Nine Uses For An Ex-Boyfriend (54 page)

Wilson didn’t have much in the way of products, so Hope used baby lotion in lieu of body moisturiser, and then realised that there was absolutely nothing she could do about her hair, which had the consistency of a kitchen mop that had seen better days.

Then, safely swathed in a plush towelling robe the colour of clotted cream, Hope opened the bathroom door a crack to grab the neatly folded pile of clothes Wilson had left for her. The plaid pyjamas were far, far too big for her. Hope had to roll up the bottoms and yank in the drawstring around the waist as far as it would go, and the jacket came down to mid-thigh. She looked incredibly waif-like, which was a first.

Leaving her own clothes draped over the heated towel rail, Hope took a deep breath and opened the bathroom door. Now the wooden floorboards felt smooth and warm under her bare feet as she padded out into the huge living space.

‘Go and sit down,’ Wilson said from the galley kitchen. ‘Just pouring the tea. Milk and one sugar, right?’

‘Right,’ she agreed. She sat down on the sofa, her legs tucked up under her, and looked around the room and remembered the last time that she’d sat here. How Wilson had made her tea then, too, and she’d fallen asleep on his shoulder.

It was strange how the circumstances could be the same and yet utterly different. Somehow, Hope didn’t think that she was going to be doing much sleeping or actually …
Stop it! Just stop it right now
, she told herself sternly.

‘What time is it?’ she asked Wilson as he placed a mug of tea and a plate of biscuits down on the coffee table in front of her.

‘It’s nearly four,’ Wilson said heavily. ‘I’ve got an eight a.m. shoot.’

‘I have to be at school at eight thirty,’ Hope countered.

‘And don’t forget that you’ve got fifty cupcakes to frost,’ Wilson reminded Hope, and when she rolled her eyes and groaned in not-so-mock despair, he smiled. ‘I’ve just drunk an entire pot of coffee so I’ll be sober enough to drive you home.’

Hope felt something inside her, it might have been her weary old heart, melt. ‘You didn’t have to do that,’ she murmured, though if he hadn’t done that, she didn’t know how she would get home. Home, where Jack was passed out in an alcohol-induced slumber and might not even realise that Hope was AWOL. She thought about digging her phone out of her bag, which Wilson had placed in front of her, but decided if there were missed calls or crabby voice messages they could wait. She turned back to Wilson, who’d sat down next to her and was demolishing a chocolate Hobnob in three decisive bites. ‘Apart from nearly being snowed in on Camden High Street, I had a really good time tonight.’

‘You wouldn’t be saying that if we’d had to bed down at the bus stop.’

‘No, because you carried me on your back like I was Tiny Tim.’ Hope shot him a sideways look. ‘It was very heroic of you.’

‘I carry random people around on my back all the time …’

Hope could sense him pulling back from her emotionally, could tell that he wanted to be quiet and wanted her to be quiet, too. Most likely, the pot of coffee had sobered him up, and all the flirting and teasing of earlier now seemed like a bad idea. It was best if she just gulped down her tea so he could take her back to Holloway to deal with her un-frosted cupcakes.

She felt Wilson looking at her but she kept her eyes on
her
mug of tea, only shifting her focus when Wilson cleared his throat. ‘Hope? Can I ask you something?’

‘Course you can,’ she said lightly, though he sounded so serious that she was dreading what his next words might be. ‘You know me, I’m an open book.’

‘I’d hardly call you that.’ Wilson reached for another biscuit, then thought better of it. ‘So … you and Jack, you’ve broken up, haven’t you?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t say that. Not exactly.’ Hope paused as she thought about how exactly she would say it, because there was still an outside chance that Jack would choose her. Choose them. Because they’d been together thirteen years and he said he still loved her and OK, it wasn’t the same as being
in
love with her, but he cared for her, which was why he … hadn’t even bothered to come to the Winter Pageant when he knew how much it meant to her. ‘Scratch that,’ she heard herself say. ‘We are broken up. He doesn’t want to be with me; he wants to be with
her
. We were four weeks into our horrible, painful counselling that was supposed to get things back on track, and all Susie had to do was turn up on the doorstep and, well …’ She shook her head. ‘We’re over.’

