Page 108 of Replay
“I’m guessing it didn’t just end badly.”
He pulled away from her hold and put his head in his hands.“Alle, I don’t know where to begin.There are things I ought to have told you before we ever—before we were ever intimate.”His eyes remained downcast as he spoke, but then he’d peep upwards, as if gauging her reaction.“I planned to tell you last night when we got to the hotel.But after we stopped at that bar, everything got derailed.”
She nodded, and gently tugged his hands away from his face so that she could see him again.“Tell me now.Start in the middle.Start at the end.Wherever’s easiest.”
“It’s not easy.Not any of it.”
“Tell me about Siv.”
He swallowed, four, maybe five times, before he finally nodded.“We were young the first time we met.I think I was twelve.She moved into the property that bordered my grandparents’ place.She was about eighteen.Hot.A complete wet dream for a boy on the cusp.She used to cycle everywhere wearing these teeny tiny cut off shorts that made her legs look endless and would show off the curve of her arse.I wasn’t exactly interesting to her at that point, but we’d see each other around sometimes, particularly during the holidays.And, we’d wind up in the park at the same times.She’d always take up position on the—” He frowned and seemed to be struggling for the right word.“Roundabout?”
Alle nodded.
“Like she was queen.And she was, because she was so much older.She’d get me and the other kids to spin her in endless circles until she was squealing and dizzy as fuck.Then she’d wind up all floppy and just sort of drape herself over the nearest lad.More often than not, it was me.”
“But you were twelve.It was just a game.Harmless.”
“Until it wasn’t.Because it carried on.She hit twenty, twenty-one… My parents split just before I turned fifteen.Mum moved away into Finland at first and then across to Canada.Dad found it hard with me and four girls.We’d wind up at my grandmother’s after school and at weekends.And then he eventually took off, and just didn’t come back.Hanne, ?sa, Elin, and I wound up withFarmorpermanently.Tove was away at college.”
He paused, took a slow breath.“Siv and I, we saw a whole lot more of one another then.
“Looking back, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense why she’d want to hang out with me, but it was a rural area.Unless you had transport, you made do.She could have left, gone to live in town, but she didn’t.Her dad, he was the sort who kept a pretty tight grip.
“We still mostly met in the park, or sometimes in the woodland between the properties.I’d still push her when she played queen bee on the roundabout.Round and round, until she was drunk with it.Then she’d laugh, and stagger about.”A brief smile eased up the edges of his lips.“She’d crash into me.And I’d catch her.We’d wind up falling down, and—and it wasn’t innocent, but it wasn’t anything else either.It was cheaper than getting drunk.”
“That changed, though?”
He peeped up at her again, and cautiously nodded.“She peed on me.”
“Whoa!Whoa.What?”Alle reared back from the waist.“Right, but not deliberat—yes, deliberately?”
“She was on my lap.”
“Wow.”Alle tried to drag her eyebrows back down to their normal position, but couldn’t quite manage it.“What di-did you do?”
“Unzipped and pissed all over her.Fair’s fair, right?I thought she’d howl in outrage.I was outraged.”
“She didn’t?”
He shook his head.“She crawled over to me on her knees, and blew me.In the open.In the middle of the park.We hadn’t even kissed.”He shrugged.“Things kind of developed from there.”
Alle stared at him, but couldn’t quite figure out what she wanted to say.Saying ‘she sounds like a nightmare you should have run from as fast as you could,’ wasn’t going to help.
“Are you shocked?”
She sucked her tongue while she considered.“Only by your ages, and her… I don’t even know what to call it.Are you still into being peed on?”
For a brief second he found another smile.“Alle, I never was.I was horrified.But, if someone I was with wanted it...”He shrugged.“It was very experimental between us from the start.No limits.If one of us thought of it, we’d try it.Pain, various forms of discipline became a big part of it.We’d educate ourselves via the internet, and then try things out.It was crazy, intense, wonderful, deranged, foolish… I never saw how controlling she was.I was the one dishing it out.So that made me the one in charge, yeah?”He gave his head another shake.“No.I mean, I was, and I wasn’t.I really wasn’t.I couldn’t see that though, and we didn’t exactly advertise the relationship.”
“I’ll bet.You were a minor, and she was a fucking adult.”
Bright plumes of colour streaked his cheeks.“I know, but… Yes,” he croaked.“But it never felt like there was a big age difference.Six years.No one would bat an eyelid over that now.”
Alle raked her gaze over his form.His shoulders were curled forward into a defensive hunch, almost as if he were to blame for being taken advantage of.That was what had happened, whether he could see that, or not.
“Tell me what happened, Spook, because eventually it fell apart.”Right around the point he became an adult, as far as she could tell.
He pulled his hands free of her grip and rose.Alle watched him pace.Each time he neared the cabin door, she held her breath, imagining him throwing it open and running.Yet each time, he turned and came back, though his expression remained masked by his long hair.
