The below is an entry for #FreshlyPolished by Ruby Estella.

Passport to happiness

Yesterday was the third consecutive day I haven’t looked at my ex-lover’s Twitter account. 

The first day of fighting back against the addiction of my social media stalking was Tuesday; quite a significant Tuesday, marking three months since he ended our affair, a quarter of a year lost to emptiness.

He wanted me to be happy, he said. He couldn’t make me happy, he said. He couldn’t give me what I needed, he said.

Among the many things I didn’t say in response, because I couldn’t trust myself to speak, was to question how the realisation of my single greatest fear – that he would choose between the two women in his life and I would be the one discarded – would make me happy, exactly? When I was only truly happy in his company; when the days without him were a life lived in monochrome.

The truth is that the end of the affair was more about messiness than happiness. Of the range of choices available to him, he opted for the one that was least messy, with less far-ranging consequences, with fewer people impacted. Far easier to end a relationship that nobody knows about than to complicate a world shared by mutual friends, argue about custody of the cocker spaniel and split a shared book collection.

His emotional pendulum had yet again swung to its furthest point from the passionate intensity that characterised our happiest moments together but which was inevitability followed by the emotional distance that accompanied his guilty phases.

It wasn’t the first time we parted. Each separation results in a further erosion of my self worth as I fail at life without him and he seems equally unable, or unwilling, to live a life without me.

Sooner or later one of us picks up the phone and summons the other’s presence or lies in wait at a familiar street corner anticipating the wordless embrace that sets the cycle anew. And then we begin again the most addictive phase of all when we use sex to convey the feelings we won’t speak aloud missed you so much will never hurt you again trust me different this time I love you I love I love you

Sometimes, it is he who initiates the phone call, conceding defeat. Come to me? Please? I make him wait while I choose how to give myself: slutty underwear to be torn away or am I inclined to tease him with bows and hooks? A dress I can lift over my arms revealing my eager nakedness or skinny jeans I command him to peel off before he’s permitted to fuck me? Other times, it’s me who lures him with a breathless phone call or a filthy text message and I wait, splayed naked on my kitchen table so he sees immediately my greedy cunt glistening and engorged in anticipation.

And this morning, three days after I last spied on his social media presence, my body’s aching for him becomes more than I am willing to bear. I choose to blink first. And so, as his 08.03 train pulls into the railway station, I wait just beyond the ticket barrier. I wear a purple shirt dress and high-heeled ankle boots for what I have in mind.

I open the top button on my dress to reveal a hint of bra lace.

He sees me. He bites his lip as he walks towards me and I recognise his hesitancy in this gesture. 

As he stands before me, I notice his eyes take in the curve of my breasts where I’ve unbuttoned my dress. He raises his hand, places two fingers on my shoulder and moves them cautiously, slowly, gently along my collarbone until he arrives at the central point under my neck, all the while his eyes fixed on mine. Then his fingers change direction and move, feathertouch soft, downward to the cleave of my breasts. The touch, although light, is everything – the sudden warmth of my pussy is followed almost immediately by glorious wetness.

We have not yet spoken. I take his hand in mine and lead him, fully compliant now, past the information desk, the ticket machines, the coffee franchise, till we reach the passport photo booth. I gesture with my eyes for him to go inside. I follow him in and pull the curtain between us and the morning’s commuters.

He sits on the stool and there’s barely any room, just enough for me to place a leg on either side of him. His hands reach up eagerly to touch my face but I push them down. It pains him to be forced to wait. With deliberate slowness, relishing his frustration, I tease each button of my dress open. Beyond the curtain is the flurry of places-to-be train travellers.

Only now do I lower myself down to sit astride him. He places his hands on my butt cheeks and pulls me towards him, banishing all space between our bodies.

I can feel the stiffness of his erection as he reaches again to touch my face. This time I don’t stop him. He kisses hard with an intensity borne of our three month separation, lips clumsily mashing mine, hands quick and rough over my face and my neck. We grasp and clutch inelegantly.

Finally, the first words whispered turn around and as I turn my back to him I hear the sound of his trousers unzipping. 

His hands pushing my thighs apart

His thumb between my legs, pushing my knickers to the side 

His cock inside me

Filling the emptiness

Me gasping

Shhhh

His hand over my mouth

My hands flat against the screen 

His balls slapping against me

His thrusts

Urgent and fast

Until he moans

And drops his head to my shoulder 

His grip on my hips loosens

His arms envelop me

He gently guides me round me so I’m facing him again. He fixes my dress into position and closes the buttons, lingering for a moment as he reaches the top button to place his lips against my breastbone.

He sits and pulls me down onto his lap. He looks around as though this is the first time he’s registered where we are. How does this thing work anyway? He pocket-rummages and finds coins; we pose playfully for photographs. As we emerge from behind our curtain and wait with exaggerated innocence for our passport photos, I put my mouth to his ear and whisper I can feel your come trickling down my thigh.

Today will be our perfect day. We will phone our excuses to work. We’ll spend the day in my bed kissing, laughing, tickling and teasing, flicking and fingering, sucking and fucking.

The recriminations and reproaches will come later, sometimes days later, sometimes weeks. Eventually, there’ll be an event – a birthday, perhaps – that pulls him back to the emotional responsibilities of his other life.

Then he will be lost to me again.

And I will have lost myself in love again.