Derby Static

The Premier Inn in Derby had the same depressing artwork every Premier Inn seemed to have — that same flatpack print of a landscape that didn't exist anywhere in Derbyshire. You'd sent me a photo of it earlier with the caption "feeling suicidal" and a crying-laughing emoji, and I'd laughed harder than I had all day.

That was the thing about you, Becky. You could make me laugh even when everything else felt like wading through wet concrete.

I was sprawled on my sofa with the phone propped against a cushion when your face filled the screen. Blonde hair loose, falling past your shoulders. That smile — the one that made you look like you'd just got away with something. You were in bed, propped on pillows, wearing what looked like one of those oversized t-shirts you slept in when you were away.

"Alright, tall boy?"

"Alright, trouble."

You shifted and I caught a glimpse of the room behind you — the clinical headboard, the lamp with the beige shade. Five weeks off and your first night back in a hotel room. I could tell it was sitting on you wrong, even before you said anything.

"I forgot how shit this bit is," you said, pulling a face. "The being on my own bit. Jessy cried when I left this morning. Actually cried. And Tom just stood there like a mannequin, didn't even walk me to the car."

"What did he do?"

"Loaded the dishwasher. While she was crying. Honestly, Luke, the man has the emotional range of a spreadsheet."

I laughed. You laughed. And then we did what we always did — talked about everything and nothing for the best part of an hour. You told me about the new woman on your team who kept saying "circling back" in meetings. I told you about the shelving unit I'd tried to put up in the bathroom that had pulled half the plaster off the wall. You put your hand over your mouth and your eyes went wide and you said, "Show me," and I held the phone up to the crater in my bathroom wall while you howled.

"You absolute weapon," you said, wiping your eyes. "You're a forty-three-year-old man, how do you not own a spirit level?"

"I do own a spirit level. I just didn't use it."

"That's worse. That's objectively worse."

We kept going. You told me about the service station sandwich you'd had for dinner — "a crime against chicken mayo" — and I told you about the bloke at work who'd cc'd my boss into an email about me being late, and you said, "What a absolute helmet," and I nearly choked on my tea.

At some point you shifted again and the t-shirt rode up slightly on your thigh and I tried not to notice. I tried not to notice the way you tucked your hair behind your ear, or the way your eyes looked in the hotel lamp light, or the way you pulled your bottom lip between your teeth when you were thinking. I tried not to notice any of it because noticing it felt like stepping onto thin ice.

Then you glanced at the time on your phone and your face changed.

"Oh, god — I'd better go and phone Tom."

The words came out before I could stop them. "Second choice, is he?"

You looked at me. Not a quick look — a real one. The kind that made the screen feel like it wasn't there at all.

"Always." Your voice was quiet. Steady. "He always is, Luke."

Neither of us said anything for a moment. I could hear the muffled sound of someone's TV through the wall of your room. You were still looking at me, and I was still looking at you, and the thin ice cracked clean through.

"Night, Becky."

"Night, Luke."

You hung up. I put the phone down and stared at the ceiling for a long time.

---

Saturday came around the way Saturdays do — slowly, then all at once. You'd texted me mid-morning: *Tom and Jessy at roller skating till 2. I could come round?*

I'd written back *Yeah* like it was nothing, like my heart wasn't doing something stupid in my chest. Then I'd cleaned my entire house in ninety minutes flat, which told me everything I needed to know about how much this wasn't nothing.

You turned up at half eleven in a little blue car, parking behind my motorbike in the drive. I saw you through the kitchen window, checking your hair in the rearview mirror before you got out. That small, human moment made my chest tight.

You knocked. I opened the door. You were wearing a sundress — simple, pale yellow, thin straps — and your hair was down and you smelled like something citrus and warm and you looked up at me with that smile and said, "You going to let me in, or are we doing this on the doorstep?"

I stepped back. You walked past me and your hand brushed mine, just briefly, and it was like a static shock.

We stood in the kitchen. I made you a coffee. You leaned against the worktop and watched me, and I was suddenly aware of how tall I was, how much space I took up, how the distance between us felt like a question neither of us had asked yet.

"How's the wall?" you asked, nodding toward the bathroom.

"Still fucked."

"Good. I'd have been disappointed."

I handed you the mug. Your fingers touched mine and stayed there. I looked down at your hand on mine and then up at your face and you were already watching me, eyes bright, mouth slightly open, and I put my coffee down and took yours and put it down too and then I kissed you.

