Best Love Page 2

  He stares at me for a very long second, until finally, he shakes his head, laughing under his breath. I look at him and feel relief run through me that he’s smiling again. “Are we okay?” I ask tentatively. “I just bloody hate it when you’re upset with me.”

  He frowns and searches my face. “Maybe one day you should ask yourself why that is.”

  I open my mouth to ask what the fuck he’s on about, but he holds his hand out for the tickets. “So, show me where we’re going.”

  I grin at him. “Up on the roof.”

  He steps back and looks at the Minster. “Here?”

  I nod enthusiastically. “Have you done it before?” He shakes his head. “It’s amazing. You can see everything.” Then I pause. “Of course, that’s just me.” I hesitate. “You did say to do what we’d like on a date and well…”

  He shakes his head, a smile stretching across his face that stops my stuttering. “That’s brilliant. I love it.”

  I stare at him. “Are you sure? I know you. It’s not very exciting. We’re not bungee jumping off it, after all. Would you rather do something else?”

  “It sounds exciting enough to me, particularly if I throw you off the top for continually questioning whether I’ll like it,” he says, nudging me, and I grin. “Anyway, I’ve always wanted to do it, and Richard never wanted to.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugs. “Who cares.” He grabs the tickets from my hand and walks towards the man on the door.

  I catch his arm and try to ignore the feeling of hard muscles under my hand. “It’s high and quite a climb.”

  “Are you implying that I’m not fit?” he says almost flirtatiously, and I look down at his body intending to make a joking remark. But the words die in my throat as I take in his lean length, the muscles in his thighs and the wide shoulders. He clears his throat and I jerk, realising I’ve just been ogling him like he’s the last steak at Morrison’s. However, when I look up, I’m caught and held by the darkness in his eyes and the way he licks his lips. For a long second, we stand there unmoving and caught in some dark undertow. Then the security guard clears his throat, and I blush as I realise that I’m probably going to hell for perving over my best friend in a church.

  I shake my head and move towards the waiting man. “Come on. Let’s climb.”

  He follows me, and we start to climb the steep, winding stone steps, worn smooth by generations of people. They curve away and out of sight, lit only by the sunlight that seeps through the narrow windows.

  “I thought you said it was a steep climb,” he says, nudging me.

  I just smile.

  Twenty minutes later we emerge at the top into the blissful cold air. “Good grief,” he says faintly, leaning against the wall and sucking in harsh breaths.

  “It is… a bit… steep,” I manage to get out, before collapsing into a sprawl on the floor.

  He looks at me and snorts.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I’m actually mortified that we had to move over so that old couple could get by.”

  I choke out a laugh. “Christ, she was moving quicker than I did when I was ten.”

  “Babe, you’re no Usain Bolt. A tortoise moves quicker than you in the mornings.”

  “It does not,” I start to say, and then shrug. “You’re probably right.”

  He slides down next to me and slings his arm companionably around my shoulders. I try not to notice the warmth and the scent of bergamot, and attempt to focus on his words. “So, what did we risk life and limb for then?”

  I lean back, feeling the cold wind on my face. “I’ll show you when I’m in less danger of throwing up in my mouth.”

  He laughs and we sit in a familiar silence that is always comfortable with him, until we can breathe properly again. Then by mutual consent, we both rise and move to the barrier.

  The wind hits us in the face like a slap. “Jesus,” he gasps. “This is amazing.”

  I smile affectionately at him. It really is, and totally worth the incipient heart attack. York is spread out below us like a model town. Tiny shops and houses crowd around the Minster like sheep seeking shelter from the storm, while minute cars crawl along the roads, and in the distance, a church bell rings.

  After a few minutes, my attention is drawn to him as ever. He’s leaning easily against the rail, his face flushed by the cold and his eyes are busy. “What do you think?”

  He laughs and turns to me. “It’s wonderful. I can’t believe I’ve lived in York all my life and never done this.”

  “Not too high?”

