#i mean it's been over on WP fro about 3 months but it's nice to have caught up here finally

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Epilogue (Final Part)

It’s hours later and we’re still talking. The DJ arrives around ten and cracks the speakers up to ear-ringing heights so we exit to the lobby and stand by the window as the snow falls and the lights from the ten foot Christmas tree twinkle on the glass. 

“No, no, stop, I can’t take it anymore,” He shrieks in agony as he grabs my arm, “He said that when he was inside you?”

“Yes! I didn’t know what to say back, like, um, thanks pal?”

“‘You’re so Alpha’” He repeats, deadpan, but his shoulders betray him when they start wobbling again, “‘and I’m just a little-”

“Beta boy, yes. Oh Evie, you intimidate me so much, I’ve always wanted to fuck a girl who scared me.”

“I’m going to die because of this story,” He cries, “I refuse to believe that men like this exist, it’s just too much.”

“There was this other lad too,” I begin, “Not as bad, but he got a nosebleed halfway through and it was dripping all over my face for like fifteen minutes before either of us noticed.”

“No!”

“Yeah, God, I feel bad, I think he was on some blood thinning medication or something but like…” We fall about laughing again, laughing and laughing until I think I’ll start gagging. I remember thinking during that experience that there was only one other person in the world who would find it as hilarious as I did, and as we splutter and cackle now at my retelling I remember how it used to be like this all of the time with us. I think about the time we lost through staying out of touch as he wipes his eyes and stumbles to the side a little bit, from laughing or from drinking a little too much, I’m not sure.

“Women are not like that,” he says, “I’m sorry for you, but they’re not, even the crazy LA ones don’t put me in situations like that.” He steadies himself a little by bracing his arm on the wall, so close that I could count his eyelashes if I wanted to. “I just don’t get it, do you think they get nervous?”

“Nervous around me? I doubt it. Sure what’s there to be nervous of?”

“It’s a lot of pressure, you know, making love to a beautiful woman for the first time. There’s a lot on the line, the chances of humiliation are high, maybe, I don’t know, maybe that guy just blurted the first weird thing that came into his head-” He breaks off because a high pitched laugh has exploded out of him again, “But it’s a flex to say that you’re so hot that you give men nosebleeds.”

“Oh come on, you’re exaggerating.”

“No, for real. Don’t you remember how nervous you made me when we were young? I turned into a total idiot around you.”

“Hardly.”

“It’s true. You were like this stunning princess and I was just some guy.”

I scoff, “Some guy?”

“Yeah, and it’s nice to see that some things never change because you’re still so beautiful and I’m still just a random man off the street.”

“Hmm, c’mon, you’re just schmoozing me,” I say, “Is this the way you all sweet-talk each other in Los Angeles? That’s not going to work. Irish girls are too humble to accept that.”

“Have I made you self-conscious?”

“No, I’m just wondering if you’re actually trying to flirt with me now or if you’re just trying to make me feel better about the fact that I’m thirty and my body is slowly ageing and rotting away.”

“Don’t say that, you look better than ever.”

I narrow my eyes, “I’m so curious about your game.”

“What do you mean?”

“Yeah, how you approach women, how you flirt with them now. What’s your technique? Is it intense flattery?”

He scoffs, “Oh, no, come on, I don’t have a technique, I don’t think about it like that.”

“No?”

“What do you think I am? Some kind of weirdo pick-up artist? No. I… I improvise, it depends on so much, like, where I am, who she is, what I feel like I’m hoping to get from the situation…”

“Okay okay, right. Well what if you were at an event with friends. Say, a wedding…”

He smirks at me.

“…and you see a woman standing on her own by the bar, and you know, she’s pretty mysterious in quite a sexy way, and you’re looking at her and thinking, hmm, yeah, maybe I’d like a piece of that-”

“You think that’s my inner monologue?” He interrupts, “That I think like that?”