It wasn't gentle. It wasn't tentative. Your mouth opened under mine immediately and your hands grabbed the front of my t-shirt and pulled me down — you had to reach, I was so much taller — and I wrapped my arms around your waist and lifted you onto the worktop without breaking the kiss. Your legs parted and I stepped between them and your dress rode up your thighs and I could feel the heat of you through my jeans.

"Fuck, Becky," I said against your mouth.

"Luke —" and the way you said my name was like you'd been holding it in your mouth for weeks.

I carried you. Just scooped you up, your legs around my waist, and walked us down the hallway to the bedroom with your mouth on my neck and your fingers in my hair. I laid you on the bed and you pulled me down on top of you and we kissed like we were trying to crawl inside each other.

I pulled back, breathing hard. "Are you sure?"

"Luke, if you ask me that again I will actually kill you."

I laughed. You pulled me back down.

I kissed your neck, your collarbone, the hollow of your throat. I pulled one thin strap of the dress down your shoulder and then the other, and pushed the fabric down until your breasts were bare and I took one in my mouth and you arched up against me with a sound that went straight through me. Your nipple hardened against my tongue and your fingers gripped the back of my neck and I could feel you rolling your hips beneath me, grinding against my thigh.

I kissed my way down your stomach. You grabbed my hair and said, "What are you doing?" and I looked up at you and said, "What does it look like?" and you laughed — that full, dirty, amazed laugh — and then I pushed your dress up to your waist and pulled your knickers aside and put my mouth on you.

You tasted like salt and heat and something I'd been imagining for longer than I wanted to admit. I found your clit with my tongue and you made a sound that wasn't a word — just a raw, broken exhale — and your thighs clamped against my ears. I worked you slowly at first, flat tongue, long strokes, feeling you swell and twitch against me. Then faster, focused, circling, and your hand was in my hair pulling hard and your hips were bucking and you were saying my name and then —

You came. Not quietly. Your whole body seized and you let out a sharp, shaking cry and then I felt it — a rush of wet against my chin, my mouth, running down my jaw. You'd ejaculated. I felt the spray of it on my lips and I didn't stop, I kept my mouth on you while you shuddered through it, and when I finally pulled back and looked up at you — your face flushed, your chest heaving, your eyes half-closed — I was so fucking hard and so fucking turned on that just the sight of you, wrecked and trembling, was enough.

I came in my pants. Just like that. No touch, no friction, nothing. Just the sight of you and the taste of you still on my tongue and the raw fact of what had just happened. I groaned and pressed my forehead against your thigh and you felt me shaking and you looked down at me and said, "Did you just —"

"Shut up."

"Luke, did you actually just —"

"I said shut up."

You laughed so hard you snorted, and I laughed too, my face still against your thigh, and then you pulled me up and kissed me and tasted yourself on my mouth and that was the end of any remaining pretence.

We stripped each other. You pulled my t-shirt over my head and ran your hands over my chest and said, "God, you're tall," like you were only just realising, and I said, "You're only noticing now?" and you said, "Shut up and fuck me."

So I did.

I fucked you hard. I rolled a condom on and pushed into you in one long stroke and you gasped and grabbed my arms and said, "More — harder —" and I gave you everything. I slammed into you and the bed frame hit the wall and neither of us cared. Your nails dug into my back and your legs locked around me and you were so wet that every thrust made a sound that was absolutely filthy and I loved it, I loved every second of it.

"Fuck — Luke — there, right there —" and you grabbed my arse and pulled me deeper and I felt you clench around me and I had to slow down or I was going to come again.

"Don't stop," you said.

"I'll come if I don't stop."

"Then come."

"Not yet." I pulled out and flipped you over and you braced yourself on your hands and knees and I pushed back in from behind and the angle was deeper and you dropped your head and moaned into the pillow. I grabbed your hips and fucked you hard and steady, watching myself slide in and out of you, watching the way your body took me, and it was obscene and perfect and I could feel you building again.

I reached around and rubbed your clit while I fucked you and you came again, harder this time, your arms giving out so your face was in the mattress and your arse was in the air and you were shaking and clenching around me and I pulled out because I was right on the edge.

I tore the condom off and stroked myself twice and came across your tits — thick, hot streaks across your chest and collarbone. You looked down at yourself and then up at me and you were still breathing hard and then you did something that I will never, ever forget.

You cupped your breast with one hand and smeared my come across your skin, slow and deliberate, and then you lifted your own nipple to your mouth and sucked it clean. Your other hand dropped between your legs and you touched yourself while you did it, your fingers working your clit, and you looked at me the entire time with those bright, filthy eyes.

