The End Of A Romance?

"So this is how it starts," she thinks to herself, "the beginning of the end...."

It's not what she'd expected, her brain works on switches; off and on; black and white; indecision, shades of grey, they are not part of her world. But this, this is different and it scares her because she recognises there's no easy way to do this, because a big part of her isn't ready to end this yet. She's not bored, in fact, she's far from bored of him. He still manages to surprise her, make her smile, forget her self consciousness and lose herself in him, even if it is just for a brief while. She'd told him he was the best she'd had in nine odd years, in fact she only ever remembers one time before that she had been able to completely forget herself with someone and that was almost twelve years ago. This scares her as well because she wants to feel that way again, to forget about thinking and just get lost in the sex. Too many times with others she finds herself feeling like a performer putting on an act, knowing that each time has to be better than the last, knowing that she will be judged on how well she can play the role, or worse she finds herself bored, using her skill to get it over with as quickly as possible so she can leave, and leave them wanting more.

With him she doesn't think, she doesn't plan each move for maximum effect, she can't. Once he touches her she's lost, unable to do anything other than feel and react, when he's inside her she struggles to breath, when she takes him into her mouth she doesn't care how she looks, she can't concentrate on anything but the taste of him and the feel of him beneath her tongue, the way he swells when she sucks and how he pushes against the back of her throat, making her gag and tears run down her face as she tries to suck more of him into her mouth. Afterwards she can never remember what happened, can't say "we did this and then we did that," all she can remember is isolated feelings and sensations that keep her awake at night and catch her off guard during the day, making her instantly wet and ready for him again. And this is why she's not ready to walk away just yet.

Several times before she's given herself set time limits, 'next Sunday', or 'one more week', and each time she's found herself thinking, "just one more time, once more and then that will be enough," and each time it's not enough, she still wants more. She recognises the danger in this, and still she finds herself saying "once more", but she knows if she continues thinking like this then she'll never walk away. Of course logic states that it must end at some point, either they'll be caught, or he'll move away, or worst of all perhaps he'll get bored of her, and the idea of letting it go on another week, another month, until the decision is taken out of her hands is a little too appealing for comfort. So she drives...

She drives down long, straight, dark roads, the only light the pale green glow of her dashboard and the bright, white headlights of approaching cars. She feels the tightness in her chest, the way it makes her breathing quick and shallow, the raw, dry ache in the back of her throat and the itchy heat behind her eyes as her vision blurs slightly, her arms feeling heavy and numb on the steering wheel, her head a dead weight on her neck as she sinks deeper into her seat under the pressure of her thoughts. She hates the way her life seems to have a soundtrack, music linked to people and places, memories. She hears the slow, sad strings begin at the start of the track as she reaches the top of the hill and looks down on the lights of the town below her – Lana Del Ray-Born To Die – it seems appropriate somehow, this will be the death of what they had together.

The lyrics trigger images in her head as she drives too fast down the steep hill; how when they first started talking she thought he was just an annoyance, complaining that he was bored incessantly, she's unsure at which point she started looking forward to hearing from him again; the first time they met, she looking around the cinema, knowing him instantly even though he was not as she'd imagined; the second time they met and she had his cock in her hands throughout the film, realising only at the end that she'd watched the whole thing without seeing any of it, concentrating on the feel of him, hard beneath her fingers; how they'd driven to the beach and parked in front of someone's house, kissing in full view before taking a short walk to the beach to have sex for the first time, the stones cold and hard under her knees and his cock hot and hard inside her; the way she'd held his hand on the drive back to his car, even when changing gear;the evening when he told her he was engaged, she sitting in bed in the dark, staring at her phone, telling him it didn't matter to her, that she wouldn't let it matter, it was easy then to brush that thought into a locked room in her brain marked 'do not touch', easy to avoid asking questions she knew she wouldn't want answers to; the day he'd taken the train to hers and they'd spent the day in bed, laughing and fucking until reluctantly she drove him back to the station; the time she'd asked him if he had any last words and what he sent as reply stuck in her head all night, keeping her wet and uncomfortable for hours; the day they'd gone to the cinema and ended up on the beach, her kissing him as he brought her to orgasm several times whilst people walked all around them; the afternoon she'd met him in his break and they'd fucked on the back seat of his coach with the curtains drawn.

