Page 88 of Degrees of Control

When he’d first met Charlotte,she’dbeen coming on tohim, looking for an easy ride after a nasty break-up. He’d thought she was cute with her pale skin and wide blue eyes and when he’d learned she liked it rough in the sack, he decided she could be his woman—for a night.

Things might have ended there if he hadn’t ruined his chances with her before they could have sex. Chasing after her had led to the discovery that she was a yoga teacher, which in turn prompted him to ask for at least a few weeks of fucking so he could get her out of his system. That was when the trouble started, when he realised Charlotte Bell had something rarer than E-cup tits and a pussy so tight it should have had blasphemous hymns written about it. She had a heart of pure fucking gold. She was kind. She cared. When he talked, she listened in a way no one else ever had. Some part of him had known then that he’d never get this girl all the way out of his system, but he was immature and fucked it all up. Mercifully, she’d taken his idiot ass back and he’d been living in a state of wonder and disbelief ever since.

His drinking buddies had gone crazy when he’d told them he was moving to Australia for a girl he’d only known a few months, but James hadn’t cared. He’d known it would work out and he’d been right. His new life in Melbourne had launched as smoothly as a luxury sailboat; he found an apartment, a job and new friends all while fucking the shit out of the girl of his dreams.

A year in, when he knew he wanted Charlotte for keeps, he’d applied for Australian citizenship. When word got around to his family, everyone aside from Kelsey had freaked the fuck out. The Hunters were seventh generation Texans and it turned out they considered dual citizenship just short of hanging the flag upside down.

“Bring your girl back here, James,” his father had said during the first non-birthday phone call they’d had since his early twenties. “You’re American, you belong in America. She’ll understand.”

He hadn’t listened, not to his father and not to any of the other relatives who called or emailed to whine about his personal decisions. Far as he was concerned, America was the land mass where he came out of his mother and Texas the reason everyone at work called him ‘Pardner.’ He had no desire to bring Charlotte to the US out of some weird patriotic duty. Besides, the further his‘like if a lotus flower was a person’girlfriend was from his family, the better.

He missed Kelsey, a few of his friends and strip bacon, but he liked living in Melbourne with its constantly changing weather and endless cafes. Besides, he had a family. He’d been wholeheartedly adopted by the Bells’ who were as nice a group of in-laws you could hope to have. Mr and Mrs Bell seemed to justassumehe was worthy of their daughter. They never dropped hints about killing him if he broke Charlotte’s heart or held excruciating dinner parties where you could feel decades of upper class resentment simmering to a boil. They also never asked him if he was a liberal, the way his mom had asked Charlotte during the first and only Skype conversation James had allowed them to have.

His whole life, the holidays had been uncomfortable to the point of pain. As a child he’d camped out in his bedroom, and as an adult he’d gotten blackout drunk at the earliest possible opportunity. Now everything was different. Better. Like yesterday for Christmas, they’d gone to Charlotte’s sisters’ house and spent the day surfing and eating mango shrimp salad and playing card games.Card games.And no one had cheated.No one.

“They treat me like I’m their own,” he’d told Charlotte after they were done making Christmas love in the spare bedroom.

She snuggled into the crook of his arm. “That’s because you are. But stop letting Tess win at poker, I know you’re better than she is and she’s getting way too smug.”

Yeah, he was one lucky motherfucker all right, the luckiest he knew. So why couldn’t he just fucking propose already?

With a quick glance to make sure Charlotte was still waiting in line, James reached into his backpack and pulled the ring box out again. The diamond winked accusingly at him, asking why he was such a cowardly piece of shit.

“I don’t know,” he muttered, snapping the black velvet box shut again.

The first time he’d intended to propose, he’d taken Charlotte to their favourite Thai place, waited ‘till she was in the bathroom and dropped the ring into her glass of sparkling cider. For one glorious moment it had seemed like he was going to go through with it and then he’d reached for the glass and drunk until he sucked the ring into his mouth. Looked a real asshole too when she asked why he’d finished her drink.

There had been lots of attempts since then. Romantic walks, fancy dates…For a week he’d told himself he was going to just roll over in the morning and hand her the ring while they were in bed together—nice and simple, low pressure. He choked every single time. Didn’t even come close.

Christmas Eve had been his greatest failure. He’d taken Charlotte on a sunset stroll down the beach.

“Charlotte,”he rehearsed in his head as they walked.“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m already happiest man on earth, but marry me anyway, just to make everyone jealous?”

After an hour, he suggested they sit at the park bench by the shore. He’d first told her he loved her on a park bench and figured asking her to marry him on one had a nice synchronicity. He figured that, but what happened was they held hands on a park bench until it got dark then went home, as non-engaged as they’d ever been.

James had only told two friends that he was struggling to propose. Both seemed to think it meant cold feet, but it wasn’t. Hewantedto marry Charlotte and he was sure she’d say yes too. Or as sure as any man whose girlfriend didn’t drop constant ‘let’s get married’ hints could be. He knew there had to be some logical reason why he couldn’t ask Charlotte to marry him, but damned if he could figure out what it was.

He shoved the ring box back inside his luggage and glanced up at Charlotte. She’d finally made it to the front of the coffee stand and was laughing at something the long-haired barista was saying. The guy had a very familiar expression on his face. It said‘Wow, what an angel. I bet she could solve all my problems.’

“Fat fuckin’ chance, son,” James muttered, but he didn’t get up and go introduce himself. He didn’t wrap an arm around Charlotte’s waist and stare daggers at the man until he rescinded all fantasies of asking his woman on a date to the hipster mini golf place and humping her on the mattress his parents bought him for Christmas.

That was progress.

When James first moved to Melbourne, he and Charlotte had run smack-bang into the issue of his jealousy. He’d never really loved anyone before and the intensity of it made him a possessive asshole. In his defense, it was difficult to go a few hours without seeing Charlotte in the beginning, let alone tolerating other men weighing her tits with their eyes. So he crushed a few hands during shakes, told a few barflies to fuck off and gave Charlotte’s male yoga students a hard time. If they didn’t like it, they could think about football when she demonstrated downward facing dog instead of staring point-blank at her ass. Only Charlotte didn’t find this behaviour particularly charming.

“So, in essence, what you want is for straight men to no longer be straight men in my presence?” she asked after a particularly glare-tastic class.

“Yup.”

“You realise you look like a complete asshole, right?”

“Darlin’ Iama complete asshole. You knew that the moment you saw me.”

She folded her arms over her chest. “I did. I also saw you were a lot more than that, otherwise I wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with you.”

“Yeah you would have, you wanted my cock too bad.”

She sighed. “James, how would you feel if every time a girl showed interest in you—which is every five minutes by the way—I grabbed your butt and started talking about how we should get home to bed so I can fuck you sideways?”

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