Sixes and Sevens Pt. 10

"But now, you've sorted it all out and not spent any time delaying getting engaged. So the toast is: The happy couple, may you never be at sixes and sevens again."

Then Brendan repeated the toast, and they all took a drink.

Aidan sat down, "Yep! You about summed it up, Vicky: sixes and sevens. But I don't think it's quite over yet."

"How so?" asked Brendan.

"Sam has to work in London, our business is up here. We'll be apart all week every week, and face a train journey every weekend to be together. Not ideal and quite expensive. So we'll not be properly together in reality. Even if we get married, we'll still be commuting to see each other and I can't think of a way out of this. Sam has to keep her job or she loses her visa. Anyway, she loves what she does."

Sam nodded, smiling. Again Aidan was thinking of her happiness.

Vicky looked thoughtful. Then she said, "Bren, you know what we were talking about?"

Brendan looked puzzled and then smiled. "Of course. Now that's a real possibility. Does us a favour as well."

It was Aidan and Sam's turn to look puzzled.

Vicky became animated. "Aidan, what have we been worrying over recently at work? What needs sorting out urgently and soon?"

"We're getting too much work, and we're going to have to hire more people to cope."

"Exactly. Bren and I've been talking about this. Most, in fact all, the new contracts are with mid-sized and one large company, right? And where are all those new customers?"

"That's obvious," said a puzzled Aidan. "London. We were muttering about all the travelling you'd-"

"Right again," Vicky cut in. "Bren and I were discussing whether we'd have to move down there and open a second office just to cope with the London work. It's my home territory, but Brendan would have to get another job there. However..." She stopped and looked expectantly at Aidan.

Aidan now looked puzzled because he was, but a broad smile spread over Samantha's face.

"Aidan, honey," she urged him. "Think"

"I don't see what Vicky and Bren moving to London has to do with our problems."

"Not Vicky and Brendan," Sam said patiently. "Someone else. Think, what is our problem?"

It dawned on Aidan at last. The reason he hadn't seen it immediately was that he had never considered he would ever move to London. He always wondered why people actually liked living in that vast amorphous conurbation wis own hich stretched for many miles in every direction. He remembered the traffic jams, the tube journeys where no one even looked at anyone else.

"You mean that I move down there and open a new branch of the company?" he said without enthusiasm.

"It would solve our problem." Sam told him, somewhat deflated by his reaction. "We'd be together."

His thoughts were going round in circles, and when you go round in circles, you might travel great distances but you make no progress, so he did realise at length that Vicky's solution was the only one if he wanted to be with Sam all the time, and he discovered that there was nothing more attractive than the prospect of living with Sam all the time.

"I want to think this through, and talk it over with Sam," he said. "It's quite an upheaval, but it would solve a lot of problems."

"You think this is an upheaval, honey?" Sam said wryly. "Try moving from Western Canada to London. That is an upheaval."

"I don't doubt it," he said somewhat acerbically. "But I hardly think you got up one morning and suddenly decided to come to London. I suspect you thought about it - perhaps for a day or two? I've been faced with this for less than five minutes."

Samantha blanched at his tone. This was not the Aidan she'd always known. Did he not want to be with her? Then she thought back to her debates with her parents and how long they argued that she ought to go before she reluctantly agreed. Then she was offered a dream job in London, but she wouldn't accept it and leave Canada without talking with them first. She loved being at home.

She did not answer him, but spoke to Vicky. "I think we really do need to talk this out. There's more to this than just a move."

Vicky and Brendan took their leave in a more subdued atmosphere.

"Let us know what you decide," Vicky said diffidently. She knew better than to argue with Aidan until he'd had time to think it through.

Sam sat in silence, allowing him the space to think, and within the silence, he gained perspective and understanding of his own reaction to the sudden suggestion from his business partner.

He pondered over the task he would be faced with, and the workload, the overtime needed and its effect on Sam. Julie didn't cope with his long hours, and he wondered if Sam could.

Now settled in the living room, side by side on the sofa, Sam remained silent, and Aidan knew the depth of self-control she was exercising, and thus how keen was her desire for a life with him, an urgency to try to convince him. Indeed he felt the same: he wanted to be with her, but first she needed to understand his position.

"You've been very patient, my love, and you've given me time to think. So let me tell you what's be going on in my head since Vicky laid this idea on me out of the blue."

She nodded with a smile. This was more the Aidan she knew.

