Solstice Ch. 03

Except -- I didn't know, did I? That's what he'd told me, but I had no way of knowing whether any of it was true...

"Oh God," I breathed, an icy chill displacing the heat of my flushed skin, the rapid transition leaving me clammy. Had I just been incredibly, mind-bogglingly stupid? Had I just fallen for the oldest trick in the book?

What if he hadn't been waiting for a blind date? It hadn't seemed very likely, after all. A good-looking man like Adam would surely have no problem attracting the opposite sex. What if he used that line about being stood up on a different woman every other night of the week? And what about Claire? What if he'd conjured up a story about a dead wife to use as a highly effective device to get women to feel sorry for him -- to lure them into his bed?

I covered my face with my hands, groaning softly. Now I really was being stupid. Of course it hadn't been like that. Had it?

I'd read about confidence tricksters in the newspapers, arrogant enough to believe that I'd never be so gullible -- I'd never be so naïve. But when it came to men, when it came to sex, I was naïve. Lisa had been telling me that for years.

So when Adam had told me that he hadn't had sex since his wife died, I'd believed him. When he'd told me that he'd been with Claire for ten years, I'd believed him. And when he'd told me he'd never had unprotected sex...

By the time the bus drew up outside my block of flats I was weak with fear. The hundred yards or so to the front door had never felt further, the tenderness between my thighs a grim reminder of the risks I'd taken. Finally managing to wrestle my way through the front door, my shaking fingers struggling with the key, I turned into the bathroom and snatched up a slim blister packet from the shelf above the sink.

"No," I whispered disbelievingly, staring at the writing above the single empty pod on the end, a further twenty pills still intact behind the foil. "Oh, God -- no..."

*

Thanks for reading me. I'm still very new to all this so all comments and advice would be very gratefully received.