We lived life to the extreme – on top of the world. Riding the world like the world was a motorbike, to be raced and dodged through the stationary and slow traffic.
I still loved the place, despite it not being homely. But I didn’t love Sharon any more. I probably never had and I didn’t like the way we lived any more. I think I’d just been in lust with Sharon in the beginning and excited by the way she lived – so fast and far on the outside of normal.
The life I led with Sharon ran parallel to everything else. It had felt like unleashing the true me in the beginning. The rebellious, fast-living, independent, unboundaried me. But if this was the real me, why didn’t I like it, or myself, any more?
Maybe I’d always known this wasn’t right for me because I’d never told my friends about it, not from school, not from my climbing club, uni, work or anywhere.
‘In here!’ Sharon shouted from the bedroom. I hoped this wasn’t going to be another gift. She knew my interest was waning and so she’d started trying everything she could to keep me in the game with her.
I didn’t want to play.
Ever since I’d had the invite to go back to my old school I’d been evaluating my life and nothing fitted. I’d been ambitious as a kid and Em and I had the business, and I had my investment properties and ten times more than I could have expected to achieve at my age – except that it all tasted sour because I’d never been ambitious for this empty fucking marriage. This was not how I’d seen myself. This was not where I wanted to be five years from now.
Sharon was on her own in the bedroom, in her underwear – just old-fashioned suspenders and stockings. Maybe she hoped I’d be motivated to react to her nudity before I left. I wasn’t. I started stripping off my leather suit. After I’d released my arms, it hung from my waist
‘What time are you going out?’ she asked.
‘As soon as I’m showered and ready.’ I removed my boots and took the leather suit off my legs. Then straightened and stripped off my t-shirt.
‘Is it okay if I ask some people over?’
By ‘some people’ she meant her friends – I used that term loosely too – and a mix of strangers, who’d take cocaine that I’d pay for and drink booze that I’d pay for. Then they’d come in here, into my bedroom and have sex on my bed, a twisting puzzle of tangled bodies. Or maybe not in here, maybe in the Jacuzzi or in the living room, or in the pool… ‘Do what you want.’
I left my clothes in a pile on the floor for the cleaner to pick up, then went to have a shower.
I washed my hair and let the water teem over my head, tipping up my face, then I sighed. I spat out the water that had run into my mouth and turned to face the wall. Fuck. The thought of tangled bodies and long legs wrapping around me and the tongues and mouths that would be all over me, if I stayed here, did still turn me on. With one hand flat on the cold marble slab lining the back wall, and the water running over my head and down my back, I took my dick in my hand.
The images in my mind had made me hard.
I gripped it with anger, because I really didn’t want to be like this. Then I shut my eyes and let thoughts of sex wash over me with the water.
Sharon would be willing to murder me if she knew I’d rather wank than have sex with her. She thought I was going to pick someone up at the reunion party. I had no intention of doing that. The girls I’d been at school with were not like Sharon.
But maybe that was why I’d been so absorbed by Sharon when this had started.
I groaned when the orgasm rattled through my bones. My head fell forward and I took another breath.
That would keep me going without sex until I got back.
I washed off the marble in front of me, then washed the soap off my body and turned off the shower.
When I looked at the guy in the mirror to shave, I still didn’t like him.
I walked back into the bedroom with a towel hanging low on my hips and droplets of water still on my skin. Sharon looked up at me from where she sat before a mirror painting on her lipgloss. She’d put a robe on. She turned around on the stool. ‘We could mess around before you go, if you come over here.’
‘No thanks. It’s a long drive. I’m going to be late already.’
I found a shirt and trousers out of the wardrobe and got dressed. She watched me, but she didn’t say anything else.
I picked out a dark-blue, thin tie just to break up the white of my shirt, but I left the tie loose, the top button of my shirt undone so the collar was open. Then I rolled up my sleeves. It was too hot to put a jacket on.
Tonight we were meeting for a drink in the hotel, then tomorrow the school were holding a formal dinner. I’d packed this morning when Sharon was asleep, so at least I didn’t have to do that with her watching me, like I was a panther she was trying to work out how to trap.
Two nights away. Two nights to look at my life and think about where I wanted it to be in another five years. I needed to work out what my end game was.
I turned and looked at Sharon. She uncrossed her legs, with her back arched, so her breasts looked good. She never said, don’t you fancy me any more? But the words were in her eyes all the time lately.
Yes, I did fancy her still. I’d have to be blind not to; she had an amazing body. I could still get hard for her and enjoy every minute of sex with her. But emotionally – she did nothing for me.
I walked over and gripped the back of her neck, pressed my lips on hers for an instant, then wiped the gloss off my lips with the back of my hand. ‘See you on Sunday. Have a good time.’
Her eyes, which some people called green, but were really hazel, stared at me. Ivy’s lavender eyes came to mind. She was the only woman I’d ever seen with really distinctive eyes. I’d never seen anyone else with lavender-grey eyes.
‘You have a good time too. Don’t shag anyone I wouldn’t.’
I gave her a crooked smile. ‘That leaves the field open, then. You’d shag everyone.’ She liked girls as well as guys. That had been one of the novel things about her, when I’d first met her – that she loved bringing other women to bed with us and she loved watching me fuck them as much as messing around with them herself.
She gave me a half-hearted laugh. ‘Bye.’
‘Bye.’ I walked out and grabbed my leather jacket off the hook by the door. Then picked up the keys to the Jag. I was going on an adventure. Stepping into the unknown. I probably felt as excited as most young guys felt when they were invited to join an orgy.
l was bored of orgies. They were full of self-centred, greedy people.
I was looking forward to going back to the simplicity of the life I’d led as a youth – with a heart-wrenching need. I wanted to be who I’d been then – the boy I used to look at in a mirror and like; the one who had dreams in his eyes. The person I’d been before I’d made my first million and had to fight off the parasites.
As I drove down there, I wondered what people would say if they knew how I lived. Some of the others had become involved with drugs too. I’d heard that. When you had money to waste and youth on your side it was too tempting. But some of them… most of them… would probably turn their backs on me if they knew everything about me – like my parents had. And my parents knew hardly anything.
Nostalgia hit me in the stomach with a punch when I drove into the small town where I’d gone to school. It was old-world. Dickensian. I’d spent years of my life here. This school had formed who I was; it had made me a stronger person and given me the confidence to believe in myself – and my belief had made me a millionaire by the age of twenty-two.
Loads of people here had money. It wouldn’t be exceptional turning up here as a rich man. But I would be one of the few who’d made it himself. Most people