And then her brain brings up the images she'd been avoiding; the times she'd wanted to meet and he'd put her off; the times she'd hoped he'd turn up but he had some excuse; the times he'd vanish for days at a time and she had no way of contacting him, having to wait for him to remember her and text, just in case she text at a time he wasn't alone; and finally the one she'd been dreading...

The day his girlfriend had come home and she'd gone to the journalists house after midnight looking to hurt someone. The look in her eyes as she pushed open the back door causing him to pause and close his laptop before hurrying upstairs. Finding him kneeling naked on the bed, no words spoken. Upending the bag of "toys" and pulling out a blindfold, a gag, his eyes growing wider as she roughly secured both around his head. The cuffs she buckled too tightly around his wrists before pulling them behind his back and clipping them together. The way she pushed him forward so he fell over the bed with a grunt. The riding crop she used across his back and buttocks until she realised sickly that she'd broken the skin in several places and stopped. The disgust she felt when she realised his moans were ones of pleasure, that he was rubbing himself against the bed covers, harder than she'd ever seen him. The violent way she looped the rope around the back of his neck and through his legs, pushing him to kneel at the foot of the bed as she wrapped the ends of the rope under and over his shoulders before knotting it around the bed frame so that he was unable to move, his bruised back pressed against the wood and his cock leaking slightly, leaving a slimy string down to the bed covers. The way she had been unable to bring herself to touch him, running the tip of the riding crop up and down his cock and over his naked, hairy body until he begged to be allowed to come. How she had unclipped his left hand before crawling back to the opposite end of the bed, her legs curled up to her chest and her arms wrapped tightly around them, fingers dug into her elbows so hard they were white to the knuckles, tears streaming down her cheeks as she commanded him to come on the count of ten, her voice steady. His fisted hand pistoning up and down faster and faster until she reached zero and he exploded, covering his fist and the bed before reaching his hand to his mouth to lick himself clean. How she'd picked up her bag and fled the house, leaving him there, jumping in her car and driving away as fast as she could before pulling over at the side of the road to throw up, smoking too many cigarettes on the drive home before falling into bed and crying herself into an exhausted sleep.

The sound of the engine screaming snaps her out of her thoughts and she lets the accelerator pedal ease up from where she has it pressed to the floor, the car slowing until the speed reaches a more sensible level. She tries to concentrate on the road, realising that she's gone several miles, through the town and out the other side, without even realising, driving on autopilot. The music has moved on as well, Jamie Woon now and she wonders whether it's a coincidence that the lyrics seem to fit so well or whether she would read something into any song that played. She feels again the tightness in her chest and the restlessness that caused her to run, well drive, again and reaches over to switch off the stereo. Now the only sound in the car is the low growl of the engine and the roar of the tyres on the tarmac. She lights up a cigarette, opening the window all the way and feeling the wind on her face, hearing it swoop and whistle around her head as she drives through the night, wondering how long it will take before she feels able to go home again. She doesn't understand why, for her, home is somewhere to run from rather than run to. Perhaps it's the loneliness, the feeling of being trapped somewhere, alone and unwanted. Sometimes she longs to have someone to curl up on when she feels like this, a chest to fall asleep on and a strong arm to hold her safe. But out of everyone she knows and has known, there is no one she wants to be with at the moment, no one she wants to talk to, nowhere she wants to be. This makes her sad again, she longs for that sense of safety, of belonging, but even now she feels there is nowhere she can go, no one she can run to, and so she carries on moving, driving, hoping to find that security in being alone, it's not the same, but at least when she's alone she feels content, like wherever she is at that moment is where she needs to be.

She flicks the cigarette butt out of the window, rolling it back up and turning up the heating, she's shivering now from the cold but the wind felt good in her hair. She realises that without knowing she's turned towards home and that's OK. If she feels like going inside when she gets there then she can, if not then it wouldn't be the first time she's sat in her car for hours outside her house, unwilling to go in and yet unwilling to leave. Sometimes that helps, to be able to just sit and think and stare at the stars rather than always be moving. She doesn't always need to run.