"I know why I didn't greet Vicky's idea with rapture, and I want you to know why as well.

"I was born not ten miles from this flat, I was brought up here and went to University here. I even did my accountancy training in Manchester. Vicky and I started our business here because she too had been to university here and we both felt at home here even though she was brought up in London.

"So you see, I'm a local boy through and through, and I love this part of the world. People here are friendly, they greet you in the street, they strike up a conversation on the bus or train. All my relatives and friends are local, and the place I live in - this 'village' of Cheadle - has its own identity. So my ties here are strong. OK so far?"

She nodded. She had felt the same about her neighbourhood in Vancouver.

"Until recently, we've only accepted clients who were local - in a fifty mile radius so we could visit them easily. Then one of them moved to London and wanted to stay with us, so we agreed. They liked us so much they told other companies, and recently the number of new clients has mushroomed, but all in the London area. I always assumed that if we expanded (and I did think having a branch in London was an option), Vicky would be the one to go. She was born and brought up there. So you can understand, I hope, that her suggestion today was a complete surprise."

Sam nodded. "I see that. Go on."

"That's one aspect. The other is the whole business of setting up an office in some part of London. It's only been a few years since Vicky and I were doing the same thing here, and it took all our time and energy, long, long days, hours of discussions, getting finance, interviewing staff, it was exhausting.

"But it's not so much that I can't face that stress yet again, but I know now the stress it put on Julie, and it led to our break-up. She couldn't take me delaying a holiday yet again, and went with Caroline, with the results you know.

"I worry that it will destroy us the same way. That's why I didn't jump for joy when Vicky suggested I up sticks and move to London - apart from the fact I don't much like London! It's too big, too impersonal. So there you are. That's where my mind is at now."

Sam sat silently for a moment or two.

"I understand," she said at length. "That's a formidable set of arguments for staying put here. It's important to feel at home where you live. The only thing I'd say is that there are lots of 'villages' round London, just like here. You know, villages which London has swallowed up. But they still keep some identity like Cheadle has.

"I understand about the additional stress setting up the office, I know I can cope with that one. I can actually help you. But there's another stress: if you were to come, my flat is very small, too small for two people to live there for long. We would have to find a bigger place, and rents are astronomical."

"That's easy. We'd buy a house."

"Aidan, do you know what houses are going for there?"

"Oh yes, but the way our practice has grown, and if I sold this place, I could easily afford a deposit and a mortgage. In any case, I suspect Vicky would want the practice to support me buying a house, as it has hers."

"So where does that leave us?" Sam asked with a worried look. "From all the points you made, I can't see you moving."

"Oh, there's only one way to go," he said trying to keep a straight face. He paused. Sam looked even more worried.

He continued. "To be with you is all that matters, so there's no two ways about it. I move."

She looked at him incredulously. "You'd leave all this that you love?"

"Oh yes," he said, hugging her to himself. "Of course I'll move. As I said, to be with you is all that matters. It's the only answer."

Sam sat silent and her eyes filled with tears.

"Sam? What's the matter? Aren't you pleased?"

"Oh yes, my darling, I've just realised how much you really love me, what you'd give up for me." And with that she buried him in a torrid kiss.

When they emerged, Samantha was excited. Indeed she was usually so collected and balanced, her excitement amused Aidan.

"We're going to be together! I thought we'd be apart most of the time, but now we'll be together all the time. That apartment of mine really is far too small for two people, so you're right: we will have to buy a house. You're right about prices as well, but you say you can afford it. Well, we can definitely afford it - hell I could afford a house on my own on what I'm making.

"You could even keep your flat on here, honey, so we can come back home often. You'll need somewhere to stay when you come to meet with Vicky anyway. I love you so much for leaving here and coming to live in London. You will be happy there: I'll make sure of that!"

Aidan gazed at his excited fiancée, her eyes sparkling with the love in them, Once again he wondered how he had been so lucky to have found her in that little hotel in Edinburgh, and luckier that she'd come back to Britain to work. Luckier still that after being at sixes and sevens, and missing each other when he went to London to find her, she had been so delighted to be asked to marry him, and now was so excited, like a little child on her birthday!

"There'll be a lot to organise," he said, affecting to be serious. "A lot to do. We need to talk to our parents, tell them the news, find and lease the new office, buy and furnish a house, and most important of all, organise a wedding and get married. But we'll do all of it together and that's what matters. You and me, babe. Together."