“No, shh- shut up for a second, in this scenario you do. And you’re going to go over and talk to her, and you see the perfect opportunity to do it, and the lights from the dancefloor are shining in her hair, and oh, she looks so lonely over there, someone should go and keep her company…’

“I’d say hi, you’re very pretty, can I kiss you please?”

“Really?”

“Yeah t-”

He doesn’t finish because I have grabbed him by the lapels and pressed my lips against his. Maybe it’s for the joke, or because I’m slightly drunk, or maybe it’s to see if it still feels the way that it used to, I don’t know. I don’t really think about it, it’s just happening. 

“Oh look, it worked!” I say as we pull away, and I don’t really have a chance to try and read his face to see what he thinks about it because he takes a step towards me and kisses me again, though differently to how I kissed him, gentler, slower, with my head cradled in his hands, which is inconvenient because he makes my insides start flip flopping around. I draw back laughing, “What are you at?”

“We’re kissing now,” he confirms, then frowns, “I think. Aren’t we kissing? Or is this a hallucination?”

“Jude…”

“Don’t you want us to be kissing?”

“Well it’s not that, it’s-”

“Ah, you think it’s dangerous to be kissing.”

“If you keep saying ‘kissing’ it’s going to lose all meaning.”

“What did we call it when we were teenagers? Shiftin’ right? Will you shift me, Evie?”

“Oh my God,” I hold my hand up to his face, “it is illegal for you to put on an accent and say that. I hate that you can still do that.”

“My Irish voice?” he says in his Irish voice. 

“Please get that away from me!”

“Sorry about that,” he settles back into his American drawl, and I jerk with surprise as I feel the tips of his fingers graze my waist, “Also, I’m sorry that I kissed you, I thought we were, you know, doing that now.”

“It was a joke… And maybe just a little bit so that I could see if it still felt the same as it used to.”

His eyes tour my face, “Did it?”

“Did it for you?”

The corners of his mouth tick up, “I don’t know, it’s been a long time since I’ve kissed you, and honestly I didn’t get a decent sample, mind if I try it again?”

“Aha! I’ve figured out your game,” I declare, “You put on that silly act you’ve always put on, don’t you?”

He hooks his finger into the strap of my dress before it drops off my shoulder, “Hm? What act is that?”

“Your favourite one. ‘Oh, little old me? I’m so innocent, why I’ve never even held hands before, and I certainly haven’t fucked half of Dublin city. I don’t even know what sex is.’”

He gasps with delight and stares right into my face, “You’re still obsessed!” He cries, “and you haven’t stopped wondering about me!”

“About what, exactly?”

“My body count! After all these years it still tortures you. You’re so shallow…”

“Oh please, I couldn’t care less.”

“Evie,” He says mock-scoldingly, really drawing out the syllables, “I can’t believe it. I told you back then that it didn’t matter, that I didn’t have to tell you if I didn’t want to, but you’ve never let it go to this day. Wow. Wow.”

“I don’t even want to know,” I sniff, “It’s meaningless information to me now.”

“Well since you don’t care and it has no power over you anymore, maybe you finally ought to know…” He glances quickly around the empty lobby before his eyes slide back to mine and he whispers, “that you were the seventh.”

“The seventh?”

“Is that a good-surprise or bad-surprise?”

“Well I thought it’d be so many more.”

He shrugs, “No, I mean there was the first girl in the playground, then a girl who worked in the tennis club at the beach, a girl from my maths class at school, Michelle, someone from my university, Astrid, and then you-” He pauses, “Wait, there was another one. You were eighth. Seventh and a half.”

“And a half? Who did you forget? A centaur?”

He shakes his head, “There was an awkward foursome situation in Berlin once. It’s a long story, really stupid. I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Well I’ve never been more curious.”

“I’m a source of a lot of interesting info.”

“Like your current body count?” I tease.

“Oh, now I’m ran-through.”

“Tell me more about your life.”

“We just don’t have the time tonight.”

