Page 58 of Oyster

“What? You don’t like that?”

“Well… yeah.” I squirmed. “No one’s ever touched me there before.”

“It’s nice. You should let me do it. You’ll like it.”

My embarrassment easing, I snorted. “You’re an authority now?”

She rubbed again with her finger. Tendrils of pleasure curled up my spine. “Sure I am. I told you—I’m a quick learner. A 'see one, do one' kind of girl.”

She pushed me onto my side, so we faced each other. I moaned as her finger explored deeper. “And I like being your first for something.”

While her lips parted against mine, my eyes fluttered closed. Her fingertip smoothed against some hidden part of me, lighting me up from the inside out. “You’re my first for everything, sweetheart. You should know that by now.”

In the soft hearth light, we moved against each other. Both of us were learning, and we fumbled around, giggling to each other as we worked out the position. Entering her felt like the first time all over again and we took it slow, staying face to face, the way she wanted.

“Love this, Nico,” she breathed. “Love you.” Her hands alighted on my cheeks, she pressed tickling kisses against my chin, my nose, my neck, my eyebrows. Each soft touch, each tender glide and push an unspoken promise of days, months, and years, a lifetime.

My pulse dropped to a steady beat as her every touch, her every sigh, ignited fingers of flame. My mind clouded, I lost myself to the rhythm, to my beautiful woman and the beautiful feel of her. Warmth flooded between us when she came and I followed, our climaxes neither endings nor beginnings but affirmations of the future.

I stayed at Éti’s for seventy-two hours straight. Most of it in bed, with Éti absorbing the ebb and flow of my sadness and indulging my grief-powered sex drive. Charles and Florian stopped by with a couple of paintings she wanted to try for size. I didn’t say much, happy to listen to my girlfriend flirting outrageously with Florian, and Charles’s measured tones lapping it all up.

“Max knows about Éti,” I confided in Florian as the other two debated the pros and cons of various overseas investment opportunities. Conversing in French, this time, but it might as well have been Mandarin for all Florian and I understood. I’d checked in at home; my mum’s sister had settled in for the weekend, helping my dad dispose of leftover medical stuff and turn the living room back into a normal space. Another unpleasant task no one had prepared us for.

“Will he be able to keep it a secret?”

I shrugged. “At the moment, yes, I think so. He has too much else on his mind. And Éti asked him to, and he’s in awe of her. But I suppose he might let slip at some point.”

“You’re on borrowed time, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” I agreed with a sigh. “I just need someone to lend us a little more, to get some distance, you know, from all of this. A chance for some normality. I think Éti wants that too.”

“Have you talked to her about it?” Florian made a minute adjustment to a painting of himself, raising one corner a fraction, then tilted his head to the side. If I had to stare at my best mate’s handsome face every day, then this one would do, bent over a rake out on his salt flat. At least he had his clothes on.

“Not really. She’s enjoying her privacy too much. The freedom being Éti is giving her. She’s learning a lot about herself. In some ways, she reminds me of Zoë, or how Zoë was until my mum got sick. She’s still experimenting with how she looks, and makeup and stuff, like a teenage girl. And then in other ways, she’s old and wise. She always knows what to sayto cheer me up at any given time. She goofs around—she teases me. She also has this very professional persona she can switch on in an instant, like now, discussing investments. It’s scary, to be honest, but then, when it’s just us, she’s soft and caring and…”

In the next room, Éti’s joyous laughter rang out as Charles teased her about something. Florian gave me a smug grin, one that said I’d been rhapsodizing over my girlfriend for a lot longer than normal. Heat spread up my neck.

“Don’t hold back, Nic. Why don’t you tell me how you really feel about her?”

Connard.“I love her, Flor. And I'm so fucking lucky. Like you wouldn’t believe.”

CHAPTER 15

My mum had been dead for six weeks. The spaces between missing her grew longer, although some days her absence felt as raw as if, only yesterday, she was sitting at her sewing machine, singing along to the radio. On others, when my arms were full of Éti, hours could pass before I remembered she was no longer with us. For the most part, my emotions oscillated somewhere in between, like now, as I settled down for the match on the sofa next to my dad.

The Champion’s League final in Munich brought the European soccer season to a close. Having already lifted the Ligue 1 trophy and smashed their way through the Champion’s League qualifying rounds, PSG were tipped as hot favourites against a Manchester City side struggling with injury and at the tail end of the long, tough English season.

We had a beer each; unusually, it was his first of the night.

“How are you, Nico?” he asked, as the players lined up for the national anthems. Like always, Éti stood alongside Fabien, her curly head at least a foot lower than his. Seeing her on the telly would never grow old; I felt my usual frisson of excitement, even though she’d found time for a quick phone call twenty minutes earlier. I’d have been at the match myself if I hadn’t given thetickets to Max and his mate. Éti being Éti, not only was my brother in the VIP section, but she’d covered the cost of their travel and hotel too.

“Um… okay?”

While I recognised it wasn’t the most searching of enquiries, for us, it was atypical. More so since we’d spent most of the day together out on the oyster beds.

“That’s good.” He shuffled closer and patted my knee. “Good,” he repeated. “You must tell me when it’s not.”

I edged away a fraction. Maybe it wasn’t his first beer after all. “Er… what’s going on?”

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