Chapter Thirty Three - Here Comes The Sun

I feel desperate. Betrayed, used and abused. I don’t let my guard down easily and yet Adrian, or Ade – as in Ade Gets Laid - as I’ve since found out, massaged me into a comfort zone. And I let it all out. And now I feel terrible. I don’t know why I trusted him, except for the fact that it all felt so right and natural. Maybe I’m just a stupid romantic – and maybe that’s why I should stay single – I’m not safe to be let out there into the whirlwind world of dating and relationships. I’m a fucking liability! What kind of an idiot falls for that trick? Except for a clown like me.

What a fool I am.

I wouldn’t mind, but I hadn’t really wanted to talk to him about all that stuff, but he’d kept on and on; his voice gentle and calming as we laid there in the early hours. He’d been stroking my cheek gently and I lost myself in the moment. He’d said that he wanted to know everything about me – what made me laugh, what made me sad, what made me angry and scared. And I hadn’t wanted to tell him, but he’d hugged me and said, “I know you’re freaked out about a relationship, but if you don’t tell me, if I don’t get to understand why you want to stay single, then you’ll run away. And then I’ll lose you.” And we simply don’t talk to each other like that on a day to day basis. None of us do. And now I can see how I fell for the oldest trick in the book – get the woman to talk about herself…

I need to get away from this. I can’t cope with the emotional bungee jump of launching myself from a height and now I’m left dangling hundreds of feet below. And I feel sick and disorientated and lost. I’m going straight into see Delaney about that singles holiday. Any excuse to escape for a few days!

*

OK - so here comes the sun.... Really, I’d been thinking more of a health spa, perhaps a European Chiva Som, but Delaney is delighted that I'm so willing to go. The problem is, she's booking me in for one of the singles holidays that are more resembling an 18-30’s brawl, but anything will do right now. I won’t tell Delaney that I have no intention of joining in with the drunken bar crawls or the intoxicated beach parties. I’m going for some time-out and a little recuperation. If I’m going to see this staying single idea out to the end, then I need to recharge my batteries. I obviously got a little lost on the way there – what with the Paul Ashkuri date, the relentless bouquets of flowers and then the mishap with Adrian. I can’t even bear to say his name. We’d been fantastic in bed together and I get a serious ache somewhere between my collar bones and my pelvis whenever I think of what he’s done to me. The lies are endless and the betrayal is too much to bear.

*

Tam came shopping with me after work and I started to get into the holiday spirit. I told her all about what happened with Adrian and she was really sympathetic, especially when I kept filling up with tears whenever I said his name. I feel so crap now that I couldn’t even muster some attitude when she said that she’s going to give Pete a second chance! How can he deserve a second chance? I don’t he should have even had a first chance! And with his wife pregnant too! It’s abso-fucking-lutely ridiculous, but I can’t continue to be Tam’s conscience. She’ll do what she wants anyway, and all I can do right now is be here as a sounding board – as much as it infuriates me that she’s happy to settle for second best. Anyway, I bought 4 bikinis and a gorgeous beach bag from Primark, along with a few pairs of flip flops too. Tam was dangling floaty tops and gypsy skirts at me every time I turned a corner, but I’m not interested. I’m determined to go with just the basics – a few bikinis, shorts and little else. I’m going to spend a week lying beside a pool. Even if I have to make up a few stories for Relationship Rehab this week – Delaney will never know! If Trevor Malone is organising a photo shoot for me to appear in Geezer, then I’m going to make sure I look shit hot for it – I’ll teach him and bloody Adrian to try and make a fool out of me!

*

Adrian hated himself. He had big feelings for Sophie and would have peeled the skin off his own arms for the opportunity to rewind a couple of days and to not have told Trevor about him and her. He should have known what a competitive bastard he was and now he’d ruined everything. He detested himself with such venom that he was embarrassed even to look in the mirror at his own reflection. But the damage had been done. He didn’t even have the nerve to try and call Sophie to apologise or to explain. And all the while Trevor was gloating that he’d been honest with Sophie Regan from the start, and that Ade should never have pretended that he worked for anything other than Geezer.

And now it was too late.

He felt like shit.

Chapter Thirty Two Chapter Thirty Four

Pulling Power #11

The Shouldn't Be Alloweds.

These are soooo bad they really shouldn't be here - but we'll give every one a fair chance.

What do you think? So bad, they're sad????




Pulling Power are still accepting your chat up lines or reasons for dumping that special/not-special person.

The response has been overwhelming and worldwide - so keep them coming and many thanks to everyone who has emailed in their lines so far. Very much appreciated!!

xx

Chapter Thirty Two - Reel Em In & Spit Em Out

I had to miss a couple of days. Sorry I haven’t been around. Talk about highs and lows!

Firstly Tam called me on Saturday afternoon to say that Rob and I didn’t need to come around. She’d said that Rob had an urgent MOT booked in and it was a bigger job than he’d expected, so would be late anyway. But she was acting strangely. So I pinned her down with my super-sleuth line of questioning and you won’t believe what she said! She told me that Pete was going to see her and wanted to talk! Of course, I said that it was a bit late for talking – what with his wife being pregnant. I wasn’t sure which of those 2 words were the most cutting – the fact that he has a WIFE or that she is PREGNANT! I told her about a quiz she should do about dating married men - but she probably won't look at it! Anyway, I was shocked at her spinelessness and told her that she needed to toughen up a bit. But Tam does what she wants and who am I to stand in judgement. Especially after what happened to me on Saturday night.

