Hold Me Close

a little game

I stand at the door, a familiar smirk playing on my lips and a bottle of wine in hand. The last time I knocked like this, it was to make amends for a stupid argument. It is a little different now.

As the door swings open, my eyes widen in surprise at the sight of Alexia, as if I hadn't expected her to exist. Before I can utter a word, her grin matches mine and she pulls me into a tight hug. The bottle presses between us uncomfortably but it is easy to ignore it. Everything else seems to melt away.

"I missed you," Alexia says softly, though her voice is filled with excitement. Her breath tickles my ear but I do not let go of her. "Earlier was torture. All I wanted to do was hug you."

"I noticed the jealousy," I tease, voice slightly muffled by her head. At the airport, she had glared hard at Mapi, who must have known what couldn't happen and decided to rub it in by squeezing me until I was on the verge of suffocating. I breathe in the scent of her perfume, subtle and lingering on the hoodie she is wearing. "I missed you too."

"Good. I almost convinced myself I was going crazy."

"You're not."

She has the opportunity to say something, but she lets it slip past her as her hand slides between us and her fingers curl over where mine are gripping the neck of the bottle. Alexia takes a step back, allowing me inside – barely over the threshold, though. The bottle is pulled from me and placed on the floor, and I am still working out what she is going to do next when she shuts her door and presses me against it.

"Hug me, huh?" I quote her words from only a second ago.

She steps into my space, hands firmly holding my waist. "Maybe something else, also." I kiss her, neither of us need more prompting than that.

Her lips work slowly but the kiss deepens all the same, with a striking inevitability that is only heightened by my travelling hands. She groans as I reach underneath her t-shirt, one hand splaying against her back to pull her into me and the other grazing the ridges of her stomach with the intention of heading straight into her bedroom. It begins as something pleasurable, until the low sound morphs into an impatient whine.

Alexia stops.

"Would you like a drink?" Mildly dazed, by both the kiss and the abrupt end to it, I nod slowly. She bends down to the bottle and plucks it from the floor, sauntering towards her kitchen as though it is not a strange thing for her to do at all. "Fleur," she calls from metres away. I look up, blinking. "You're not made of stone. Come over here."

The apartment is not well-lit, but that is to be expected at this time of night. Distracted by the action of earlier, I had failed to notice the music in the background, but it is clearer now. Something soft – something that sounds like warm socks and plumped cushions at any volume you turn it up to. It strikes me that Alexia must seek comfort like most of us do. I am sometimes too swept up in my own battle with the human condition to realise that everyone else is in the same boat, as Jaimie loves to remind me.

"So," she says as I lean against the worktop, propping my body up on one elbow and admiring her as she unscrews the cork, "tell me about England. I'll tell you about Mexico, if you haven't heard about it already from Esmee. For me, it was almost like a crash course in therapy. Pina was – is – inconsolable, and it is awful to comfort someone when you know the other person is not in the same state. There is no way that Talia is sobbing herself silly in London."

"We all deal with things differently." It is hard to gauge whether or not I hear bitterness in her voice. "And England was nice. Boring, if anything. A good way to miss out on preseason."