I was hard again before you finished.

I pushed you back and spread your legs and slammed into you and you wrapped your arms around my neck and I fucked you so hard the bed moved across the floor. I clutched your breasts, squeezing them, my thumbs on your nipples, and you were meeting every thrust and saying "yes, yes, fuck, yes" and I could feel you getting close again and so was I and this time neither of us stopped.

You came first, your whole body locking up and then shattering, and the feeling of you clenching and pulsing around me dragged me right over the edge with you. I came deep inside you, my face buried in your neck, groaning your name while you held me and shook.

We collapsed. Just — fell sideways onto the mattress, still tangled, still joined, and lay there panting like we'd run a marathon. The room smelled like sex and sweat and us. Your hair was everywhere. I was fairly certain I had scratches down my back that would need explaining to absolutely no one, since I lived alone.

"Holy shit," you said.

"Yeah."

"Luke."

"Yeah."

"I think you broke my vagina."

I laughed so hard I had to pull out of you, which made you laugh too, and we lay there laughing like idiots, naked and wrecked, and I don't think I'd ever felt that good in my life.

I got up after a while and ran a bath. You could hear the water from the bedroom and you called out, "What are you doing?" and I said, "Running you a bath," and you went quiet in a way that told me something had shifted.

I came back and got you and walked you to the bathroom and you stepped into the water and sank down and I got in behind you — it was a tight fit, I was too tall for my own bath — and you settled back against my chest and the warm water closed over us and you let out a long, slow breath.

"Thank you," you said.

"For what?"

"For this. For all of it. For making me laugh. For the wall. For —" you paused. "For being the first choice. Just once."

I kissed the top of your head. We stayed in the bath until the water went lukewarm, talking quietly — about Jessy's school, about your meeting on Monday, about whether I'd ever fix the bathroom wall. You told me about the summer — five weeks at home, feeling like you were disappearing into the routine of being someone's mum and someone's wife, and how going back to work had felt like coming up for air but also like drowning in a different way.

I told you about my job. How I was fed up, how I'd been thinking about leaving, how I didn't know what else I'd do. You listened the way you always did — fully, without interrupting, your head against my chest — and then you said, "You'll figure it out. You always do. You're smarter than you think you are, you're just too busy being dorky about it."

"Thanks for that."

"You're welcome."

We got out and dried each other off and somehow — I'm still not entirely sure how — we ended up back in the bedroom, on the clean side of the bed, and this time it was different. Slow. Tender. I kissed every part of you I could reach. Your neck, your shoulders, the insides of your wrists, the soft skin of your stomach. You ran your fingers through my hair and looked at me with an expression that was open and unguarded and a little bit terrified.

I pushed into you gently and you wrapped your legs around me and we moved together, slow and deep, and your eyes didn't close. You watched me the whole time. I watched you back. It felt like something cracking open — something that had been sealed for a long time.

"Luke," you whispered.

"I know."

"I love you."

I stopped moving. Not because I didn't feel it — because I did, I felt it in my chest and my throat and the backs of my eyes — but because I wanted to be in this moment completely. I wanted to feel every single second of it.

"I love you too, Becky."

You smiled. That smile — the one that made you look like you'd got away with something. Except this time, I think we both knew that what we'd got away with was each other.

We finished slowly, together, and it was quiet and overwhelming and nothing like what had come before. We lay tangled up in each other and you traced patterns on my chest and I played with your hair and outside it was a Saturday afternoon in a suburb where nothing ever happened and everything had happened.

You checked your phone eventually. "They'll be back from skating by three," you said.

"So you've got an hour."

"I've got an hour."

"Whatever will we do with it?"

You propped yourself up on your elbow and looked at me. "Well, you could show me that bathroom wall. I want to see it properly."

"You want to see my DIY disaster?"

"Luke, it's the most romantic thing you've ever shown me."

I looked at you — blonde hair tangled, naked in my bed, grinning like a teenager — and I thought: this is it. This is the thing. Not the motorcycle or the fast car or the job I hated. This. You. In my bed, in my bath, in my stupid broken house.

I got up and pulled on my boxers and you pulled on my t-shirt and we stood in the bathroom doorway together staring at the crater in the wall and you laughed so hard you had to hold onto me, and I laughed too, and I thought: if this is what being second choice looks like, Tom can have first place forever.

I'll take this. I'll take the mess.