Chapter 16

“So,” her voice was a horse whisper. “Do you want to come back to my place and have sex with me?” she looked across at me.
I looked up shocked. Then I recovered my composure. “Why?” I asked, putting an edge in my voice.
She smiled, almost giggled, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what’s the point, Alexandra?” I looked at her.
She looked up at my face. “I don’t understand.”
I sighed and let the edge drop. “The last time I asked you to make love to me, to give me an orgasm, you asked me what was the point.” I remembered that night when I tried so futilely to make contact with her one last time. I decided to add a bit of humour, “I mean, you never asked what was the point in me making you come.”
She didn’t get the joke. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean.”
I sighed. “It doesn’t mean anything, Alexandra. It’s a joke.”
“I never asked you to ‘make love’ to me, Kevin,” she said. “You just did it to me because you wanted me to suck your prick.”
I looked down, realizing that she still didn’t understand. “I made love to you because I wanted you to come. I wanted to give you pleasure.” I looked up, “O.K. so maybe it was just an ego boost for me to make you come. And yeah I enjoyed it. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t.” I shook my head, “But I didn’t do it so you’d feel that you owed me something. I didn’t do it just to get some cheap trill back. I did it to you because I loved you.”
She looked down and said nothing.
I tried to explain once again. “I gave my love to you freely and openly, without reservation. I made love to you to show you how much I loved you. And I wanted you to love me. That’s not greed that’s human nature.”
She didn’t respond.
“I made love to you because I loved you. And I wanted you to make love to me, because I wanted you to love me.” I ran out of words, “There’s nothing more I can say, Alexandra.” I shrugged, “If you don’t understand now, you’ll never understand.”
“It’s difficult for me, Kevin.” She stopped and smiled, “But then you don’t want to know anything about that.”
“No I don’t,” I replied dryly.
“Let’s just say,” she spoke slowly and deliberately. “No promises and no demands.” She looked into my eyes, “That I want to make love to you. That I want to have sex with you. That I love you. And that you don’t even have to accept that I do. And you don’t have to love me back.” Her eyes pleaded with me, “I just want to show you how much I love you.” She looked down, “Like you tried to show me.”
I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to fuck her so badly. And yet I wanted to remain loyal to Jasmine. But hadn’t I already betrayed Jasmine by the way I felt, the way I couldn’t get Alexandra out of my mind, the way she still had a hold on me? And wouldn’t I be betraying myself, wouldn’t she have won some sort of victory over me if I let her make love to me now? But isn’t that what I wanted all along, for her to want to make love love to me? And wouldn’t I be the real winner by finally having “my evil way” with her?
Yet wasn’t the fact that she wanted to make love to me the important thing? Not weather or not we actually did it. I’d wanted her to feel the love for me that I felt for her. But now I loved Jasmine and I no longer wanted her to love me. Oh I still loved her, but if she didn’t love me I could forget about her. Like I almost had. Now that she’d told me that she loved me how would I ever manage to let her go?
But the waiter arrived with the bill and I was spared having to work through all that and coming up with an answer. I took out my plastic and barely glancing at the bill handed it back to him.
Alexandra took note. “Hold on, Kevin,” she said. “I’m not letting you pay for this meal.”
I smiled back, “Well I was hoping that you’d give me your half in cash. I don’t have enough so I have to use my card.”
“Oh,” she nodded and took her purse out of her bag. “That’s alright.” She counted out and handed me the cash.
“Thanks,” I pocketed it and we looked at each other, waiting for me to come up with an answer.
“Well,” I admitted. “You’ve certainly caught me completely by surprise, Alexandra. I’d never have expected you to ask that.” I shrugged, “I mean you always said no when ever I asked you.” I lent forward, “OK. I accept that you didn’t call what we did do sex. So I presume that what you are saying is that you want spent the night with me, to give yourself fully into the act rather that holding back like you did.” I snorted, at myself more than anything else, “What I’m saying is that you’re going to let me come. Give me an orgasm like?”
She hesitated. “Well yes, Kevin,” she said. “That’s what sex is all about, isn’t it?”
I laughed. “If you had asked me that before I met you I’d have agreed. But now,” I shrugged, “I’m not so sure.”
She lent forward to touch my arm. “Let’s forget about that, Kevin,” she said. “I want to get as close to you as I can.” She looked into my eyes, “I want to be processed totally by you.”
I looked back into her dark, green eyes and had an instant hard on.
Then the waiter came back and I signed the counterfoil and took my card back. As I put it away I looked at Alexandra. She was still looking longingly at me.
“Listen, Alexandra,” I said. “I just don’t know what you want from me.”
“I want to know that you love me, Kevin,” she squeezed my arm.
“I never said that I didn’t love you, Alexandra,” I looked down. “I’ve always loved you.”
She was silent for a moment, then she asked, “And do you tell Jasmine that you love her, as well?”
“Of course I do,” I smiled.
“And which time are you telling the truth?” her voice had lost some of the anger. “Which time do you mean it?”
I looked at her, puzzled. “I mean it both times.” I shook my head, “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.”
“So you’re telling me that you love us both?” her voice had changed from anger to incredulity.
I shrugged, “Well yes.” But some how I didn’t feel convinced.
Once again she was demonstrating her knack of totally undermining my self-confidence. I had come to her with my feelings all worked out and explained. And once again she was reacting in a way I hadn’t expected and was asking questions I’d never thought of.
“How can you love two people at once?” she demanded.
“Quite easily,” I smiled back. I was going to tell her that I loved my mother and farther and brothers and sisters, but the look on her face stopped me. “I fall in love easily,” I added as an explanation.
“You fall in love easily and you fall out of love easily,” she said.
That wasn’t true. “I’ve loved you for over two years now,” I explained. “And I only started my love affair with Jasmine when you broke off our relationship.”
I looked away from her again, “I’ve loved you since the very first time that I saw you. I’ve never stopped loving you. And I never will.”
“You just started loving her instead !” she hissed.
“You didn’t want me ! What was I supposed to? Commit suicide !” I replied.
We glared at each other.
“Listen,” I looked away. “I think about you all the time. Even when I’m with her.” I snorted, “Hell I seem to spend half my time talking to her about you. it’s a wonder that she hasn’t dumped me because of it.” No wonder, I thought. Jasmine really loves me.
“Well I don’t see how you can love two girls at once,” she said. “I mean really, properly love them.”
There was silence for a moment.
“I think you love one of us and only lust after the other,” she explained.
I looked at her and saw that she was serious. I decided that I’d have to accept that. She would never believe that I could love two people at once. But I could live with lust. I have nothing against lust. I believe that it’s an healthy enough emotion. In moderation.
“Well I admit that there are differences in my feelings for each of you. But I can’t tell which one is love and which one is lust.” I shrugged, “I guess you’ll just have to decide that for yourself.”
She lent across the table, smiled as she put her arms around my neck, closed her eyes and kissed me.
I didn’t know how to react.
She pulled away and smiled broadly at me. “I don’t remember you as being shy in public,” she teased.
It was time for one of those spilt second decisions. Something clicked inside me and I just didn’t care any more, I mean I stopped worrying and started to act. O.K lets be brutality honest about it, my hormones took over.