‘How are you doing?’ Wilson wanted to know, and he didn’t make any attempt to touch her or comfort her, but that was a good thing, because she was one fingertip away from coming undone.

‘I don’t know,’ Hope said, finally turning to look at Wilson, who seemed curious rather than concerned. ‘This is the first time I’ve admitted it to anyone else. Actually, this is the first time I’ve admitted it to myself, instead of pretending that Jack’s going to have a change of heart. He’s not. We’re done.’

Wilson put down his mug and sat still, elbows resting on his knees as he cupped his chin. ‘But you still love him, right?’

Hope sighed. ‘I don’t know. I’ve always loved Jack but I wonder if loving Jack is more a habit than something
I
really
feel
.’ Wilson bombarding her with questions had brought Hope’s mood crashing down, though maybe that was the hangover kicking in early, or the prospect of having to go home. ‘It all sucks, and I’m pretty wretched. I mean, getting drunk tonight and hanging out with you has been great, but generally I feel like I want to crawl into bed and stay there until they carry me out in a coffin.’

She knew that when they had conversations like this, and they’d had a lot of conversations over the last few weeks about how crappy Hope felt, Wilson would dole out some devastating home truths, but it was still easier to talk to him about it than to, say, Angela. For one thing, Jack wasn’t sitting next to her on the sofa, and also Wilson was a lot easier on the eye than Angela, who didn’t provide tea, Hobnobs or something comfortable to sit on. Which was a pity – she was really missing a trick, Hope thought, as she sipped the last of her tea. And unlike Angela, Wilson instinctively seemed to know that she was just gathering her thoughts and hadn’t finished yet.

‘I know you think I’m a total drama queen, but I don’t know how I’ll ever get over this or feel normal again. It’s like I don’t even know what normal is without Jack. He’s been at the centre of my life for so long that if he’s not there then I’m just going to be half a person.’ Hope put down her mug so she could hug her knees. ‘I don’t want to be half a person.’

‘Now that I’ve got to know you properly, I don’t think you’re a total drama queen,’ Wilson said. He shot her a lazy grin. ‘Not all the time, anyway.’

‘Well, that’s progress of a sort, I suppose,’ Hope said, and she could have smiled too, but instead she sighed.

‘I know it seems impossible now, but you won’t always feel this way,’ Wilson said softly. ‘Not going to happen overnight, but you’ll get over it and when you think about Jack, you won’t want to cry or take a contract out on him. You might even end up being friends.’

Now it was Hope’s turn not to say anything because she couldn’t ever imagine a point in the future when she and Jack could be friends. Not when she loved him as much as she did and not after what he’d done to her … why would she want a friend like that?

‘You know I was engaged, right?’ Wilson suddenly asked her.

Hope turned to him. ‘Well, no, I didn’t.’

‘I was. We were together for five years. Loved her to pieces, went through loads of stuff together. Not just the good stuff.’ Wilson was staring off into the middle distance as if he was lost in memories. ‘Her dad dying, the magazine I was working on closing, even a miscarriage. We were solid, then three weeks before the wedding, she left me for another woman.’

‘Oh my God,’ Hope breathed. ‘That’s awful. Did you have any idea?’

‘Not really – which was why I was planning to spend the rest of my life with her,’ Wilson said dryly.

‘How on earth did you cope?’

She expected Wilson to tell her that he put on his best stiff upper lip and soldiered on, but he shook his head. ‘I didn’t. Went on a six-month bender, if you must know, but I did get over it eventually. Mind you, not sure that my liver has ever fully recovered.’

‘I wonder whether anyone gets over this kind of thing?’ Hope mused.

‘If it doesn’t change you, then you were never in love,’ Wilson pointed out. ‘No one gets through life scot-free. Shit happens. It’s how you deal with it that shapes you, not the actual event itself.’

Wilson was actually pretty good at giving advice. It wasn’t anything tangible that Hope could do tomorrow and know that she’d instantly feel better, but it was still good to know that she might come through this alive. ‘So, your ex … is she still on your Christmas-card list?’ she asked,
because
surely it was easier to have no contact at all, to not be reminded of her, but Wilson was nodding.

