Pillow Talk

They snuggled, together, close. Pattie's arm tightened around his neck so hard that it made him chuckle, and then she wriggled away a little and turned around, so that she was facing half away from him, spooning into his body and both her hands clasping his arm across her stomach to keep him close. He held her even nearer, and they lay for a while, resting, silent, wordless. Thoughts were drifting through his head and he watched them idly. One thought caught his attention as it floated past, and he took a breath to summon the energy to actually speak. "Pattie?"

"Hmmm?" Her eyes were closed.

"Pattie?" He couldn't yet quite muster the energy required to find more words, so stuck with that one.

"What?" The word emerged slurred, but intelligible. He nuzzled the back of her neck in a space where her hair had fallen aside.

"How old were you when you first did it?"

There followed a long pause. George wondered if she hadn't heard him, and took breath to repeat the question. "How...?"

"Um..." No more followed. George frowned.

"Pattie?" His frown deepened; as she was still turned away from him she didn't know. "Wassup?"

She twisted round slightly in his arms so that she could turn her head comfortably to face him. She too was frowning, but it was a frown of puzzlement rather than concern. "Nothing?" she answered, and shook her head slightly. "Why... would there be?"

"I... er..." George had no idea how to proceed on this one, and felt as though he'd just dug a hole for himself and jumped down into it unaided. "Well... you didn't answer... and I thought..."

Her blue eyes were steady. "What?"

That I'd... I dunno...that you were upset with me asking..."

Pattie shrugged. "No? What's there to be upset about?"

"Thank God for that," George muttered, more to himself than to her. They both relaxed again into the pillows. "So – when was it then?"

"Hmmm?"

"How old were you?"

She didn't have to think very hard. "Eighteen."

It was time for George's eyes to widen, but he concluded that she'd misunderstood. "No, I mean – how old were you when you did it for the first time?"

"Eighteen. I said."

"But..." Once again in this conversation, which he was sincerely beginning to wish he'd never started, he found himself searching for words. "You're nineteen."

"Er – yeah."

The sarcastic tone did not escape him.

"It was last year."

"I didn't know you were a maths genius."

Again, he chose to ignore the tone. "But... I thought..."

"What?" Sarcasm was gone. It had been replaced by annoyance. George pressed his lips together, tried to think quickly. Failed.

"Oh... nothing." That was an attempt at airy, which also failed.

"Nothing! Oh come on!" She sounded angry, and it felt deeply uncomfortable to him, being a completely new experience. She had never been angry with him before; at least, not that he knew. "What on earth are you going on about?"

George found it remarkable that, even cross, she still sounded like someone talking on the BBC. When he was angry his vocabulary and diction plummeted. Hers apparently didn't. "George!!"