylor what was really going on between us now, there was still some mist covering it but I think we’d pretty much got the gist that there was considerably more chemistry this time than on any other occasion that we’d been together- so god knows what Hyde would have made of it, come to think of it, it doesn’t even bear thinking about. Giving Taylor a pleading glance to be silent, I shut the basement door on him and hoped to god I wasn’t glowing too much in my baggy t-shirt and navy pj hot pants.
Opening the door slowly, I saw him resting against the doorframe casually, one hand in his pocket and the other raised and curled as he examined his self-styled nails. ‘Sorry, I was just about to get in the shower,’ I apologized as our eyes met briefly. The over whelming urge to say something about ’this being all for the best’ was bursting to leave my mouth, but I daren’t-it might just show how vulnerable I really was starting to feel around him, as if he was a stranger, someone who I passed on the street. It only took a split second for all the comfort, all the security I had with him to come falling down and maybe that’s why I questioned what I was doing with Taylor, asking to be held, the two turning point kisses- but I didn’t need to question anymore with Taylor, just as long as I had my 99.9%. The silence grew a little as I prompted myself to get this over and done with and get him out of the way so I could let Taylor out from the basement. ‘All the stuff I could find is in the hall,’ I started as I let him a little way as I lunged for the 5 boxes and two crates and slid them along the ground towards him so he could lift them out and into the boot of his car parked right up the driveway. ‘I doubt you had to pack much of it, we’d not gotten round to even doing that,’ he remarked, his tone straining a little as he started to walk down to the boot with the first two boxes stacked on top of each other. ‘There were lots of things we didn’t get to do Hyde…. look I hate to sound unwelcoming but I have to be at work in an hour and I’m not even ready,’ I was practically itching to throw him out the door, shifting my weight from foot to foot as If Taylor was tickling my foot on the basement ceiling and it was transmitting through. ‘I know you want me gone quick, I’m tainted goods, don’t remind me,’ his words were harsh, as if he was irked underneath, as if he’d finally realized that pleading with me and a bunch of false ’If Only’s,’ would not make our relationship magically start up again and erase the fact he was with another woman, that he didn’t love me as much as I’d thought he did. ‘Come on Hyde I didn’t mean it like that, don’t sound all nasty,’ I whined as he shifted the last two crates out onto the porch and stood up to look at me. ‘We can be however we want to be now, I mean after all, were not gonna stay buddies after this are we?’ It’s like his motive was to launch a scathing attack on me so when I look back on the relationship when I’m old and grey I’ll always feel bad because it ended on an argument-he had his tactics and he was sticking too them, although I wished to god he wasn’t. ‘Leave now, I’d have liked to think we wouldn’t have to retort to foul language to end this relationship but obviously, once again you prove yourself to be nothing like the man I fell in love with,’ I felt in-powered to conduct my rage, but at the same time I felt sad to realize that I’d been playing Hyde’s game for a year and got burnt, not like I did with Taylor, but I was still burnt. He tucked the last two crates in the car and slammed the boot shut on his 4x4 and immediately jumped in the drivers seat, obviously too chicken to come back with an answer of any worthy able substance. I felt myself slump a little as his car screeched out the drive and down the road, leaving me to shake myself up and slap myself around the face and say:’he wasn’t everything I made him out to be,’
I heard the door slamming shut just as I had finished getting myself dressed again, and the creaking of the basement door opening followed soon after that. I walked over to the bottom of the stairs as I watched Alba slouch down them casually. ‘You okay?’ I asked as she sat down on the last step, causing me to have to kneel down in front of her to conduct any kind of conversation. ‘He’d obviously decided he wanted to spite me, either that or his logic was he’d upset me to the point that I’d go running to find him, apologize and then we’d get back together again and be happy ever after-god he said so little but it stung so much,’ her brown was furrowed as she explained to me exactly what had happened upstairs. ‘I don’t think there is ever such a thing as a non-emotional break up,’ I commented as I rubbed her thigh re-assuring, raising a little smile as she looked up at me. ‘But why did we break up Taylor? Because he had an affair with your girlfriend-and now look at us! I’m totally contradicting everything I said to him! We’ve slept together, we’ve kissed god, why is he managing to make me feel bad about something he doesn’t know anything about?’ she sniffed as I crawled up and sat down beside her. I could understand her concern but in a sense, her worries were UN founded, in no way was this situation anything like Hyde and Beau. They had an adulterous affair, as pure cut as that, where- yes, we had a past but it wasn’t your typical type of past, we weren’t a couple we weren’t in any way involved other than our stupid mistakes that we used to combat feelings of dislike and discomfort. ‘It’s not the same though is it? There’s more to us now than what there was with Beau and Hyde. There was no question about what they were doing but with us, it was so much different-for a start you are technically single now you’ve broken up so what’s to stop you seeing other men and not to mention the small fact that we have a past, of sorts, where we’ve been caught up in tense argument, in confrontation and lust and now, I don’t know about you but it’s like the air of misunderstanding that clouded over us, about who we really were, what we were really like and all that shit, has finally been cleared,’ she rested her head on my shoulder as I cradled her in my arms as I slowly explained to her the difference in situations. She nodded her head slightly as I pulled her chin up so she was looking at me, her slightly tearstained cheek highlighting the rosy ness of it that had blossomed through last night and this morning. ‘If you want this to be everything you want it to be Alba, then I’m not going to stop you. I’ve been down the wrong road with you before, when I was nothing but a jackass and totally self involved but this time there’s more to it, we both know there is and I know it’ll take more time but we could grow with it. But on the other hand if you don’t want this to be your everything, if you want to hold your hands up and walk away and cleanse yourself of the whole situation then I can’t stop you similarly if you want to sort things out with Hyde and go back to him- I can’t make you try at anything you don’t want to,’
I watched her eyes dart around my face, her hand absent mindedly swirling patterns on my leg, as she listened to what I had to say, in the most sincere way I could word it. ‘So is this going to be your everything, or not?’ I whispered, our lips closing in closer to each other as her hand snaked round my neck and through my hair, pushing me closer to her, our body heat rising once again as her fingers teased my hair at the base of my neck. Just as her lips brushed mine I heard her breath:
’My everything,’