Addicted - Charlotte Stein

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now that I was wrong.

      ‘That’s right,’ she calls out, over the mostly paired-up room. ‘Hold your partner in your arms, and show them that you’re there for them.’

      And then it clicks in my mind. Dillon is coming over here because I’m the person he wants to hug. He was touched by my lack of any kind of connection with fellow human beings, and is reaching out in his own lunkish way. He wants to show me it’s OK – but unfortunately, he wants to show me it’s OK by putting his massive arms around me.

      I can’t have that. There’s a toilet somewhere beyond the double doors into this hall, and I need to feign interest in that place immediately. But how best to do it? If I raise my hand and ask for a bathroom pass, I’m going to look like the biggest fool on the planet. And if I don’t ask, then it’s not going to be clear what I’m doing. When he gets over here I won’t be able to politely excuse myself, and I’ll just have to walk away.

      He’ll think I’m an ass. He’s going to think I’m an ass. And by the time I’m finished panicking over what an ass I am, it’s far too late. He’s already upon me – and, Jesus, he’s even bigger than he’d seemed across the circle. He has to be at least six foot two, if not more. His shoulders are so immense I can’t see the ends of them, once my eyeline is level with his chest.

      You can’t even call what he does standing. It’s more like looming. I’m being loomed over by the most handsome man I’ve ever seen in real life, and once he’s there I don’t have a chance of escaping. It would take me seven years just to run from his left bicep to the tips of his fingers – though running isn’t even an option. The moment I think of it – like a desperate light bulb going off in my panicky head – he leans down and enfolds me in those enormous arms.

      He enfolds me. I didn’t even know I could be enfolded. I’m not sure what to do, once it’s happening. My own arms go really stiff and sort of stick out on either side of his body, and I forget to turn my head when his chest angles down – which just leads to a kind of awkward face-mashing against his left pectoral muscle.

      Though, in my defence, I’m not used to men having something in that place. Typically it’s just skin and chest hair, or maybe gigantic pillows of extra sweaters. Some of the guys I’ve dated weren’t really keen on hugging full stop, so there’s no helpful comparison there.

      This guy hugs like his life depends on it. He hugs me so warmly that something embarrassing starts happening in my general eye area – something that stings a bit and mortifies me to my very soul. Apparently I’m so starved of affection I tear up when a random bloke squeezes me a bit.

      I’m like a tube of toothpaste that’s never been used. My destiny in life – to have people compress me – has not been fulfilled.

      Until now.

      He has a hand on my back, and he’s kind of rubbing it up and down. Not in a sexual manner, you understand. Just in a nice, soothing, warm sort of way. He’s so full of heat that he’s got a ton of it to spare, and he just hands it around to random strangers, whenever the mood takes him. He can afford to, after all.

      Women hurl themselves at him while he’s eating a cheese sandwich. He’s not going to nearly cry because he’s being hugged – but I think he understands that I might.

      ‘Yeah, that’s nice, right?’ he says, and I just sort of nod helplessly. I don’t want to; because if it turns out that he is an arrogant ass then this is only going to make him worse.

      But I just can’t do anything else. He feels incredible. And he smells much, much better than I thought he would, when he was sat all the way over there like some half side of beef. I thought he’d have a musky tang, but mostly he’s made up of shampoo and fabric softener. He’s like a big pile of laundry, fresh out of the drier – and I don’t mind admitting that I kind of want to bury my face in him.

      In fact, I’m almost comfortable enough to do that, by this point. My limbs have gone all loose and lax, and I’m pretty close to returning the favour. All I have to do is make a loop around his broad back, then squeeze gently.

      Seems simple.

      And then he whispers one word, in my ear. One shocking word that makes my hair almost stand on end.

      ‘Faker,’ he says.

      Chapter Three

      I know he’s behind me. It’s like his presence is pressing against the fabric of the universe, and I’m forced to notice it whether I want to or not. Plus … you know. I can also actually see him in the flat-black gaze of the shop windows across the street. He’s about ten paces back, hands stuffed deep into the pockets of the hoodie he’s put on.

      I’ll admit: I kind of expected him to brave the elements in just that ridiculous T-shirt. But it makes him more human to see him with some layers on. He’s not some sexual superhero, swinging through the November-washed streets in just his undercrackers.

      Even he has a line of normalcy drawn in the sand of his insides.

      It’s just that this line includes following me – because come on, now. He totally is. I stop when I get to the window of a newsagent’s and pretend to be examining a sign for someone’s missing cat, just to see if he’ll stop too. And when he does, it couldn’t be more obvious that he’s only doing so because I did. He has to feign interest in the contents of a store that sells orthopaedic trusses, for God’s sake.

      I almost want to shout back at him that he’d look great in a girdle.

      But I refrain. Jokey comments about his gut-restraining needs will only encourage him – and after I did so well to evade him back at the hall. Out here, I’m never going to get away with declaring loudly that I need a wee. There’s no one here to frown at him for stopping me visiting the toilet.

      He had to let me go, then. He doesn’t have to let me go now.

      Unless this isn’t actually a thing – which could be the case. Maybe I’m just imagining him all hot on my trail, ready to take me down for the terrible crime of sex-addiction fakery.

      ‘Hey, Kit – wait up!’

      Or maybe not.

      I try walking faster, but to no avail. You can’t block out sound by moving your feet more rapidly – and even you could, he’ll soon be close enough for me to read his lips. Two of his strides make up seventeen of mine, and he makes short work of the distance between us. In fact, I’m starting to wonder if his speed and persistence mean something else.

      Maybe he kills people for faking sex addiction. He’s the fabled Fake Sex Addiction Killer, and I’m about to be horribly offed in the doorway of a Burger King.

      ‘This is a really long way around to the bathroom,’ he says, which at least reassures me on the murdering front. If not the anything else front. He’s going to want to have a discussion, now, about that one word he whispered, and I am not at all prepared for it.

      I didn’t bring my conversational shotgun.

      ‘Are the facilities not seven streets down? Oh, that’s pretty foolish of me. Well – I’m here now. Might as well keep going. Goodnight, Dillon!’

      I say ‘Goodnight, Dillon’ far too hysterically. Even I know that, and I’m the person who never realises when I’m being hysterical. I just discover that Masterchef didn’t record and then hurl the remote control through the television.

      ‘Hey – you remembered my name.’

      I don’t look at him when he speaks. Sensing the weight of those beautiful eyes on the side of my face is enough. I feel like I’m basking in the light and heat of some sun from a distant galaxy, where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.

      ‘I think anyone would remember your name.’

      ‘Huh. Really? Why’s that,

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