Thankfully his job as a salesman in a local garage meant that he didn’t start work until eleven o’clock, otherwise sleep deprivation would have killed him.
My confidence was plummeting to an all-time low. Was I completely unattractive? Had his crush well and truly worn off?
I discussed the situation with the girls, and then ignored their suggestions of ‘Forget him’ or ‘Just tell him straight out that you ‘re a sure thing!’ I knew I had to leave it up to him.
Puzzled but persistent, I invited Doug round to the flat I shared with Kate for dinner one Wednesday night, the only night of the week that I didn’t work and Kate did. I promised him a great meal, so it was action stations as my culinary skills extended to Pot Noodles and banana sandwiches. I phoned Roberto, the owner of a nearby Italian restaurant and explained the problem. He came up trumps. In exchange for free tickets to the nightclub for the next month, one of his guys arrived at my door half an hour before Doug with a veritable feast. I bunged it in the oven.
As I opened the door to him, my hormones surged. He was so beautiful that I just wanted to take his hand and drag him to bed.
Instead, I served dinner, accepting his compliments on my cooking with grace and humility, knowing that my chances of going to heaven were diminishing by the minute.
We cuddled up on the couch afterwards and it finally happened. He kissed me. It was tentative and tender as he stroked my face and ran his fingers through my hair. When I eventually came up for air, I gave in to weeks of curiosity.
‘Doug, can I ask you something? Why did you wait so long?’
He shrugged, flushed a little. ‘I just think this is going to be really big and I want to take it slow. I don’t want to rush things and fuck it up.’
‘How big?’ I asked, stunned at his sincerity and thoughtfulness.
‘Forever big. Huge. Massive. Weddings and babies big.’
Oh, God. In my head, I hadn’t got past multiple orgasm big. I was still on wild passionate affair and he was already on mortgages and lifelong commitments. Next, he’d be washing my car on a Sunday and I’d be checking his pockets before taking his suits to the dry-cleaners. Panic set in. Hadn’t I just left this situation six months before? I lapsed into a pensive silence. Why did everyone suddenly want to talk about bloody weddings? I thought that all men were supposed to be complete commitment-phobes who avoided the ‘m’ word like it was contagious?
‘Don’t worry, babe,’ he whispered, holding me close. ‘Like I said, we’ll take it slow.’
I should have realised then that I was doomed, but I had more pressing matters to worry about – we kissed and cuddled for the rest of the night, but still not a breast was fondled.
I called an emergency meeting of the girls the next morning. Jess was in Aberdeen, but Sarah was home and Kate and Carol could make it too. They met me at Roberto’s and as I relayed the previous night’s events, their hilarity was deafening.
‘Talk about out of the frying pan and into the sauna,’ Carol exclaimed. Her command of common sayings hadn’t improved, but with the money she was starting to make from modelling, she didn’t care. Nor did she notice that every waiter in the restaurant was staring at her in a catatonic trance whilst sucking in his stomach and puffing out his pecs.
‘I think it’s sweet that he’s already thinking about that kind of stuff,’ Sarah offered. She’d always been a hopeless romantic, so I discounted that opinion immediately.
Only Kate had a modicum of balanced sensibility. ‘Are you in love with him?’ she asked quietly.
All joviality ceased and four pairs of eyes focused on me, waiting for the reply.
‘No, no, no. Well, maybe, potentially. Oh, God, I don’t know. It’s so soon after Joe. But yes, I think about Doug constantly and just want to be with him all of the time. I’m pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.’
Their silence offered no contradiction of my self-flagellation.
‘Well, just do as he says and take it slowly.’
Fair point. But in the sex and fondling department, my version of taking it slowly was positively meteoric compared to Doug’s.
Over the next few nights, he alternated between kissing me passionately, nibbling my ears and nuzzling my neck. Occasionally, his hand would creep up my back under my jumper, but no more than that. I’m ashamed to admit I resorted to guerrilla tactics. I even tried going braless and when his hand crept up my back, I swung around quickly, hoping he’d inadvertently stumble upon a breast. But nothing worked. Nothing.
Until one night, a few Wednesdays later, after another of Roberto’s masterpieces was fraudulently disguised as my own creation. We sat on the floor, food on the coffee table, when Doug looked up and took my hand.
‘Cooper,’ he said solemnly, ‘this has got to stop.’
My heart skipped a beat. What did he mean, stop? We couldn’t stop now. I was falling more in lust with him by the minute and, barring the fact that he obviously had the sex drive of a monastic celibate, I had come to realise that we were actually really good together.
‘What’s got to stop?’ I ventured tentatively.
‘The fact that we’ve eaten our way through all of Roberto’s menu.’
Shit! He knew.
I collapsed in a fit of giggles.
‘How did you know?’
‘The garnish was a giveaway. Nobody heats up a garnish.’
Caught red-handed. How was I to know that I should have taken the decoration off the plates before putting them in the oven?
He stood up and pulled me to join him. What was this? Action stations. Incoming fondles. Without saying a word, he unbuttoned