I went on to meet Trevor Malone. He was predictably charming and cheeky and his interview questions loaded with innuendo and sexual hints! He’s going to organise a photo shoot too and I’ve told him I won’t be getting my bits and pieces out on camera. He just laughed at me. He has a wicked twinkle in his eye that’s really attractive, but he’s so not my kind of guy. So then, I was peeved. I’d cancelled Adrian and Tam had cancelled me! So I sat in front of the televisions for a couple of hours, itchy and fidgety. I really wanted to go out and everything had gone wrong. So I opened a bottle of wine and after 3 glasses everything looked so much more positive. So I did something outrageous. I slid on my jeans and white ribbed vest, slung my gypsy beads around my neck, pulled my hair up into a loose ponytail and mustered up the courage to go to the gig. In the hope that Adrian had gone anyway….

He had.

He looked bloody gorgeous. As I’d anticipated the small venue was hot and sweaty and the band was fabulous. Adrian’s eyes lit up when he saw me walking toward the bar and I was shocked as he hugged me, kissed me on the cheek and then grabbed my hips and pulled me toward him with a little growl. I melted on the spot. We were inseparable all night. We danced and drank together, finding it difficult to keep our hands off each other. It was all so natural and easy – I wasn’t making any efforts to be sexy/funny/cute and he wasn’t trying to be macho/cool/witty. It just worked. The chemistry clicked. At the end of the gig he asked me if I wanted to get some chips and curry dip from the chippy. I loved the idea – so much more ‘me’ than the posh restaurants that Paul Ashkuri and Trevor Malone had booked. So we walked in the light rain through the streets of London at 2.30am plucking damp chips from a soggy paper cone. I went back to his house and the inevitable kind of happened. But it sort of didn’t happen either. I knew I wanted desperately to sleep with him, but it wasn’t in just a sex-for-the-sake-of-it way. He really had got into my head and I would have done anything to spend more time with him – to slide him out of his wet clothes and share our bodies seemed the most natural thing in the world.

So we did. It wasn’t earth-shattering and I hadn’t expected it to be. It was as if we’d known each other forever. We laughed and giggled, we took our time to experiment with each other and it was a beautiful warm moment. I’m overwhelmed by how I feel about him and it’s scary. We didn’t sleep much. We lay there afterwards talking about everything. He told me all about his childhood and his twin brother that had died when he was 13. I didn’t want to talk about my life – it seemed so boring and angsty compared to his. But he cuddled me and stroked my face, kissing my eyelids and lips as he’d told me that he wanted to know me – to know what made me tick, made me cry, made me laugh. And so I began to let down the barriers. I told him about my Mum and her lifelong mission to shack up with the wrong man, I told him about my sister and her strange wannabe keep-up-with-the-Jones’s lifestyle. I told him about my string of failed relationships and how I feel about my future. It was hard at first. And then he asked me loads more questions and it was such fun – favourite band, best sex position, fave drink, school friend, animal, first pet, fave colour, birthday, how many partners I’d had, my greatest fear…. Nobody ever asks you these questions and when somebody that you feel close to does ask – then it’s amazing how close you become to them. And how quickly.

*

So I started the week on an immense high. I literally floated home from Adrian’s on Sunday – after he’d cooked me a fantastic Eggs Benedict for breakfast – his Hollandaise sauce was to die for! I’d showered and dressed. He’d dried my jeans and vest out on his radiators overnight – I hadn’t even noticed him pick them up from the floor. What a guy! I floated to my desk and even AJ’s scowl didn’t touch me. Talk about rose-coloured glasses – I had a bloody bouquet of roses on my desk. This time the name tag read ‘Adrian’ and my stomach flipped. I wasn’t sure how to keep this a secret and pondered again over whether I was breaking my promise to stay single. But I wasn’t about to compromise this potentially fulfilling relationship with Adrian all because of a stupid promise.

It all fell to pieces on Wednesday morning. I thought it was strange, the way that AJ plonked the new copy of Geezer magazine onto my desk. I looked up at her smirking face questioningly, but she said nothing except, “page 23.” I waited until she moved away before casually flicking through the pages screaming HOT HOLLYOAKS BABES and SKY'S HOT BABES - STUNT AWARDS STUNNERS until I reach Trevor Malone’s column. He’d named it ‘Reeling ‘Em In And Spitting ‘Em Out’. I read with disinterest his sexist comments about the best way to get a woman into bed is to ask her about herself. He’d listed a string of ridiculously flimsy chat up lines, including the ‘tell me about yourself’ one. And then the penny dropped. I felt sick and my face flushed as I read his work,

‘.. the oldest trick in the book guys, is to ask her about herself. The birds fall for it every time, without fail. It’s as easy as ‘OK babe, who’s your favourite singer, what’s your greatest fear, what’s your favourite colour…’ Subconsciously you’re getting the chicks to unpack their baggage in front of you and once that’s out of the way they’ll feel close enough to you mentally to get their kit off. Here in the Geezer offices, we’ve notched up more grooves on our bedposts from using these tactics. Email any of us with your best chat up lines.’

And then I’d seen the list of email addresses. But there was only one that jumped out at me – Ford, Adrian AFord@geezermag.com. That wasn’t my Adrian was it? I thought he worked for the Accountancy magazine.

I’ve been set up.

I feel sick.

I know that AJ laughed as I ran past her, holding my mouth as I headed for the toilets.

I am completely devastated.

Chapter 31
Chapter 33