  He shakes his head, smiling wryly. “Seeing as I tackled climbing on your mum’s shed roof when I was seven, I think I can handle the Minster.”

  He turns back to his contemplation of the view, while I enjoy the opportunity to look at him unnoticed. I smile to myself because I still vividly remember the day I met him.

  I was in the garden hunting for a species of plant my mother was testing me on. She’d given me the Latin name, along with a picture and a time limit, but as I was seven I’d been easily distracted by the sunshine and insects and a frog I’d found by the pond. I was lying on the ground staring at the frog when I heard a psfft.

  Looking around I didn’t see anyone, but then the noise came again and I realised that it was coming from above me. I looked up and gasped when I saw a small, dark haired boy clinging to the roof of the shed and looking at me.

  “Who are you?” I asked, and he gave me a gap-toothed grin.

  “I’m Sage. We just moved in next door, and my mum said there was a boy the same age as me living next door.”

  “That’s a funny name,” I said honestly and rather rudely, but he just smiled.

  “You haven’t met my mum. When you do, you’ll understand our names.”

  “Our names? Have you got brothers and sisters?”

  “Two brothers called River and Kemp.”

  “Oh, I wish I had brothers.”

  “You can have mine,” he said wryly.

  “Why? Don’t you get on?”

  He shrugged casually, and then gripped tightly when he slid a little on the roof.

  “Oh, be careful,” I hissed, and moved to stand by the shed and stare up at him. “Are you okay?”

  “Not sure,” he said casually. “I think I might be stuck.”

  “Stay there,” I urged, and ran to get the stepladder. “Why didn’t you come and knock at the door?” I asked, as he climbed down.

  “Your mum looked a bit scary,” he gasped out. “And the hedge between the houses is too high for me to climb, so that just left the shed.”

  He got to the bottom of the steps and grinned at me. He was slightly shorter than me, with wild dark hair, freckles and a wide grin that stretched his face and made his smile almost manic. I felt an instant warmth towards him which puzzled me as I was a fairly solitary child. My mother was extremely strict and scarily focused on me since my father had left, and consequently I didn’t have many friends who were on her approved list.

  “Is that a frog?” he gasped in excitement, and immediately threw himself down in front of the startled creature. I stared after him for a minute, before deciding to ignore my mother’s commands and plopped myself down next to him.

  I never realised I had found my soulmate that day, and a thorn in my mother’s side that delights me still. I followed him blindly and adoringly through every adventure and mishap his agile mind could conjure up, and in return he showed me the side of me I wasn’t aware was there – the daring and funny side.

  I never once regretted the day I’d got him a ladder to climb down, although sometimes I wished I could, when the feelings I had for him threatened to drown me, and he went merrily on with conquest after conquest. My mother tried to ban him from the house many times, but I stood firm because where he was, then so was I.

  He turns to me and breaks into my thoughts. “What are you thinking about?” he asks, moving closer to me.

  “My mother,” I say wryl
y.

  His nose wrinkles immediately. “What a lovely thought. I’d better hold your arms in case you want to jump off.”

  I laugh. “It’s not that bad.” He raises an eyebrow, and I laugh involuntarily. “Let me rephrase. It’s not that bad, because I haven’t seen her for longer than half an hour at a time in months.”

  “How is Hitler’s Handmaiden, anyway?”

  I shake my head. I made peace a long while ago with my mother’s ways, and he has a right to take the piss, as my mother was utterly poisonous to him when we were growing up. “We’ve found an uneasy middle ground,” I say, and he looks at me in query. “I do my own thing and provided she refrains from criticizing, I’ll still visit her. She doesn’t have quite as much to say as she used to.”

  “She must find that difficult,” he muses. “If she was organising Brexit, the Europeans would have set fire to the Channel Tunnel long ago.”

  I snort and shove him gently. “How’s your mum then? I haven’t seen Tallulah in ages.” I smile at the thought of his colourful, happy-go-lucky mother.

