Decision making, one of my great strengths

It was only as I was arriving at Heathrow at three thirty in the morning on a Monday that it dawned on me that this decision really should have been made after a bit more forethought. I’d very briefly put in the dormitory group chat that I had to quickly go back to London for a family emergency (which wasn’t entirely a lie) and I wasn’t all that bothered about skipping a week of classes – the issue lay more in how my actual family might react to me being back.

I knew from our last couple calls that Charley had been absolutely swamped at work recently, and while I knew that she’d probably just say I could stay at her place from the kindness of her heart, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to barge in on her. On the plane I’d been fantasizing about this as some kind of romantic gesture, but walking out the door and coming face to face with the cold, gray British skies sort of shocked me back to reality. Anyway, that was assuming I’d even make it there in time today before she left for the office. I wasn’t that optimistic about placing all my hopes in the mighty tube getting me to her apartment on time for her punctual morning routine, and that meant there was decent chance I wouldn’t catch her. This either meant creepily waiting outside her door all day and risking one of her neighbors calling the police on me, or going back to Mum and Dad’s house.

I wasn’t sure which one scared me more.

I’d basically burned through my savings on the plane tickets, and I was skipping a good chunk of classes not that far off from exam period; with all of that, along with the small issue that Dad had walked in on his only son in bed with his stepdaughter a couple months ago, led me to believe that they might not be that happy to see me.

It was a mad dash through border control to the station, and an extremely anxious train ride into London. I just about beat rush hour on the tube, which I was very glad about because by that point all of the running with my suitcase had left me pretty sweaty and disgusting. I finally got to Charley’s at six-thirty, which was right on the precipice of too late.

I leapt up two stairs at a time as I lugged the suitcase up to her apartment, and by the time I made it to her door I was panting like a dog. After I rang the doorbell, I stood there for a second with my heart pounding, not entirely sure whether it was the physical exertion or the nerves.

And then the door swung open, and there she was – dressed up in her work attire, the gray pantsuit just as frustratingly hot as it had been in my fantasies from the moment she’d told me she was starting at JP Morgan last Summer.

As soon as she caught sight of me, her eyes went as wide as saucers and her mouth fell agape in surprise.

“…Luke?”

“Hi,” I breathed.

We stood there in silence for a second, with Charley still staring at me in shock, just long enough to make me a little anxious.

I swallowed. “Sorry, I know this is really sudden … I just had a slightly less busy week so I thought after we called over the weekend I could come back and see you for a little while, which I know is kind of crazy and I should have talked about it with you firs—”

Charley cut me off by grabbing my face with both hands and kissing me hard. And immediately, holding her tightly in her doorway, I knew I had made the right decision to come back.

My heart was beating even faster than before,

“Your breath is really bad,” Charley mumbled. She almost looked on the verge of tears, which I was hoping was because of the overwhelming emotions of our reunion and not because I really just stank that bad.

“Sorry,” I replied. “Fourteen-hour flight, you know?”

“Well, it’s disgusting,” she muttered, right as she dragged me back down and kissed me again. When she pulled away this time, she was beaming. “Come on, get inside.”

She grabbed my suitcase from me before I could protest and wheeled it through into her living room, as I followed on behind still trying to catch my breath. Being in her apartment again was a bit trippy, given that the last time I was here was all the way back in September – the first time I attempted to tell her I loved her. But watching her dump my suitcase on the floor and hurry back over to me with that giddy look on her face.

“Whew, heavy,” she said, looking me up and down, a little bit hyper. “You want breakfast? I can make you something. You want a coffee?”

“I’m good, thanks. I’m on Tokyo time – if I have caffeine now, I’ll crash by midday. Give it a few hours.”

“Yeah, smart.” Charley was staring at me intently. “Fuck, Luke. I can’t believe you’re here. This is … it’s really, really cool. I’ve been…” She cut herself off. “Never mind. How long are you here for?”

Her pause felt a little off, but I decided not to bring it up and ruin the moment. “My return flight’s next Monday, if it’s okay to stay until then.”

“A week. Okay, that’s good.” She hesitated. “I’m not gonna lie, this week is a tough one … I’ve got a presentation this morning, and then…” She looked down and checked her watch. “Oh, shit. Oh, fuck. I’m gonna be late.”

She bit her lip, looking up at me guiltily. “I could call in sick and try to push it, but I don’t think it would go over very well with my boss. Maybe from tomorrow it would be a bit more acceptable…”

I reached over and laid both my hands on her shoulders, laughing. “Charley, relax. I didn’t come here expecting you to drop everything to hang out with me all day.”

As soon as I touched her, Charley turned to look at where my fingers were making contact. “Really?” She swallowed, distracted, and I swear I could actually make out her pupils dilating in real time.

“Yes, really. You don’t have to worry about that. I’ll take any time with you I can get.”

“Okay, shut up now,” she laughed. “If you carry on talking, I’m going to jump on you and tear off your clothes and I’m not gonna be done until lunchtime, and I’ll miss my presentation and I’ll get fired and it’ll be all your fault.”

I’m not ashamed to admit the idea of that sequence of events going down sounded pretty hot to me, but I kept my mouth shut.

“You’d better be here when I get back. Ideally oiled up and ready to go.” Charley reached up on her tiptoes and kissed me one more time, smiling into my mouth. “And brush your teeth, for god’s sake.”

I shot her a disapproving look as she pulled away and grabbed her bag, making her way briskly towards the door. “It’s like I’m just a piece of meat to you…”

“You thought you were staying here for free? she called back at me, chuckling. “Oh no. You’re gonna earn your keep.”

Once she left, I stayed for a long moment staring at the door and grinning like an idiot. I obviously knew I had been missing her since I’d gone back, but I guess it was difficult to understand just how much I’d missed her until now, actually seeing her again. I didn’t have anything else to do except hang around her apartment, and I was determined to make a start on the uni work I was going to be missing this week before the jetlag got to me. But it quickly became obvious that I wasn’t going to be able to focus properly.

While I wasn’t so enthusiastic about oiling myself up for her, it was extremely difficult to stop myself eagerly imagining what was going to happen when she got back. Both Charley and I knew I was probably a bit too awkward still to attempt phone sex, so the topic hadn’t really come up at all in our facetime conversations. But somehow not talking about it had kind of made me even more pent up – basically every night in my dorm room alone I couldn’t stop myself from replaying all the times we’d slept together in my head. The quiet, slow shuffling under the covers, her soft moaning, like something out of a dream. It was basically how it was when I used to crush on her as a hormonal teenager, except now I felt slightly less guilty because I was thinking about things that actually happened as opposed to my sordid incestuous fantasies.

Unable to concentrate on anything useful, I defaulted to old reliable and fired up Charley’s switch for a bit, wandering around aimlessly in Breath of the Wild. By the time evening rolled around I was experiencing a weird combo of severe jetlag (Tokyo is eight hours ahead), extreme arousal and a general sense of anticipation for what would happen when Charley got back.

And then at around half seven I heard her key turning in the lock.