‘Yeah, I was even best man at her civil partnership.’

‘Wow. Even though she ended it three weeks before you were due to get married?’

‘But when she asked me if I’d donate some of my sperm, I told her to bugger off,’ Wilson said, and he sounded so disgruntled about the temerity of his ex that Hope wanted to giggle. She managed to school her features into something more sympathetic. ‘So, anyway. Remember that this isn’t going to destroy you.’ He paused. ‘It just feels like it will for a while.’

Lauren always insisted that it took a week for every month you dated, or a month for every year that you were in a relationship, to heal your broken heart. Hope realised she was in for a long, painful thirteen months, and then she realised that since she’d been sitting on Wilson’s sofa, she hadn’t once entertained the idea that she and Jack would get back together. At last that had finally sunk in, and while she still wasn’t happy about it, not even a little bit, Hope was accepting it. It was one tiny step on a very, very long road …

‘You know what’s weird?’ Wilson suddenly nudged Hope and disproved her theory that he knew when she wasn’t in the mood for talking any more.

She frowned. ‘No. What?’

‘That I’m meant to be giving you advice and a shoulder if you want to cry on it, but you’re sitting there in my pyjamas and smelling of my bubble bath, neither of which are that alluring, and all I can think about is how you …’ Wilson swallowed hard and Hope could hardly breathe as she waited for him to finish his sentence. ‘You’re warm and naked inside my clothes and I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anyone as much as I want you right now.’

Hope hadn’t been feeling alluring sitting there with frizzy hair and wearing baggy pyjamas, but now she was conscious
that
she was naked underneath the brushed cotton, which suddenly felt like a caress on her bare breasts, and when she shifted restlessly she could feel herself growing heavy and damp.

She didn’t know what to say. There wasn’t much that she could say either, except that she was meant to be broken and blue and crying on Wilson’s shoulder but, actually, that wasn’t what she wanted from him right then. She wanted his big heavy body on her, in her, and saying the words out loud would be yet another betrayal, but not as much as uncoiling her legs in an unsteady movement so she could rise up on her knees, take off Wilson’s glasses, place them carefully on the coffee table and fling her arms around his neck.

Hope imagined that she could taste Wilson’s shock, but she chased it away with her lips and her tongue, her hands on either side of his head to keep him still while she kissed him. Because he was always kissing her, and that seemed terribly unfair and one-sided.

Wilson’s arms had been hanging limply by his sides, but as he started to kiss her back with a ferocity that was a little bit frightening but mostly thrilling, his hands clasped her hips and he lifted Hope as she scooched over so she was straddling him and God, yes, she could feel the hard nudge of his cock rubbing against her clit, which felt like it might detonate inside its brushed-cotton prison.

It was obvious that Hope wasn’t going anywhere, was happy to stay right where she was, arching against the delicious promise of his dick, but Wilson pulled away from her voracious mouth so he could start to unbutton her pyjama top. He sighed as he slowly uncovered her breasts, sliding his hands into the jacket to shape their swollen fullness, thumbs pressing against her peaked and aching nipples.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he said softly, reverently, and no one had ever said that to Hope before. No one. Not even the one person who should have said it to her many times and
sounded
like he meant it. ‘Your freckles,’ Wilson continued, tracing the freckles that dusted her skin, before Hope could think herself to another place, a place where she shouldn’t be half-naked with someone who wasn’t Jack. ‘If we had enough time, I’d kiss every single one. How far down do they go?’

‘All the way down,’ Hope said, as she slipped the pyjama top down her arms so Wilson could see the mass of brown blotches on her shoulders, where they were at their most prolific. ‘Got them everywhere but my palms and the soles of my feet.’

Hope had never thought of her freckles as sexy before, until Wilson quirked an eyebrow, one hand hovering over the drawstring knot that was holding up her pyjama bottoms.

‘Everywhere?’ he asked with interest.

Hope thought about slapping his hand away because she wasn’t sure how far she wanted this to go, but she decided that there was no harm in giving him a visual demonstration if he really, really wanted one. ‘Everywhere.’