Page 78 of The Rest is History
‘Spill,’ she says. ‘Sex.’
‘You’re particularly articulate today,’ I say.
‘Fuck off. Give me details.’
‘By details, you mean…’
‘Deeds, positions, oral, locations, what he said to you, how good he is, and orgasm count, obviously.’
I cock my head. ‘Um. Nope.’
She shimmies with impatience. ‘Come on, Lid. I’ve got to live vicariously here.’
I hesitate, mentally composing a Venn diagram where feeding my sister’s frenzied interest in my sex life and honouring Charlie’s privacy don’t meet in the middle.
At all.
Oh, well. She’s my twin, and he’s told me to my face that we have no future, so while I’m hoping to persuade him otherwise, my loyalty is to Grace.
Besides, she already knows all about the Hampton Court angry-hookup-orgasms and the school stationery cupboard, so she’s well aware I’ve ensnared myself with a man possessing a repertoire of seriously hot moves. I mean, she may find sex on a sofa and in a bed positively anticlimactic (although clearly, in practice, there were many, many climaxes).
‘Fine.’ I give her some side-eye to communicate my reluctance to spill. ‘He was a bit tense when I arrived. I think he was nervous about having me over.’
This is as much as I’m willing to divulge. I’m open to dishing the dirt on Charlie’s cunning linguistics but not his anxiety, or whatever that was.
Not even to my twin.
‘He was nervous?’ she repeats. ‘Seriously? I wouldn’t have expected that. Hmm, maybe he’s not a total sociopath after all, then?’
‘Exactly. I think it’s encouraging. And let’s say it motivated me to find a way to relax him.’ I grin at the memory. ‘And that set off a whole series of, um, events.’
She squints. ‘Is ‘events’ code for ‘orgasms’?’
‘Basically.’
‘Got it. Please proceed.’
‘So there were a lot of events, right there on his outdoor sofa, and by the time he fired up the barbecue, we were both totally sexed out and relaxed and I was just in his shirt, and it made the evening a lot more fun.’
Grace nods sagely. ‘Sex always makes evenings more fun.’
I shove her. ‘That’s not what I meant. I meant it broke the ice. You know. He let his guard down, and we had a thoroughly delightful evening. It felt very intimate.’
‘And he hasn’t let you out of his sight since then, basically.’
‘Not really. And he kissed me in front of the other queens yesterday. They’re allveryexcited. I heard Lauren—that’s Anne of Cleves—saying something to Shelby about owing her a tenner, so I think they even had money on us getting together.’
‘This is good, right?’ Grace pulls one knee up onto the bench and hugs her leg. ‘I mean, however much you’ve complained about him in the past, it seems like he’s completely smitten. Is it serious, do you think?’
I peel a strip of paint off the bench and flick it away. ‘He said some things.’
‘Okay. What things, exactly?’
‘Ugh, I don’t know. He told me he was crazy about me, had been since I joined. That he can’t stay away from me.’
I look up to find Grace staring at me.
‘Bloody hell, Lid.’
