And Baby Makes Two - Dyan Sheldon [16]
“Geez,” he panted. “Was that your first time, too?”
This is going to sound weird, but I didn’t really know it’d happened until then. First of all, I didn’t remember him putting on a condom. I wasn’t sure, but I had the impression it wasn’t something you could do too far in advance. Plus, it wasn’t exactly how I’d imagined.
I propped myself on one elbow and leaned against his chest. “You mean you’ve never done it before, either?”
Les was staring at the ceiling. He shook his head. “What’d you think?” he asked.
I kissed the side of his head. “What did you think?”
He grinned. “I thought it was great.”
I nestled my head on his shoulder.
“So did I.”
Earth Calling Lana Spiggs
When I look back at it now, I reckon sleeping with Les must have put me in some kind of trance. Like a fairy tale, but in reverse. Instead of the Prince’s kiss waking me up, it put me to sleep.
Everything sloshed around me in a blur. I went through the motions of eating and sleeping and watching telly and carrying my books back and forth to school, but without really connecting any of those activities to my brain. All I could think of was our future. Mine and Les’s. The Emerald City of Oz had nothing on that.
It took me a long time to get anywhere, because I was always stopping to look at something. I read the notices in estate agents’ windows, looking for the perfect flat for me and Les. I stopped at every furniture shop I passed (except the second-hand ones) to check out what they had. I even went out of my way to go past places that sold prams and stuff like that. Plus, I read all my mother’s catalogues, especially the ones from Argos and Ikea, from cover to cover, dozens of times. I picked out the pots and pans and bath towels Les and I would have. I picked out the furniture and the curtains. I imagined having people round and them admiring what we’d done with the flat.
“Lana did it all,” Les would say proudly. “She’s the perfect wife.”
I was happy.
I was finally a woman; why shouldn’t I be happy?
Not that everything was all rosy, cosy. My nan always said there were flies in every ointment, and there were definitely flies in the ointment of my love.
The biggest flies were my mother and her boyfriend. Hilary and Charley always had a big fight before Christmas, when they broke up once and for all. They’d been together for six years, and for six years they’d been breaking up forever at Christmas.
“This is it!” she’d shriek. “I never want to see him again!”
And she’d take all the presents he’d given her (except things like the telly and the stereo, of course) and put them in a box and leave it in the hall for him to collect. He never bothered. They usually made up in time to go out for New Year’s Eve.
This year was just like the ones before. On the tenth of December (a little earlier than usual) my mother announced that she and Charley had broken up for good, and asked if I wanted to go to the cinema with her that night.
The row between my mum and Charley really messed up my new love life. Since Hilary hardly ever went out unless she dragged me with her, Les couldn’t drop round any more. And I couldn’t come and go as I pleased, either – not without making up some place to be going and someone who wasn’t Les to go there with. Without Charley to occupy her, she watched me like a hawk.
I was just getting used to all that when Christmas itself came. Les was going up to Norwich for a week to see his mother. He took me to his house for the first time the night before he went away. There was no one else at home, since they’d all gone away for the holidays. At least we’d have a chance to do it again.
Les’s house looked like all the other houses on the road, comfortable family houses, a bit on the posh side. There weren’t any council flats on Les’s street.
Inside, though, it was different because there wasn’t even a living-room, just five bedrooms and a kitchen. The only room I saw beside Les’s was the kitchen. It was incredibly tidy for five guys living alone, but Les was a very tidy