Her eyes glistened with happy tears, and he thought she'd never looked so beautiful. For her part she saw the man she could not live without, and now... "Yes," she whispered. "Never to part. Together, my love."

"I think I know a good place to start our lives together," he said, standing and holding out both hands to pull her up into an embrace. Then they walked with arms locked round each other, into the bedroom.

They were unhurried as they unclothed their partner, until all they wore was a ring apiece.

They lay together, touching bodies all over with fingertips, their breaths becoming shallow and swift, until Sam gently tugged Aidan over her and he sank into her slick depths as she hissed her pleasure.

He lay quite still, deep within her, resting on his arms above her, drinking in her lust-laden beauty and especially her half-hooded eyes, as he glanced between their bodies to see himself so deeply buried in her, and looking up again to catch her knowing smile before her mouth hung slack with loss of self in the intensity of heightened senses borne of their union.

She for her part was full-filled in both senses, feeling his rigid presence probing as if seeking out her soul. She saw the tightly controlled passion and overwhelming affection in his eyes as he moved in her body, swooping again and again to steal kisses from her lips, her breasts crushed between them each time.

It went on and on, his slow action building the frustration in them, but both refusing to give in, lose control and pound to a release, panting and whining, tightly strung, until at long last Sam crumpled into a soul splitting orgasm, heaving in her spasms, as she cried out.

Aidan lost himself then and pounded her to his own excruciating release shooting a few remaining pulses almost painfully from him into her, and collapsing onto her body as she came down, then rolling off her.

She groaned, still jerking with occasional twitches. He was panting from his heedless exercise. She spoke in a reverent whisper.

"Soul to soul," she said. "So close. Soul to soul. Never so close."

Aidan said nothing then, but took her in his arms, laid his lips on hers, and rested there. At length as if forced to say something: "One. They say two become one. We were - are one."

His kisses ended, they lay wrapped in each other's bodies, closely held together, further words failing them, and even the ones they'd uttered being inadequate.

After a long rest, they rose, pulled on dressing gowns and returned to the living room, where they sat close together and speechless. The experience was for each profoundly moving and pulled them more intimately together than ever.

When the news came on at ten, it seemed to return them to a more mundane world, and they got out some cheeses and oatcakes, and ate them washed down with a bottle of red wine, before wandering off to bed together, where they did not engage in further congress since they fell instantly asleep.

That Sunday, only the second day of their new relationship, Aidan was woken by Sam bringing tea and English Muffins which they took in bed, and afterwards idly played with each other's bodies, touching and gazing at each other's nakedness, warm and full of affection, occasioned by their shared glances, smiles, hugs and kisses when the opportunities arose.

Eventually by silent consent, Aidan covered her and slipped within, and then they gazed into each other's eyes as he moved slowly to and fro. Thus they satisfied each other quite gently compared with the congresses of the previous day, but made up for it with the deep affection they shared.

They had sandwiches in bed for lunch, and then played some more, until mid afternoon, when a shadow crossed Sam's face.

"We have to get up or I"ll miss my train. We'll be apart again."

"Not for long," he said. "I'll be with you very soon, and for good."

On the station, in each other's arms making the most of the final minutes before the whistle was blown and she had to board the train, she sighed.

"It doesn't seem like this is only the second day we're finally together." she said, stealing a kiss, one of many.

"You arrived on Valentine's Day, fourteenth of February, how apt!" he said squeezing her to him.

"But you came for me the day before, or I'd never have come at all." she said with shining eyes.

"February 13th," he said. "Friday the 13th in fact. You know that is supposed to be a day of bad luck? I did think that was true when Megan told me you were with someone else. I was sure that it was definitely all over between us. That indeed it was a bad day."

"But it wasn't," she asserted. "The thirteenth was a luckiest date for me. We'll keep the 13th of February as our anniversary: it was when you turned all the bad luck into good by coming hot foot to find me."

"If you think about it," he said. "Vicky keeps on about us always being at sixes and sevens before this weekend. When I was at six you were at seven, when I was at seven, you were at six. But put us together: six and seven, and what do you get?" he asked.

"Thirteen!" they both shouted together, and laughed.

"Lucky thirteen," he said. "No more sixes and sevens, they've all been sucked up into loving thirteens."

"Only an accountant would think of that," she groaned, and pulled him into a final hug ("for now", she said). The whistle blew, and she left his arms with a last fleeting kiss - for now, but not for long.

--

END.