  “She looks exactly the same as ever,” he says calmly. “She’s so stoned most of the time I think she’s managed to halt the passage of time. L’Oreal will be calling her soon.”

  I laugh. “Because she’s worth it.” I shake my head. “How did we ever turn out so fucking normal?”

  “Because we had each other,” he says quietly, and something in his voice catches my attention. “When our mums fucked up we always had each other to turn to.”

  “Always,” I echo, and smile before turning to face the view again. I take a deep breath.

  “Why here?” he suddenly says, and when I turn back it’s to find him staring at me. “Why do you love it?”

  “Because it’s clear and quiet,” I say slowly. “Because I can breathe here. And because some things never change, even though everything else does.”

  I almost expect him to joke, but he’s always been strangely attuned to my moods. Others might have filled the silence with chatter and moved ahead of me. He just stands next to me with his shoulder bumping me comfortably. The bells of the Minster begin to ring, and amid the cacophony of sound we stand together and look out companionably.

  Three

  We come down the Minster steps and pause at the bottom.

  “Well, that was a lot quicker than the journey up,” Sage muses.

  I smirk. “That’s because at one point I swear you were jet propelled coming down those steps. You looked like my mum’s old Labrador when she used to lean into the wind.”

  He shakes his head. “Good old Poppet. Didn’t she bite your mum once?” I nod and he sighs happily. “Good old Poppet.”

  I shake my head. “Well, what did you think of my date?”

  He gapes at me. “That was your date?”

  I reel back slightly feeling like he’s slapped me. “I knew you wouldn’t like it.”

  He stares at me. “I loved it. What are you on about?” He shakes his head. “I meant don’t you feed your men on a date, or do you starve them to death?” He pauses. “In which case I also have to ask why you didn’t pursue that option with Hugo?”

  Relief rushes through me and I laugh as I push him. “Come on then, you total whinge bag.”

  He laughs and follows me obediently. It’s still cold but the rain has stopped and the streets are filling up again with tourists. We edge down the narrow lanes of the Shambles, the stooped old buildings looming over us like rows of little old men. I skirt a big party of Americans discussing a map held out in front of them and turn to see Sage at my heels like a particularly gorgeous shadow.

  “Where are we going?” he immediately and predictably asks. Sage hates being left in the dark.

  “A restaurant I know. I think you’ll like it.”

  “Did you go with Hugo?” The note of disdain in his voice is very clear despite him having to duck and weave to avoid an old lady with a shopping trolley.

  He comes up beside me at the next opportunity as I think hard. “No, I don’t think so. I came with a few people from my old work.” He brightens and I shake my head. “Perhaps you need your own version of Trip Advisor.” I snigger. “You could call it Hugo Adviser and you could use it to tell you which restaurants he’s eaten at in York, so you can avoid them. I have to warn you though, that you’ll starve. He’s eaten at most of them. He’s a serious foodie.”

  “I remember,” he says sourly. “We couldn’t even eat a plate of chips until he’d rhapsodised about the quality of the salt and whether it had been harvested by virgins during a lunar eclipse.” He pauses and shoots me a sidelong look. “I just don’t want us to go to the same places that you went to with him. I want us to have fresh experiences.”

  I shoot him a confused look that hopefully covers the softness in my stomach at his words. “I don’t even think of him anymore,” I say softly. “I don’t know why I was so upset when he cheated.”

  “I think the idea of Hugo is infinitely better than the reality,” he says gloomily. He stops me with a hand on my arm. “He was a fucking idiot,” he says earnestly. “Anyone who cheats on you is a blind twat.”

  I stare at him for a long second, warmth filling my chest. “You have to say that,” I finally say. “It’s clause number one of the best friend charter.”

  For a second I see a funny expression in his warm eyes. Then he shakes his head. “I think the second clause is feeding me. Where’s this restaurant?” I point up the street to the tapas bar and follow him feeling like a moment has been lost.