“What, not now?” I protest, “Not in this perfectly perfect situation when we’re both a little drunk and potentially snowed in for days, when there’s nothing to do but talk to each other?”

“No, see you’ve changed the subject, you’ve got me messed up. I…” He laughs tipsily and sways a little bit closer to me, through accident or otherwise I’m not sure, “…I was thinking about how much I might like to kiss you for a little longer this time, just to see if you still give me that same crazy feeling that I used to get with you, and you distracted me.”

I act like it’s a burden to me and slump back against the wall, “Fine, go ahead.”

“Oh jeez, no need to beg me, you know it’s off putting to be so eager?”

“Please?”

He comes in close and pecks my lips gently and even that makes my knees start to wobble. “No, come on, give me a proper kiss, that’s the only way we’ll know.”

“Still so demanding,” He tilts my chin towards him and angles his mouth over mine while his hands skim up my back and hold my body flush to his.  As he strokes his lips over mine I can’t help but curse inwardly because of course this is happening to me, of course it feels like everything I’ve been searching for in the years between then and now, everything I couldn’t find in other people. These are the kinds of kisses that ruined me for other men for years to follow, and he’s ruining me now. 

He glides his tongue along my lower lip and builds this kiss to the kind of intensity that shouldn’t be displayed in a public lobby, but he doesn’t care so neither do I. He kisses me until I’m soft and formless in his arms, until I forget the years in between then and now, and then he finally slows it, brushing his lips against mine and then gently drawing away and I find myself following his mouth in search of more, “The same?” He murmurs with his forehead against mine, “Or terrible?”

His hand cradles the back of my head as I sigh and bury my face in his shoulder, “What are we going to do, Jude?”

“You’re going to have to try not to be awkward about it because we might be snowed in for several days.” He says, “If you’ve decided I’m crusty and repulsive, you’re going to have to hide it from me to spare my ego. Either that or I’ll camp out in my room out of humiliation and get my sister to bring my meals to me until I can get the earliest flight to LAX.”

I pause, “so you’re sharing with your sister?”

“Yeah we booked late, so a twin room was all they had left. And she snores like hell.”

“Well that’s a pity because I booked months ago, and got a huge room all to myself. A four poster bed and a big gorgeous bath.”

“Are you bringing that up to make me jealous or is that an invitation?”

I scoff, “an invitation to what, exactly?”

“Come up and fuck you in the bath or something, I don’t know. Why would you bring the bath into it?”

“That’d be fairly shameless of me, wouldn’t it, if that’s what I was alluding to.”

“Is that the kind of woman you’ve become? The kind that invites strange men into her bath?”

“God no, I’d never directly ask that, that’d be very slutty.”

He brushes his fingers gently along the side of my neck, which is unfair because he knows how much I like that, and as I feel that touch all the way down to my toes he gives me a sly little smile and draws back to look at me, “I don’t know, you’ve really talked up this bath and you’ve got me curious. Will you show it to me?”

“You’ve always been so cheeky, did you know that? You ask audacious things of people.”

“Me? Never. That’s just not me, you must be thinking of somebody else. Of one of your other ex-boyfriends.” He grins and saunters casually toward the stairs, glancing over his shoulder at me as he goes, “I actually just remembered that I spilled something on my suit.”

“Did you.”

“Mm, I’m a total mess, I might be drunker than I look. I think I better go and take it off.”

“Doesn’t suit you anyway. You were always better in shorts.”

He pauses for a moment and regards me with one raised eyebrow, a question, and I don’t care that I’m predictable to him, that he already knows I will push myself away from the wall and catch up to him, “Actually you have the right idea, my dress is uncomfortable. I want to change out of it, only I’m not sure I can manage the zip on my own.”

“Oh, I can help you with that,” he says, “Or at least I can try, you know, but fair warning I haven’t ever undressed a woman before.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” I smile, as I wind my fingers through his. 

THE END

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