Title: Nice View of a Wall
Author: MelWil
Rating: PG13
Disclaimer: I don’t own them
Archive: Just let me know where
Feedback: is loved - lina_wilson@hotmail.com
Summary: “We shouldn’t have done that.”
Author’s note: The quote is from Rupert Brooke’s poem The Hill

~*~

“And then you suddenly cried, and turned away.” : Rupert Brooke

She was sitting up when he returned, the sheet pulled close and wrapped around her. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes avoided his. He was glad for the security of his pants, slipped on as he left the room.

“We shouldn’t have done that.” Her voice was throaty, and he wondered why she wasn’t smoking. She seemed like the kind of girl who would smoke her way through the morning after. Smoke and toss her head and gaze at him out of the corner of her eye.

“Yeah?” He crossed the room to stare out her window. She had a nice view of a wall.

“We shouldn’t have done that.” A note of panic crept through her voice and years fell from her age. She was so young.

“I heard you the first time.” He was irritated because he’d enjoyed himself all night and now, with the hint of morning, he was feeling guilty. He turned slowly to face her, watching her draw her knees towards her chest. He wondered how on earth she managed to look guiltier than he felt.

“You have a fiance, you know.” She was taunting. She was risking nothing, while he held everything in the palm of a rapidly closing hand.

“Yeah.” He remembered that he had a fiance, he was actually there when he proposed to her . . .

Andi. Sweet Andi with her long, silky hair and her understanding eyes. Touch Andi in her suit and stilettos and red lipstick.

Andi, who would kick his ass if she knew what happened. Who would scream at him and hit him and scratch him because he would have deserved every bit of it.

“We shouldn’t have done that.” He whispered, the ten tonne weight falling heavily onto his shoulders.

She grinned at him, a grin that would have made the Cheshire Cat proud. “I told you.”

He wondered if she kept cigarettes in her bedside table. “Claudia . . .”

“CJ.” She spoke quick and sharp and the initial poked at him. “It’s CJ now.”

He wondered when that happened, when she pared all the curves and bends from her name, when she became straight and pointed. He wondered if someone convinced her to change names, if some older politico held her naked body to him, convincing her that CJ was more sophisticated than Claudia.

“CJ.” It stumbled off his lips. “I’ve done something terrible here.”

“Actually I quite enjoyed it.” She was turning on him, turning into a stranger, a veteran of poor political campaigns and cruel men.

“I have to go.” He plucked his T-shirt from the small pile of clothes next to the bed.

“Say hi to Andi for me.” She waved to him as he turned the handle of the door.

“I’ll talk to you later.” The door slammed behind him and he bounded down the stairs.