Again her thoughts drift back to him. If he were single, would she want more from him? She thinks not. She enjoys spending time with him, likes talking to him, touching him, kissing him, fucking him, she'd like to do it more often of course, she smiles, remembering how she once told him she'd happily strap him to her bed and keep him there for a week at least. This is still true, but would she want a relationship with him, "no," she thinks. Their meeting, their conversations, even the sex is based on lies and half truths, there could be no trust, and how long before she started to sink into the sort of jealousy she always despised, the kind she always demonstrated when she found herself in a relationship, the kind he was already demonstrating hints of. It would be hell, both of them always wondering if the other was with someone else when they weren't together, especially given the unpredictability of both of their jobs, they'd both already proven that the opportunity was there just by being together themselves. If she was completely honest, she thought to herself, the main reason she didn't want a relationship was because she hated the person she became when she was a girlfriend. Being a fuck buddy allows her to remain detached, no commitment means that she doesn't expect faithfulness and so any jealousy can be destroyed with logic, no commitment also means she can spread her attentions between a few guys so that she doesn't get too attached to any of them. She hates how she feels when she gets attached to someone, needy and pathetic, the tiniest rejection makes her feel useless and unwanted, destroys her confidence, makes her miserable and horrible to be around. Better to stay single, better for everyone, she thinks sadly, wishing it were different, that she was different.

She pulls into a supermarket to buy more cigarettes, parking the car and taking her purse from her wallet. The cashier is Asian in appearance, male, mid to late 50s, his name badge says Charles, she notes this all automatically as she queues, habit now due to her job. When he speaks she is surprised to hear that his accent is pure public school English. She's unused to this, expecting him to speak with a foreign accent or in that kind of gangsta style accent that everyone between Crawley and London adopts to fit in. It annoys her that she's made assumptions about him based on his appearance having always made a point of saying she takes people on face value. As he hands her her change and cigarettes she wonders whether any of the other things she says are actually true. She says she doesn't get jealous but she knows this is a lie, she does get jealous, if she thought about the girlfriend in any detail she'd rip herself apart with jealousy and so she simply doesn't think about it. It's self preservation, survival ultimately. She unlocks the car, noticing that the wind has picked up again although it is still warm, she's thinking that perhaps it is unfair to make an issue of his jealousy, the comment he picked up on her wall would have had the same effect on her had it been on his wall, she just wouldn't have said anything to him, so does that mean he's more honest than her. Can she really complain that he tells her he doesn't like the idea of her with other men, hadn't she in fact told him exactly the same about thinking of him with other girls? Is she making this into more of a big deal than it should be?

Plugging her phone into the charger she finds herself pulling up the messaging app, clicking on his profile and hovering over the block button for a second, unsure, before pushing it. "What am I doing?" she thinks, wondering if this is really a good idea, before remembering how she felt earlier that day, waking late, expecting a text message from him to say he was coming over and seeing nothing. Then checking on the app only to see he had been logged in over an hour ago, meaning the girlfriend had gone and yet he hadn't sent anything. The text message she had sent three hours later after he still hadn't sent anything, "Got a better offer huh? :p" hadn't seemed to offend, but it had broken her rules, never to text first, never to question if she wasn't sure of the answer. And she still remembered the tightness in her chest when she'd logged in to see he had spoken to somebody, but it hadn't been her, again she thought of jealousy, blocking him was needed, that way she wouldn't know that he'd been online, wouldn't wonder why he wasn't taking every opportunity he could to talk to her. What is she doing? Burning bridges, cutting lines of communication, raising barriers, protecting herself the only way she knows how, by removing things that make her ask uncomfortable questions, ignorance is bliss as far as she is concerned. While she's at it she logs on to google docs, removing the option to share, partly for the same reason, partly because she worries about his girlfriend reading it, he's told her that his girlfriend is suspicious, the result of several texts sent to the wrong person and it makes sense to remove anything that would raise suspicion to knowledge.

Satisfied that she's done everything she can, she twists the key in the ignition, feeling the engine catch, turning the music up high, her voice still catching at some parts as she sings along, but feeling the tightness in her chest ease slightly. Driving is when she does most of her thinking, this is what no one understands, they ask her why she wastes so much money on petrol whilst spending equal amounts on alcohol or computer games or gadgets. Pulling back onto the road she speeds up, feeling the darkness pressing in around her as she speeds along, she finds the darkness comforting rather than oppressing, favouring the night over the daylight, especially when driving. Feeling happier now she heads home, tired all of a sudden. Perhaps he'll wake her up tomorrow with a text, perhaps she'll hear nothing from him until the afternoon, or the following day, but now that she knows she doesn't have to end this today she can be patient, good things are worth the wait after all.