Curve Ball Read Online Free Page A

my hair and thought he better pluck it out.
    I swear to God I almost scream – and I don’t think I do it because of the imaginary spider. I think I do it because his fingers are so massive, and suddenly they’re all over my face. He aims for somewhere around the ear area, but fails, miserably. He could probably touch France and stretch one finger over to England, so it shouldn’t be a shock.
    But it is. It makes all the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. For a second it’s all I can feel: the heat from his hand, the unintentional pressure of his big fingers, the feel of them sinking briefly into my hair … All of it combines to make me breathless, though I can hardly blame myself for that.
    I’ve never been touched like this before. I’m not used to this kind of intimacy – not even from actual boyfriends. Certainly not from Frank. He had a very firm view of what was appropriate between life partners, including that they should always refer to themselves as life partners. Public physical contact was a complete no-no, though I guess we’re not exactly in public right now. Jason and Kimberley aren’t paying the least bit of attention to what Steven may or may not be doing, and besides – he does it far too quickly for anyone to catch.
    So it doesn’t really count, on that level. It just counts on the other level Frank wasn’t a fan of: making my insides go woo-woo. He felt that any sort of woo-wooing was rather unseemly, and he had a point. I want to make a big blarting noise, the second Steven does it. And for ages afterwards I can feel the aftershock of what he’s done. My body is practically vibrating with it, in a way I definitely don’t want anyone to see.
    Just pretend it never happened, I think at myself, but myself doesn’t want to obey. Myself has been starving in the desert of affection for 7,000 years, and feels like I deserve a long, long drink. In fact, I think myself might be about to do something very stupid – like maybe fondling his hair in return.
    Would he really mind if I fondled his hair in return?
    He probably wouldn’t, all things considered. I mean, what can he say? “I just played with yours but you can’t play with mine?” That seems grossly unfair, and I’ve never known Steven to be grossly unfair. He hardly ever cheats when we play Monopoly.
    Though I realise that’s a flimsy reason for touching him. Too flimsy, I think. Too dangerous. No matter how weirdly intimate he gets with me, I’m never going to do the same in return. The fear of Crush Knowledge is just too great.
    So rather than continue into this, I get up in a big blunder – knocking over my glass and flinging pizza into Jason’s lap as I do so. And though I know I should then say sorry for my klutziness, I don’t do that either. Instead, I talk really loudly about feeling tired and wanting to read and basically anything, anything at all to get me out of this situation.
    To my eternal embarrassment, I actually think I mention needing the toilet.
    But at least I get to escape. I avoid the biggest embarrassment of all: randomly throwing myself at Steven Stark because he plucked a spider out of my hair. And downstairs on my table bed it’s so much quieter and darker and cooler. The boat has a little air conditioning unit, and once I’m being blown on by it I can actually think. The heat stops making me do crazy things.
    Because that’s obviously the explanation for all of this:
    The terrible, terrible heat.
    And me, slowly going insane.
    I know why I’m in the water – I’m trying to hide from him. But I’m pretending it’s for a good, normal reason, like snorkelling. Even though I can’t snorkel. I try, I really do, but it’s a bit beyond me. All I can manage is sort of peering down into the water while my body remains as straight as an arrow, so that I look kind of like a fish hook. I’m dangling over the sea bed, with my goggles just glancing the surface of the water.
    It almost works,