  * * *

  I wake the next morning feeling unusually keen to start the day. Today is our second date and just the thought of the two of us being on a date makes me bound out of bed and dive into the bathroom to start the shower.

  We sat for hours last night, talking and laughing and sipping rich, dusky red wine. We ate enough for four people, and the evening was filled with the usual heady combination of warm familiarity and breath catching attraction. Well, at least that’s the way it always is for me. Sage seemed as oblivious as ever, remaining focused on me and totally engaged.

  He left me with a hug and a promise to pick me up at ten this morning, when apparently, I would be in his power. That thought is more thrilling than I think he knows.

  I become aware that I’m standing in a bathroom filled with steam, so obviously the water has heated up. I slide in and hiss in appreciation as the hot water sluices down over my body. I twist and groan when the powerful spray hits my cock. It stirs and I reach down and start a long, slow slide, my fingers tightening on the upstroke and twisting.

  For a second my mind is mercifully blank, but then suddenly he’s there, front and centre in my brain. I can see him in my mind’s eye, twisting under the spray, as the water caresses his body in long streams, running over the colours that mark it.

  I try to backtrack and think of the actors I’d seen in a porn video the other night, but it’s no good. Sage is still there. My swollen cock is hard and throbbing, my balls full and pulled tight. I need to come so badly, and in the end, I have to give in. I rest one arm against the wall and look down at my other arm bunching as I shuttle my cock through my fist. I squeeze my eyes shut and he’s there again, his dark hair plastered to his skull and those warm, tawny eyes intent on me. In my imagination, he lowers himself to his knees and looks up at me, the water making his eyelashes spike like starfish.

  “Noah,” he moans, and opens his mouth. In my daydream, I lean forward and slide my cock along that full lower lip, before slipping it between his lips. He groans in his chest and I look down and see him fisting his own cock. The vision is so hot I can feel my balls tighten even more.

  “Sage,” I groan, and open my eyes in time to see streams of creamy liquid hit the wall, only to be washed away. For a second I stand panting, my mind a pure dazzling empty. Then the knowledge that I just wanked off over Sage floods my brain, and I groan and blush. Fuck. It’s not the first time I’ve jerked off over thoughts of
him, of course, but for some reason this one feels more important, and I’m now going to have to spend the day with him in the knowledge that I thought of face fucking him until I came. I shake my head. This dating app has certainly complicated my life.

  I dry off and then dress in jeans and a thick, grey jumper. Sage had told me to wear warm, comfortable clothes and sensible shoes. I’d enquired at the time whether he thought I’d be wearing platform sandals, but he just shook his head and said he’d take me any way he could get me. That thought steers a little too close to my earlier activities, so I hasten into the kitchen and make a cup of tea.

  Ten minutes later there’s a knock at the door, making me start and spill my drink. “Fuck,” I hiss and mop it up with a tea towel, before speeding over and opening the door. Sage stands there dressed in old, faded jeans and a forest green jumper. Dark hair sticks out from under a charcoal coloured beanie, and he’s wearing a thick, navy parka.

  “Ready?” he asks, wandering in and making a beeline for the kitchen. “Oh, great. You’ve made tea,” he says happily, and swipes both my cup and my piece of toast.

  “Help yourself,” I say tartly, and grab my own parka from the hook.

  “Make sure you’re warm,” he offers with his mouth full of my toast. “Although you do look a bit flushed, Noah. What have you been doing?”

  I try to ignore his eyes which I’m sure will see straight through to what I did earlier. Instead, I snatch the toast back. “Is there anything else you want from my person?”

  He looks me up and down slowly and carefully, and I fidget under his stare. His gaze sharpens and he smiles slowly. “There’s plenty I want from your person, Noah.” With a lightning change of mood, he laughs. “But we’ve got plans, so get your cute arse out to the car.”

  It’s freezing outside. The sky is a stormy grey and a strong wind buffets us as we walk to his car.

  “Where are we going?” I ask, jumping in and holding out my hands to the heater. He obligingly starts the engine.